wife at night attempted to sweeten his tea from the bags.  This brought out from the deacon the following remark:  ’I declare, when I felt that ‘ar sand agrittin’ between my teeth, I don’t know but it was wicked, but I e’en a’most wished that there wouldn’t never be another wreck!’” Lowell told the story with all the humour possible, rendering the deacon’s remark with a twang and an emphatic dwelling on the double negative (a thing which Lowell believed we had suffered to drop out of polite speech unfortunately) with inimitable effect and most evident enjoyment.  The substratum of the man was Yankee but probably no other of the stock has so enriched himself with the best of all lands and times.  He had a most delicate sense of what was best worth while in all literatures and absorbed it to the full.  One of the greatest mistakes I ever made was in neglecting to become a member of his class in Dante when the opportunity came to me.  What an interpreter he was of the soul of the great Italian, and with what unerring instinct he penetrated to what was best in the sages and poets of the world everywhere!  His own gifts as poet and thinker were of the finest, and they were set off with acquirements marvellous in their range and in the unerring precision with which they were selected.  I recall him at a very impressive moment.  Many regard Lowell’s Commemoration Ode, read at the Commemoration in 1865 of the Harvard soldiers who had taken part in the Civil War, as the high-water mark of American poetry.  Whether or not that claim is just I shall not debate, but it is a great composition and perhaps Lowell’s best.  The occasion was indeed a noble one.  A multitude had collected in the college-yard and through it wound the brilliant procession of soldiers who had taken part in the war, marching to the drum and wearing for the last time the uniform in which they had fought.  From Major-Generals and Admirals down to the high privates, all were in blue, and the sun glittered resplendent on epaulet and lace worn often by men who walked with difficulty, halting from old wounds.  The exercises in the church, the singing of Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress is our God, the oration and the impressive prayer of Phillips Brooks were finished.  The assembly collected under the great tent which filled the quadrangle formed by the street, Harvard and Hollis Halls and Holden Chapel.  I sat at the corner by the side of Phillips Brooks.  He was the Chaplain of the day and I had been honoured by a commission to speak for the rank and file.  The speeches, though not always happy, preserved a good level of excellence.  At length came Lowell.  He stood with his back toward Hollis about midway of the space.  He was then in his best years, brown-haired, dark-eyed, rather short-necked, with a full strong beard, his intellectual face, an Elizabethan face, surmounting a sturdy body.  His manner was not impassioned, he read from a manuscript with distinctness which could be heard everywhere,