BOSTON, January 22nd, 1891.
[DEAR FAMILY: — ]
This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that
my head is still its normal size, although I have at last
found one man in Boston who has read one of my stories, and
that was Barrymore from New York. The Fairchilds' dinner was
a tremendous affair, and I was conquered absolutely by Mr.
Howells, who
went far, far out of his way to be as kind and charming as an
old man could be. Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave a tea in her
studio. I thought she meant to have a half dozen young people
to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most
nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked
to meet me. And everybody came, principally owing to the
"Harding Davis" part of the name for they all spoke of mother
and so very dearly that it made me pretty near weep.
Everybody came from old Dr. Holmes who never goes any place,
to Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and all the debutantes. "I was on in
that scene." In the evening I went with the Fairchilds to
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's to meet the S — — s but made a point
not
to as he was talking like a cad when I heard him and Mrs.
Fairchild and I agreed to be the only people in Boston who had
not clasped his hand. There were only a few people present
and Mrs. Howe recited the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I
thought very characteristic of the city. To-day I posed again
and Cumnock took me over Cambridge and into all of the Clubs
where I met some very nice boys and felt very old. Then we
went to a tea Cushing gave in his rooms and to night I go to
Mrs. Deland's. But the mornings with the Fairchilds are the
best.
DICK.
In the spring of 1891 my mother and sister, Nora, went
abroad for the summer, and the following note was written to
Richard just before my mother sailed:
