d his son if he ever attended service there. He said, "Oh,
yes; I sometimes go to hear the minister exhort that assemblage of weary
ones to forsake the vanities of life. Looking at the choir, I see some
forlorn women who seem, from the way in which they open their mouths, to
mistake the congregation for a dentist." He did not care for music. At a
party devoted to classical performances, he turned to me: "Mrs. Howe,
are you going to give us something from the symphony in P?"

He was much of an amateur in art, literature, and life, never appearing
to take serious hold of matters either social or political. Wendell
Phillips had been his schoolmate, and the two, in company with John
Lothrop Motley, had fought many battles with wooden swords in the
Appleton garret. For some unexplained reason, he had but little faith in
Phillips's philanthropy, and the relations of childhood between the two
did not extend to their later life.

His Atlantic voyages became so frequent that he once said to a friend,
"I always keep my steamer ticket in my pocket, like a soda-water
ticket." Indeed, his custom almost carried out this saying. I have heard
that once, being in New York, he invited friends to breakfast with him
at his hotel. On arriving they found only a note informing them of his
departure for Europe on that very morning.

I myself one day invited him to dinner with other friends, among whom
was his sister, Mrs. Longfellow. We waited long for him, and I at last
said to Mrs. Longfellow, "What can it be that detains your brother so
late?"

"I don't know, indeed," was her reply.

"Your brother?" cried one of the guests. "I met him this morning on his
way to the steamer. He must have sailed some hours since."

A friend once spoke to him of matrimony, of which he said in reply,
"Marriage? I could never undergo it unless I was held, and took
chloroform."

Yet those who knew him well supposed that he had had some romance of his
own. To his praise be it said that he was a man of many friendships, and
by no means destitute of public spirit.

It was from Mr. Dana that I first heard of John Sullivan Dwight, whom he
characterized as a man of moderate calibre, who had "set up for an
infidel," and who had dared to speak of the Apostle to the Gentiles as
Paul, without the prefix of his saintship. In the early years of my
residence in Boston I sometimes heard of Mr. Dwight as a disciple of
Fourier, a transcendental of the transcendentals, a