Our society consisted mainly of friends staying in the house, or of flying visitors from London. As usual, too, my mother soon gathered around her a knot of nice girls, who made the house bright. For herself she seemed always ready to take part in all the fun and amusement that was going; and was the first to plan dances, and charades, and picnics, and theatricals on a small and unpretending scale. But five o’clock of every morning saw her at her desk; and the production of the series of novels, which was not brought to a conclusion till it had reached the hundred and fifteenth volume, though it was not begun till she was past fifty, never ceased. The Christmas was, I remember, a very merry one. We were seeing a good deal of a young fellow-clerk of my brother’s in the secretary’s office at the Post Office, who was then beginning to fall in love with my sister Cecilia, whom he married not long afterwards. He was then at the beginning of a long official life, from which he retired some years ago as Sir John Tilley, K.C.B. Among others of our little circle, I especially remember Joseph Henry Green, the celebrated surgeon, Coleridge’s literary executor, who first became known to us through his brother-in-law, Mr. Hammond, who was in practice at Hadley. Green was an immensely tall man, with a face of no beauty, but as brightly alive with humour as any I ever saw. He was a delightful companion in a walk; and I remember to the present hour much of the curious and out-of-the-way information I picked up from him, mainly on subjects more or less connected with his profession--for he, as well as I, utterly scouted the stupid sink-the-shop rule of conversation. I remember especially his saying of Coleridge, _à propos_ of a passage in his biography which speaks of the singular habit (noticed by his amanuensis) that he had of occupying his mind with the coming passage, which he was about to dictate, while uttering that with which the writer was busy, that he (Green) had frequently observed the same peculiarity in his conversation. Some few of our guests came to us from beyond the Channel, among them, charming Mrs. Fauche, with her lovely voice and equally lovely face, whose Ostend hospitalities my mother was glad to have an opportunity of returning. Among these visitors from the other side of the Channel, I remember one elderly lady of the Roman Catholic faith, and a strict observer of its precepts, who was pleased to express a very strong approbation of a certain oyster soup, which made its appearance one day at my mother’s table. She was charmed at the idea of being able to eat such soup for a _maigre_ dinner, and begged that the receipt might be written out for her. “Oyster soup! Just the thing for a Friday!” So the mode of preparing the desired dainty was duly written out for her. But her face was a study for a physiognomist when she read the first line of it, to the effect that she was to “Take of _prime beef_” so much. Oyster soup, indeed!