It was in these years that I met Margaret and Lorin Deland, to whom I was drawn from the first, by a strong sympathy. The Delands were then living at Number 112 Mt. Vernon Street, a small house they had fitted up picturesquely, whose chief feature was a diminutive living room and an immense fireplace. Here, whenever there was the slightest excuse, a fire of enormous birch [Illustration: HENRY MARION HOWE, SC.D., LL.D. CHEVALIER DE LA LÉGION D’HONNEUR, KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF ST. STANISLAS PROFESSOR OF METALLURGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY From the portrait by Font] logs blazed on the hearth. Phillips Brooks, who was one of their intimates, spent many evenings sitting over the wood fire. As the Delands’ fortunes improved, owing to Lorin’s original and brilliant work in what was then the new field of advertising and business counsel, they bought a more expensive house, Number 76 Mt. Vernon Street. When they moved, the ashes from the big fireplace at Number 112 were carefully collected and transported to the new house. The strong resemblance between Margaret and myself was often noticed. People said she looked like another of the Howe sisters. The resemblance was far deeper than this, for from the beginning of our acquaintance, I felt that she was like one of ourselves. Margaret, who did not remember her own mother, had a deep sympathy for mine. She often signed her letters, “Your abandoned Spring-off,” and declared that she was in reality my mother’s daughter, and had been abandoned in infancy on the doorsteps of her excellent Aunt and Uncle Campbell, the only parents she ever knew. I have had for many years the happiness of being one of Margaret’s literary advisers. This was a new and interesting experience, for it is the man or woman behind every book that gives its deepest interest; that is the reason intimate friends are bored by each other’s books. When you know the answer to the riddle, the riddle no longer exists! In my family we all wrote books inevitably, and while we tried to be patient with each other, we were rather tried by each other’s work. I rarely knew what my sisters, my mother, or Crawford were writing, and more rarely read their books when they were published. With Margaret the case was different. Here were deep, unsuspected springs of prejudice and tradition. Southern and Middle States instincts--her people had been slave owners--unlike any I had known. So I could not trace the origin of every character and incident in her writings, as I thought I could in the family books! How many times I heard “Helena Ritchie”, “The Iron Woman”, and “The Rising Tide” I should not like to say, but I know the characters in these books far better than any of my own drawing. Mrs. Deland wrote all her books in longhand, scorning the help of typewriter or stenographer. Dr. Lavender remains for me her most successful character. I have a theory about him that always amused her.