him as
pleasant as I have found him. It may turn out so; but if my wife says,
'Theodore, I don't like that man; there's something wrong about him,' I
always find in the end that I have been mistaken,--that her judgment was
correct."

Parker's ideal of culture included a knowledge of music. His endeavors
to attain this were praiseworthy, but unsuccessful. I have heard the
late John S. Dwight relate that when he was a student in Harvard
Divinity School, Parker, who was then his fellow student, desired to be
taught to sing the notes of the musical scale. Dwight volunteered to
give him lessons, and began, as is usual, by striking the dominant _do_
and directing Parker to imitate the sound. Parker responded, and found
himself able to sing this one note; but when Dwight passed on to the
second and the third, Parker could only repeat the note already sung. He
had no ear for music, and his friend advised him to give up the hopeless
attempt to cultivate his voice. In like manner, at an earlier date, Dr.
Howe and Charles Sumner joined a singing class, but both evincing the
same defect were dismissed as hopeless cases. Parker attended sedulously
the concerts of classical music given in Boston, and no doubt enjoyed
them, after a fashion. I remember that I once tried to explain to him
the difference between having an ear for music and not having one. I
failed, however, to convince him of any such distinction.

The years during which I heard him most frequently were momentous in the
history of our country and of our race. They presaged and preceded grave
crises on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe was going on the ferment
of ideas and theories which led to the revolutions of 1848 and the
temporary upturning of states and of governments. In the United States,
the seed of thought sown by prophetic minds was ripening in the great
field of public opinion. Slavery and all that it involved became not
only hateful but intolerable to men of right mind, and the policy which
aimed at its indefinite extension was judged and condemned.

Parker at this time had need in truth of the two-edged sword of the
Spirit. On the one hand he encountered the foes of religious freedom, on
the other the advocates and instruments of political oppression. His
sermons on theism belonged to one of these domains, those which treated
of public men and measures to the other. Among these last, I remember
best that on Daniel Webster, and the terrible "Lesson for