without sign of recognition. He confessed to me that he was apt to go
astray when intent on rhyme. With so much to abstract him from outward
life, he could hardly be said to live in the world that was bustling
around him. Almost the only relaxation that he allowed himself was an
occasional performance on a bass-viol which stood in the corner of his
study, and from which he loved to elicit some old-fashioned tune of
soothing potency. At meal-times, however, dragged down and harassed as
his spirits were, he brightened up, and generally gladdened the whole
table with a flash of Dr. Caustic's honor.

Had I anticipated being Mr. Fessenden's biographer, I might have drawn
from him many details that would have been well worth remembering. But
he had not the tendency of most men in advanced life, to be copious in
personal reminiscences; nor did he often speak of the noted writers and
politicians with whom the chances of earlier years had associated him.
Indeed, lacking a turn for observation of character, his former
companions had passed before him like images in a mirror, giving him
little knowledge of their inner nature. Moreover, till his latest day,
he was more inclined to form prospects for the future than to dwell upon
the past. I remember the last time, save one, that we ever met--I found
him on the bed, suffering with a dizziness of the brain. He roused
himself, however, and grew very cheerful; talking, with a youthful glow
of fancy, about emigrating to Illinois, where he possessed a farm, and
picturing a new life for both of us in that Western region. It has
since come to my memory, that, while he spoke, there was a purple flush
across his brow,--the harbinger of death.

I saw him but once more alive. On the thirteenth day of November last,
while on my way to Boston, expecting shortly to take him by the hand, a
letter met me with an invitation to his funeral--he had been struck with