ght
and feeling; and some of her friends used to say that, with the same
advantages and opportunities her brother had, she would have been his
equal.

On a day's visit which Henry once made me in New Bedford, I remember we
had a long conversation on hunting and fishing, in which he condemned
them, and I defended. Pushed by his arguments, at length I said, "for
I went a-fishing myself sometimes with a boat on the Acushnet; yes, and
barely escaped once being carried out to sea by the ebb tide," I said,
"My fishing is not a reckless destruction of life; somebody must take
fish, and bring them to us for food, and those I catch come to my
table." "Now," said he, "that is as if you said to your butcher, You
have to slay a certain number of cattle, calves, and sheep, and turkeys,
and fowls for my table; let me have the pleasure of coming and killing
them myself."

Of Dr. Channing himself, I should, of course, have much to say here, if,
as I have just said, I had not already expressed my thoughts of him in
print. His conversation struck me most; more [56] even than any of his
writings ever did. He was an invalid, and kept much at home and indoors,
and he talked hour after hour, day after day, and sometimes for a week,
upon the same subject, without ever letting it grow distasteful or
wearisome. Edward Everett said, he had just returned from Europe, where
doubtless he had seen eminent persons, "I have never met with anybody to
whom it was so interesting to listen, and so hard to talk when my
turn came." There was, indeed, a grand and surprising superiority in
Channing's talk, both in the topics and the treatment of them. There
was no repartee in it, and not much of give and take, in any way. People
used to come to him, his clerical brethren, I remember Henry Ware
and others speaking of it, they came, listened to him, said nothing
themselves, and went away. In fact, Channing talked for his own sake,
generally. His topic was often that on which he was preparing to write.
It was curious to see him, from time to time, as he talked, dash down
a note or two on a bit of paper, and throw it into a pigeon-hole, which
eventually became quite full.

It would appear from all this that Channing was not a genial person, and
he was not. He was too intent upon the subjects that occupied his
mind for that varied and sportive talk, that abandon, that sympathetic
adjustment of his thoughts to the moods of people around him, which
makes the agr