to principle his social position in America, he clung the more
closely to his foreign attachments. The Free Soil Party fared ill
in Beacon Street. The social arbiters of Boston -- George Ticknor
and the rest -- had to admit, however unwillingly, that the Free
Soil leaders could not mingle with the friends and followers of
Mr. Webster. Sumner was socially ostracized, and so, for that
matter, were Palfrey, Dana, Russell, Adams, and all the other
avowed anti-slavery leaders, but for them it mattered less,
because they had houses and families of their own; while Sumner
had neither wife nor household, and, though the most socially
ambitious of all, and the most hungry for what used to be called
polite society, he could enter hardly half-a-dozen houses in
Boston. Longfellow stood by him in Cambridge, and even in Beacon
Street he could always take refuge in the house of Mr. Lodge, but
few days passed when he did not pass some time in Mount Vernon
Street. Even with that, his solitude was glacial, and reacted on
his character. He had nothing but himself to think about. His
superiority was, indeed, real and incontestable; he was the
classical ornament of the anti-slavery party; their pride in him
was unbounded, and their admiration outspoken.

The boy Henry worshipped him, and if he ever regarded any older
man as a personal friend, it was Mr. Sumner. The relation of Mr.
Sumner in the household was far closer than any relation of
blood. None of the uncles approached such intimacy. Sumner was
the boy's ideal of greatness; the highest product of nature and
art. The only fault of such a model was its superiority which
defied imitation. To the twelve-year-old boy, his father, Dr.
Palfrey, Mr. Dana, were men, more or less like what he himself
might become; but Mr. Sumner was a different order -- heroic.