t "filled out," but
held myself straightly, and was fairly proportioned. I wore a cap _a
l'etudiant_, very much over my left ear, and had very long, soft,
straight, dark-brown hair; my dream and ideal being the German student. I
was extremely shy of strangers, but when once acquainted soon became very
friendly, and in most cases made a favourable impression. I was "neat
and very clean-looking," as a lady described me, for the daily bath or
sponge was universal in Philadelphia long ere it was even in England, and
many a time when travelling soon after, I went without a meal in order to
have my tub, when time did not permit of both. I was very sensitive, and
my feelings were far too easily pained; on the other hand, I had no trace
of the common New England youth's vulgar failing of nagging, teasing, or
vexing others under colour of being "funny" or "cute." A very striking,
and, all things considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I
_hated_, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and
their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested
curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great
development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the
time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval
officer, who roomed with me in a cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and
whom I greatly admired as a man of the world and a model of good manners.
To him one day I communicated some gossip about somebody, when he
abruptly cut me short, and when I would go on informed me that he never
listened to such talk. This made a very deep impression on me, which
never disappeared; nay, it grew with my growth and strengthened with my
strength. Now the New England people, especially Bostonians, are
inordinately given to knowing everything about everybody, and to "tittle-
tattle," while the Southerners are comparatively free from it and very
incurious. Two-thirds of the students at Princeton were of the first
families in the South, and there my indifference to what did not
personally concern one was regarded as a virtue. But there is a spot in
this sun--that he who never cares a straw to know about the affairs of
other people, will, not only if he live in Boston, but almost anywhere
else--Old England not at all excepted--be forced, in spite of himself,
and though he were as meek and lowly as man may be, into looking down on
and feeling himself