friend, radical and conservative, laugh alike and alike enjoy the joke, each only remembering how _he_ finds it hard to love _his_ neighbor, and how _he_ hates to talk in the cars. The restless “interviewer,” who may perhaps have gained entrance to the pleasant library, never found himself treated, after he left, with any less courtesy than that which allowed him to be happy while he was “interviewing,” to the misery of his hapless victim. The pen that “never dared to be as funny as it could be,” never permitted itself to be as witty as it might have been, at the expense of any suffering to others. The gentle Doctor, when the interviewer was gone, turned again to his ducks in the beautiful aviary outside his window, and only vented his long-suffering in some general remark thrown carelessly in, as he describes how the bird Sees a flat log come floating down the stream; Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger;-- Ah! were _all_ strangers harmless as they seem! And the very latest stranger who may have inflicted the blow that drew out that gentlest of remonstrances, would be the first to laugh and to enjoy the remonstrance as a joke! And so came to the Autocrat what he prized as the very best of all his fame--the consciousness that he never made a “hit” that could wound. So truly was this his temperament, that if you praised some of the fine lines of his noble poem on “My Aviary,” he would say gently: “But don’t you think the best line is where I spare the feelings of the duck?” and you remember,-- Look quick! there’s one just diving! And while he’s under--just about a minute-- I take advantage of the fact to say His fishy carcase has no virtue in it, The gunning idiot’s worthless hire to pay. And not even “while they are under” would Dr. Holmes ridicule his fellow-men. It is never _we_ whom he was laughing at: it is simply human nature on its funny side; and it is a curious fact that none of us resent being considered to have the foibles of human nature provided they are not made to appear personal foibles. So, while remembering the intensity of the pleasure he has given us, let us remember, what he would care far more to hear, that he has never given any of us anything _but_ pleasure. ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS. JULIA WARD HOWE JULIA WARD HOWE AT “OAK GLEN,” NEWPORT