Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

I am interested in what you say about a balance in the hands of the dear old Town and Country Club. As you were the creator, baptizer, and long-continued curse of the club, I think that the disposal of the balance left in the treasurer's hands should be decided by you, whether you devote it to your personal adornments which maturer years justify, or to beneficiaries among the colored race, or those Italians who write you such graceful odes on your birthdays, should be left to you. You have put far from you those Vices of whom I am one, but I have no doubt that they would all agree in their opinion.

Now I wish you would consent to do what has only lately been possible, i.e. to nominate you as the first woman member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York, of which Stedman is the president and Howells first vice-president. .... It includes almost all our leading authors and has also departments of art and music. There must be three proposers, of whom Gilder will be one, Clemens another, and I the third, but the blank says, “It is understood that this proposal is made with the consent of the candidate” -so I write you now.