A few moments later Mr. Beecher and this colored man and I were riding through the streets of the capital of Kansas in an open carriage. There could be no more appropriate background for that picture than the Capitol of Kansas. We soon drove up to a very fine-looking large frame house in the quarter of negro aristocracy. There were flowers in the yard and climbers over windows and doors. As we were dismounting, Mr. Beecher said: “I see Letitia has not forgotten her love for flowers.” Just then a very large and motherly colored woman came to the door to welcome him. I don’t believe that in all our travel we ever enjoyed a visit more than that. They lived over their early life in Indiana, and Mr. Beecher recollected just the incidents and circumstances they were in touch with--the building of the house, the making of the gardens, the flowers, the different horses, cows, and the long rides they had together in his missionary work, prying their old mud wagon out of the mire and pulling the horses out of swamps. Each and all had shared these hardships alike, and were now enjoying alike the reminiscences. After an hour we drove back to the hotel, Mr. Beecher sounding the praise of his old servants until we arrived. Dinner was ready, and no small portion of the town waiting to set eyes on my star. About 6 that evening Jim came in with a large pitcher of hot coffee, something that was hard to get in that country. “Mr. Beecher, Letitia was afeared you would have no good coffee here, and she knowed how much you needed it, as you speak to-night. She never forgot the coffee, you know.” “Oh, Jim, tell Letitia that she knows just how to have a good lecture to-night.” It was a good lecture. Mr. Beecher’s visit to his old servants before he had seen any callers was much and favorably commented upon, and greatly enhanced the popularity of the already best-known colored citizen in the town. Mr. Beecher never ate before speaking. Not even at home on Sunday did he take breakfast. He was a great coffee drinker, and always required one or two cups of good coffee instead of his meal before a lecture or sermon. He gave me to understand before we started out together that if we were to have good lectures we must have good coffee. So I found it very often necessary to impress upon the host at our hotel that Mr. Beecher’s success depended upon the hotel-keeper as much as on the lecturer. It was very seldom we failed to have good coffee, except when in some frontier city in the far West and through the South. On August 18, 1883, Mr. Beecher lectured in Butte City, Mont. We arrived by an early train, went directly to the hotel, and Mr. Beecher retired to his room to lie down. We had left Mrs. Beecher for a day’s rest at Deer Lodge, about forty miles from Butte, a sort of mountain watering-place, to join her on the following day on our way to Portland, Ore.