d, both leaders in social life, one of them a
physician, who had suddenly lost every spear of hair. I was invited by
the unfortunate physician and his wife to dine with them. And, in his
own home, I noticed in their parlour a portrait of him before his
experience. He had been blessed with magnificently thick black hair, a
handsome face, adorned with a full beard and moustache. It was an
April evening and the weather was quite warm, and after dinner the
doctor removed his wig, placing it on a plaster head. He was now used
to his affliction. He told me, as he sat smoking, looking like a
waxwork figure, how several years ago he awoke in the dead of the
night to find something he could not understand on his pillow. He
roused his wife, lit the gas, dashed cold water on his face to help
him to realize what had happened and washed off all the rest of his
hair, even to eyebrows and eyelashes. That was a depressing story to
me. And I soon met a lady (the Mayor's wife) who had suffered exactly
in the same way. She also was resigned, as indeed she had to be. I
began to tremble lest my own hair should never return.

But I should be telling you about St. Louis. We were most cordially
received by clergymen from three churches and all the professors at
the university, and the trustees with their wives and daughters. Wyman
Crow, a trustee, was the generous patron of Harriet Hosmer, whose
_Zenobia_ was at that time on exhibition there. The Mary Institute was
founded in remembrance of Rev. Dr. Eliot's daughter Mary, who while
skating over one of the so-called "sink-holes," then existing about
the city, broke the ice, fell in, and the body was never recovered.
These sink holes were generally supposed to be unfathomable.

Since I could not dance, I took to art, although I had no more
capacity in that direction than a cow. I attempted a bunch of dahlias,
but when I offered the result to a woman cleaning our rooms she
looked at it queerly, held it at a distance, and then inquired: "Is
the frame worth anything?"

I acknowledge a lifelong indebtedness to Chancellor Hoyt. He was
suffering fearfully with old-fashioned consumption, but he used to
send for me to read to him to distract his thoughts. He would also
criticize my conversation, never letting one word pass that was
ungrammatical or incorrectly pronounced. If I said, "I am so glad," he
would ask, "So glad that what? You don't give the correlative." He
warned against reliance on the ai