All Boston that winter was stirred by the approaching agitations of war; and those two remarkable women, Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Howe were using their pens to excite the community into a species of splendid rage. I first met them both at the Fields' and always admired Julia Ward Howe as a representative type of the highest Boston culture. Harriet Beecher Stowe had just finished _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. Many people believed that it and the disturbance it made were partly responsible for the war itself. Mr. Fields told me that her "copy" was the most remarkable "stuff" that the publishers had ever encountered. It was written quite roughly and disconnectedly on whatever scraps of paper she had at hand. I suppose she wrote it when the spirit moved her. At any rate, Mr. Fields said it was the most difficult task imaginable to fit it into any form that the printers could understand. Mrs. Stowe was a quiet, elderly woman, and talked very little. I had an odd sort of feeling that she had put so much of herself into her book that she had nothing left to offer socially. I did not realise until years afterwards what a precious privilege it was to meet in such a charming _intime_ way the men and women who really "made" American literature. The Fields literally kept open house. They were the most hospitable of people, and I loved them and spent some happy hours with them. I cannot begin to enumerate or even to remember all the literary lights I met in their drawing-room. Of that number there were James Freeman Clarke, Harriet Prescott Spofford, whom I knew later in Washington, and Gail Hamilton who was just budding into literary prominence; and Sidney Lanier. But, as I look back on that first Boston engagement, I see plainly that the most striking impression made upon my youthful mind during the entire season was the opening night of _Linda di Chamounix_ and the three hundred auditors! It was long, long after that first season that I had some of my pleasantest times in Boston with Sidney Lanier. This may not be the right place to mention them, but they certainly belong under the heading of this chapter. The evening that stands out most clearly in my memory was one, in the 'seventies, that I spent at the house of dear Charlotte Cushman who was then very ill and who died almost immediately after. Sidney Lanier was there with his flute, which he played charmingly. Indeed, he was as much musician as poet, as anyone who knows his verse must realise. He was poor then, and Miss Cushman was interested in him and anxious to help him in every way she could. There were two dried-up, little, Boston old maids there too--queer creatures--who were much impressed with High Art without knowing anything about it. One composition that Lanier played somewhat puzzled me--my impertinent absolute pitch was, as usual, hard at work--and at the end I exclaimed: "That piece doesn't end in the same key in which it begins!" Lanier looked surprised and said: