Charles Eames was at the outset of his career a ne'er-do-well New
Englander--a Yankee Jack-of-all-trades--kept at the front by an exceedingly
clever wife. Through the favor she enjoyed at court he received from Pierce
and Buchanan unimportant diplomatic appointments. During their sojourns in
Washington their home was a kind of political and literary headquarters.
Mrs. Eames had established a salon--the first attempt of the kind made
there; and it was altogether a success. Her Sundays evenings were notable,
indeed. Whoever was worth seeing, if in town, might usually be found there.
Charles Sumner led the procession. He was a most imposing person. Both
handsome and distinguished in appearance, he possessed in an eminent degree
the Harvard pragmatism--or, shall I say, affectation?--and seemed never
happy except on exhibition. He had made a profitable political and personal
issue of the Preston Brooks attack. Brooks was an exceeding light weight,
but he did for Sumner more than Sumner could ever have done for himself.

In the Charles Eames days Sumner was exceedingly disagreeable to me. Many
people, indeed, thought him so. Many years later, in the Greeley campaign
of 1872, Schurz brought us together--they had become as very brothers in
the Senate--and I found him the reverse of my boyish ill conceptions.

He was a great old man. He was a delightful old man, every inch a
statesman, much of a scholar, and something of a hero. I grew in time to be
actually fond of him, passed with him entire afternoons and evenings in his
library, mourned sincerely when he died, and went with Schurz to Boston, on
the occasion when that great German-American delivered the memorial address
in honor of the dead Abolitionist.

Of all the public men of that period Carl Schurz most captivated me. When
we first came into personal relations, at the Liberal Convention, which
assembled at Cincinnati and nominated Greeley and Brown as a presidential