We had some tea and some strawberries, and passed a pleasant evening. There was no very noteworthy conversation; the most interesting topic being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of spiritual communications, as regards which Mrs. Browning is a believer, and her husband an infidel.... Browning and his wife had both been present at a spiritual session held by Mr. Hume, and had seen and felt the unearthly hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on Mrs. Browning’s head. Browning, however, avowed his belief that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Hume, who lay extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under the table. The marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his logic, while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle word of expostulation. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: ‘Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1872. * * * * * [Sidenote: The color of her hair.] It curiously happens that I first met Mrs. Browning at Rome in 1859, where and when Hawthorne also first made her acquaintance, I believe. I remember going through the Vatican with him, and the then ex-President Pierce, during my sojourn in Rome, in the spring of that year. Though we both saw Mrs. Browning last in that year, my impressions are very distinct that her hair was of a dark-chestnut. It did not curl naturally; but, by one of those artifices of the toilet which all of her sex and some of mine understand, it was worn, as it has usually been painted, in side ringlets. Hawthorne’s constitutional propensity to take sombre views of things may account for the liberty he seems to have taken with Mrs. Browning’s hair. JOHN BIGELOW: _The Critic_, September 23, 1882. * * * * * [Sidenote: Mrs. Browning’s conversation.]