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He could have certainly written nothing more charming in reference to his three lost nephews than when he described, at the beginning of his essay “On a certain Condescension in foreigners,” his walks from Elmwood to Harvard Square about 1870: “The war was ended. I might walk townward without that aching dread of bulletins that had darkened the July sunshine and twice made the scarlet leaves of October seem stained with blood. I remember with a pang half proud, half painful, how, so many years ago, I had walked over the same path and felt round my finger the soft pressure of a little hand that was one day to harden with faithful grip of sabre. On how many paths, leading to how many homes where proud memory does all she can to fill up the fireside gaps with shining shapes, must not men be walking in just such pensive moods as I? Ah, young heroes, ”
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