e Pacific Coast.
He was in the class after mine. I knew him slightly in our
undergraduate days. But when I went to the Law School in
September, 1847, we boarded together in the same house. We
speedily became intimate and used to take long walks together
of three or four hours every day. We rambled about Watertown
and Brighton and Somerville and West Cambridge and had long
discussions about law and politics and poetry and metaphysics
and literature and our own ambitions and desires. We were
constantly in each other's rooms, and often sat up together,
sometimes until the constellations set, with the wasteful,
time-consuming habits of boyhood.

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights
In search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence and poetry,--
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.

John came of a distinguished family. His brother Cornelius
was a famous Greek professor, one of the most striking figures
about Cambridge. Another brother was Samuel M. Felton, the
most distinguished civil engineer in the country of his time;
builder of the Fitchburg railroad, afterward builder and President
of the Pennsylvania Railroad; the man who conceived the plan
of getting the New England troops into Washington by the way
of Annapolis when Baltimore was in the power of the Rebels.
Another brother was quite distinguished in college in the
class of 1851. John after he graduated went to California
and never came back from the Pacific Coast or kept up his
communication with his old friends, although he received them
with great hospitality, I am told, when they went out there.
I think he had a fancy that he would keep to himself until
he could come back in some great place, like that of Senator
or Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was
a candidate for the Senate at one time, but was defeated by
a much inferior man. He was fond of argument; never was
contented without challenging somebody and was a very tough
customer to encounter, whatever side of a question he chose
to take. He liked, however, nothing better than a sturdy
resistance. To yield to him was never the way to win his
good will. The first day when we went to live at the same
boarding-house, I got into a hot dispute with him at dinner
over the Wilmot Proviso, and the constitutional power of Congress
to legislate against slavery in the territories, which was
then a burning questio