Flossie’s engagement was a boy-and-girl affair. When David Hall was fourteen he declared he would marry Flossie Howe. The news of their engagement was broken to me during the family’s absence. I took it hard, as Flossie now represented home, family, all I held dear. In the shock of discovery, I felt a desperate sense that I had lost my last friend, but as I was very fond of David, I soon made up my mind to accept the new order. As long as he lived he was my stanch friend, one of the people I leaned upon, one who never failed me in any difficult moment. In the winter of 1868 we were living in our Boylston Place house, Number 19, when the family fire occurred on the coldest night of the year. All the household had gone to bed save Mama, who, just as she was about to put out her light, “thought she smelt smoke.” She roused my father; he soon discovered that this time the house really was on fire. Harry now came in from a dance and ran out in his dress suit, without an overcoat, to give the alarm. Laura and I dressed quickly and came down from our room at the top of the house. There came a violent ringing of the doorbell; Laura ran to answer it. I can see her now flying down the stairs, her long dark hair, a dusky veil, hanging about her. She opened the door to find our neighbors, the five Richards brothers, who, having smelt the smoke, came to give the alarm. They were all fine looking men, Frank the paper miller, George the lawyer, John the soldier, Robert the scientist, and Henry the youngest, a Harvard student in our own Harry’s class. What follows is confused. I see one of the Richards brothers whirling an ax above his head, smiting asunder the dividing wall; see all of them serviceable and energetic in saving our house and their own from destruction. I remember best the boyish face of Henry the youngest. It is impressed upon my memory that the night he and his brothers put out our fire, a flame was kindled in his heart that has kept it warm and tender from that day to this.