The other night I was at the New York Society Library, which more than anything made me want to be a little rich kid so I could frequent the children’s room. A man named Bill Dean—a tall, elegant lawyer of seventy-nine—told me some wonderful stories about the library, which dates back to pre-Revolutionary days. It was the original library of Kings College (Columbia University) and, while New York was the capital of the United States, the first Library of Congress. Recently, Mount Vernon returned a book that George Washington had borrowed—actually, they replaced the book, at considerable cost, but it was only a fraction of the late fees. Another delinquent was Herman Melville. All the books on whaling disappeared from the library until after he finished “Moby-Dick.”

The New York Society Library is in a sumptuous space on East 79th Street. Before the talk, I spent a few minutes  sitting on the marble steps between stories, going over my notes. I had brought along a framed proof of Eleanor Gould on Lawrence Weschler’s 1995 piece about war crimes and Vermeer in The Hague. Jeffrey Frank (a member of the NYSL) graciously lent it to me for the occasion. It is quintessential Eleanor: irritable, witty, logical, cutting.

Roger Angell was there with his wife, Peggy, and seeing Roger in the aisle seat gave me an unaccountable sense of warmth and familiarity. Roger got quite a shock, I think, seeing a Gould proof on his chair after all these years. The library members are passionate about language. One man wanted to talk about “that” and “which.” He didn’t see what the big fuss was about: just get rid of “that” and always use “which,” and forget about the commas—a revolutionary idea that would put a lot of copy editors out of business.

Next, I took the train to Washington and spoke at the Cosmos Club. Oh, man . . . If I stay in any more places like this, I’m going to begin to believe I’m entitled to it. The Cosmos Club is in a mansion on Massachusetts Avenue, near Dupont Circle. The event was a literary dinner: cocktails, salad, fish, coffee, dessert, and me. I don’t have a stock speech—I get bored saying the same thing over and over—so I was still writing something in the afternoon and had to ask the receptionist to print it out for me. My room had beautiful molding in the ceiling, like inverted cake frosting. It reminded me of the Fleischmanns’ apartment on 66th and Madison. I had a hard time writing about anything besides the room I was writing in. So I decided to talk about Jeanne and Peter, and how I was adamant that Peter had not gotten me my my job in the editorial library.

About a hundred and twenty people were seated at round tables—it looked like Versailles. Three women across from me at the table wanted to know what I thought about “than” in a sentence such as “Dee was  two years younger than [I or me?].” I had written “Dee was two years younger than me,” and I stand by it. I said that we’d all been taught that “than” was a coordinating conjunction and should be followed by the nominative (I), but that it was also a preposition and could be followed by the accusative (me). This made those women very grumpy. It was not what they wanted to hear.

Very far along in the book tour I am learning how to incorporate friends. I’d arranged for a friend of my late friend Lindsley Cameron Miyoshi, Pam Constable, to come. Lindsley had talked about her for years. And to my surprise the friendly face of Jim Conaway appeared. We were on a press junket to Greece together. He turns out to be a member of the club. Starr Kopper, who sat next to me, knew Gregory Maguire, a friend from long ago  in Greece (and, yes, the author of “Wicked”), and had gone to school with Anne Mortimer Maddox (Dusty), a former fact checker at The New Yorker. As usual, when it was over and I could relax, all these people evaporated.

But I am used to that by now, and I found my way to the bar by myself. Seated there was a woman I’d enjoyed talking to earlier and a man who said we’d met last summer on Martha’s Vineyard. “Oak Bluffs?” he said. “The cement camel?” I’d been to a book festival on Martha’s Vineyard, so I figured he must be a writer, but I couldn’t place him. Gradually he came into focus: Jesse, a fish scientist, with a yard full of fruit trees and, yes, a sculpture of a camel. He is a friend of my friend Susan, whom I stayed with on the island. She had been invited over to pick peaches and took me along. The wisteria was in bloom, and I learned that wisteria blossoms are edible. So I had someone to talk with at the Cosmos Club after all.