d;
He had the bearing of the gentleman;
And nobleness of mind illumined his mien,
Winning at once attention and respect."

He was over six feet in stature, with a broad chest and graceful
manners. His features, though not perhaps strictly regular, were
classical, and naturally of an animated cast; his hazel eyes were
somewhat inflamed by night-work; he wore no beard, except a small
pair of side-whiskers, and his black hair lay in masses over his
high forehead. I do not remember to have ever seen two finer-
looking men in Washington than Charles Sumner and Salmon P. Chase,
as they came together to a dinner-party at the British Legation,
each wearing a blue broadcloth dress-coat with gilt buttons, a
white waistcoat, and black trowsers.

The conservative Senators soon treated Mr. Sumner as a fanatic
unfit to associate with them, and they refused him a place on any
committee, as "outside of any political organization." This
stimulated him in the preparation of a remarkable arraignment of
the slave-power, which he called the "crime against Kansas." It
was confidentially printed before its delivery that advance copies
might be sent to distant cities, and nearly every one permitted to
read it, including Mr. William H. Seward, advised Mr. Sumner to
tone down its offensive features. But he refused. He was not, as
his friend Carl Schurz afterward remarked, "conscious of the stinging
force of the language he frequently employed, . . . and he was not
unfrequently surprised, greatly surprised, when others found his
language offensive." He delivered the speech as it had been written
and printed, occupying two days, and he provoked the Southern
Senators and their friends beyond measure.

Preston S. Brooks, a tall, fine-looking Representative from South
Carolina, who had served gallantly in the Mexican war, was incited
to revenge certain phrases used by Mr. Sumner, which he was told
reflected upon his uncle, Senator Butler. Entering the Senate
Chamber one day after the adjournment, he went up to Mr. Sumner,
who sat writing at his desk, with his head down, and dealt him
several severe blows in the back of his head with a stout gutta-
percha cane as he would have cut at him right and left with a
dragoon's broadsword.

Mr. Sumner's long legs were stretched beneath his desk, so that he
was pinioned when he tried to rise, and the blood from his wound
on his head blinded him. In his struggle he wrenched the desk from