[Manchester—ca. Wednesday, 27 August 1879]
I was much impressed by E.S.P.’s little house. “the whole place only as large as my study, I cannot get over it.”
Mrs H.B. Stowe and her daughter came August 19 & remained nearly a week. She seemed well and happy and talked of her old days when she taught school with Catherine in Hartford. “She was but sixteen when she was teaching Butler’s Analogy and Mathematics (for the latter she had no gift she said) to a class of 40 bright girls. Catherine never stopped to know if I could teach a thing or not, if she wanted me to do it she told me I must study up and thereupon the class was given me.” I think I never before appreciated how much severe and continuous work Mrs Stowe has done. Her reputation has not been founded on the sand—nor built without labor, but her labor has been for the most part congenial her brain being equal to the strain laid upon it.
We have tried to recall even two or three of Aldrich’s witty things. He said when the North American had at one time grown very thin, “that it looked as if destiny had sat down upon it.”
