Where lies the land to which the ship would go?4Had he been otherwise fitted for an historian, it is certain that he would have been as punctilious as his penmanship, as just and accurate as his habitual expression. His letters are noticeably minute as chronicles, and free from blunders as to dates. The Liberator may be searched in vain for his being called to account for any serious misrepresentation as the result of carelessness: of deliberate misrepresentation he was as incapable as of vindictiveness. My father's goodness was so transparent that to be known by the good was equivalent to his being loved. His friendships in both hemispheres were numerous and very wide, and of a kind to do honor to any man; his companionships more restricted, and of very different degrees of intimacy. Quincy, who proclaimed my father's5 friendship one of the chief pleasures and honors of his life, was less often seen at our home than Phillips (being, to be
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know;
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
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share to the flow of wit in those choice gatherings where Thompson, Phillips, and Quincy vied with each other.
There was, however, a limitation to this humor: ‘On anything that he deems a serious subject, he won't bear a jest,’ wrote Quincy to Webb in 1843.1
Mrs. Stowe has borne witness to my father's singular tact in conversation, adapting himself unconsciously to2 his auditor.
As he had a very poor memory for past events even in his own experience, he seldom indulged in reminiscence.3 His life was strictly from day to day, his thoughts projected into the future—shall we say, like a sailor's, like his father's?
1 Ms. Nov. 27.
2 Ante, 3.401.
3 The only autobiographical sketch known to have been drafted by him was (on request) for Oliver Johnson's use in preparing the article Garrison in Appletons' “New American Cyclopaedia,” in 1859. This Ms. is probably still in existence, but its whereabouts is unknown.
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