"_January 29, 1882._ Frank [Marion Crawford] had met Oscar Wilde the evening before at Dr. Chadwick's; said that he expressed a desire to make my acquaintance. Wrote before I went to church to invite him to lunch. He accepted and Maud and Frank, or rather Marion, flew about to get together friends and viands. Returning from a lifting and delightful sermon of J. F. C.'s, I met Maud at the door. She cried: 'Oscar is coming.' Mrs. Jack Gardner, Madame Braggiotti, and Julia completed our lunch party. Perhaps ten or twelve friends came after lunch. We had what I might call a 'lovely toss-up,' _i.e._, a social dish quickly compounded and tossed up like an omelet." During this year and the next, Crawford made his home at 241 Beacon Street. Here he wrote his first three books, "Mr. Isaacs," "Dr. Claudius," and "A Roman Singer." He was a delightful inmate, and the months he spent under our mother's roof were happy ones. A tender _camaraderie_ existed between aunt and nephew. During his first winter in Boston he thought of going on the stage as a singer, and studied singing with Georg Henschel. He had a fine voice, a dramatic manner, full of fire, but an imperfect ear. This fault Henschel at first thought could be remedied: for months they labored together, trying to overcome it. Crawford delighted in singing, and "Auntie" in playing his accompaniments. At dusk the two would repair to the old Chickering grand to make music--Schubert, Brahms, and arias from the oratorios they both loved. In the evening the three guitars would be brought out, and aunt and nephew, with Maud or Brother Harry, would sing and play German students' songs, or the folk-songs of Italy, Ireland, and Scotland. Our mother was sure to be asked for Matthias Claudius's "_Als Noah aus dem Kasten war_": Crawford would respond with "_Im schwarzen Wallfisch zu Ascalon_." This was the first of thirty happy years passed at 241 Beacon Street, the house Uncle Sam bought for her. The day she moved in, a friend asked her the number of her new house. "241," she answered. "You can remember it because I'm the two-forty one."