Produced by Eric Eldred, Brendan Lane and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Illustration: Portrait of the author] FROM THE EASY CHAIR BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS "I shall from Time to Time Report and Consider all Matters of what Kind Soever that shall occur to Me." --THE TATLER. CONTENTS. EDWARD EVERETT IN 1862 AT THE OPERA IN 1864 EMERSON LECTURING SHOPS AND SHOPPING MRS. GRUNDY AND THE COSMOPOLITAN DICKENS READING [1867] PHILLIS THOREAU AND MY LADY CAVALIERE HONESTUS AT THE CAUCUS THALBERG AND OTHER PIANISTS [1871] URBS AND RUS RIP VAN WINKLE A CHINESE CRITIC HOLIDAY SAUNTERING WENDELL PHILLIPS AT HARVARD [1881] EASTER BONNETS JENNY LIND THE TOWN SARAH SHAW RUSSELL STREET MUSIC A LITTLE DINNER WITH THACKERAY CECILIA PLAYING THE MANNERLESS SEX ROBERT BROWNING IN FLORENCE PLAYERS UNMUSICAL BOXES THE ACADEMY DINNER IN ARCADIA EDWARD EVERETT IN 1862. The house was full, and murmurous with the pleasant chat and rustling movement of well-dressed persons of both sexes who waited patiently the coming of the orator, looking at the expanse of stage, which was carpeted, and covered with rows of settees that went backward from the footlights to a landscape of charming freshness of color, that might have been set for the "Maid of Milan" or the pastoral opera. Between the seats and the foot-lights was a broad space, upon which stood a small table and two or three chairs; and if the orator of the evening, like a _primo tenore_, had been surveying the house through the friendly chinks of the pastoral landscape, he would have felt a warm suffusion of pleasure that his name should be the magic spell to summon an audience so fair, so numerous, and so intelligent. There were ushers who showed ladies to seats, and with their dress-coats and bright badges looked like a milder Metropolitan police. But no greater force was presumed to be required of them than pressing aside a too discursive crinoline. In the soft, ample light, as the audience sat with fluttering ribbons and bright gems and splendid silks and shawls, so tranquilly expectant, so calmly smiling, so shyly blushing (if, haply, in all that crowd there were a pair of lovers!), it was hard to believe that civil war was wasting the land, and that at the very moment some of those glad hearts were broken--but would not know it until the sad news came. Yet it was easy, in the same glance, to feel that even the terrible shape that we thought we had eluded forever did not seem, after all, so terrible; that even civil war might be shaking the gates and the guests still smile in the chambers.