timent that he should never practice law. He
was always dreaming of becoming independent in some other way. "Above
all things," he declares, "should I love to sit down and do something
literary for the rest of my natural life."

He did not then think of marrying, and it does not require much to
support a single man. Though he opened a law office in Boston, it does
not appear that he did any business. He wrote a story entitled "My
First Client," but one of his biographers unkindly suggests that this
may have been purely imaginary.

All through his letters we see his ambitious yearning. "George," says
he in one place, "before I die your heart shall be gladdened by seeing
your wayward, vain, and too often selfish friend do something that
shall make his name honored. As Sheridan once said, 'It's _in_ me,
and' (we'll skip the oath) 'it shall come _out_!'"

His bachelor dreams were soon dissipated, however. He went to visit a
friend of his, W.A. White, and there met the young man's sister Maria.
He thought her a very pleasant and pleasing young lady, and he
discovered that she knew a great deal of poetry. She could repeat more
verse than any other one of his acquaintances, though he laments that
she was more familiar with modern poets than with the "pure
wellsprings of English poesy."

The friendship grew apace. In the same fall that he began the
pretended practice of law he became engaged to her, and she caused a
fresh and voluminous outpouring of verse. His productions were printed
in various periodicals, such as the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, to which
Longfellow had contributed, and the _Southern Literary Messenger_,
which Poe once edited.

Miss White was a most charming and interesting young lady. She was
herself a poet, and had a delicate intellectual sympathy that enabled
her to enter into her lover's ambitions, and assist him even in the
minutest details of his work.

It is fair to suppose that Lowell's friends brought every possible
pressure to bear upon him to make him give up poetry and _dig_ at the
law. His father's financial losses had left him without an inherited
income; he was engaged to a beautiful girl and anxious to be married;
in some way he must earn his living, and if possible do more. Such was
not the effect, however. He devoted himself to poetry with an almost
feverish activity. He has made up his mind that he will do something
great; for only so can he hope possibly to make literature a paying
p