account of his father, the sea-captain, who died of the yellow-fever in
Surinam in 1808, and of his beautiful mother, who dwelt a secluded
mourner ever after the death of her husband. Then he told stories of his
college life, and of his one sole intimate, Franklin Pierce, whom he
loved devotedly his life long.

In the early period of our acquaintance he much affected the old Boston
Exchange Coffee-House in Devonshire Street, and once I remember to have
found him shut up there before a blazing coal-fire, in the "tumultuous
privacy" of a great snow-storm, reading with apparent interest an
obsolete copy of the "Old Farmer's Almanac," which he had picked up
about the house. He also delighted in the Old Province House, at that
time an inn, kept by one Thomas Waite, whom he has immortalized. After
he was chosen a member of the Saturday Club he came frequently to dinner
with Felton, Longfellow, Holmes, and the rest of his friends, who
assembled once a month to dine together. At the table, on these
occasions, he was rather reticent than conversational, but when he
chose to talk it was observed that the best things said that day came
from him.

As I turn over his letters, the old days, delightful to recall, come
back again with added interest.

"I sha'n't have the new story," he says in one of them, dated from
Lenox on the 1st of October, 1850, "ready by November, for I am
never good for anything in the literary way till after the first
autumnal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination
that it does on the foliage here about me,--multiplying and
brightening its hues; though they are likely to be sober and shabby
enough after all.