While at Mrs. Smith's home in Germantown, both she and Miss Willard urged me to sign a Temperance Pledge that lay on the table in the library. I would have accepted almost anything either of those good friends presented for my attention. So after thinking seriously I signed. But after going to my room I felt sure that I could never keep that pledge. So I ran downstairs and told them to erase my name, which was done without one word of astonishment or reproof from either. I wish I knew how to describe Hannah Whitehall Smith as she was in her everyday life. Such simple nobility, such tenderness for the tempted, such a love for sinners, such a longing to show them the better way. She said to me: "If my friends must go to what is called Hell I want to go with them." When a minister, who was her guest, was greatly roused at her lack of belief in eternal punishment and her infinite patience with those who lacked moral strength, he said: "There are surely some sins your daughters could commit which would make you drive them from your home." "There are no sins my daughters could commit which would not make me hug them more closely in my arms and strive to bring them back." Wherewith he exclaimed bitterly: "Madam, you are a mere mucilaginous mess." She made no reply, but her husband soon sent him word that a carriage would be at the door in one hour to convey him to the train for New York. * * * * * "If you do not love the birds, you cannot understand them." I remember enjoying an article on the catbird several years ago in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and wanting to know more of the woman who had observed a pair of birds so closely, and could make so charming a story of their love-affairs and housekeeping experiences, and thinking that most persons knew next to nothing about birds, their habits, and homes. Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, who wrote that bird talk, is now a dear friend of mine, and while spending a day with me lately was kind enough to answer all my questions as to how and where and when she began to study birds. She is not a young woman, is the proud grandmother of seven children; but her bright face crowned with handsome white hair, has that young, alert, happy look that comes with having a satisfying hobby that goes at a lively pace. She said: "I never thought of being anything but a housekeeping mother until I was about thirty-one and my husband lost all his property, and want, or a thousand wants, stared us in the face. Making the children's clothes and my own, and cooking as well, broke down my health, so I bethought me of writing, which I always had a longing to do." "What did you begin with?"