Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899

[403] to be of my invention, but which originated in the following manner: Colonel Higginson had related to us that at a boarding-house which he had recently visited, he found two children of a Boston family of high degree, amusing themselves on the broad piazza. The little boy presently said to the little girl:—

‘I say, sis, is n't this a bully piaz?’

My friend on the Point had heard this, and when she introduced me to the veranda which she had added to her house, she asked me, laughing, ‘whether I did not consider this a bully piaz.’ The phrase was immediately adopted in our confraternity, and our friend was made to figure in a club ditty beginning thus:—

There was a little woman with a bully piaz,
Which she loved for to show, for to show.

This same house contained a room which the owner set apart for dramatic and other performances, and here, with much mock state, we once held a ‘commencement,’ the Latin programme of which was carefully prepared by Professor Lane of Harvard University. I acted as president of the occasion, Colonel Higginson as my aid; and we both marched up the aisle in Oxford caps and gowns, and took our places on the platform. I opened the proceedings by an address in Latin, Greek, and English; and when I turned to Colonel Higginson, and called him, ‘Filie meum ’