tten for the campaign, became the object of pilgrimages other
than literary ones. He received sound advice, and introductions, which
aided him in getting the appointment, and he held it for nearly twenty
years--more to the benefit of the custom-house than of poetry, no
doubt, though he never let poetry escape him, and he is to-day a mine
of knowledge and wisdom on literary subjects. There is an immense human
ardor, power, and pathos in Stoddard; better than any other American
poet does he realize the conception of his great English brother--the
love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn. The world has proved
impotent to corrupt his heroic simplicity; he loved fame much, but truth
more. He is a boy in his heart still, and he has sung songs which touch
whatever is sweetest, tenderest, and manliest in the soul of man.

[IMAGE: EDWIN P. WHIFFLE]

E. P. Whipple, essentially a man of letters, and famous in his day as a
critic of literature, appeared often in "The Wayside." His verdict on a
book carried weight; it was an era when literary criticism was regarded
seriously, and volumes devoted to critical studies had something more
than, a perfunctory vogue. He had written penetrating and cordial things
about my father's books, and foretold the high place which he would
ultimately occupy in our Pantheon. He was rich in the kind of Attic salt
which, was characteristic of Boston in the middle century; the product
of an almost excessive culture erected on sound, native brains. He had
abounding wit; not only wit of the sort that begets mirth, but that
larger and graver wit which Macaulay notices in Bacon's writings--a
pure, irradiating, intellectual light. It had often the effect of an
actual physical illumination cast upon the topic. He was magnificent as
a dinner-table companion. He was rather a short, thick-shouldered man,
with a big head on a short neck, a broad, projecting forehead, prominent
eyes, defended by shiny spectacles, and bushy whiskers. He is not
remembered now, probably because he never produced any organic work
commensurate with his huge talent. Analyses of the work of others,
however just, useful, and creative, do not endure unless they are
associated with writing of the independent sort. Whipple, with all his
ability and insight, never entered the imaginative field on his own
account, and in the press of wits he falls behind and is forgotten.

My father had come to Concord with the idea of a new romance