He returned sooner than he expected, and for a reason that very well illustrates his business habits.  When he set out he had a limited amount of money.  This he placed with London bankers, arranging to draw on them for such sums as he might need from time to time.  He asked that when he had drawn down to a certain sum the bankers should notify him, and then he would immediately prepare to return home.  He settled down, and thought that he was getting on moderately well and had a considerable sum still to draw.  What was his surprise when he was notified by his bankers that he had drawn his account down to the amount he had mentioned!  As there was nothing better for him to do, he packed his trunk and went home.

Some years after that, he received a letter from these London bankers informing him that an error had been made in his account, and that a draft for a hundred pounds sterling (five hundred dollars) which had been drawn by some other person named Lowell had by mistake been charged to his account.  This money, with compound interest, was now at his disposal.  The bankers suggested, however, that if he was not in immediate need of the money, they would use it for an admirable investment they knew of which might considerably increase it within a year.  At the end of a year he received a draft for seven hundred pounds.  This he used to refurnish Elmwood.  “Now, you, who are always preaching figures and Poor Richard, and business habits,” said he, in telling the story to some friends, “what do you say to that?  If I had kept an account and known how it stood, I should have spent that money and you would not now be sitting in those easy chairs, or walking on Wilton carpet.  No; hang accounts and figures!”

In 1857 the Atlantic Monthly was started, and Lowell was made editor, with a salary of three thousand dollars a year, of course in addition to his salary as a Harvard professor.  Though he was the editor, he recognized that the success of the magazine would be made by Holmes.  Said he, “You see, the doctor is like a bright mountain stream that has been dammed up among the hills and is waiting for an outlet into the Atlantic.  You will find that he has a wonderful store of thought—­serious, comic, pathetic, and poetic,—­of comparisons, figures, and illustrations.  I have seen nothing of his preparation, but I imagine he is ready.  It will be something wholly new, and his reputation as a prose writer will date from this magazine.”  When you recollect the success of the “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” you cannot help remarking that Lowell was a veritable prophet.

President Hayes, soon after his inauguration, offered Lowell an appointment as minister to Austria, but Lowell declined.  When he was asked if he would accept an appointment as minister to Spain, he consented, and thither he went in the early part of President Hayes’ administration.  After a time he was transferred to London, where he became a striking diplomatic figure.