The Last Leaf | Page 8

and the stroke fell. Sumner was called up
before President Kirkland and received a reprimand. He came from the
faculty-room to the proctor's apartment in a very boyish fit of tears,
complaining between sobs that he was the victim of injustice, and
upbraiding the proctor. My father was short with him; he had brought it
upon himself, the penalty was only reasonable, and it would be manly
for him to take it good-naturedly. Long afterward, when Sumner rose
into great fame, my father remembered the incident perhaps too
vividly.
My curiosity as to whether Mr. Sumner had any rankling in his heart
from that old difference was at length gratified. The years passed, the
assault in the Senate Chamber by Brooks roused the whole country;
then came the time of slow recovery. Sumner had come back from the
hands of Dr. Brown-Séquard at Paris to Boston, and was mustering
strength to resume his great place. Calling one day on a friend in
Somerset Street, I found a visitor in the parlour, a powerful man
weighed down by physical disability, whom I recognised as the sufferer
whose name at the moment was uppermost in millions of hearts.
As he heard my name in the introduction which followed my entrance,
he said quickly, while shaking my hand, "I wonder if you are the son of
the man who reported me in college." The tone was not quite genial.
The old difference was not quite effaced. I told him as sturdily as I
could that I was the son of his old proctor and that I had often heard my
father tell the story. He said plainly he thought it unnecessary and
unfair, and that that was the only time since his childhood when he had

received a formal censure. Long after, he received censure from the
Massachusetts Legislature for an act greatly to his credit, the
suggestion that the captured battle-flags should be returned to the
Southern regiments from which they had been taken.
But it was only a momentary flash. He settled back into the easy-chair
with invalid languor, and began to tell me good-naturedly about his old
velocipede, describing its construction, and the feats he had been able
to perform on it, clumsy though it was. He could keep up with a fast
horse in riding into Boston, but at the cost of a good pair of shoes. The
contrivance supported the weight of the body, which rolled forward on
the wheels, leaving the legs free to speed the machine by alternate rapid
kicks. From that he branched off into college athletics of his day in a
pleasant fashion, and at the end of the not short interview I felt I had
enjoyed a great privilege.
Another contact with Charles Sumner was a rather memorable one. We
were in the second year of the Civil War. He was in his high place,
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Senate, a main
pillar of the Northern cause. I meantime had been ordained as minister
of a parish in the Connecticut valley, and was a zealous upholder of the
cause of the Union. John A. Andrew was Governor of Massachusetts. I
had come to know him through having preached in the church at
Hingham with which he was connected. He was superintendent of the
Sunday-school, and had introduced me once for an address to his
charge. We were theologically in sympathy, but for me it was a closer
bond that he was the great war Governor.
At an Amherst commencement we had talked about recruiting in the
Connecticut valley, and he had impressed me much. Short in stature,
square, well-set in frame, he had a strong head and face. His colour was
white and pink almost like that of a boy, and the resolute blue eyes
looked out from under an abundant mat of light curling hair that
confirmed the impression he made of youth. Not many months before,
he had been the target of much ridicule, being held over-anxious about
a coming storm. He had bought three thousand overcoats for the militia,
and otherwise busied himself to have soldiers ready. He was "our merry

Andrew." But the Massachusetts Sixth had been first on the ground at
Washington, with many more close behind, and the Governor had had
splendid vindication.
Early in September, 1862, I went to Boston with a deputation of
selectmen from four towns of the Connecticut valley. They had an
errand, and my function was, as an acquaintance of the Governor, to
introduce them. Little we knew of what had just happened in Virginia,
the dreadful second Bull Run campaign, with the driving in upon
Washington of the routed Pope, and the pending invasion of Maryland.
The despatches, while not concealing disappointment, told an
over-flattering tale. More troops