moodily and silently, as he was wont when anything troubled him; then,
without speaking a word, he shook Pierce warmly by the hand, and at
last remarked, 'Ah, Frank, what a pity!' The moment the victory was
won, that timid, hesitating mind saw the evils of the successful
course--the advantages of the one which had not been followed. So it
was always. Of two lines of action, he was perpetually in doubt which
was the best; and so, between the two, he always inclined to letting
things remain as they are.

"Nobody disliked slavery more cordially than he did; and yet the
difficulty of what was to be done with the slaves weighed constantly
upon his mind. He told me once that, while he had been consul at
Liverpool, a vessel arrived there with a number of negro sailors, who
had been brought from slave States, and would, of course, be enslaved
again on their return. He fancied that he ought to inform the men of
the fact, but then he was stopped by the reflection--who was to
provide for them if they became free? and, as he said, with a sigh,
'while I was thinking, the vessel sailed.' So, I recollect, on the old
battle-field of Manassas, in which I strolled in company with
Hawthorne, meeting a batch of runaway slaves--weary, foot-sore,
wretched, and helpless beyond conception; we gave them food and wine,
some small sums of money, and got them a lift upon a train going
northward; but not long afterwards Hawthorne turned to me with the
remark, 'I am not sure we were doing right after all. How can these
poor beings find food and shelter away from home?' Thus this ingrained
and inherent doubt incapacitated him from following any course
vigorously. He thought, on the whole, that Wendell Phillips and Lloyd
Garrison and the Abolitionists were in the right, but then he was
never quite certain that they were not in the wrong after all; so that
his advocacy of their cause was of a very uncertain character. He saw