. Reminiscences of the Knox and Soutter families of Virginia. evening when I went in after dinnerto see Mr. and Mrs. Walter Langdon. Mrs. Bell,with her usual kindly courtesy, presented him to meas her young rector. I bowed, and would havepassed on to Mrs. Langdons side, but she stopped meand said, You must shake hands ; and thus the veryfirst time we met we joined hands. Nearly three yearsafter this, Mrs. Bell being dead, her daughter, , invited her two nieces May and Edith Belland myself to dinner to meet her rector. The rectordid not appear, having been detained by ice in theriver
. Reminiscences of the Knox and Soutter families of Virginia. evening when I went in after dinnerto see Mr. and Mrs. Walter Langdon. Mrs. Bell,with her usual kindly courtesy, presented him to meas her young rector. I bowed, and would havepassed on to Mrs. Langdons side, but she stopped meand said, You must shake hands ; and thus the veryfirst time we met we joined hands. Nearly three yearsafter this, Mrs. Bell being dead, her daughter, , invited her two nieces May and Edith Belland myself to dinner to meet her rector. The rectordid not appear, having been detained by ice in theriver on his return from a service in Jersey City; buthe was so chagrined at his own seeming discourtesythat he begged that he might be again asked to meetthe same party. I remember that, with a certain per-versity of the feminine mind, I wished to decline thesecond invitation, and that my father was equally de-termined that I should go — so I went. What anevening that was I How charming looked the littlehouse, always to me an ideal interior among houses in 78. New-York; how agreeable the cultivated hostess as shedrew out her guests in entertaining talk! What funand laughter as we looked over the wonderful scrap-books made up by Mrs. Bell in the early days of New-York I My eyes and my heart fill as I recall it all now,and thank God and this friend for the joy that came intomy life on that evening more than twenty years ago. My fathers condition had now become very serious,and in May we sailed for Europe. I had only metDr. Dix twice, once in the street and once at Mrs. Far-nums, when I went to bid her good-by; but I hadreceived several notes of sympathy in our trouble,books, etc. The day we sailed he sent me his bookof lectures on the Two Estates, with a letter beg-ging me to write and tell him how I liked it, and end-ing with some rather stirring words and a pen-and-inksketch of a steamer starting forth on its way across thestormy sea. My father had never allowed me to corre-spond
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectknoxfam, bookyear1895
