d no hope that Miss
Cobbe could be at her town residence, but I felt bound to deliver Mrs.
Howe's letter, and I wished to give her a Vassar pamphlet; so I took a
cab and drove; it was at an enormous distance from my lodging--she told
me it was six miles. I was as much surprised as delighted when the girl
said she was at home, for the house had painters in it, the carpets were
up, and everything looked uninhabitable. The girl came back, after
taking my card, and asked me if I would go into the studio, and so took
me through a pretty garden into a small building of two rooms, the outer
one filled with pictures and books. I had never heard that Miss Cobbe
was an artist, and so I looked around, and was afraid that I had got the
wrong Miss Cobbe. But as I glanced at the table I saw the 'Contemporary
Review,' and I took up the first article and read it--by Herbert
Spencer. I had become somewhat interested in a pretty severe criticism
of the modes of reasoning of mathematical men, and had perceived that he
said the problems of concrete sciences were harder than any of the
physical sciences (which I admitted was all true), when a very white dog
came bounding in upon me, and I dropped the book, knowing that the dog's
mistress must be coming,--and Miss Cobbe entered. She looked just as I
expected, but even larger; but then her head is magnificent because so
large. She was very cordial at once, and told me that Miss Davies had
told her I was in London. She said the studio was that of her friend. I
could not refrain from thanking her for her books, and telling her how
much we valued them in America, and how much good I believed they had
done. She colored a very little, and said, 'Nothing could be more
gratifying to me.'

"I had heard that she was not a women's rights woman, and she said, 'Who
could have told you that? I am remarkably so. I write suffrage articles
continually--I sign petitions.'

"I was delighted to find that she had been an intimate friend of Mrs.
Somerville; had corresponded with her for years, and had a letter from
her after she was ninety-two years of age, when she was reading
Quaternions for amusement. She said that Mrs. Somerville would probably
have called herself a Unitarian, but that really she was a Theist, and
that it came out more in her later life. She said she was correcting
proof of the Life by the daughters; that the Life was intensely
interesting; that Mrs. Somerville mourned all her life that she