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March 31st 329 E 15 [1879] Dear Julia When your last letter came we were waiting for Marie Taylor to arrive and I concluded not to write you till after our return from Kennett. I have been scurrying about since, too much wrapped in my own small necessities, but now I will try to answer your questions. The Papyrus dinner was a success, a novel pleasure to me, all the lady writers present except one EDBS were complimented in the toast given to our guests. You may imagine how gratifying it was to me to be so ignored and before women
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who were such my superiors. Mrs Barnett amazed me. She was all covered with new clothes, regardless of expense, ready made I should judge ever so many buttons to her gloves. She peeled them off at the table as if she were about to go into the suds. She has no style, poor manner, but she is a fine genius and whips the United States in novel-writing. Oliver Wendell Holmes , whom I never saw before looked like a superceded monthly nurse out of snuff. Miss Alcott looked old and not especially pleased , Mrs Whitney looked amiable, self-satisfied, Mrs Dodge stolid, Louise Moulton short-breathed and dazed. Rose Hawthorne sweet and uncertain - there have I been ill natured enough?
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Louise Moulton goes abroad again. She called on me a few weeks ago for the first time in four years, or since my separation from Laura Ballard. A mutual friend in Boston asked why she had not called before. She said when she was in NY before it so happened she could not have Laura's carriage to come in! There's friendship for you. Tory is well and so [growed ?], he is a great comfort to me for he is good. We think now of placing him with a drawing teacher an artist - he has an ugly nose but a very interesting face and manner. Its the first time Stoddard is discouraged, he has lost almost the power and wish to struggle, at fifty-four a failure - he says. We cannot get away
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we owe so much, rent etc and must stay to work if off. [ ?] has decided to contribute to Scribners a series of papers & has begun to read but the labor is very great, the work slow. He is also negotiating in regard to some biographies which will give him all the work he can do for the present. Stoddard has not taken any place on the Independent he sometimes writes book notices there. What a pity. You should stay alone in your pleasant houseIt is one of my ideas of the charity I would like to have the power to bestow - to have a house well appointed anyway, with books and a
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good cook, and then invite 3 cultured, [ ?] lovely people to visit me, I would give them what they could not otherwise have. I would begin with Mr Akens Allen who has been that up in the Portland Advantages office at the drudgery of a daily newspaper - I would fill her, body and soul and send her back with all her physical and mental joints lubricated with the finest rites of hospitality - There are so many like her at large in the treadmill of poverty and work. We went to Kennett with a few of Beyards old friends. A car was placed at Marie's
