His loyalty was
always something flawless. A friend might treat him with the grossest
dishonor, but he would let you think he was himself deficient in
perception or in a proper regard for his money before he would let you
guess that his friend should be denounced. With loyal love, he had,
for his part, wound about New England the purple haze of which Dr.
Holmes spoke in ecstasy, because he had found his country standing
only half appreciated, though with a wealth of virtue and meaning that
makes her fairer every year. With love, also, he came home, after
having barely tasted the delights of London and Oxford completeness.
In Concord he entered upon a long renunciation. Of necessity this was
beneficial to his art. He was now fully primed with observation, and
"The Dolliver Romance," hammered out from several beginnings that he
successively cast aside, appeared so exquisitely pure and fine because
of the hush of fasting and reflection which environed the worker. It
is the unfailing history of great souls that they seem to destroy
themselves most in relation to the world's happiness when they most
deserve and acquire a better reward. He was starving, but he steadily
wrote. He was weary of the pinched and unpromising condition of our
daily life, but he smiled, and entertained us and guided us with
unflagging manliness, though with longer and longer intervals of
wordless reserve. I was never afraid to run to him for his sympathy,
as he sat reading in an easy-chair, in some one of those positions of
his which looked as if he could so sit and peruse till the end of
time.
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