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things I ever heard — a reticent man breaking the habit of a lifetime and talking about an affair of his own. He held the young men perfectly, especially in his terse sketches of the characters of his friends.
They will remember it all their lives — that close contact with a perfectly truthful and transparent nature.
He spoke without notes, but with a prompter having his manuscript behind him, and he was so simple, and unconcerned about that, it made it seem the only fit way for a man to speak — looking round occasionally at the prompter and saying quietly, “What next?”
Some of the best things were inserted offhand and were not in the printed notes; e.g., his saying, “Remember that this is our university; it was John Harvard's, but now it is what we make it.”
There was a poetic and ideal atmosphere about it which I feel keenly and I was very proud of being Henry's cousin.
Dublin, N. H., June 20, 1890
We . . . are right among the pine trees with the pretty lake in sight and mountains farther off .... Then close behind us are the children of Thayer, the New York artist, wild, very picturesque little creatures . ... There is a perpetual Pumpelly circus [children of Raphael Pumpelly]. .. . They keep seven ponies and are always riding about the country, bare-backed and astride, boys and girls alike.
One boy, Raphael, ... is always galloping about with long curls over his shoulders, like a sort of angelic Comanche. . . . Rob is here, and enjoying it much, but the dogs suffer terribly from getting hedgehogs' quills 