6S6 AUGUSTUS LOWELL. 



In Boston and in its immediate neighborhood his boyhood was spent. 

 Of the winter delights of town as seen through youthful eyes we are 

 given a glimpse in a letter written at the time to his friend, Mr. Augustus 

 Peabody. Chief among them it would seem was coasting on the Common, 

 and in the epistle we are informed of the existence of two coasts there: 

 " one the big boys' coast and the other the small boys' coast ; " " but," 

 the writer adds to fire the ambition of his friend and so induce him to 

 come up for a visit, " the big boys do coast on the small boys' coast and 

 the small boys do coast on the big boys' coast." The rounded accuracy 

 of this statement, devoid of even the least suspicion of the elliptical, 

 testifies conclusively to the writer's time of life. 



His father had inherited the family country place in Roxbury, which 

 then was country indeed, innocent of bricks and mortar, of city streets and 

 of course of railroads. Horses and carriages made sole means of outside 

 communication. Partly from necessity, therefore, partly for pleasure, 

 Mr. .John Amory Lowell every day drove into town to his business and 

 with him he took his son to attend the Boston Latin School. This school, 

 so named from teaching " small latin and less greek," was then the popu- 

 lar school for boys of the place. To it in consequence went many well- 

 known men, among them his lifelong friends, Mr. George A. Gardner 

 and Mr. Thornton K. Lothrop. The " small latin " was hardly such in 

 quantity, if one may judge by report of the approved Latin grammar of 

 the day. Indeed education would seem to have consisted of the learning 

 by heart — pathetically so called in such connection — of a mass of rules 

 and their elephantine exceptions, sufficient to stagger even a Roman into 

 speaking something else. At all events, of the son's labors at that insti- 

 tution of learning the sole document extant is of the lucus a non kind : a 

 petition to his Honor the Mayor and Chairman of the School Committee 

 to allow the boys the first day of May as a holiday in which they might 

 " enjoy the beauties of nature and a recreation and relaxation from school 

 labors." Mr. Lowell appears heading the interesting document, which 

 was couched as convincingly as possible by a classmate. 



By nature the place in Roxbury was beautiful, though one would never 

 divine it to-day. Shorn of its fine old trees, even pared of its hills, the 

 land is possessed now by a brewery and tenement houses. But in those 

 days it was otherwise, as fading photographs show, and its garden was 

 both a delight and a name. For Mr. John Amory Lowell had two pas- 

 times, algebra and botany. His spare moments were devoted to one or 

 the other of these pet pursuits. When he was not setting himself prob- 

 lems he was puttering over plants. And he did both to some effect. 



