I have heard many women read, some most execrably, who fancied they were famous elocutionists; some were so tolerable that I could sit and endure it; others remarkably good, but I was never before so moved as to forget where I was and merge the reader in the character she assumed.
Grace Greenwood probably made more puns in print than any other woman, and her conversation was full of them.

It was Grace Greenwood who, at a tea-drinking at the New England Woman's Club in Boston, was begged to tell one more story, but excused herself in this way: "No, I cannot get more than one story high on a cup of tea." Her conversation was delightful, and what a series of reminiscences she could have given; for she knew, and in many cases intimately, most of the leading authors, artists, politicians, philanthropists, agitators, and actors of her time in both her own land and abroad.

In one of her letters she describes the various authors she saw while lounging in Ticknor's old bookstore in Boston.
Here, many a time, we saw Longfellow, looking wonderfully like a ruddy, hearty, happy English gentleman, with his full lips and beaming blue eyes.

Whittier, alert, slender and long; half eager, half shy in manner; both cordial and evasive; his deep-set eyes glowing with the tender flame of the most humane genius of our time.
Emerson's manner was to her "a curious mingling of Athenian philosophy and Yankee cuteness." Saxe was "the handsome, herculean punster," and so on with many others.
She resided with Miss Cushman in Rome, and in London she saw many lions--Mazzini, Kossuth, Dickens and Talfourd, Kingsley, Lover, the Howellses, Miss Mitford, Mrs.Muloch Craik, George Eliot, etc.
She was the first Washington correspondent of her sex, commencing in 1850 in a series of letters to a Philadelphia weekly; was for some years connected with the _National Era_, making her first tour in Europe as its correspondent, and has written much for _The Hearth and Home_, _The Independent_, _Christian Inquirer_, _Congregationalist_, _Youth's Companion_; also contributing a good deal to English publications, as _Household Words_ and _All the Year Round_.
She was the special correspondent from Washington of the New York _Tribune_, and later of the _Times_.

Her letters were racy, full of wit, sentiment, and discriminating criticism, plenty of fun and a little sarcasm, but not so audaciously personal and aggressive as some letter-writers from the capital.