weight. He was athletic in his tastes, and given to
riding the velocipede of those days, a heavy, bonebreaking machine,
moved not by pedals but by thrusting the feet against the ground.
This Sumner kept in his room, carrying it painfully up the stairs, and
practised on it with the result, his size and energy being so
unusual, that the building, solid as it was, was fairly shaken, to
the detriment of plaster and woodwork, and the complete wreck of the
proper quiet of the place. My father remonstrated mildly, but without
effect. A second more emphatic remonstrance was still without effect,
whereupon came an ultimatum. If the disturbance continued, the
offender would be reported to the college authorities.

The bone-breaker crashed on and the stroke fell. Sumner was called up
before President Kirkland and received a reprimand. He came from the
faculty-room to the proctor's apartment in a very boyish fit of tears,
complaining between sobs that he was the victim of injustice, and
upbraiding the proctor. My father was short with him; he had brought
it upon himself, the penalty was only reasonable, and it would be
manly for him to take it good-naturedly. Long afterward, when Sumner
rose into great fame, my father remembered the incident perhaps too
vividly.

My curiosity as to whether Mr. Sumner had any rankling in his heart
from that old difference was at length gratified. The years passed,
the assault in the Senate Chamber by Brooks roused the whole country;
then came the time of slow recovery. Sumner had come back from the
hands of Dr. Brown-Sequard at Paris to Boston, and was mustering
strength to resume his great place. Calling one day on a friend in
Somerset Street, I found a visitor in the parlour, a powerful man
weighed down by physical disability, whom I recognised as the sufferer
whose name at the moment was uppermost in millions of hearts.

As he heard my name in the introduction which followed my entrance, he
said quickly, while shaking my hand, "I wonder if you are the son of
the man who reported me in college." The tone was not quite genial.
The old difference was not quite effaced. I told him as sturdily as I
could that I was the son of his old proctor and that I had often heard
my father tell the story. He said plainly he thought it unnecessary
and unfair, and that that was the only time since his childhood when
he had received a formal censure. Long after, he received censure from
the Massachusetts Legisla