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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies, 1859. (search)
art,—I write it seriously,—when he was judged not strong enough for a place in the picked crew of the Harvard. He could have borne almost anything better than that. As to his mental ability, it was naturally great. He took no pains to acquire scholarship, and probably hated the Tabular View as much as any man in the Class. The curriculum he cared most for was the Delta. But for all that he was not indifferent to the humanities, and was passionately fond of certain favorite books. Shirley he used to read through regularly once a term, and he would pore over a deep passage of Tennyson or Wordsworth with an avidity that would have won him signal Commencement honors had it been turned in another direction. But the trait that most distinguished Jack was unquestionably his quick sense of the ludicrous. By all odds he was the best humorist we had. I was next him alphabetically, and the tedium of the recitation-room was brightened for four years by his drollery. I remember he us