h he
will owe to a single poem, is Walter Mitchell. He was a
very bright and accomplished person in college and a great
favorite with his friends. He studied law, but afterward
determined to become a clergyman and took orders in the Episcopal
Church. I have never heard him preach, but I have no doubt
from his distinction as a writer and scholar in college that
he is an excellent preacher. But his poem of the sea entitled
"Tacking the Ship off Fire Island" is one of the most spirited
and perfect of its kind in literature. You can hear the wind
blow and feel the salt in your hair as you read it. I once
heard it read by Richard Dana to the Phi Beta Kappa Society
at Harvard, and again by that most accomplished elocutionist,
E. Harlow Russell. I never read it or hear it without a renewed
admiration.

But the brightest, raciest, wittiest, liveliest, spunkiest of
all the youths was Daniel Sargent Curtis, one of the race
of that name so well known in Boston for excellence in various
departments. Curtis was the son, I believe, of Thomas B.
Curtis, the merchant, a nephew of Charles P. Curtis, the
eminent lawyer, and a cousin of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis.
I do not know what he would not have made of himself if he
had cultivated his great literary capacity. Certainly if
he had performed the promise of his boyhood he would have
been one of the foremost men in American literature. He
studied law but pretty soon became a banker. Soon after
he took up his residence in Italy, where I suppose he is
living now. He produced some serious poetry which he read
to some college societies. I hope for the credit of the class
and for the country and his name he may have done something
in later years which will be given to the world. It is said,
I know not how truly, that he was for many years a near neighbor
and intimate friend of Browning. When he was in college and
in the Law School the boys used to enliven all social gatherings
by repeating his good jests as, in later years, the lawyers
did those of Rufus Choate, or the people in public life in
Washington still later, those of Evarts. Such things lose
nine-tenths of their flavor in the repetition and nine parts
of the other tenth when they are put in writing. Curtis was
quite small in stature but he was plucky as a gamecock, and
a little dandyish in his dress. It is said that when he was
a freshman, the boys at the Cambridge High School, a good
many of whom were much bigg