es had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcottian
evil influences, I was not altogether responsible. I was a precocious
boy, and I had fully developed extraordinary influences, which, like the
seed of Scripture, had in my case fallen on more than fertile ground; it
was like the soil of the Margariten Island, by Budapest, which is so
permeated by hot springs in a rich soil that everything comes to maturity
there in one-third of the time which it does elsewhere. I was the last
child on earth who should ever have fallen into Alcott's hands, or
listened to Dr. Channing or Furness, or have been interested in anything
"ideal"; but fate willed that I should drink the elfin goblet to the
dregs.

George H. Boker had a great influence on me. We were in a way connected,
for my uncle Amos had married his aunt, and my cousin, Benjamin Godfrey,
his cousin. He was exactly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo,
and a head which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron. A few
years later N. P. Willis described him in the _Home Journal_ as the
handsomest man in America. He had been from boyhood as precociously a
man of the world as I was the opposite. He was _par eminence_ the poet
of our college, and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its "swell." I passed a
great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, Shelley, and
Byron, the last named being his ideal. He ridiculed the Lakers, whom I
loved; and when Southey's last poem, "On Gooseberry Pie," appeared, he
declared that the poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented
with sorrow in my heart. Though only one year older than I, yet, as a
_Junior_, and from his superior knowledge of life, I regarded him as
being about thirty. He was quite familiar, in a refined and gentlemanly
way, with all the dissipation of Philadelphia and New York; nor was the
small circle of his friends, with whom I habitually associated, much
behind him in this respect. Even during this Junior year he was offered
the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the
others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient
to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in
all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now,
whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my
mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that I
was somewhat like the young lady of whom I heard