Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/163

 of the whole table, all the guests listening to him. His talk was so animated, bubbling and sparkling, and at the same time there was so kindly and genial a flow of wit and wisdom, that I sat there in a state of amazed delight. I had never heard anything like it. After a while I asked my neighbor on the other side: “Pray, who is the wonderful man?” “You do not know him?” he answered. “Why, this is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.” I visited Boston often after those days in 1859, and then I had sometimes the happiness of sitting as a guest at the same table with the other members of the famous circle of Boston's, or rather America's, great celebrities—Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Agassiz, Holmes, Norton, Field, Sumner, and others of their companionship, and of hearing them converse among themselves—not with an effort of saying remarkable things, but with the natural, unpretending, and therefore most charming simplicity of truly great minds. I never saw Whittier at one of those dinners. But being a warm admirer of Whittier's powerfully moving anti-slavery poems, I wished very much to behold the poet's face and to hear his voice. Therefore, I eagerly accepted, on one of my visits to Boston, the offer of one of Whittier's friends to take me to Amesbury, the village where he lived, and to introduce me to him. When we called at his very modest frame house, the typical New England village house painted white with green shutters, we were told that he was not at home, but might possibly be found at the post-office. At the post-office we were told that he had been there, but had probably gone to the drug store. At the drug store we found him quietly talking with a little company of neighbors assembled around the stove—for it was a cold winter day. I was almost sorry to break into that tranquil chat between the poet and his village familiars, for I was satisfied with looking at him