"Went with Talcott Williams to see Walt Whitman, a grand, splendid old man. He sat in the most disorderly room I ever saw, but he made it a temple for his greatness. He expounded his theories of verse; he spoke of his work, of his boyhood; of his infirmities merely by way of excuse for his difficulty in moving, and he gave me a book. He was altogether delightful." From the diary one gets a curiously vivid impression that Mrs. Moulton's work was done in the very midst of interruptions and almost in an atmosphere so markedly social that it might seem to be utterly incompatible with imaginative production. Of course, a large number of those whom she saw most intimately were concerned chiefly with the artistic side of life, and this in a measure explains the anomaly; but the fact remains that she had an extraordinary power of doing really fine work in scraps and intervals of time which would to most writers have seemed completely inadequate. "Full of interruptions, but managed to get written an editorial entitled 'A Post Too Late.'" "Went to Lady Seton's breakfast-party and sat beside Oswald Crawfurd. In the morning before I went out at all I wrote a sonnet commencing, "Have pity on my loneliness, my own!" "Finished _Herald_ letter. Mr. F.W.H. Myers called. Lunched at Walter Pater's and met M. Gabriel Sarrazin, the French critic, who told me that Guy de Maupassant thought the three disgraces for a French author were to be _décoré_, to belong to the Academy, and to write for the _Revue des Deux Mondes_." "Jan. 1, 1889. Wrote poem, 'At Dawn,' or whatever better title I can think of. Spent the time from 8 to 2 in correcting my 13,000 words story." "Louise Guiney came in to help me look over my poems. We worked till night, then went to the Cecilia concert to hear Maida Lang's quartet." "Such a busy morning! Polished off a rondel to send to the _Independent_. Read _Herald_ proof; wrote letters. This afternoon pleasant guests,--Mrs. Ole Bull, Mr. Clifford, Percival Lowell, and others." [In New York.] "Went over to Brooklyn and gave a Browning reading.... Met the Russian Princess Engalitcheff. Lunched at Mrs. Field's with the Princess and Mr. and Mrs. Locke Richardson. Went in the evening to the Gilders'." "Wrote a little.... Mrs. [John T.] Sargent and sweet Nellie Hutchinson called in the forenoon; and in the afternoon ten people, including Stedman." [In London.] "Worked on poems in forenoon. Had a lovely basket of flowers from dear old Mr. Greenough. Gave a little dinner at night at the Grand Hotel, to the Oswald Crawfurds, Sir Bruce Seton, Mrs. Trubner, and Mr. Greenough."