Lowell entered Harvard College when he was but fifteen years old, very
nearly the youngest man in his class. In those days the college was
small, there were few teachers, and only about fifty students in a
class.

CHAPTER III

COLLEGE AND THE MUSES

Soon after he entered college, young Lowell made the acquaintance of a
senior, W.H. Shackford, to whom many of his published letters of
college life are addressed. Another intimate friend was George Bailey
Loring, who afterward became distinguished in politics. To one or
other of these men he was constantly writing of his literary
ambitions, always uppermost in his mind.

Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard when Lowell was there, and
afterward Lowell wrote an essay on "A Great Public Character," which
describes this distinguished president. In it he refers to college
life in a way that shows he thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Almost every one," he writes, "looks back regretfully to the days of
some Consul Plancus. Never were eyes so bright, never had wine so much
wit and good-fellowship in it, never were we ourselves so capable of
the various great things we have never done.... This is especially
true of college life, when we first assume the titles without the
responsibilities of manhood, and the president of our year is apt to
become our Plancus very early."

In another of his essays he tells one of the standing college jokes,
which is worth repeating. The students would go into one of the
grocery stores of the town, whose proprietor was familiarly called
"The Deacon."

"Have you any sour apples, Deacon?" the first student to enter would
ask.

"Well, no, I haven't any just now that are exactly sour," he would
answer; "but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sour
apple generally like that."

Enter the second student. "Have you any sweet apples, Deacon?"

"Well, no, I haven't any now that are exactly sweet; but there's the
bellflower apple, and folks that like a sweet apple generally like
that."

"There is not even a tradition of any one's ever having turned the
wary Deacon's flank," says

Lowell, "and his Laodicean apples persisted to the end, neither one
thing nor another."

It did not take young Lowell long to find out that he had a weakness
for poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his
friend Loring, probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation,
1836, he says, "Here I am alone in Bob's room with a blazi