I
never had any other nickname, save that of late years some dear and
intimate friends have made syllables of my initials and called me Jay
Vee.
At four o'clock my sister and I trudged up to pay our call at the Eyrie.
This was a square house of the surburban villa type, two-and-a-half
stories high, and the handsomest building on the place, though plain,
enough, as compared with villas in the neighborhood to-day. Doctor and
Mrs. Ripley received us very kindly and gave us a most cordial welcome
to Brook Farm. Mrs. Ripley, born Sophia Dana, was a slender, graceful
lady, belonging to what Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the Brahmin
class of Boston; charming in manner, animated and blithe, but profoundly
serious in her religious devotion to what she regarded as the true
Christian life. She had, informally, the general charge of the girls in
the school, and she at once made Althea feel at home under her motherly
care.
Dr. Ripley gained my confidence by claiming old acquaintance, recalling
a former meeting that I had quite forgotten.
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