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

“ [111] visits. The first was from the soap-fat merchant, who gave me thirty-four pounds of good soap for my grease. I was quite beside myself with joy, capered about in the most enthusiastic manner, and was going to hug in turn the soap, the grease, and the man, had I not remembered my future ambassadress-ship, and reflected that it would not sound well in history. This morning came the rag-man, who takes rags and gives nice tin vessels in exchange.... Both of these were clever transactions. Oh, if you had seen me stand by the soap-fat man, and scrutinize minutely his weights and measures, telling him again and again that it was beautiful grease, and he must allow me a good price for it — truly, I am a mother in Israel.”

Much as the Doctor loved the Perkins Institution, he longed for a home of his own, and in the spring of 1845 he found a place entirely to his mind.

A few steps from the Institution was a plot of land, facing the sun, sheltered from the north wind by the last remaining bit of “Washington Heights,” the eminence on which Washington planted the batteries which drove the British out of Boston. Some six acres of fertile ground, an old house with low, broad, sunny rooms, two towering Balm of Gilead trees, and some ancient fruit trees: this was all in the beginning; but the Doctor saw at a glance the possibilities of the place. He bought it, added one or two rooms to the old house, planted fruit trees, laid out flower gardens, and in the summer of 1845 moved his little family thither.

The move was made on a lovely summer day. As