comprehensive
sympathy with all that was or was meant to be good and true, even
though to his own mind it was neither the one nor the other....

Another eminent American who often honored my quiet home at Oxford was
James Russell Lowell, for a long time United States minister in
England. He was a professor and at the same time a politician and a
man of the world. Few essays are so brimful of interesting facts and
original reflections as his essays entitled _Among my Books_.

Lowell's conversation was inexhaustible, his information astonishing.
Pleasant as he was, even as an antagonist, he would occasionally lose
his temper and use very emphatic language. I was once sitting next to
him when I heard him stagger his neighbor, a young lady, by bursting
out with, "But, madam, I do not accept your major premise!" Poor
thing, she evidently was not accustomed to such language, and not
acquainted with that terrible term. She collapsed, evidently quite at
a loss as to what gift on her part Mr. Lowell declined to accept.

Sometimes even the most harmless remark about America would call forth
very sharp replies from him. Everybody knows that the salaries paid by
America to her diplomatic staff are insufficient, and no one knew it
better than he himself. But when the remark was made in his presence
that the United States treated their diplomatic representatives
stingily, he fired up, and discoursed most eloquently on the
advantages of high thoughts and humble living....

I lost the pleasure of shaking hands with Longfellow during his stay
in England. Though I have been more of a fixture at Oxford than most
professors, I was away during the vacation when he paid his visit to
our university, and thus lost seeing a poet to whom I felt strongly
attracted, not only by the general spirit of his poetry, which was
steeped in German thought, but as the translator of several of my
father's poems.

I was more fortunate with Dr. Wendell Holmes. His arrival in England
had been proclaimed beforehand, and one naturally remained at home in
order to be allowed to receive him. His hundred days in England were
one uninterrupted triumphal progress. When he arrived at Liverpool he
found about three hundred invitations waiting for him. Though he was
accompanied by a most active and efficient daughter, he had at once to
engage a secretary to answer this deluge of letters. And though he
was past eighty, he never spared himself, and was always ready t