My brother, in spite of distinct distress of mind, turned laughingly to me as we walked rapidly away and said, quoting from Maria Edgeworth’s immortal pages: “Little Rosamund’s day of misfortunes!” The next day the morning newspapers announced that the evening newspapers had given the misinformation that the Republican candidate for governor would not be able to return from the Troy fair in time for the colored meeting, an announcement which had so discouraged the colored folk that only one old man had been true to his colors! From that day on, through the strenuous campaign, my brother was known by the family entirely as “Little Rosamund.” Another evening comes back to my mind. My husband and my brother had left me in my country home on the hill at Orange, and they were supposed to return at eleven o’clock that night. The last train arrived and my carriage returned from it empty. I was worried, for they were so thoughtful that I felt they would surely have telephoned to relieve my possible anxiety, and when at twelve o’clock the telephone-bell rang, I ran to the instrument expecting to hear a familiar voice, instead of which “I am a _World_ reporter” was what I heard, “and I would like to know where Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Douglas Robinson are.” “I cannot give you any information,” I replied discreetly, and more truthfully than usual, I confess. “It is very strange,” said the voice--a distant unknown voice at twelve o’clock at night, when you are the sole occupant of a remote country house, always has a somewhat eerie effect--“for we have traced them up to within the last hour and we cannot find them anywhere.” A slight wave of apprehension passed over me, but at the same time I was sufficiently confident of my two stalwart gentlemen not to have any serious fear concerning their whereabouts, and suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to be “funny”--a perfectly inexcusable inclination in a political campaign--I said to the reporter: “Wait one moment, please. Should you by any chance discover the whereabouts of Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Robinson, would you be kind enough to let _me_ know where they are?” I have always remembered the sound of the distant laugh of the man as I hurriedly put down the telephone-receiver, fully realizing my mistake in becoming jocose, and sure enough the next morning, in large headlines, appeared on the front page of the _World_: “Mrs. Douglas Robinson has no knowledge where Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Douglas Robinson have spent the night.”