She was not so much to be called affectionate or lovable as good-natured and kindly; and with an undisguised relish for the comfortable things of this world, and a very frank liking for the society of the rich and great, she was yet constant, after a fashion, to humbler friends, and liked to do them good turns. Much of her amiability took the form of flattery,—a flattery so habitual that it lost all its grossness, and became almost a form of good deeds. She was sometimes justly accused of applying this to the wealthy and influential, but it was almost as freely exercised where she had nothing to gain by it; and it gave to the humblest the feeling that he was at least worth flattering. Even if he had a secret fear that what she said of him behind his back might be less encouraging, no matter: it was something to have been praised to his face. It must be owned that her resources in the other direction were considerable, and Lord Steyne himself might have applauded when she was gradually led into mimicking some rich amateur who had pooh-poohed her pictures, or some intrusive dame who had patronizingly inspected her humble cot. It could not quite be said of her that her wit lived to play, not wound; and yet, after all, what she got out of life was so moderate, and so many women would have found her way of existence dreary enough, that it was impossible to grudge her these trifling indulgences. Inheriting her father’s love of the brush, she had little of his talent; her portraits of friends were generally transferred by degrees to dark corners; but there existed an impression that she was a good copyist of Stuart’s pictures, and she was at one time a familiar figure in Boston, perched on a high stool, and copying those of his works which were transferred for safe-keeping from Faneuil Hall to the Art Museum. On one occasion, it was said, she grew tired of the long process of copying and took home a canvas or two with the eyes unpainted, putting them in, colored to please her own fancy, at Newport. Perhaps she invented this legend for her own amusement, for she never spared herself, and, were she to read this poor sketch of her, would object to nothing but the tameness of its outlines. XV JOHN BARTLETT JOHN BARTLETT In every university town such as Cambridge, Massachusetts, there is an outside circle, beyond the institution itself, of cultivated men who may or may not hold its degrees, but who contribute to the intellectual atmosphere. One of the most widely known and generally useful of these at Cambridge—whether in his active youth or in the patient and lonely seclusion of his later years—was John Bartlett, best known as the author of the dictionary entitled “Familiar Quotations.”