to him and had given him most pleasure was his facility in acquiring
language. He said this on occasion of a visit to a county prison, where
they had taken him to the cell of a person whom no one could understand.
I think he had been called a Greek; but he proved to be an Italian. Mr.
Everett was then Governor of the Commonwealth, and this was an official
visit. It was a pretty illustration of republican institutions, that
this poor prisoner in his solitude should first hear his own language
from the chief magistrate. Mr. Everett addressed him first in the
language of his supposed country,--I think in Greek,--and changed to
Italian, when the prisoner spoke to him. He spoke French, German,
Italian, and the Romaic with ease. He read the whole Hebrew Testament in
his youth, and in Germany made considerable progress in Arabic; but I do
not think that he kept up his Oriental languages in later years. He was
fond of exercising himself in the other languages named, and almost
always had some stated correspondence on his hands in each of them.

Unless he really loved correspondence, as some men do, I believe, I
cannot conceive that even so conscientious a man as he should have kept
his correspondence in such perfect order, answered letters of every kind
so faithfully, so fully, and so agreeably. The last day of his life, a
sick man as he was, he seems to have written a dozen letters. Everybody
had an answer, and a kind one. He was, I think, the last man living who
courteously acknowledged printed documents. Certainly there is no one
left to do so among men whose habits I have heard of. But he would not
fail in any kindness or courtesy. At times his correspondence rose into
a position of real dignity. Thus, after Fort Sumter, while we still
carried the Rebels' mails for them, he wrote steadily through all his
working-hours of every day to his Southern correspondents, who were
sending him all sorts of Billingsgate. And he wrote them the truth. "It
is the only way they see a word of truth," he said. "Look at that
newspaper, and that, and that." Till the mails stopped, they had not to
blame him, if they were benighted. I wish that series of letters might,
even now, be published separately.

In such duties, coming next his hand, he spent a busy life. Every life
has a dream, a plan, of what we are going to do, when we can do what we
will. I think his was the preparation of his work on International Law.
As I have said, it became his