Lowell. We know that his humor went further than any man's passion
toward setting tolerant men atingle with the new impulses of the
day. We naturally hold back from those who are intemperate and can
never stop to smile, and are deeply reassured to see a twinkle in
a reformer's eye. We are glad to see earnest men laugh. It breaks
the strain. If it be wholesome laughter, it dispels all suspicion
of spite, and is like the gleam of light upon running water,
lifting sullen shadows, suggesting clear depths.

Surely it is this soundness of nature, this broad and genial
quality, this full-blooded, full-orbed sanity of spirit, which
gives the men we love that wide-eyed sympathy which gives hope
and power to humanity, which gives range to every good quality
and is so excellent a credential of genuine manhood. Let your
life and your thought be narrow, and your sympathy will shrink to
a like scale. It is a quality which follows the seeing mind
afield, which waits on experience. It is not a mere sentiment. It
goes not with pity so much as with a penetrative understanding of
other men's lives and hopes and temptations. Ignorance of these
things makes it worthless. Its best tutors are observations and
experience, and these serve only those who keep clear eyes and a
wide field of vision. It is exercise and discipline upon such a
scale, too, which strengthen, which for ordinary men come near to
creating, that capacity to reason upon affairs and to plan for
action which we always reckon upon finding in every man who has
studied to perfect his native force. This new day in which we
live cries a challenge to us. Steam and electricity have reduced
nations to neighborhoods; have made travel pastime, and news a
thing for everybody. Cheap printing has made knowledge a vulgar
commodity. Our eyes look, almost without choice, upon the very