Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

[378] fire, and a very hot one with it. Dirty bed not made up, a sinister likeness of Schuyler Colfax hanging high on the wall, and a print of the managers of Andy Johnson's impeachment. I — in distress about my trunk -have telegraphed to Mansfield for the title of my lecture and learn that it is “Polite Society.” Must give it without the manuscript, and must borrow a gown to give it in.

Minnesota in winter

The twistings and turnings of a lecture trip have brought me twice, in the present season, to Minnesota. ...

To an Easterner, a daily walk or two is the first condition of health. Here, the frost seemed to enter one's very bones, and to make locomotion difficult .... Life at the hotel was mostly an anxious tete-a-tte with an air-tight stove. Sometimes you roasted before it, sometimes you froze. As you crammed it with wood at night, you said, “Will you, oh! Will you burn till morning?” Finally, on the coldest night of all, and at that night's noon, you bade it farewell, on your way to the midnight train, and wondered whether you should be likely to go further and fare worse....

After the lecture an informal sitting was held in the parlor of my hostess, at which there was much talk of the clubs of Boston; “If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem!” being the predominant tone in the minds of those present. And at noon, away, away, in the caboose of a freight car, to meet the passenger train at Owatonna, and so reach Minneapolis by early evening.