l things, he had what we Yankees call faculty,--the knack
of doing everything. If he rode with a neighbor who was a good horseman,
Theodore, who was a Centaur, when he mounted, would put any horse at any
gate or fence; for it did not occur to him that he could not do whatever
was to be done. Often, after writing for a few hours in the morning, he
stepped out of doors, and, from pure love of the fun, leaped and turned
summersaults on the grass, before going up to town. In walking about the
island, he constantly stopped by the roadside fences, and, grasping the
highest rail, swung himself swiftly and neatly over and back again,
resuming the walk and the talk without delay.

I do not wish to make him too much a hero. "Death," says Bacon, "openeth
the gate to good fame." When a neighbor dies, his form and quality
appear clearly, as if he had been dead a thousand years. Then we see
what we only felt before. Heroes in history seem to us poetic because
they are there. But if we should tell the simple truth of some of our
neighbors, it would sound like poetry. Winthrop was one of the men
who represent the manly and poetic qualities that always exist around
us,--not great genius, which is ever salient, but the fine fibre of
manhood that makes the worth of the race.

Closely engaged with his literary employments, and more quiet than ever,
he took less active part in the last election. But when the menace of
treason became an aggressive act, he saw very clearly the inevitable
necessity of arms. We all talked of it constantly,--watching the
news,--chafing at the sad necessity of delay, which was sure to confuse
foreign opinion and alienate sympathy, as has proved to be the case. As
matters advanced and the war-cloud rolled up thicker and blacker, he
looked at it with the secret satisfaction that war for such a cause
opened his career both as thinker and actor. The admirable coolness, the
promptness, the cheerful patience, the heroic ardor, the intelligence,
the tough experience of campaigning, the profound conviction that the
cause was in truth "the good old cause," which was now to come to the
death-grapple with its old enemy, Justice against Injustice, Order
against Anarchy,--all these should now have their turn, and the wanderer
and waiter "settle himself" at last.

We took a long walk together on the Sunday that brought the news of the
capture of Fort Sumter. He was thoroughly alive with a bright, earnest
forecast of his part