the winter the
deep New England snows kept their purity in the stretch of meadow behind
the house, which a double row of pines guarded in a domestic privacy. All
was of a modest dignity within and without the house, which Lowell loved
but did not imagine of a manorial presence; and he could not conceal his
annoyance with an over-enthusiastic account of his home in which the
simple chiselling of some panels was vaunted as rich wood-carving. There
was a graceful staircase, and a good wide hall, from which the
dining-room and drawing-room opened by opposite doors; behind the last,
in the southwest corner of the house, was his study.

There, literally, he lived during the six or seven years in which I knew
him after my coming to Cambridge. Summer and winter he sat there among
his books, seldom stirring abroad by day except for a walk, and by night
yet more rarely. He went to the monthly mid-day dinner of the Saturday
Club in Boston; he was very constant at the fortnightly meetings of his
whist-club, because he loved the old friends who formed it; he came
always to the Dante suppers at Longfellow's, and he was familiarly in and
out at Mr. Norton's, of course. But, otherwise, he kept to his study,
except for some rare and almost unwilling absences upon university
lecturing at Johns Hopkins or at Cornell.

For four years I did not take any summer outing from Cambridge myself,
and my associations with Elmwood and with Lowell are more of summer than
of winter weather meetings. But often we went our walks through the
snows, trudging along between the horsecar tracks which enclosed the only
well-broken-out paths in that simple old Cambridge. I date one memorable
expression of his from such a walk, when, as we were passing Longfellow's
house, in mid-street, he came as near the declaration of his religious
faith as he ever did in my presence. He was speaking of the New
Testament, and he said, The truth was in it; but they had covered it up
with their hagiology. Though he had been bred a Unitarian, and had more
and more liberated himself from all creeds, he humorously affected an
abiding belief in hell, and similarly contended for the eternal
punishment of the wicked. He was of a religious nature, and he was very
reverent of other people's religious feelings. He expressed a special
tolerance for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was
also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I
suspect t