I found Mr. Reed in a three-story corner brick house, on one of the most sightly spots in town. Over the western walls of that modern, substantial New England home there clambers a mass of Japanese ivy, which, relieving the straightness of the architectural lines, gives a pleasing something, an artistic touch, to the _ensemble_. Its owner having shown his pride in that beautiful ivy, straightway took me to the roof of the house, to admire the superb view of Casco Bay and the picturesque expanse of country around Portland. The stamp of the man's character is plain everywhere in that house. The rooms are large, airy, and unpretentiously furnished, yet with solidity and that certain winning grace of domestic appointments in old New England. Much of Mr. Reed's work is done at his desk in a wee bit of a room on the second floor, where crowded book-shelves reach to the ceiling. His library long ago overflowed the confines of his den, and books are scattered through the rooms on every floor; books, bought not for binding nor editions, but for the contents, ranging from miscellaneous novels to the dryest historical treatises, from poetry to philosophy. The library,[1] on the ground floor, where callers are usually received, has among the inevitable book-shelves a few photographs of masterpieces. Over the mantelpiece a painting of Weeks's shows that the sympathies of the owner extend beyond that sphere to which the great public is inclined to confine him. [1] The picture which forms the frontispiece of the Magazine represents him in this room, at his favorite seat by the window. Of the favorite haunts of Mr. Reed, the place of all to study his social side is at his club, The Cumberland. "You see," said Mr. Reed, "a club of this kind is only possible in a conservative town like Portland, a staid, old place which grows slowly, at the rate of about five or six hundred a year, where the one hundred club members, while belonging to opposite political parties, unite to a man in celebrating the victory of any of their fellow-members. Most of them, friends from boyhood, have gone to school together, and are known to one another but by their Christian names." There the ex-Czar is always called "Tom," or "Thomas, old boy," and there reigns supreme a fine spirit of equality, or unpretentious "give and take" sort of intercourse, which is really the ideal object of a club. "Indeed, there is no place like it," said Reed. "It is the most home-like club one can imagine; too small to have coteries, and with lots of bright, sensible boys, quick at repartee. People talk of my wit, but, I tell you, it's hard work to hold my own there; and then no one can try to pose among us, or attempt to make a fool of himself, but he is properly sat upon. Intercourse with your fellow-men in such a _milieu_ is the best discipline I know of for a man--except that of political life," he added, with his droll smile.