“The Corner”, the house Grandfather Ward built on the corner of Bond Street, with the picture gallery extension running along Broadway, was still standing, a handsome house of soft-toned brick with white marble “trimmings.” The gallery had no windows, the lighting being from the top. The other day a gentleman said to me _à prôpos_ of the extension: “When I was a boy, I thought that was the city treasury and that all the money in New York was kept there, because there were no doors or windows for robbers to break in!” “The Corner” was now owned by Mr. Sampson, from whom my mother got permission to show me the home of her youth. I received an impression of greater state than I had before known; it pleased me to think of my mother as a girl receiving her guests in the long drawing-rooms, one hung with blue, one with yellow, brocade. I admired the mantelpieces, with graceful sculptured figures, the work of Thomas Crawford, while still the marble cutter’s apprentice. There was ample space in the entrance hall and well-balanced stairway, that might have been planned by our own Boston architect, Bulfinch. We were not asked to go upstairs; I never saw the room where my mother sat “tied to her chair”, studying hour after hour. Was she thinking of that time of severe study when she wrote? Who sows in tears his early years May bind the golden sheaves; Who scatters flowers in summer bowers Shall reap but their withered leaves. At Number 23 Bond Street lived Aunt Henry, widow of my mother’s uncle, Henry Ward, and mother of Cousin Henry. “Mis’ Henry Ward will be pleased to see ye, Mis’ Julia,” the old negro butler exclaimed, as he opened the door, grinning until he showed all his ivories. In the darkened parlor I was startled by a savage cry: “Good-by!” “You shut up,” said the darkey, raising the blind. “It’s only the parrot, Missie; dat bird is most one hundred years old.” There was something depressing about Number 23--the gloom deepened when I saw Aunt Henry--it is all too intangible to put into words. I was to hear much about her later, and to read in her biography that she was “noted for a remarkable talent for painting, intellectual power and great benevolence!” I never heard her spoken of by her own name, she was always “Aunt Henry” the widow of Mama’s Uncle Henry. _He_ must have been a delightful person; whenever the Three Graces of Bond Street, my mother and her two sisters, wanted to dance or sing, they always sent across the street for Uncle Henry to play for them. All that was long ago, when the parrot, the butler, Aunt Henry herself were young. Uncle Henry had long been dead; Cousin Henry, his son, now lived with Aunt Henry at Number 23. I was curious enough about him. I had heard him spoken of as a “club man”; none of the people who came to our house were exactly “club men”, and I wanted to see one badly. Mama, who was possessed to nickname all her intimates, spoke of him as “poor dear Hutie.”