ve failed utterly. The moral of this episode
is, hold on to your manuscript.

Owing to the illness of my son-in-law, Frank E. Lawrence, he and my
daughter went to California to see if the balmy air of San Diego would
restore his health, and so we gave up housekeeping in Omaha, and, on
April 20, 1889, in company with my eldest son I returned East and spent
the summer at Hempstead, Long Island, with my son Gerrit and his wife.

We found Hempstead a quiet, old Dutch town, undisturbed by progressive
ideas. Here I made the acquaintance of Chauncey C. Parsons and wife,
formerly of Boston, who were liberal in their ideas on most questions.
Mrs. Parsons and I attended one of the Seidl club meetings at Coney
Island, where Seidl was then giving some popular concerts. The club was
composed of two hundred women, to whom I spoke for an hour in the dining
room of the hotel. With the magnificent ocean views, the grand concerts,
and the beautiful women, I passed two very charming days by the seaside.

My son Henry had given me a phaeton, low and easy as a cradle, and I
enjoyed many drives about Long Island. We went to Bryant's home on the
north side, several times, and in imagination I saw the old poet in the
various shady nooks, inditing his lines of love and praise of nature in
all her varying moods. Walking among the many colored, rustling leaves
in the dark days of November, I could easily enter into his thought as
he penned these lines:

"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread."

In September, 1889, my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Lawrence, came East to
attend a school of physical culture, and my other daughter, Mrs. Stanton
Blatch, came from England to enjoy one of our bracing winters.
Unfortunately we had rain instead of snow, and fogs instead of frost.
However, we had a pleasant reunion at Hempstead. After a few days in and
about New York visiting friends, we went to Geneva and spent several
weeks in the home of my cousin, the daughter of Gerrit Smith.

She and I have been most faithful, devoted friends all our lives, and
regular correspondents for more than fifty years. In the family circle
we are ofttimes referred to as "Julius" and "Johnson." These euphonious
names originated in this way: When the Christy Minstr