Her
voice was richly mellow, like my father's, and her wit was the merry
spray of deep waves of thought. The sculptor, Miss Harriet Hosmer, it
was easy to note, charmed the romancer. She was cheerfulness itself,
touched off with a jaunty cap. Her smile I remember as one of those
very precious gleams that make us forget everything but the present
moment. She could be wittily gay; but there was plenty of brain power
behind the clever mot, as immensities are at the source of the
sun-ray. There was a blessing in the presence of Miss Elizabeth Hoar,
once engaged to that beloved brother of Mr. Emerson whom death had
taken. She seemed to me (I plead guilty to fancifulness) like a tall,
speaking monument, composed of diamonds and pearls. She talked a
great deal, gently, with a penetrating sweetness of voice, and looking
somewhat down, as those do who have just received the news of a bitter
sorrow. She knew everything that was fine in history and poetry and
art; and to be near her, and to catch at moments the clear unfaltering
challenge of her sad but brave eyes, was to live a little nobler one's
self.
I will give here two letters from this friend, showing her strength of
sympathy and tenderness:--
FLORENCE, May.
DEAR SOPHIA,--We are here after a journey entirely prosperous in every
respect, driving through a country as lovely as it could be. Such
wreaths of hawthorn, such hanging tassels of laburnum, such masses of
delicate purple flowers draping the rocks and carpeting every broken
ground,--golden broom on every hillside, scarlet poppies illuminating
every field of grain, and the richest crimson clover, like endless
fields of strawberries,--I never saw before.
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