read the Constitution as well as Mr. Webster, and I say that the
Fugitive Slave Law is unconstitutional,--is an outrage and an imposition
of which you will all soon be ashamed. It is a disgrace to humanity and
to your republicanism, and Mr. Webster should be hung for advocating it.
He is a humbug or an ass," continued the Count, his wrath growing
fiercer as he poured it out,--"an ass if he believes such an infamous
law to be constitutional; and if he does not believe it, he is a humbug
and a scoundrel for advocating it." Beacon Street, of course, was aghast
at this outburst of blasphemy; and the high circles thereof were
speedily closed against the plain-spoken radical who dared to question
Mr. Webster's infallibility, and who made, indeed, but small account of
the other idols worshipped in that locality.

It was at this time, in the spring of 1851, that I became acquainted
with Gurowski. I was standing one day at the door of the reading-room in
Lyceum Hall in Cambridge, of which city I was then a resident, when I
saw approaching through Harvard Square a strange figure which I knew
must be the Count, who had often been described to me, but whom till
then I had never chanced to see. He was at the time about forty-five
years of age, of middle size, with a large head and big belly, and was
partly wrapped in a huge and queerly-cut cloak of German material and
make. On his head he wore a high, bell-shaped, broad-brimmed hat, from
which depended a long, sky-blue veil, which he used to protect his eyes
from the sunshine. His waistcoat was of bright red flannel, and as it
reached to his hips and covered nearly the whole of his capacious front,
it formed a startlingly conspicuous portion of his attire. In addition
to the veil, his eyes were protected by enormous blue goggles, with
glasses on the sides as well as in front. These extraordinary
precautions for the defence of his sight were made necessary by the fact
that he had lost an eye, not in a duel, as has been commonly reported,
but by falling on an open penknife when he was a boy of ten years old.
The wounded eye was totally ruined and wasted away, and had been the
seat of long and intense pain, in which, as is usual in such cases, the
other eye had participated. During the first year or two of his
residence in this country he was much troubled by the intense sunshine;
but afterwards becoming used to it, he left off his veil, and in other
respects conformed his costume to th