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crying of “Latest news from the front!”
and listen to the quiet words of philosophic thought and suggestion.
Side by side with work, as usual, went play.
In January she records the first meeting of the new club, the “Ladies' social,” at the home of
Mrs. Josiah Quincy.
This club of clever people, familiarly known as the “Brain Club,” was for many years one of her great pleasures.
Mrs. Quincy was its first president.
It may have been at this meeting that our mother, being asked to present in a few words the nature and object of the club, addressed the company as follows: “Ladies and Gentlemen; this club has been formed for the purpose of carrying on” --she paused, and began to twinkle--“for the purpose of
carrying on!”
She describes briefly a meeting of the club at 13 Chestnut Street:
Entertained my Club with two charades.
Pandemon-ium was the first, Catastrophe the second.
For Pan I recited some verses of Mrs. Browning's ‘Dead Pan,’ with the gods she mentions in the background, my own boy as Hermes.
For ‘Demon’ I had a female Faust and a female Satan.
Was aided by Fanny Mc-Gregor, Alice Howe, Hamilton Wilde, Charles Carroll, and James C. Davis, with my Flossy, who looked beautifully.
The entertainment was voted an entire success.
We remember these charades well.
The words
Aphrodite, dead and driven
As thy native foam thou art...
call up the vision of
Fanny McGregor, white and beau-