MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS _By the Same Author_ BIOGRAPHICAL American Bookmen (1898) Phillips Brooks (in “Beacon Biographies,” 1899) Life and Letters of George Bancroft (1908) Life and Labors of Bishop Hare (1911) Letters of Charles Eliot Norton (with Sara Norton, 1913) George von Lengerke Meyer: His Life and Public Services (1919) Memoirs of the Harvard Dead (1920, 1921, ——) HISTORICAL Boston, the Place and the People (1903) Boston Common: Scenes from Four Centuries (1910) The Boston Symphony Orchestra (1914) The Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1918) The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers (1919) VERSE Shadows (1897) Harmonies (1909) EDITED The Beacon Biographies (31 volumes, 1899-1910) The Memory of Lincoln (1899) Home Letters of General Sherman (1909) Lines of Battle, by Henry Howard Brownell (1912) The Harvard Volunteers in Europe (1916) A Scholar’s Letters to a Young Lady (1920) [Illustration: MRS. FIELDS] MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS A CHRONICLE OF EMINENT FRIENDSHIPS DRAWN CHIEFLY FROM THE DIARIES OF MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS BY M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE “_I stay a little longer, as one stays_ _To cover up the embers that still burn_” [Illustration] _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE First Impression, October, 1922 Second Impression, December, 1922 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS I. PRELIMINARY 3 II. THE HOUSE AND THE HOSTESS 6 III. DR. HOLMES, THE FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 17 IV. CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE VISITORS 53 V. WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 135 VI. STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 196 VII. SARAH ORNE JEWETT 281 ILLUSTRATIONS MRS. FIELDS _Frontispiece_ From an early photograph A NOTE OF ACCEPTANCE 9 Autograph of Julia Ward Howe THE OFFENDING DEDICATION 15 From First Edition of Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home” AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF DR. HOLMES 18 REDUCED FACSIMILE OF DR. HOLMES’S 1863 ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD 23