"Mr. Emerson has a way of looking off into the distance as he speaks or listens which is very poetic and beautiful. I liked it, but yet I was not happy, for I had a knot of purple violets in my hair, and I distrusted this way of appreciating them. I don't wear violets every day; nor for the Colonel who talks politics to me; nor for the young preacher who propounds chemical conundrums. And so they meant something in this case! perhaps to subtly express the homage of a Southern heart, that I had no skill to put into words. I dare say, however, the great man received a general impression of sweetness and perhaps it is well he did not trace it to outside influences. "On the whole, Mr. Emerson personally strikes me as one who might falsify that comprehensive saying that no man is a hero to his valet, as I cannot imagine him under any circumstances other than the consistent high-toned man, who beyond all scholarship and learning 'Still may hear without abuse That Grand old name of gentleman.'" She thus describes her impressions of Carl Schurz, the occasion on which she saw him being a Sumner memorial meeting: "He is German in accent but not in appearance. His full whiskers are red, not blonde. And his features have none of the Teutonic heaviness, but are rather characterized by the sagacious sharpness of the American. The eulogy was very fine, and repeated bursts of applause testified to the enthusiasm of the audience. Most especially I must note the warm and hearty reception accorded that part of the address in which Mr. Schurz spoke of the noble and manly stand taken by Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, and paid a just tribute to his brilliant eloquence, which was especially grateful to my Southern pride." In the following paragraph she gives her Southern readers a pen picture of her poet friend: "Longfellow was there from his beautiful historic home. Bret Harte calls him his 'ideal poet,' and as one looks upon his gracious, benignant face, framed in silvery hair, and reverently notes the broad thoughtful brow, and the eyes from which love toward all mankind seemed to beam, it is easy to comprehend how the perfect harmony between the man and his works should win from one, a poet himself, the highest praise he could possibly bestow." In her stories Longfellow suggested that she write of the life around her, but she chose, and wisely, the life of the South that she knew best, and the poet admitted in the end that her instinct had led her aright. Before '76 she wrote some of the "Gran-mammy Stories" and other short sketches that found a ready sale. Longfellow said that she would be "the American writer of the future."