household, and have taken a step towards that object. But in doing so I
was influenced far less by what Mr. Bradford is than by what he is not;
or, rather, his negative qualities seem to take away his personality, and
leave his excellent characteristics to be fully and fearlessly enjoyed. I
doubt whether he be not precisely the rarest man in the world." Mrs.
Hawthorne wrote of Bradford, that "his beautiful character makes him
perennial in interest." After the death of Bradford, Curtis wrote of him
in one of the most appreciative of the biographical papers which the "Easy
Chair" gave to the public:

"Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late George P. Bradford, upon
reading that he was the son of a stout sea-captain of Duxbury, must have
recalled Charles Lamb's description of one of his comrades at the old
South Sea House--'like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter.' A
more gentle, truthful, generous, constant, high-minded, accomplished man,
or, as Emerson, his friend of many years, said of Charles Sumner, 'a
whiter soul,' could not be known. However wide and various and delightful
your acquaintance may have been, if you knew George Bradford, you knew a
man unlike all others. His individuality was entirely unobtrusive, but it
was absolute.

"The candor of his nature refused the least deceit, and rejected every
degree of indirectness without consciousness or effort. His admirable
mind, the natural loftiness of his aim, his instinctive sympathy with
every noble impulse and humane endeavor, his fine intellectual
cultivation, all made him the friend of the best men and women of his time
and neighborhood, and none among them but acknowledged the singular charm
of a companion who asserted his convictions by his character, and with
whom controversy was impossible. Mr. Bradford had the temperament, the
tastes, and the acquirements of a scholar; a fondness for nature, and a