hen to submit all his writings to her criticism.

Although his own life work lay entirely in the field of letters, he
had a sincere admiration for work with the hands, and often expressed
his surprise at the mechanical cleverness of American women. He took
pleasure in seeing that we could cut, fit, and make our own clothing,
and do a pretty good job of it, too, and looked on at the operation
with serious interest, sometimes making useful suggestions, for he had
a genuine and unaffected sympathy with the work and aims of other
people, no matter how humble they might be. Any one could go to him
with a tale of daily struggle, of little ambitions bravely fought for,
even though it were nothing more than a job as waiter in a restaurant,
and be sure of his respectful consideration and sincere advice, always
granting that the ambition were honest and the fight well fought.

Sickness and discouragement were not enough to keep down his boyish
gaiety, which he sometimes manifested by teasing his womenfolk. One of
his favourite methods of doing this was to station himself on a chair
in front of us, and, with his brown eyes lighted up with a whimsical
smile, talk broad Scotch, in a Highland nasal twang, by the hour,
until we cried for mercy. Yet he was decidedly sensitive about that
same Scotch, and his feelings were much wounded by hearing me express
a horror of reading it in books.

A pleasant trivial circumstance of our life that comes to mind is an
occasion when we were all rejoicing in the possession of new
clothes--a rare event with any of us in those days, and Louis proposed
that we should celebrate this extraordinary prosperity by an evening
at the theatre. Women wore pockets then, but there had been no time to
provide my dress with one, so Louis agreed to carry my handkerchief,
but only on condition that I should ask for it when needed in a true
Scotch twang, "Gie me the naepkin!" a condition that I was compelled
to fulfill, no doubt to the surprise of our neighbours at the theatre.
Gilbert and Sullivan were in their heyday then, and the play given
that night was _The Pirates of Penzance_. Louis said the London
"bobbies" were true to life.

Chief among the amusements with which we tried to brighten the extreme
quietude of our lives in the little Oakland house was reading aloud.
We obtained books from the Mercantile Library of San Francisco, among
which I especially remember the historical works of Francis Parkman,
who