t figures
in Newport society. Their hospitality was proverbial, and at their
entertainments one was sure to meet the notabilities who from time to
time visited the now reviving town.

Mrs. Ritchie, only daughter of Harrison Gray Otis, of Boston, resided on
Bellevue Avenue, as did Albert Sumner, a younger brother of the senator,
a handsome and genial man, much lamented when, with his wife and only
child, he perished by shipwreck in 1858. Colonel Higginson and his
brilliant wife, a sad sufferer from chronic rheumatism, had taken up
their abode at Mrs. Dame's Quaker boarding-house. The elder Henry James
also came to reside in Newport, attracted thither by the presence of his
friends, Edmund and Mary Tweedy.

These notices of Newport are intended to introduce the mention of a club
which has earned for itself some reputation and which still exists. Its
foundation dates back to a summer which brought Bret Harte and Dr. J. G.
Holland to Newport, and with them Professors Lane and Goodwin of Harvard
University. My club-loving mind found sure material for many pleasant
meetings, and a little band of us combined to improve the beautiful
summer season by picnics, sailing parties, and household soirees, in all
of which these brilliant literary lights took part. Helen Hunt and Kate
Field were often of our company, and Colonel Higginson was always with
us. Our usual place of meeting was the house of a hospitable friend who
resided on the Point. Both house and friend have to do with the phrase
"a bully piaz," which has erroneously been supposed to be of my
invention, but which originated in the following manner: Colonel
Higginson had related to us that at a boarding-house which he had
recently visited, he found two children of a Boston family of high
degree, amusing themselves on the broad piazza. The little boy presently
said to the little girl:--

"I say, sis, isn't this a bully piaz?"

My friend on the Point had heard this, and when she introduced me to the
veranda which she had added to her house, she asked me, laughing,
"whether I did not consider this a bully piaz." The phrase was
immediately adopted in our confraternity, and our friend was made to
figure in a club ditty beginning thus:--

"There was a little woman with a bully piaz,
Which she loved for to show, for to show."

This same house contained a room which the owner set apart for dramatic
and other performances, and here, with much mock state, we once held a