Chapter 12: Inner traits.
Love of sports (p. 309), handwriting (p. 309), epistolary style (p. 310), dexterity (p. 311), preference of city to country (p. 311), fondness for cats (p. 312), aesthetic sense (p. 312), musical passion (p. 313), reading (p. 314), poesy (p. 315), oratory (p. 316), personal appearance (p. 319), constitution and ailments (p. 322), medical experimentation (p. 323), service and courtesy (p. 324), considerateness in the printing-office (p. 325), domestic helpfulness and happiness (p. 326), cheerfulness in adversity (p. 327), burden of hospitality (p. 327), fondness for light (p. 329), editorial disorderliness (p. 329), accessibility and charity (p. 330), discipline and care of his children (p. 331), delightin infants (p. 332), vocal animation and humor in the home (p. 333), forward-looking and unhistoric mind (p. 334), close friendships and fidelity to friends (p. 334), initiative in the antislavery agitation (p. 335), judgment (p. 336), theological emancipation (p. 336), relations to the clergy (p. 337), views on spiritualism (p. 338), his indebtedness to his wife (p. 340), devotedness to her (p. 341).To the hand which began this narrative has been allotted the vastly more difficult task of concluding it in the pages which are to follow. It has not seemed to me hard to stand off and view, and accordingly depict, my father as an historical personage. Critics must decide how far this objective treatment has been successful; yet, given the materials for this biography, in print and in manuscript, ours, I would fain hope, is the portrait that would be drawn by any seeker after the truth. To attempt, on the other hand, to exhibit my father from the side of his private and domestic life, or in the light of a psychological analysis, fills me first of all with a sense of insufficiency, and imposes a restraint quite different from that exacted by the foregoing documentary narrative. In another place and connection I might, giving a free rein to filial feeling, strive to convey an adequate impression of what my father was in his home to wife and children, and in common intercourse with friend and fellow-man. Some glimpses of this have been already incidentally afforded, and much has been able to be inferred as to the absolute consistency of his public and private behavior—a uniform simplicity, humility, self-abnegation, sympathy with all suffering, detestation of all forms of cruelty and oppression, active benevolence, charitable toleration, endless patience in adversity, indomitable courage, perennial cheerfulness. Something, too, has been observable of the magnetic power to charm and move others which displayed itself both on and off
