Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

[199] case. Every one stared at him as he walked the streets; and he could not help becoming conscious of this. That there were moments when he seemed to reflect with satisfaction on his past life his best friends could not deny; but the vanity that is born of a frivolous spirit was not in him. He was more like a Homeric hero than a Sir Philip Sidney, and considering the work he had to do it was better on the whole that he should be so.

He carried the impracticable theory of social equality to an extent beyond that of most Americans, and yet he was frequently complained of for his reserve and aristocratic manners. The range of his acquaintance was the widest of any man of his time. It extended from Lord Brougham to J. B. Smith, the mulatto caterer of Boston, who, like many of his race, was a person of gentlemanly deportment, and was always treated by Sumner as a valued friend. As the champion of the colored race in the Senate this was diplomatically necessary; but to the rank and file of his own party he was less gracious. He had not grown up among them, but had entered politics at the top, so that even their faces were unfamiliar to him. The representatives of Massachusetts, who voted for him at the State House, were sometimes chagrined at the coldness of his recognition,--a coldness that did not arise from lack of sympathy, but