Carolyn Wells's "A Reader's Lament" (1899).

Carolyn Wells,
ca. 1923

Carolyn Wells's The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and she's also known for her Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In addition, she wrote poetry, such as the following "Reader's Lament" (The Bookman, Mar. 1899, p. 22):

I cannot read the old books
I read long years ago;
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray,
Bulwer and Scott and Poe.
Marryat's yarns of sailor life,
And Hugo's tales of crime; —
I cannot read the old books,
Because I haven't time.

I love the dear old stories,
My thoughts to them will stray;
But still one must keep posted on
The writers of to-day.
My desk is piled with latest books
I'm striving to despatch;
But ere I've finished all of them,
There'll be another batch.

Hope's new one isn't opened yet,
I've not read James's last;
And Howells is so prolific now,
And Crawford writes so fast.
Evelyn Innes I must skim,
O'er Helbeck I must pore;
The Day's Work I'll enjoy, although
I've read the tales before.

And then there is The King's Jackal,
The Gadfly, Caleb West,
Silence, The Forest Lovers, and—
I can't name all the rest.
I'll try to keep up with the times,
But, oh, I hope that I
May read my David Copperfield
Once more before I die.

Conan Doyle visits Kipling, Thanksgiving 1894.

Rudyard Kipling, c. 1897
Library of Congress, Prints
and Photographs Division

In Rudyard Kipling: Hell and Heroism (2005), William B. Dillingham reports that Arthur Conan Doyle, who was in the United States on a lecture tour, visited Rudyard Kipling in Brattleboro, VT, over Thanksgiving 1894, but it appears all was not serene over the turkey and cranberry sauce:

Arthur Conan Doyle
Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs
Division

Conan Doyle . . . tried to persuade Rudyard to be kinder in his remarks about America. They argued a good deal but parted on good terms thanks to the determination of both men to be as reasonable and generous as possible. Conan Doyle's attitude . . . was that Kipling was misguided but that he could bring him around. . . . Kipling told [H.] Rider Haggard . . . that he "got nothing from [Conan Doyle]." (303) 

Adds Dillingham, "What appears to have alienated [Kipling] the most was Conan Doyle's immeasurable gullibleness" (303).

Conan Doyle had a rosier view of the visit, as he recounted in Memories and Adventures (1924): "I had two great days in Vermont, and have a grateful remembrance of Mrs Kipling's hospitality . . . We parted good friends" (220).