Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

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one has heard her say an ill-natured word of any one,
however she may have been imposed upon. Yet she
was not by any means lacking in a keen sense of the
ludicrous, and might have been a most witty and
scathing critic if she had not been principled against
paining others or shining at their expense.
What a book of recollections she could have given
us, knowing intimately so many noted persons! At
her early receptions were to be found Edgar Poe,
Horace Greeley, the Cary sisters, pretty Fanny Osgood,
Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Ellet, Mary Hewitt, Eliza
Leslie, Doctor Griswold, Bayard Taylor, and Catherine
Sedgwick, that bright novelist who has given us a
most graphic pen-picture of a Saturday evening at
Miss Lynch's:
I passed to the drawing-room of Miss L.. It was her reception evening. I was admitted to a rather dimly lighted hall
by a little portress, some ten or twelve years old, who led me to
a small apartment to deposit my hat and cloak. There was no
lighted staircase, no trained attendant, none of the common
flourish at city parties....
When I entered I found two fair-sized drawing-rooms filled with
guests in a high state of social enjoyment. There was music,
dancing, recitation, and conversation. There were artists in every
department-painting, poetry, sculpture, and music. There I
saw, for the first time, that impersonation of genius, Ole Bull.
Even the histrionic art asserted its right to social equality in the
person of one of its most honorable professors.
No one ever needed an egis less than my lovely hostess. She
has that quiet delicacy and dignity of manner that is as a glittering
angel to exorcise every evil spirit that should venture to approach
her...
Here was a young woman without " position," to use the cant
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