sor,
Phillips Brooks, and Dr. Holmes. I stood on the stairs at the rear of
Appleton Chapel as the audience came down the aisle at the close. The
coffin of Lowell rested for a moment on the grass under its wreaths,
President Eliot and Holmes walked side by side; I have a distinct
image of the countenance of Holmes as they came slowly out. It was no
longer a young face but it had all the old vivacity and even at the
moment was cheerful rather than serious; it had not, however, the
cheerfulness of a man who looks lightly on life, but that of one whose
philosophy enables him to conquer sorrow and look beyond, the face
of a man who might write a triumphant hymn even in an atmosphere of
death. These lines ran in my thought:

"Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low vaulted past,
Let each new temple, nobler than the last
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine out-grown shell
By life's unresting sea!"

The fame of James Russell Lowell, too, in these years was incipient.
As a writer he had shown himself to be elegantly schooled, but in the
_Fable for Critics_ and the _Biglow Papers_, he had burst
forth as a most effective and slashing satirist. His culture was
closely and perfectly fitted, but when scratched, revealing in full
proportions the "Whang-doodle" Yankee. The whang, however, handling
with all the deftness in the world the broadest and subtlest themes,
and the doodle standing for a patriotism of the noblest. Those
who came into close connection with him say that he grew morbidly
fastidious, shrinking from coarse contacts and was happy at last only
in a delicate environment. When in health, nevertheless, he was a
Yankee of the truest, though sublimated by his genius and superb
accomplishments. I know a little inn far away among the hills on whose
porch half concealed by the honeysuckle, Lowell is said often to have
sat listening to the dialect of the farmers who "vanned" and "vummed"
as they disputed together in the evenings after the chores were done.
Lowell had the dialect in his very bones, and loved it, but took pains
to confirm his knowledge of it by studying on the sod.

"An' yit I love the unhighschooled ways
Ol' farmers hed when I was younger--
Their talk wuz meatier and would stay,
While book-froth seems to whet your hunger.
For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt humbug's
eyes, th