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[322] called it, phrenologically speaking, a ‘full’ one; and1 Bronson Alcott, in his Boston ‘conversations’ on2 Representative Men, in 1851, characterized my father in one masterly stroke as a ‘phrenological head illuminated.’

My father inherited an enviably strong constitution, as was proved both by his longevity and by his exceptional recuperative powers when prostrated by illness. His digestion was perfect, and he used to say that he never knew what it was to have a stomach. He was wholly unfastidious about his food, bringing to whatever was set before him a good appetite, and abstaining from only one or two easily dispensable articles. The home table was plainly but abundantly supplied, my mother being an excellent housekeeper. My father was a good sleeper, of which I can give no better token than the fact that he could fall asleep directly after his return from a speech in the evening. He dreamed habitually except in sickness, and I have heard him remark on the singular experience that, despite his daily contemplation of the horrors of slavery, and the not infrequent apprehensions concerning his own safety, he had almost never in his sleep been troubled with images of either. The advent of the hot weather usually found him run down in health, and needing to get away from the printing-office and the city. The most serious illness of his life was the attack of Western fever in Cleveland in 1847, from which his3 system never recovered. It affected his brain4 periodically, and was, I presume, the cause of that spinal inflammation and weakness which from time to time disabled him, and made him exclaim against his paradoxical ‘want of backbone.’ In following his life day by day in the ample records available to us, I have been struck with the total amount of his ailing (particularly after 1847), as compared with our childish recollection of his physical condition. I attribute this to the fact that he never dwelt upon his distresses and sufferings, but maintained a cheerful mien and conversation. Low spirits, like dyspepsia, were unknown to him.

1 Ante, p. 317.

2 Mrs. E. D. Cheney in the Open Court newspaper, p. 1143.

3 Ante, 3.206.

4 Ms. July 20, 1858, W. L. G. to S. J. May.

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