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 Legislature for an act greatly to his credit, the
suggestion that the captured battle-flags should be returned to the
Southern regiments from which they had been taken.

But it was only a momentary flash. He settled back into the easy-chair
with invalid languor, and began to tell me good-naturedly about his
old velocipede, describing its construction, and the feats he had been
able to perform on it, clumsy though it was. He could keep up with a
fast horse in riding into Boston, but at the cost of a good pair of
shoes. The contrivance supported the weight of the body, which rolled
forward on the wheels, leaving the legs free to speed the machine
by alternate rapid kicks. From that he branched off into college
athletics of his day in a pleasant fashion, and at the end of the not
short interview I felt I had enjoyed a great privilege.

Another contact with Charles Sumner was a rather memorable one. We
were in the second year of the Civil War. He was in his high place,