to remind me of a little incident which Charlotte Cushman once related to me.  She said a man in the gallery of a theatre (I think she was on the stage at the time) made such a disturbance that the play could not proceed.  Cries of “Throw him over” arose from all parts of the house, and the noise became furious.  All was tumultuous chaos until a sweet and gentle female voice was heard in the pit, exclaiming, “No!  I pray you don’t throw him over!  I beg of you, dear friends, don’t throw him over, but—­kill him where he is.”

One of our most royal times was at a parting dinner at the house of Barry Cornwall.  Among the notables present were Kinglake and Leigh Hunt.  Our kind-hearted host and his admirable wife greatly delighted in Hawthorne, and they made this occasion a most grateful one to him.  I remember when we went up to the drawing-room to join the ladies after dinner, the two dear old poets, Leigh Hunt and Barry Cornwall, mounted the stairs with their arms round each other in a very tender and loving way.  Hawthorne often referred to this scene as one he would not have missed for a great deal.

His renewed intercourse with Motley in England gave him peculiar pleasure, and his genius found an ardent admirer in the eminent historian.  He did not go much, into society at that time, but there were a few houses in London where he always seemed happy.

I met him one night at a great evening-party, looking on from a nook a little removed from the full glare of the soiree.  Soon, however, it was whispered about that the famous American romance-writer was in the room, and an enthusiastic English lady, a genuine admirer and intelligent reader of his books, ran for her album and attacked him for “a few words and his name at the end.”  He looked dismally perplexed, and turning to me said imploringly in a whisper, “For pity’s sake, what shall I write?  I can’t think of a word to add to my name.  Help me to something.”  Thinking him partly in fun, I said, “Write an original couplet,—­this one, for instance,—­

    ’When this you see,
    Remember me,’”

and to my amazement he stepped forward at once to the table, wrote the foolish lines I had suggested, and, shutting the book, handed it very contentedly to the happy lady.

We sailed from England together in the month of June, as we had previously arranged, and our voyage home was, to say the least, an unusual one.  We had calm summer, moonlight weather, with no storms.  Mrs. Stowe was on board, and in her own cheery and delightful way she enlivened the passage with some capital stories of her early life.