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by extracting and minuting he could sit up till midnight. Dr. Peabody says that Mr. Dane was hos pitable and generous, and that he lived ele gantly. This does not mean, however, that he was addicted to the pleasures of the table; for when he dined with President Quincy, on the occasion of the dedication of Dane Hall, at Harvard, he said, on being urged to have some dessert, that he would so far depart from his invariable rule as to take three al monds. He had no children of his own, and he educated various relations, or else estab lished them in business; he adopted as his son his nephew, Joseph Dane, who was grad uated from Harvard in 1799, and became a Congressman from Maine. There is one little scrap of contemporary characterization from the pen of John Lowell, the poet's uncle, who wrote of him to Timothy Pickering, at the time of the Hartford Convention, as follows : " He is a man of great firmness,

approaching to obstinacy; singular, imprac ticable, and of course it must be uncertain what course he will take. Honestly, how ever, inclined." Lowell was one of those fiery Federalists who feared that the mem bers of the convention were not of the kind that were calculated for bold measures. As extreme age drew on, Mr. Dane used to test the condition of his faculties by noticing, while reading the newspapers, whether their contents interested him as readily as they formerly had, and whether he comprehended them as promptly. It does not appear that any mental failure showed itself, and even the paralytic stroke which preceded his death some three months left his mind unclouded and still intent upon his usual subjects. He died at Beverly, on the 15th of February, 1835, at the age of eightytwo. His venerable wife, who for fifty-five years had been his companion, survived him.