his cousin, Pauline Adeline Fowle, of Virginia, daughter of the
late Lieutenant-colonel John Fowle of the United States Army and
Paulina Cazenove. On March 2, 1855, the little boy, Henry Fowle
Durant, Jr., was born, and on October 10, 1857, a little girl,
Pauline Cazenove Durant, who lived less than two months. On
June 21, 1862, we find the Boston Evening Courier saying of the
prominent lawyer: "What the future has in store for Mr. Durant
can of course be only predicted, but his past is secure, and if
he never rises higher, he can rest in the consciousness that no
man ever rose more rapidly at the Suffolk Bar than he has." And
within a year he had put it all behind him,--a sinful and unworthy
life,--and had set out to be a new man. That there was sin and
unworthiness in the old life we, who look into our own hearts,
need not doubt; but how much of sin, how much of unworthiness,
happily we need not determine. Mr. Durant was probably his own
severest critic.

Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words
describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation
of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis,
in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile Library Lecture
course:

"One cannot study his writings and history and escape the conviction
that there were two natures in this great man. There was the
trained lawyer, man of action, prompt and brave in every emergency.
But there was in him another nature higher than this. In all times
men have entertained angels unawares, ministering spirits, whose
missions are not wholly known to themselves even, men living beyond
and in advance of their age.