CHAPTER XIV 



CAMBRIDGE AND BOSTON CELEBRITIES 



As in this record I now end with my life as a bachelor student 

 in Cambridge, it is fit to finish the story of that period with 

 some account of the people other than fellow students or teach- 

 ers with whom I had been in contact during the years I had 

 spent there. Not many houses were open to me in Cambridge 

 or Boston, for I had little time and not much inclination for 

 society, yet these few houses were much to me and the memories 

 of them are dear. First to be named of them was that of Mr. 

 George Ticknor. As soon as the lists of students were presented 

 which bore my name, I had a message from him through my 

 master, saying that if I were a kinsman of Mr. William Shaler, 

 sometime consul at Algiers, he would be glad to see me. I made 

 haste to do his bidding, and found my way to what was in its 

 time perhaps the stateliest mansion in Boston, at the corner 

 of Park and Beacon streets, where its windows looked down 

 the mall which leads to the foot of Beacon Hill. Mr. Ticknor 

 received me in a way that made me feel that I had known him 

 all my life. This impression was probably due to certain like- 

 ness in his manner to my grandfather, Richard Southgate. He 

 sought to find in my appearance traits which recalled my 

 father's uncle. On my first visit, which stays very clearly in 

 mind, I met his wife, who made an immense impression on me; 

 for splendor of carriage and dignity of manner, she was to be 

 compared with my great-aunt, Abigail Stilwell. They were both 

 dames of a vanished age. That this was no mere boy's impres- 

 sion, but well judged, is shown by the fact that years afterward 

 I went to the house with Professor Bonamy Price of Oxford, 

 who was accustomed to august personages; as we came away, 



