e
serves him many a good turn; he makes it a duty to read thoroughly or to
"dip into" every new book that is talked about. He fortifies himself,
whether for daily life or for social intercourse, with all the
intellectual weapons, so to speak, that can ever be called into play.
Still, he moves along the pathway of life thoroughly without
affectation; a "liberal education" seems to have been his by
inheritance, and he can make better use of it than most college men with
whom he is brought in contact.

It is as impossible for Mr. Shepard not to quote poetry as it is for him
to fly through the air and his facility in so doing would alone make him
a marked man. His whole soul is full of poesy, ever restless and
exuberant. I am not aware that he ever molded a rhyme, or sung a measure
of song in all his life. And yet so tenacious is his memory, so
wonderful his talent in applying the epigrammatic utterances of the
leading writers, both old and new, that a person, on being made
cognizant of the fact, finds himself puzzled. Poetry enters into even
the driest details of Mr. Shepard's business life. The signature to a
check is often audibly accompanied by some melodic couplet. Anywhere and
everywhere, and for everything that happens or may happen, the poetic
spice is rarely wanting. Mr. Shepard does not deliberately intend this
to be so; the gift rallies into utterance before he is aware of it, and
he can no more suppress it than he can turn back the roaring waters of
Niagara.

Possessed of such qualities as these, Mr. Shepard very easily finds
friends and is the centre of their attraction. Outspoken, sometimes even
to bluntness, a bitter hater of duplicity and meanness, a keen detector
of counterfeit character, on the one hand; on the other, warm in his
affections, generous to a fault, faithful to those whom he
admires,--such is the man of whom I write. No one is ever at a loss to
discover whether Mr. Shepard is his friend or his enemy.

Mr. Shepard has been intimately connected with the politics of his time.
He began as a thorough, out-and-out abolitionist; during the war he was
a stanch Republican, and a firm admirer of Charles Sumner. When the
great Senator forsook his party, Mr. Shepard chose the same course, and
to-day finds him enrolled upon the Democratic side, although, for some
years back, he has taken no active interest in any political movement of
the day.

Such, in brief, is Charles A.B. Shepard, a man better kno