ell and had a
considerable sum still to draw. What was his surprise when he was
notified by his bankers that he had drawn his account down to the
amount he had mentioned! As there was nothing better for him to do, he
packed his trunk and went home.

Some years after that, he received a letter from these London bankers
informing him that an error had been made in his account, and that a
draft for a hundred pounds sterling (five hundred dollars) which had
been drawn by some other person named Lowell had by mistake been
charged to his account. This money, with compound interest, was now at
his disposal. The bankers suggested, however, that if he was not in
immediate need of the money, they would use it for an admirable
investment they knew of which might considerably increase it within a
year. At the end of a year he received a draft for seven hundred
pounds. This he used to refurnish Elmwood. "Now, you, who are always
preaching figures and Poor Richard, and business habits," said he, in
telling the story to some friends, "what do you say to that? If I had
kept an account and known how it stood, _I should have spent that
money_ and you would not now be sitting in those easy chairs, or
walking on Wilton carpet. No; hang accounts and figures!"

In 1857 the _Atlantic Monthly_ was started, and Lowell was made
editor, with a salary of three thousand dollars a year, of course in
addition to his salary as a Harvard professor. Though he was the
editor, he recognized that the success of the magazine would be made
by Holmes. Said he, "You see, the doctor is like a bright mountain
stream that has been dammed up among the hills and is waiting for an
outlet into the Atlantic. You will find that he has a wonderful store
of thought--serious, comic, pathetic, and poetic,--of comparisons,
figures, and illustrations. I have seen nothing of his preparation,
but I imagine he is ready. It will be something wholly new, and his
reputation as a prose writer will date from this magazine." When you
recollect the success of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" you
cannot help remarking that Lowell was a veritable prophet.

President Hayes, soon after his inauguration, offered Lowell an
appointment as minister to Austria, but Lowell declined. When he was
asked if he would accept an appointment as minister to Spain, he
consented, and thither he went in the early part of President Hayes'
administration. After a time he was transferred to London, wh