Chapter VI

Before this last visit in New York there was a second visit to Boston, which I need not dwell upon, because it was chiefly a revival of the impressions of the first. Again I saw the Fieldses in their home; again the Autocrat in his, and Lowell now beneath his own roof, beside the study fire where I was so often to sit with him in coming years. At dinner (which we had at two o'clock) the talk turned upon my appointment, and he said of me to his wife: "Think of his having got Stillman's place! We ought to put poison in his wine," and he told me of the wish the painter had to go to Venice and follow up Ruskin's work there in a book of his own. But he would not let me feel very guilty, and I will not pretend that I had any personal regret for my good fortune.

The place was given me perhaps because I had not nearly so many other gifts as he who lost it, and who was at once artist, critic, journalist, traveller, and eminently each. I met him afterwards in Rome, which the powers bestowed upon him instead of Venice, and he forgave me, though I do not know whether he forgave the powers. We walked far and long over the Campagna, and I felt the charm of a most uncommon mind in talk which came out richest and fullest in the presence of the wild nature which he loved and knew so much better than most other men. I think that the book he would have written about Venice is forever to be regretted, and I do not at all console myself for its loss with the book I have written myself.

At Lowell's table that day they spoke of what sort of winter I should find in Venice, and he inclined to the belief that I should want a fire there. On his study hearth a very brisk one burned when we went back to it, and kept out the chill of a cold easterly storm. We looked through one of the windows at the rain, and he said he could remember standing and looking out of that window at such a storm when he was a child; for he was born in that house, and his life had kept coming back to it. He died in it, at last.

In a lifting of the rain he walked with me down to the village, as he always called the denser part of the town about Harvard Square, and saw me aboard a horse-car for Boston. Before we parted he gave me two charges: to open my mouth when I began to speak Italian, and to think well of women. He said that our race spoke its own tongue with its teeth shut, and so failed to master the languages that wanted freer utterance. As to women, he said there were unworthy ones, but a good woman was the best thing in the world, and a man was always the better for honoring women.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Abstract, the air-drawn, afflicted me like physical discomforts Bayard Taylor: incomparable translation of Faust Became gratefully strange Best talkers are willing that you should talk if you like Charles Reade Could easily believe now that it was some one else who saw it Death of the joy that ought to come from work Did not feel the effect I would so willingly have experienced Dinner was at the old-fashioned Boston hour of two Edward Everett Hale Either to deny the substance of things unseen, or to affirm it Emerson Espoused the theory of Bacon's authorship of Shakespeare Feigned the gratitude which I could see that he expected First dinner served in courses that I had sat down to Forbearance of a wise man content to bide his time Forebore to speak needlessly to him, or to shake his hand Hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love Heine Hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness of life I did not know, and I hated to ask I find this young man worthy If he was half as bad, he would have been too bad to be If he was not there to your touch, it was no fault of his In the South there was nothing but a mistaken social ideal Incredible in their insipidity Industrial slavery Lincoln Love of freedom and the hope of justice Lowell Man who had so much of the boy in him Men who took themselves so seriously as that need Met with kindness, if not honor Might so far forget myself as to be a novelist Napoleonic height which spiritually overtops the Alps Never paid in anything but hopes of paying Not quite himself till he had made you aware of his quality Odious hilarity, without meaning and without remission Praised extravagantly, and in the wrong place Quebec was a bit of the seventeenth century Remember the dinner-bell Seen through the wrong end of the telescope Stoddard Things common to all, however peculiar in each Thoreau Visited one of the great mills Welcome me, and make the least of my shyness and strangeness Wit that tries its teeth upon everything