He very, very
rarely spoke of himself at all, and almost never of the grievances which
he did not fail to share with all who live.
He was patient, as I said, of all things, and gentle beyond all mere
gentlemanliness. But it would have been a great mistake to mistake his
mildness for softness. It was most manly and firm; and of course it was
braced with the New England conscience he was born to. If he did not
find it well to assert himself, he was prompt in behalf of his friends,
and one of the fine things told of him was his resenting some censures of
Sumner at a dinner in Boston during the old pro-slavery times: he said to
the gentlemen present that Sumner was his friend, and he must leave their
company if they continued to assail him.
But he spoke almost as rarely of his friends as of himself. He liked the
large, impersonal topics which could be dealt with on their human side,
and involved characters rather than individuals. This was rather strange
in Cambridge, where we were apt to take our instances from the
environment. It was not the only thing he was strange in there; he was
not to that manner born; he lacked the final intimacies which can come
only of birth and lifelong association, and which make the men of the
Boston breed seem exclusive when they least feel so; he was Longfellow to
the friends who were James, and Charles, and Wendell to one another. He
and Hawthorne were classmates at college, but I never heard him mention
Hawthorne; I never heard him mention Whittier or Emerson.
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