d come in they must. Never before or after did our
liliputian drawing-room harbor so large an assemblage. They dripped on
the carpet, they were conventional and courteous; we made conversation
between us; but whenever the thunder rolled, Mrs. James became ghastly
pale. Mr. James explained that this was his birthday, and that they were
on a pleasure excursion. He conciliated me by anecdotes of a pet magpie
or raven who stole spoons. At last, the thunder-storm and the G. P. R.
Jameses passed off together.

There were many other visitors, not only old friends, but persons
attracted thither out of the void by the fame of the book "along whose
burning leaves," as Oliver Wendell Holmes sang of it, "his scarlet web
our wild romancer weaves." It was a novel experience for the man who had
become accustomed to regarding himself as the obscurest man of letters
in America. Lonely, yearning ladies came; enthusiastic young men;
melancholy sinners. The little red house was not a literary Mecca only,
but a moral one. The dark-browed, kindly smiling author received them
all courteously; he was invariably courteous. "I would not have a
drunken man politer than I," he once answered me, when I asked him why
he had returned the salutation of a toper. What counsel he gave to
those who came to him as to a father confessor of course I know not; but
later, when I used to sit in his office in the Liverpool consulate,
I sometimes heard him speak plain truths to the waifs and strays who
drifted in there; and truth more plain, yet bestowed with more humanity
and brotherly purpose, I have never heard since. It made them tremble,
but it did them good. Such things made him suffer, but he never
flinched from the occasion by a hair's-breadth. He must have loved his
fellow-creatures.

Somebody gave me a rabbit, which I named Hind-legs. I was deeply
interested in him for a while, especially when I learned that he could
not drink water; but he lasted only two weeks, and I am under the
impression that I killed him. Not that I loved him less; but children
are prone to experiment with this singular thing called life when it
is in their power. They do not believe that death can be other than
a transient phenomenon; the lifeless body may puzzle, but it does not
convince them. I was certainly not a cruel urchin, and I can recall
none but cordial sentiments towards Hindlegs on my part. I remember no
details of the murder, if murder were done; but I do remember f