done something, and notably to men who have
done something in the sort I wished to do something in, myself. I
could never recognize any other sort of superiority; but that I am proud
to recognize; and I had before Lowell some such feeling as an obscure
subaltern might have before his general. He was by nature a bit of a
disciplinarian, and the effect was from him as well as in me; I dare say
he let me feel whatever difference there was as helplessly as I felt it.
At the first encounter with people he always was apt to have a certain
frosty shyness, a smiling cold, as from the long, high-sunned winters of
his Puritan race; he was not quite himself till he had made you aware of
his quality: then no one could be sweeter, tenderer, warmer than he; then
he made you free of his whole heart; but you must be his captive before
he could do that. His whole personality had now an instant charm for me;
I could not keep my eyes from those beautiful eyes of his, which had a
certain starry serenity, and looked out so purely from under his white
forehead, shadowed with auburn hair untouched by age; or from the smile
that shaped the auburn beard, and gave the face in its form and color the
Christ-look which Page's portrait has flattered in it.

His voice had as great a fascination for me as his face. The vibrant
tenderness and the crisp clearness of the tones, the perfect modulation,
the clear enunciation, the exquisite accent, the elect diction--I did not
know enough then to know that these were the gifts, these were the
graces, of one from whose tongue our rough English came music such as I
should never hear from any other. In this speech there was nothing of
our slipshod American slovenliness, but a truly Italian conscience and an
artistic sense of beauty in the instrument.

I saw, before he sat down across his writing-table from me, that he was
not far from the medium height; but his erect carriage made the most of
his five feet and odd inches. He had been smoking the pipe he loved, and
he put it back in his mouth, presently, as if he found himself at greater
ease with it, when he began to chat, or rather to let me show what manner
of young man I was by giving me the first word. I told him of the
trouble I had in finding him, and I could not help dragging in something
about Heine's search for Borne, when he went to see him in Frankfort; but
I felt at once this was a false start, for Lowell was such an impassioned
lover of Cambridge