ho had the gift of determining happily the pitch of
ease; suspense, not to say anxiety, as to the possible turn or drift of
the affair quite dropped--I rested then, we alike rested, I ever felt,
in a golden confidence. This last was so definitely not the note of my
attention to him, so far as I might indulge it, in the wider social
world, that I shall not scruple, occasion offering, to inquire into the
reasons of the difference. For I can only see the ghosts of my friends,
by this token, as "my" J. R. L. and whoever; which means that my
imagination, of the wanton life of which these remarks pretend but to
form the record, had appropriated them, under the prime contact--from
the moment the prime contact had successfully worked--once for all, and
contributed the light in which they were constantly exposed.

Yes, delightful I shall undertake finding it, and perhaps even making
it, to read J. R. L.'s exposure back into _its_ light; which I in fact
see begin to shine for me more amply during those very minutes of our
wait for our distinguished host and even the several that followed the
latter's arrival and his seating himself opposite the unknown guest,
whose identity he had failed to grasp. Nothing, exactly, could have made
dear Lowell more "my" Lowell, as I have presumed to figure him, than the
stretch of uncertainty so supervening and which, in its form of silence
at first completely unbroken between the two poets, rapidly took on for
me monstrous proportions. I conversed with my gentle neighbour during
what seemed an eternity--really but hearing, as the minutes sped, all
that Tennyson didn't say to Lowell and all that Lowell wouldn't on any
such compulsion as that say to Tennyson. I like, however, to hang again
upon the hush--for the sweetness of the relief of its break by the fine
Tennysonian growl. I had never dreamed, no, of a growling Tennyson--I
had too utterly otherwise fantasticated; but no line of Locksley Hall
rolled out as I was to happen soon after to hear it, could have been
sweeter than the interrogative sound of "Do you know anything about
_Lowell_?" launched on the chance across the table and crowned at once
by Mrs. Tennyson's anxious quaver: "Why, my dear, this _is_ Mr.
Lowell!" The clearance took place successfully enough, and the
incident, I am quite aware, seems to shrink with it; in spite of which I
still cherish the reduced reminiscence for its connections: so far as my
vision of Lowell was concerned