He wasn't successful; his best compositions were too
delicate, fanciful, to please the popular taste; and then he was full
of the radical and fanatical notions which infected so many people at
that time in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and
his sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till
his dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always
staved off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose above
the drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was terribly
passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't wise. What I mean
is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done
to any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black
in the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the
wrong-doer. I do believe he would have visited his own brother with the
most unsparing invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a
street-beggar, or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35