When my friend, Mrs. Botta, said one evening to her husband: "Grace writes me that she will be here tomorrow, to spend the Sabbath," and then said to me, "Grace Greenwood, I mean; have you ever met her?" my heart beat very quickly in pleasant anticipation of her coming. Grace Greenwood! Why, I had known her and loved her, at least her writings, ever since I was ten years old. Those dear books, bound in red, with such pretty pictures--_History of My Pets_ and _Recollections of My Childhood_, were the most precious volumes in my little library. Anyone who has had pets and lost them (and the one follows the other, for pets always come to some tragic end) will delight in these stories. And then the _Little Pilgrim_, which I used to like next best to the _Youth's Companion_; and in later years her spirited, graceful poetry; her racy magazine stories; her _Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe_; her sparkling letters to the _Tribune_, full of reliable news from Washington, graphic descriptions of prominent men and women, capital anecdotes and atrocious puns;--O how glad I should be to look in her face and to shake hands with the author who had given me so much pleasure! Well, she came, I heard the bell ring, just when she was expected, with a vigorous pull, and, as the door opened, heard her say, in a jolly, soothing way: "Don't get into a passion," to the man who was swearing at her big trunk. And then I ran away, not wishing to intrude, and waited impatiently for dinner and an introduction to my well-beloved heroine. Grace--Mrs. Lippincott--I found to be a tall, fine-looking lady, with a commanding figure and a face that did not disappoint me, as faces so often do which you have dreamed about. She had dark hair, brown rather than black, which was arranged in becoming puffs round her face; and such eyes! large, dark, magnetic, full of sympathy, of kind, cordial feelings and of quick appreciation of fun. She talked much and well. If I should repeat all the good stories she told us, that happy Saturday night, as we lingered round the table, you would be convulsed with laughter, that is, if I could give them with her gestures, expressions, and vivid word-pictures. She told one story which well illustrated the almost cruel persistent inquiries of neighbours about someone who is long in dying. An unfortunate husband was bothered each morning by repeated calls from children, who were sent by busy mothers to find out "Just how Miss Blake was feeling this morning." At last this became offensive, and he said: "Well, she's just the same--she ain't no better and she ain't no worse--she keeps just about so--she's just about dead, you can say she's dead." One Sunday evening she described her talks with the men in the prisons and penitentiaries, to whom she had been lately lecturing, proving that these hardened sinners had much that was good in them, and many longings for a nobler life, in spite of all their sins.