Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

One product of Sumner's vacation was a magazine article on Franklin's life in Paris as ambassador of our country, which began with tracing the pedigree of the famous line concerning him, ‘Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis,’ and gave sketches of Franklin's friends and contemporaries in France, with observations on the remarkable impression he made on the French people. It closed with a contrast between him and John Slidell, the Confederate emissary to the French emperor.¹

Sumner became at this time a member of the Union Club, Park Street, then recently organized, and often took his dinners there for the rest of his life when he was in Boston. The year before, he was formally admitted to the Saturday Club,² whose membership included Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, Lowell, Benjamin Peirce, Motley, Whipple, Judge Hoar, Felton, Dr. Holmes, R. H. Dana, J. M. Forbes, and others.³ He had been its guest before at times, but he now when in Boston dined regularly with it at Parker's on its club day, the last Saturday of the month. On other Saturdays he dined at times at Parker's, with a political club of which his friend F. W. Bird was the leader; but his frequent dining with this club belongs to a period three or four years later.

George Sumner, who had been smitten with paralysis two years before, died, October 6, at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Charles was with him daily after his return from Washington, except at the time of his address in New York, being then called home by the tidings of George's rapid decline. Longfellow and Dr. Howe were frequent visitors to their friend's room at the hospital, and George W. Greene came occasionally from his Rhode Island home. To Mrs. Waterston, Charles wrote, October 3: ‘I should have been to see you, and ’