January 3rd, 1892. Went with Mama to church, she preaching, as Mr. Ames is ill with grippe. Her prayer was very moving. She asked for faith, inspiration, and love. Also spoke of the church and the noble souls who had built it up. The sermon was on the text, “Thou Art Peter.” One of her best efforts. Have heard it before and went largely with the idea of studying her methods of delivery. Daisy Chanler advised me to study with her rather than any one else, said she thought Mama’s was the most beautiful manner and speech she had ever heard. Soon, however, the matter and the manner overcame me, and I forgot to mark the intonations save to be moved by them. The thought in the sermon was the strength of simple humanity. Sinful, deceitful sometimes, but capable of heroism and self-sacrifice. On this rock of the common sense and the right feeling of the simple human being, Christ’s church was builded. The congregation was much moved, I thought, and I bore her off rather fiercely from “congregationing.” She had been very anxious about this service and had hardly slept the night before. She is never so wearied as by prayer; it is the thing she loves best. She was flushed and beautiful at the end of the service. November 11th, 1893. To the funeral of Francis Parkman, to which I went as a matter of historical interest. It took place at King’s Chapel, without pomp, ceremony or trappings of woe. The music was pure classic, but passionless, the voice of the clergyman grave, reverent, without emotion. It seemed as if all elder Boston had come to the obsequies of one of the last great New Englanders. The service was impressive from its very impassiveness. No rending either of hearts or garments, no shrouding of pale faces with crape,--all stern, granite, real. Barrett Wendell had been that morning to the funeral of his choreman at the Catholic cathedral. He compared the gorgeous ceremony for this humble servant with the incense, the vestments, the velvet pall, the emotional music, to the grave function at King’s Chapel. He spoke of the ringing Latin words of the mass, _in sæcula sæculorum_. “In the matter of funerals,” he said, “Thomas certainly had the best of it.” CHAPTER XVI LONDON IN THE NINETIES “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!” The absurd words, the maddening air, greeted us when we marched on London, four strong, in that dazzling season of 1892. My husband, my mother, my niece, Alice Richards, and myself made up the swaggering contingent,--“four precious souls and all agog to dash through thick and thin.”