ston, ignorant, I
was an admirable vessel into which he could pour the inexhaustible
stream of his acquired eloquence. I was delighted to listen to beautiful
passages from the classic as well as modern poets, dramatists,
philosophers, and orators, and recalled the anecdote of the man sitting
under a fluent divine, who could not refrain from muttering, "That is
Jeremy Taylor; that, South; that, Barrow," etc. It was difficult to
suppress the thought, while Mr. Sumner was talking, "That is Burke, or
Howard, Wilberforce, Brougham, Macaulay, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Exeter
Hall," etc.; but I failed to get down to the particular subject that
interested me. The nearest approach to the practical was his
disquisition on negro suffrage, which he thought should be accompanied
by education. I ventured to suggest that negro education should precede
suffrage, observing that some held the opinion that the capacity of the
white race for government was limited, although accumulated and
transmitted through many centuries. He replied that "the ignorance of
the negro was due to the tyranny of the whites," which appeared in his
view to dispose of the question of the former's incapacity. He seemed
over-educated--had retained, not digested his learning; and beautiful
flowers of literature were attached to him by filaments of memory, as
lovely orchids to sapless sticks. Hence he failed to understand the
force of language, and became the victim of his own metaphors, mistaking
them for facts. He had the irritable vanity and weak nerves of a woman,
and was bold to rashness in speculation, destitute as he was of the
ordinary masculine sense of responsibility. Yet I hold him to have been
the purest and most sincere man of his party. A lover, nay, a devotee of
liberty, he thoroughly understood that it could only be preserved by
upholding the supremacy of civil law, and would not sanction the
garrison methods of President Grant. Without vindictiveness, he forgave
his enemies as soon as they were overthrown, and one of the last efforts
of his life was to remove from the flag of a common country all records
of victories that perpetuated the memory of civil strife.

Foiled in this direction, I worried the President, as old Mustard would
a stot, until he wrote the permission so long solicited. By steamer from
Baltimore I went down Chesapeake Bay, and arrived at Fortress Monroe in
the early morning. General Burton, the commander, whose civility was
marked,