Beside a taste for poetry and music, the most valuable life asset I acquired in these days was a love of art. Our house was filled with pictures and statuary. While I do not remember either parent talking to me about them, their influence was none the less powerful. A copy of the Greek Clytie stood on the stairs; I loved her so much that on going up to bed, after having kissed all the family good night, I would pause and, if nobody were looking, reach up and kiss the cold lips of the marble woman. A set of engravings of the Greek temples hung in my father’s study; long before I knew what they were, I had learned to love the Parthenon, the Temple of Victory, the Erectheum, so that when I first saw the Acropolis at Athens I was well prepared for its glories. Mama had inherited a number of old masters from her father’s gallery, remembered as the first private picture gallery in the country. Of these I liked best the Velasquez portrait of the Little Prince. There were a dozen good Italian and Dutch pictures, all of which I studied thoroughly, if unconsciously, for when I went to live in Italy, I found no difficulty in attributing these pictures to their proper schools. CHAPTER V UNCLE SAM WARD While proud of being a Bostonian, I had from the beginning a sort of sneaking affection for New York. My mother, though of mixed New England and Southern descent, was born and bred a New Yorker. Some consciousness of these different strains of blood made me resent equally the disparagement with which Bostonians spoke of New York, and the condescension with which New Yorkers mentioned Boston. Like Annie in Enoch Arden, I wanted to be “little wife to both.” My first visit in New York was in the spring of 1863. My mother and I stayed at Number 8 Bond Street, the home of her uncle, John Ward. Bond Street was already unfashionably downtown, though still dignified; its stately houses had immaculate white doorsteps. The rooms of Number 8 were large and high, the doors of heavy Santo Domingo mahogany, the furniture Georgian, in keeping with the rest. Uncle John was adored by my mother and her sisters, to whom he was a second father; to me he is but a shadowy memory, not so distinct as his brother, Uncle Richard, who lived with him. Both were very tall men; Uncle Richard was slender, Uncle John heavily built, with a clean-shaven face, rare in those days when the moustache was almost universal. He was the President of the New York Stock Exchange, where his portrait by Wensler may still be seen. Did I hear Uncle Richard say to my mother, speaking of himself and his five brothers, all men over six feet tall? “They were fine men, dearie! I am the least of them!”