Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

[56] offerings of charity, an excursion in the summer, an occasional drive in the suburbs, and clothes, in which he provided for himself somewhat generously. He laid by nothing; and when pressed to go to Europe to attend a Prison or Peace Congress, want of funds was one of the reasons he gave for not going. From time to time he borrowed small sums of Howe and Longfellow, which were promptly repaid. He had then as always a dread of being in debt; and was for some time quite unhappy about a note he had improvidently given for the benefit of a State Normal School, where others equally interested failed to meet his expectations in sharing the burden.¹

Sumner's ‘Orations and Speeches,’ in two volumes, were published in November, 1850, by Messrs. W. D. Ticknor and Co.,² and were going through the press during the spring and summer of that year. He made very many changes and corrections, not only of the orations and speeches as originally printed separately, but in the different proofs. The changes in the proofs, even in the third, were so many that the publishers wrote him that they could not endure the expense, and that he must submit his copy complete in the first instance; his erasures, additions, and transfers were carrying the cost of printing to ten dollars for each volume, while the publisher was to receive only about one. An excess in revision was characteristic of him. He continued the alterations in every successive edition, filling the margins with pen or pencil marks. No matter how thorough was the preceding revision, he was always discovering a construction or a word to improve. Horace Mann wrote to a young man in whom he had been interested as a boy,—George E. Baker,³ just elected a member of the legislature of New York,—

Purchase and read and study two volumes just published of Charles Sumner's “Orations and speeches.” You will find then full of the most noble views and inspiring sentiments. I could ask a young man just entering political life to do nothing better than to form his conduct after the high models here presented.

Josiah Quincy, acknowledging the present to him of the two volumes, wrote Nov. 28, 1850:—