e Bostonian
of his day. It was related of him that once, being present at the
execution of a criminal, and having trodden upon the foot of the
condemned man, the sheriff took off his hat and apologized for the
accident. Whereupon the criminal exclaimed, "Sheriff Sumner, you are the
politest man I ever knew, and if I am to be hanged, I had rather be
hanged by you than by any one else." It was sometimes remarked that the
sheriff's mantle did not seem to have fallen upon his son.

Charles Sumner's appearance was curiously metamorphosed by a severe
attack of typhoid fever, which he suffered, I think, in 1843 or 1844.
After his recovery he gained much in flesh, and entirely lost that
ungainliness of aspect which once led a friend to compare him to a
geometrical line, "length without breadth or thickness." He now became a
man of strikingly fine presence, his great height being offset by a
corresponding fullness of figure. His countenance was strongly marked
and very individual,--the features not handsome in themselves, but the
whole effect very pleasingly impressive.

He had but little sense of humor, and was not at home in the small
cut-and-thrust skirmishes of general society. He was made for serious
issues and for great contests, which then lay unguessed before him. Of
his literalness some amusing anecdotes have been told. At an official
ball in Washington, he remarked to a young lady who stood beside him,
"We are fortunate in having these places; for, standing here, we shall
see the first entrance of the new English and French ministers into
Washington society."

The young girl replied, "I am glad to hear it. I like to see lions break
the ice."

Sumner was silent for a few minutes, but presently said, "Miss ----, in
the country where lions live there is no ice."

During the illness of which I have spoken, he was at times delirious,
and his mother one day, going into his room, found that he was
endeavoring to put on a change of linen. She begged him to desist,
knowing him to be very weak. He said in reply, "Mother, I am not doing
it for myself, but for some one else."

Some debates on prison discipline, held in Boston in the year 1845,
attracted a good deal of attention. Dr. Howe had become much
dissatisfied with the management of prisons in Massachusetts, and
desired to see the adoption of the Pennsylvania system of solitary
confinement. Mr. Sumner entered warmly into his views. The matter was
brought before the B