He writes only in the morning, his work being done conscientiously and with painstaking. After that he devotes himself to his family, to whom he is greatly attached, and of whom he is justly proud. Besides a son, who is to be an architect, there is a daughter, who inclines to the literary taste; and another, a sweet-faced little maid, known to fame through the publication of a series of her remarkable, naïve, childish drawings, in the volume entitled “A Little Girl Among the Old Masters.” Their father is not a voluble talker; he does not aspire to shine; there is little that is Macaulayish, there are few _tours de force_ in his conversation. On the other hand, he has what some one has described as the dangerous trait of being an excellent listener. It might be said of him, as it was of Mme. Récamier, that he listens with _séduction_. He is not bent upon displaying his own resources, but possibly upon penetrating the mind and heart before him. Perhaps this is the natural, receptive mood of the true student of character. And then it is all so gracefully done, with such a sympathy and tact, that when, afterwards, you come to reflect that you have been talking a great deal too much for your own good, there comes, too, with the flush, the reassuring fancy that perhaps, after all, you have done it pretty well. His own conversation I should call marked by sincerity of statement and earnestness in speculation, at the same time that it is brightened by the most genial play of humor. His humor warms like the sunshine; we all know how steely cold may be the brilliancy of mere wit. He is a humorist, I sometimes think, almost before everything else. He takes to the humorists (even those of the broader kind) with a kindred feeling. Both Mark Twain and Warner have been his intimate friends. He wanted to know Stockton and Gilbert before he had met them. In this connection, I may close, apropos of him, with one of the slighter _bons mots_ of Gilbert. On the first visit of that celebrity to this country, in company with his collaborator, Sullivan, he chanced to ask me something about the works of Howells. In reply, I mentioned among others “Their Wedding Journey”--a book that every young couple put into their baggage when starting off on the tour. “Sullivan and I are not such a very young couple,” returned Gilbert, “but I think we’ll have to put one into our baggage, too.” WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [Mr. Howells now lives in apartments in New York, where he is editor of “The Easy Chair” in _Harper’s Monthly_ and a contributor to various magazines.--EDITORS.] CHARLES GODFREY LELAND CHARLES GODFREY LELAND IN PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON