His father’s family was at this time living in the house No. 7 Walnut Street, looking down Chestnut Street over the water to the western hills.  Near by, at the corner of Beacon Street, was the residence of the family of the first mayor of Boston, and at a little distance from the opposite corner was the house of one of the fathers of New England manufacturing enterprise, a man of superior intellect, who built up a great name and fortune in our city.  The children from these three homes naturally became playmates.  Mr. Motley’s house was a very hospitable one, and Lothrop and two of his young companions were allowed to carry out their schemes of amusement in the garden and the garret.  If one with a prescient glance could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternoon while our century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, enacting more or less impromptu melodramas.  In one of the boys he would have seen the embryo dramatist of a nation’s life history, John Lothrop Motley; in the second, a famous talker and wit who has spilled more good things on the wasteful air in conversation than would carry a “diner-out” through half a dozen London seasons, and waked up somewhat after the usual flowering-time of authorship to find himself a very agreeable and cordially welcomed writer,—­Thomas Gold Appleton.  In the third he would have recognized a champion of liberty known wherever that word is spoken, an orator whom to hear is to revive all the traditions of the grace, the address, the commanding sway of the silver-tongued eloquence of the most renowned speakers,—­Wendell Phillips.

Both of young Motley’s playmates have furnished me with recollections of him and of those around him at this period of his life, and I cannot do better than borrow freely from their communications.  His father was a man of decided character, social, vivacious, witty, a lover of books, and himself not unknown as a writer, being the author of one or more of the well remembered “Jack Downing” letters.  He was fond of having the boys read to him from such authors as Channing and Irving, and criticised their way of reading with discriminating judgment and taste.  Mrs. Motley was a woman who could not be looked upon without admiration.  I remember well the sweet dignity of her aspect, her “regal beauty,” as Mr. Phillips truly styles it, and the charm of her serene and noble presence, which made her the type of a perfect motherhood.  Her character corresponded to the promise of her gracious aspect.  She was one of the fondest of mothers, but not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy from whom she hoped and expected more than she thought it wise to let him know.  The story used to be current that in their younger days this father and mother were the handsomest pair the town of Boston could show.  This son of theirs was “rather tall,” says Mr. Phillips, “lithe, very