IN THE UNITED STATES 1838-1875 381 



lovely being, whether at Nahant or at Cambridge. Low 

 ell was wonderfully brilliant as well as kindly, and Ed 

 ward Everett Hale delightful. It was the time of Hale s 

 short stories in the &quot;Atlantic Monthly, &quot; which seem to 

 me the best ever written. Oliver Wendell Holmes I met 

 so rarely that I have little memory of his brilliant conver 

 sation. Emerson I met then and at other times, once, 

 especially, in a railway train during one of his Western 

 lecture tours; he was then reading the first volume of 

 Carlyle s i Frederick the Great, and, on my asking him 

 how he liked, it, instead of showing his usual devotion 

 to the author, he burst forth into a stream of pro 

 tests against Carlyle s &quot;everlasting scolding at Dryas 

 dust. &quot; A man who was as much overrated then as he 

 is underrated now was Whipple, the essayist ; he was al 

 ways bright, and often suggestive; but too reliant upon 

 a style which is now out of date, frequently summoning 

 &quot;alliteration s artful aid,&quot; and resorting to other de 

 vices, fashionable then, but now discarded. Perhaps the 

 best of all his sentences was the one on the three great 

 statesmen of that period, to the effect that Webster was 

 inductive, Calhoun deductive, and Clay seductive ; which 

 was not only well stated but true. Very vividly comes 

 back to me a supper-party given early in 1875 at the 

 house of James T. Fields, in celebration of Bayard Tay 

 lor s birthday. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Fields and Taylor 

 were present Eichard H. Dana, eminent in law and let 

 ters; Cranch, then known both as a painter and poet; 

 Mr. Osgood ; and myself. Taylor recited, as I had heard 

 him do at other times, from the productions of the Geor 

 gia poet, Chivers, and especially from the &quot;Eonx of 

 Buby.&quot; Chivers, according to Taylor s showing, had 

 become infatuated with Poe, and adorned his verses with 

 every sort of beautiful word which he could coin, the 

 result being as nonsensical a medley as was ever known. 

 Earlier in the evening, Taylor, Fields, and myself had 

 each of us been giving a lecture, and this led Taylor 

 to speak of a recent experience of his while holding 



