summer home at Newburgh that I had the opportunity of knowing her
readiness to enter into that kind of enjoyment, which depends upon the
co-operation of every member of a circle for the entertainment of all.
The elements of our group were well commingled, and the bright things
evoked by their contact and friction were neither few nor far between.
The game to which you allude of "Inspiration" or "Rhapsody" was a
favorite. The evening at Paltz Point called out some clever sallies, of
which I have no record or special recollection; but I know that then, as
always, Mrs. Prentiss seemed to have at her pencil's point for instant
use the wit and fancy so charmingly exhibited in her writings. She
published somewhere an account of one of our inspired or rhapsodical
evenings, but greatly to my regret failed to include in it her own
contribution which was the best of all. I distinctly remember the time
and scene--the September evening--the big, square sitting-room of the
old Seminary building in which you boarded--the bright faces whose
radiance made up in part for the limitations of artificial light--the
puzzled air which every one took on when presented with the list of
unmanageable words, to be reproduced in their consecutive order in prose
or verse composition within the next quarter or half hour--the stillness
which supervened while the enforced "pleasures" of "poetic pains" or
prose agony were being undergone--the sense of relief which supplemented
the completion of the batch of extempore effusions--and the fun which
their reading provoked. Mrs. Prentiss had contrived out of the odd and
incoherent jumble of words a choice bit of poetic humor and pathos,
which I never quite forgave her for omitting in the publication of the
nonsense written by other hands. These trifles as they seemed at the
time, and as in fact they were, become less insignificant in the
retrospect, as we associate them with the whole character and being
we instinctively love to place at the farthest remove from gloom or
sadness, and as they rediscover to us in the distance the native
vivacity and grace of which they were the chance expression. Since that
summer of 1865, having lived away from New York, I saw little of Mrs.
Prentiss, but I have a special remembrance of one little visit you made
at our home in Yonkers which she seemed very much to enjoy--saying of
the reunion which made it so pleasant to the members of our family and
all who happened to be toge