No allusion to these delightful talks with Mrs. Moulton in her morning-room could be complete without mention of her faithful and confidential maid, Katy, whom all the frequenters of the house regarded with cordial friendliness as an important figure in the household life. It was Katy who knew to a shade the exact degree of greeting for the unending procession of callers, from the friends dearest and nearest, to the wandering minstrels who should have been denied, though they seldom were. It was Katy who surrounded the gracious mistress of the establishment with as much protection as was possible; but as Mrs. Moulton's sympathies were unbounded, while her time and strength had their definite limits, it will be seen that Katy's task was often difficult. The informal lingerings in Mrs. Moulton's morning-room were so a part of the "dear days" that "have gone back to Paradise" that without some picture of them no record of her Boston life could be complete. The first mail was an event, and to it Mrs. Moulton gave her immediate attention after glancing through the morning paper with her coffee and roll. Her correspondence increased with every season, and while it was a valued part of her social life, it yet became a very serious tax on her time and energy. There were letters from friends and from strangers; letters from the great and distinguished, and from the obscure; and each and all received from her the same impartial consideration. Every conceivable human problem, it would seem, would be laid before her. Her name was sought for all those things for which the patroness is invented; there were not wanting those who desired her advice, her encouragement, her practical aid in finding, perhaps, a publisher for their hitherto rejected MSS. with an income insured; and they wanted her photograph, her autograph, her biography in general; a written "sentiment" which they might, indeed, incorporate into their own concoctions by way of adornment; or they frankly wanted her autograph with the provision that it should be appended to a check, presumably of imposing dimensions,--all these, and a thousand other requests were represented in her letters, quite aside from the legitimate correspondence of business and friendship. With all these she dealt with a generous consideration whose only defect was perhaps a too ready sympathy. Her familiar friends might sometimes try to restrain her response. "It is an imposition!" one might unfeelingly exclaim. "God made them," she would reply. And to the insinuation that the Divine Power had perhaps little to do in the creation of professional bores and beggars, she would smile indulgently, but she usually insisted that it "wasn't right" to turn away from any appeal, although, of course, all appeals were not to be granted literally. In vain did one beseech her to remember Sir Hugo's advice to Daniel Deronda: "Be courteous, be obliging, Dan, but don't give yourself to