The first week in June the French maid came to our room with a telegram for Mr. Edwards, announcing that Mr. and Mrs. Hutton would sail for home the following week.

We began to hunt for a place to live, beginning with the hotels and larger boarding-houses, and ending with the smaller ones. After a week of varied, and some very funny, experiences, we decided at last upon one house, principally because of its attractive court overlooked by pleasant verandas.

"With its glistening fountain and pretty shrubbery and flowers, how nice for our baby," I said. "How cool and refreshing are the sound of the water and the glimpse of green."

So, for baby's sake, the selection was made and our rooms engaged. Our landlady was a very dark brunette, and prided herself upon being a French Canadian, but——

"That man of mine," she sorrowfully said, "is a soggy Englishman, and you would hardly believe it possible he could be the father of our two beautiful daughters. Both of them are going to do well, but they don't take after their pa. The oldest is engaged to be married to a Stateser with nine businesses!"

By the "nine businesses" and "Stateser" I gathered from her explanation, which she volunteered in answer to my puzzled look, that the fortunate son-in-law-to-be was a Yankee living in a small town in the State of Vermont, and owning a little country store where woolen and cotton goods, silks and flannels, pottery, queen's-ware, hardware, groceries, grain, and so forth, were sold, the precursor of the department store. In her admiration of him, after each alleged "business" she affixed the, to her, high-sounding title of "merchant."

The second daughter, she told me, was learning to sing.

"She has a sweet voice, but she don't take after her pa," she said, "and the young preacher student in the next room to the right of the one you have chosen is very much taken with her, and it looks like I'd get both girls off my hands before long."

She said she could not give me the use of the parlors when the girls wanted them.

"The Stateser comes a long ways, you know, and has to have it all to himself when he is here."

She generously suggested that if none "of them" were using the parlor at the time when my "company came," she would let me entertain my visitors in it at the rate of a "shilling a dozen," which arrangement I considered a very good one for me, as I did not expect to have more than a shilling's worth of visitors in six months.

Our meals were to be served in our own room, except on Sundays, when we would dine in the public dining-room and do our own "waiting," like the others. We did not exactly understand what that meant, but one day's experience proved it to be anything but comfortable. The dinner had all been cooked on Saturday and was cut up and piled on the table in the center of the room, and we served ourselves. I could not help thinking of the time when my Soldier had been served by butlers and waiters, each anxious to be the first to anticipate his wishes, and all feeling amply rewarded for every effort by a pleasant word or an appreciative smile. I wondered how any one of those obsequious attendants would feel to see us now.

The following menu was about the average dinner (with the exception, of course, that on week-days it was warm): Corned beef, mutton pie, potato salad, pickled snap-beans, gooseberry tarts and milk. Our breakfast was always cold; the first one was cold bread, preserves, a baked partridge (which is the same as our pheasant), and delicious coffee and butter.

Our rooms had one discomfort: we were awakened every morning by the young lady, who made love to the bird of her preacher beau while she arranged his room.

"Dear 'ittle birdie!—birdie dot a Dod?—birdie dot a soul?—'ittle birdie sings praises to Doddie?"

A sound as of the door opening, a rustling and a confused "Oh, dear!" and then "Good morning" was followed by the invariable excuse for not having finished tidying up the room and cage before he came, "because birdie and I are such friends—ain't we, birdie?—and time slips so quickly—don't it, birdie?"

I would know she was being forgiven, though I could hear only the sounds of his deep, low tones between the chirping to—birdie, of course. Neither my husband nor I meant to listen to these chirpings to—birdie, of course, and I always put my fingers in his ears at the sound of them.

After our breakfast was over and baby had been made comfortable, I usually sent him out for his walk with Annie McCarthy, his new nurse, who was delighted at having him all to herself.

"Shure, and I'll not be having the interfarence of so many others whose rasponsability I don't be a-wanting; for the bairn, God save him, was afther being that kissed, his dinner wouldn' agray with him at all, at all. There was the cook and John's wife and John and the coachman and that ugly French Lizette (sorra a bit am I to be rid of her, the vain prig) would be all afther kissing him until he'd be that sick his milk would curdle in him, and for the loife of me I couldn't be kaping the clothes clane on him with all their crumpling and handling; and it's glad that I am entirely, the saints save us, having him to mesilf, the blissed child!"

The rooms were comfortable, and we found the long veranda, where we spent our evenings and most of our mornings, not only a very pleasant change, but a source of amusement as well. My curiosity was greatly excited concerning our neighbors on the left. I was uncertain how many there were of them, though I put them down in my mind as not less than half a dozen.

The first morning these "Left-handers," as I called them, were as silent as the grave till about noon, when, all at once, without any premonitory noises, they began a most animated conversation, interspersed with laughter, mirthful and scornful. The tones of their voices would change from anger to reproach and then to grief, so that at one time I was so full of sympathy with the poor man who was being driven out into the cold world that it was all I could do to refrain from going in and pleading for him; but while I was hesitating the trouble ceased. I supposed he was gone and all was over with him, and involuntarily offered up a prayer—the only help I could give.

Imagine, if you can, my surprise when the next morning at a little later hour I heard a repetition of the same painful scene. The poor man had returned, I reasoned. Taking them all together, I thought they certainly were a most peculiar family, and I determined to enlist my husband's interest when he returned. Something had prevented my telling him the day before. That evening as we were sitting on the veranda I carried my resolution into effect and, though he listened with his usual sweet patience, my description of the disturbance, to my surprise, excited in him more mirth than sympathy.

Just as I had finished telling my story, our baby was brought in to be enjoyed and put to sleep. "The little pig went to market," "the mouse ran up the clock," "the cock-horse" was ridden "to Banbury Cross," and after innumerable "Hobble-de-gees," baby was ready, and so were we, for his "Bye Baby Bunting."

When his sweet little "ah-ah-ah" accompanying ours grew fainter and fainter, we began to sing in the Chinook jargon the Lord's Prayer, which my husband had taught the Indians on the Pacific coast, and which we always sang at the last to make baby's sleep sound. At the words, "Kloshe mika tumtum kopa illahie, kahkwa kopa saghalie" (Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven), from through the open door of the room to our left a voice clear and sweet joined in the same jargon with ours to "Our Father," and as the last invocation was chanted, "Mahsh siah kopa nesika konaway massachie—Kloshe kahkwa" (Send away from us all evil—Amen), a handsome stranger stepped out and, with outstretched hand, said to my Soldier, with great cordiality, "Klahowya sikhs, potlatch lemah" (How do you do, friend; give me your good hand). Then followed a conversation between them about the Pacific coast, Fort Vancouver, San Juan Island, Puget Sound, the Snohomish tribe and their many mutual friends of the Salmon Illehe.

All the while I was wondering what could have become of the other family—if they had gone—and yet now and then I caught a tone in our visitor's voice as he talked to my Soldier, that sounded very similar to the tones of the man in trouble belonging to them, though I did not see how it would be possible for any one to drive, or wish to drive, him out of one's home. When, after awhile, I came in for the compliments of the season, my astonishment knew no bounds when I learned that he had been the sole occupant of that room since Sunday night.

The clock in the court struck seven. Rising hastily, and with many apologies, this strange-family man wrote something on his card, and handing it to my husband, said, "I am playing at the theater here to-night—come and see me," and was gone.

To this kind stranger, William Florence, I was indebted for my first taste of the pleasures of the theater. Almost every evening he joined us on the veranda, shared our play with baby, cheered and entertained the General, and kindly took us afterward to see the play. Yet, during the whole of his stay—four days—he never once, in the most remote way, intruded himself upon our confidence; and though he knew there was some mystery, in his innate delicacy he made no allusion to it.

On Saturday evening, when his engagement was over and he came to say good-bye, after lingering over the pleasant evenings we had passed together, and putting great stress upon the benefit they had been to him, he stopped abruptly, saying:

"Confound it all! Forgive me, if I put my foot in it—but here is something to buy a rattle for the youngster. I swear I absolutely have no use for it. In fact, I never had so much money at one time before in my whole life, and it belongs by rights to the young rascal; for, if it had not been for the 'cat's in the fiddle,' the 'cow jumping over the moon,' 'getting the poor dog a bone,' and 'Our Father who art in heaven,' I should have spent every red cent of it on the fellows. Please—I insist," he said, as my husband refused. "I know you have had more money than you seem to be bothered with now; take this."

Though we were both very much touched by the kind generosity of this stranger in a strange land, my Soldier was firm in his refusal.

"Well, good-bye and good luck to you," he said. "You are as obstinate as an 'allegory on the banks of the Nile.' Here it goes," putting the fifty dollars back into his pocket, and turning to me, with a tone I so well remembered, he wished me happiness.

"Good-bye," I said; "may 'Our Father' who art in heaven and his little ones of whom he says 'suffer to come unto me,' keep your heart thoughtful for others, and gentle and kind all through this life. Believe in soul and be very sure of God."

In all the years that came afterward the friendship formed then between my husband and our first "Left-hander" was never broken—and to me it was a legacy.

The following week I noticed his rooms were taken by a lady and gentleman whose actions were very strange. I saw there were two of them this time. The second evening, as I was putting baby, who was unusually restless and fretful and would not be amused or comforted, to sleep, the queer lady, with a "Banquo-is-buried-and-can-not-come-out-of-his-grave" tone and manner, came in and said, "The child—is't ill, or doth it need the rod withal!" Whether the child needed "the rod withal?" or Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup, he stopped crying at once and, while she talked on, he never took his startled eyes from her face till he wearily closed them, hypnotized to sleep.

"Hast thou a nurse—one that thou call'st trustworthy?" she asked, after I had put the baby in his little bed.

"Yes, madam," I answered, "one whose love makes her so."

"It is well" she said, "and if thou dost not fear to leave the watch with her, wilt thou and thy husband come as our guests to see our Hamlet as we have conceived him to be?"

It was the first of Shakespeare's plays I had ever seen, and my blood ran cold as I breathlessly watched the portrayal of it by these, the most celebrated actors of their day (Charles Kean and his wife, Ellen Tree), with talents so versatile that I cried over the tragedy as if my heart would break, and laughed with equal heartiness over "Toodles," the farce which followed.

At the close of the play the actress brought her husband into the box and introduced him. Unlike her, he did all his acting on the stage; she stabbed her potatoes and said, "What! no b-e-a-n-s?"

We accepted their kind invitation to share their carriage back to the house, and enjoyed, too, some of the delicious supper prepared for them. It was their last year on the stage, and I never saw them again, though I treasure their little keepsake, given me in exchange for one not half so pretty, and gratefully remember the pleasure they put into our lives during the days they were our "Left-handers."

Among others, there came in time that king of comedians, noble in mind as he was perfect in art, Joe Jefferson. This pleasant acquaintance did not end with our Canadian experience. The next time we saw Joe Jefferson he gave a performance in Richmond and turned over the whole proceeds to a war-ruined Confederate who had assisted him in early days, all in such a quiet manner as to fulfill the spirit of the Scriptural injunction regarding the right and left hands. The kindness which was shown by the wealthy tobacconist—the seeming favorite of fortune—to the poor lad in the beginning of that career the distinction of which, even then, could be foretold, was thus gracefully repaid a thousand times by the successful actor.

Our landlady made a tour of inspection of all the rooms every Friday, but to us she made her visits longer each time, showing a growing interest in our affairs. She could not solve the mystery of our having come from such a palatial home to her boarding-house. Then, too, one of my "shilling visitors" happening to be the Governor-General and another an English officer, they were also a cause of wonder. She was so insistent in this unbounded curiosity that we were compelled to seek a larger house where we should be more lost to sight, especially as just at this time two prominent Southern gentlemen, Mr. Beverly Tucker and Mr. Beverly Saunders, had been gagged and taken through the lines, though their release was immediately demanded by the English government.

Much to my husband's relief, I volunteered to assume the disagreeable task of notifying her, which notice she seemed intuitively to have anticipated and determined to thwart by telling of her troubles, all of which she laid at her husband's door.

"He is got so high-minded now," she said, "he refuses to blacken all the boots at night—leaves the top floor ones till morning. Wants to set upstairs with me and the girls, instead of staying down in the kitchen, looking for chaws and to be handy; expects us to hunt tins to shine and mend, and nails to drive; won't eat the boarders' leavings; reads the Stateser's newspaper that he sends to his girl; sets on it when he hears us coming; took money from Stateser, too, and was that sly he was going to spend it on himself, and I giving him all he needs."

Taking advantage of her pause for sympathy, I edged in my notice. She immediately put all the blame of our going on "that Johnson," and, though I assured her that he had nothing whatever to do with it, wailed:

"You can't fool us, you can't fool us—he drives every boarder out of the house."

Our next rooms opened on the Champs de Mars, the attractions of which in part made up for the loss of the veranda, but not for that of our "Left-handers," who had made oases in our lives.