It is pleasant to recall his social life at the capital. His ready wit and brilliant conversational powers made him a welcome visitor every-where. Stepping to a book-case, he was wont to lake down a volume of Thackeray or Dickens, and, hastily scanning its pages, entertain a roomful with the drollery of his remarks. He cultivated the acquaintance of people of talent, and was passionately fond of music. In these social rounds was found the key-note to many of his early poems. But it was at St. Francis that his youthful fancies met a happy consummation. The boarders frequently gave social hops, and to one of these informal affairs came a beautiful girl. She was a stranger in the city, a guest of her aunt,—a sister of ex-President Hayes. In the interval of the dance she hastily sketched upon her fan a caricature of a fellow-guest, J. Q. A. Ward, the sculptor. Ward was an awkward young fellow, and the caricature was so clever that it occasioned much merriment among his friends. Howells was attracted to the fair stranger by this ludicrous evidence of her talent. Thus in the sculptor's outline was kindled the novelist's flame. Shortly after he entered upon his duties as consul to Venice, and a year later Miss Meade joined him in Paris, where they were married.
His life abroad was fruitful. The impressions garnered there distil an aroma through all his writings. It was "Venetian Life" (1866) that brought him his first general recognition as an author,—a recognition that came through the English rather than the American press. On his return to this country he wrote for the New York Tribune and Times, and was a salaried contributor to The Nation until called to the assistant-editorship of the Atlantic Monthly, which position he held until 1872, when, upon the retirement of James T. Fields, he became the editor-in-chief. In 1881 he was succeeded by the present editor, T. B. Aldrich. His subsequent career is well known to all lovers of good literature. Harvard College paid a unique compliment when she invited Howells to teach Spanish and Italian in her classic precincts,—an honor which he accepted and fulfilled for a short time after his return from Venice. While editor of the Atlantic he visited Columbus. He was asked then whom he took his walks with in Boston. "With James," was the reply. The influence of Howells and James in all probability has been reciprocal. Howells is warmly attached to Columbus, interwoven as it is with his early struggles. Like the town of Jefferson, it colors many of his stories. In Columbus he found the original Mrs. Erwin in "The Lady of the Aroostook." With his wonderfully keen observation, he studies the idiosyncrasies of the people he encounters as the painter catches the effect of light and shade upon the wavering landscape. A leading incident in "A Chance Acquaintance" actually occurred in the author's travelling-experience: while Kitty Ellison's "idle hands fallen into the lap one in the other's palms," it is whispered, was a favorite attitude of the novelist's sister, Anne Howells, who married Frechette, the Canadian poet. In Silas Lapham may we not catch a fleeting picture of a steamboat Dean?
With that perversity of human nature which makes us discontented with our best endeavors, Howells thought at one time that his forte lay in the historic field. "I have thought of writing a book describing a
