The Last Leaf | Page 7

but not from the feeling that the task was not
worth doing. Everett had the idea that the armed rush of the North and
South against each other might be stayed even at the last, by reviving in
them the veneration for Washington, a sentiment shared by both. The
delivery of his oration on Washington as a means to that end was well
meant, but pathetic in its complete futility to accomplish such a purpose.
So small a spill of oil upon a sea so raging! He was a master of
beautiful periods, and I desire here to record my testimony that he also
possessed a power for off-hand speech. The tradition is that his
utterances were all elaborately studied, down to the gestures and the
play of the features. I have heard him talk on the spur of the moment,
starting out from an incident close at hand and touching effectively
upon circumstances that arose as he proceeded.
Of the two men, often seen side by side, so similar in tastes, education,
and character, both for the same cause ostracised from public life by
their common wealth, a repugnance to reform which scouted all
counting of costs, Winthrop impressed me in my young days as being
the abler. His public career closed early, but he had time to show he
could be vigorous and finely eloquent. I remember him most vividly as
I saw him presiding at a Commencement dinner, a function which he
discharged with extraordinary felicity. He had an alertness, as he stood
lithe and graceful, derived perhaps from his strain of Huguenot blood.
His wit was excelling, his learning comprehensive and well in hand. He
was no more weighed down by his erudition than was David by his
sling. Encomium, challenge, repartee,--all were quick and happy, and
from time to time in soberer vein he passed over without shock into
befitting dignity. I have sat at many a banquet, but for me that ruling of
the feast by Winthrop is the masterpiece in that kind. He lived long

after retiring from politics, the main stay of causes charitable,
educational, and for civic betterment. My memory is enriched by the
image of him which it holds.
* * * * *
Sixty years ago, one met, under the elms of the streets of Cambridge,
two men who plainly were close friends: one of moderate height, well
groomed in those days almost to the point of being dapper, very
courteous, bowing low to every student he met, Henry W. Longfellow.
Of him I shall have something to say later on. The other was a man of
unusual stature and stalwart frame, with a face and head of marked
power. His rich brown hair lay in heavy locks; the features were
patrician. He would have been handsome but for an hauteur about the
eyes not quite agreeable. His presence was commanding, not genial. It
was Charles Sumner.
I often encountered the two men in those days, receiving regularly the
poet's sunny recognition and the statesman's rather unsympathetic stare.
Both men were overwhelmingly famous, but, touched simultaneously
by warmth and frost, I, a shy youngster, could keep my balance in their
presence. Sumner in those years was the especial _bête noire_ of the
South and the conservative North, and the idol of the radicals--at once
the most banned and the most blessed of men. I had, besides, a personal
reason for looking upon him with interest. He was a man with whom
my father had once had a sharp difference, and I wondered, as I
watched the stride of the stately Senator down the street, if he
remembered, as my father did, that difference of twenty-five years
before.
My father, in the late twenties a divinity student at Harvard, was a
proctor, living in an entry of Stoughton Hall, for the good order of
which he was expected to care. The only man he ever reported was
Charles Sumner, and this was my father's story.
Sumner, an undergraduate, though still a boy, had nearly attained his
full stature and weight. He was athletic in his tastes, and given to riding
the velocipede of those days, a heavy, bonebreaking machine, moved

not by pedals but by thrusting the feet against the ground. This Sumner
kept in his room, carrying it painfully up the stairs, and practised on it
with the result, his size and energy being so unusual, that the building,
solid as it was, was fairly shaken, to the detriment of plaster and
woodwork, and the complete wreck of the proper quiet of the place. My
father remonstrated mildly, but without effect. A second more emphatic
remonstrance was still without effect, whereupon came an ultimatum. If
the disturbance continued, the offender would be reported to the college
authorities.
The bone-breaker crashed on