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Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 08:31:13 -0400 From: "Printer Ink" <printer_ink@jdfvy.com> To: <mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu> <html> <head>=20 <title>1ink Saves You Money on Printer Ink!</title>=20 </head>=20 <body> 1ink Saves You Money on Printer Ink!=20 <h1>1 Ink</h1>=20 <p>Don't pay a fortune for printer ink. Save with 1ink! Free Shipping Ava= ilable.</p>=20 <a href=3D"http://www.jdfvy.com/179D8F6zo33al7axhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONWec7/unfriendliness-rears">Learn More</a> <br />=20 <a href=3D"http://www.jdfvy.com/179D8F6zo33al7axhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONWec7/unfriendliness-rears"><img src=3D"http://www.jdfvy.com/da9L7aC33Cdg7aNhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONWd04/condenses-colossal" width=3D"663" height=3D"6= 58" border=3D"0" alt=3D"1 Ink" /></a> <br />=20 <a href=3D"http://www.jdfvy.com/7558i6w3DP3Dbl7aDhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONW586/radioed-seamen"><img src=3D"http://www.jdfvy.com/ef3E7aN33Pe-7awhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONW200/grottos-briefly" width=3D"664" height=3D"4= 6" border=3D"0" /></a> <br />=20 <div style=3D"font:normal 10px Arial, Times New Roman, sans-serif; col= or:#ffffff; ">=20 <p>1ink Saves You Money on Printer Ink!<br /> I have already spoken of m= y earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridge when I came to New England on = a literary pilgrimage from the West in 1860. I saw him more and more after = I went to live in Cambridge in 1866; and I now wish to record what I knew o= f him during the years that passed between this date and that of his death.= If the portrait I shall try to paint does not seem a faithful likeness to = others who knew him, I shall only claim that so he looked to me, at this mo= ment and at that. If I do not keep myself quite out of the picture, what pa= inter ever did? I. It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home from my co= nsular post at Venice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston, I went out t= o see Lowell at Elmwood, and give him an inkstand that I had brought him fr= om Italy. The bronze lobster whose back opened and disclosed an inkpot and = a sand- box was quite ugly; but I thought it beautiful then, and if Lowell = thought otherwise he never did anything to let me know it. He put the thing= in the middle of his writing-table (he nearly always wrote on a pasteboard= pad resting upon his knees), and there it remained as long as I knew the p= lace--a matter of twenty-five years; but in all that time I suppose the ink= pot continued as dry as the sand-box. My visit was in the heat of August, w= hich is as fervid in Cambridge as it can well be anywhere, and I still have= a sense of his study windows lifted to the summer night, and the crickets = and grasshoppers crying in at them from the lawns and the gardens outside. = Other people went away from Cambridge in the summer to the sea and to the m= ountains, but Lowell always stayed at Elmwood, in an impassioned love for h= is home and for his town. I must have found him there in the afternoon, and= he must have made me sup with him (dinner was at two o'clock) and then go = with him for a long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some one h= elp him idle the time away, and keep him as long as possible from his work;= and no doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in this way, aside from a= ny pleasure he might have had in my company as some one he had always been = kind to, and as a fresh arrival from the Italy dear to us both. He lighted = his pipe, and from the depths of his easychair, invited my shy youth to all= the ease it was capable of in his presence. It was not much; I loved him, = and he gave me reason to think that he was fond of me, but in Lowell I was = always conscious of an older and closer and stricter civilization than my o= wn, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritative status. His democracy was m= ore of the head and mine more of the heart, and his denied the equality whi= ch mine affirmed. But his nature was so noble and his reason so tolerant th= at whenever in our long acquaintance I found it well to come to open rebell= ion, as I more than once did, he admitted my right of insurrection, and nev= er resented the outbreak. I disliked to differ with him, and perhaps he sub= tly felt this so much that he would not dislike me for doing it. He even su= ffered being taxed with inconsistency, and where he saw that he had not bee= n quite just, he would take punishment for his error, with a contrition tha= t was sometimes humorous and always touching. Just then it was the dark hou= r before the dawn with Italy, and he was interested but not much encouraged= by what I could tell him of the feeling in Venice against the Austrians. H= e seemed to reserve a like scepticism concerning the fine things I was hopi= ng for the Italians in literature, and he confessed an interest in the fact= s treated which in the retrospect, I am aware, was more tolerant than parti= cipant of my enthusiasm. That was always Lowell's attitude towards the opin= ions of people he liked, when he could not go their lengths with them, and = nothing was more characteristic of his affectionate nature and his just int= elligence. He was a man of the most strenuous convictions, but he loved man= y sorts of people whose convictions he disagreed with, and he suffered even= prejudices counter to his own if they were not ignoble. In the whimsicalit= ies of others he delighted as much as in his own. II. Our associations with= Italy held over until the next day, when after breakfast he went with me t= owards Boston as far as "the village": for so he liked to speak o= f Cambridge in the custom of his younger days when wide tracts of meadow se= parated Harvard Square from his life-long home at Elmwood. We stood on the = platform of the horsecar together, and when I objected to his paying my far= e in the American fashion, he allowed that the Italian usage of each paying= for himself was the politer way. He would not commit himself about my retu= rning to Venice (for I had not given up my place, yet, and was away on leav= e), but he intimated his distrust of the flattering conditions of life abro= ad. He said it was charming to be treated 'da signore', but he seemed to do= ubt whether it was well; and in this as in all other things he showed his f= inal fealty to the American ideal. It was that serious and great moment aft= er the successful close of the civil war when the republican consciousness = was more robust in us than ever before or since; but I cannot recall any re= ference to the historical interest of the time in Lowell's talk. It had bee= n all about literature and about travel; and now with the suggestion of the= word village it began to be a little about his youth. I have said before h= ow reluctant he was to let his youth go from him; and perhaps the touch wit= h my juniority had made him realize how near he was to fifty, and set him t= hinking of the past which had sorrows in it to age him beyond his years. He= would never speak of these, though he often spoke of the past. He told onc= e of having been on a brief journey when he was six years old, with his fat= her, and of driving up to the gate of Elmwood in the evening, and his fathe= r saying, "Ah, this is a pleasant place! I wonder who lives here--what= little boy?" At another time he pointed out a certain window in his s= tudy, and said he could see himself standing by it when he could only get h= is chin on the window-sill. His memories of the house, and of everything be= longing to it, were very tender; but he could laugh over an escapade of his= youth when he helped his fellow-students pull down his father's fences, in= the pure zeal of good-comradeship. III. My fortunes took me to New York, a= nd I spent most of the winter of 1865-6 writing in the office of 'The Natio= n'. I contributed several sketches of Italian travel to that paper; and one= of these brought me a precious letter from Lowell. He praised my sketch, w= hich he said he had read without the least notion who had written it, and h= e wanted me to feel the full value of such an impersonal pleasure in it. At= the same time he did not fail to tell me that he disliked some pseudo-cyni= cal verses of mine which he had read in another place; and I believe it was= then that he bade me "sweat the Heine out of" me, "as men s= weat the mercury out of their bones." When I was asked to be assistant= editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and came on to Boston to talk the matter o= ver with the publishers, I went out to Cambridge and consulted Lowell. He s= trongly urged me to take the position (I thought myself hopefully placed in= New York on The Nation); and at the same time he seemed to have it on his = heart to say that he had recommended some one else for it, never, he owned,= having thought of me. He was most cordial, but after I came to live in Cam= bridge (where the magazine was printed, and I could more conveniently look = over the proofs), he did not call on me for more than a month, and seemed q= uite to have forgotten me. We met one night at Mr. Norton's, for one of the= Dante readings, and he took no special notice of me till I happened to say= something that offered him a chance to give me a little humorous snub. I w= as speaking of a paper in the Magazine on the "Claudian Emissary,"= ; and I demanded (no doubt a little too airily) something like "Who in= the world ever heard of the Claudian Emissary?" "You are in Camb= ridge, Mr. Howells," Lowell answered, and laughed at my confusion. Hav= ing put me down, he seemed to soften towards me, and at parting he said, wi= th a light of half-mocking tenderness in his beautiful eyes, "Goodnigh= t, fellow-townsman." "I hardly knew we were fellow-townsmen,"= ; I returned. He liked that, apparently, and said he had been meaning to ca= ll upon me; and that he was coming very soon. He was as good as his word, a= nd after that hardly a week of any kind of weather passed but he mounted th= e steps to the door of the ugly little house in which I lived, two miles aw= ay from him, and asked me to walk. These walks continued, I suppose, until = Lowell went abroad for a winter in the early seventies. They took us all ov= er Cambridge, which he knew and loved every inch of, and led us afield thro= ugh the straggling, unhandsome outskirts, bedrabbled with squalid Irish nei= ghborhoods, and fraying off into marshes and salt meadows. He liked to indu= lge an excess of admiration for the local landscape, and though I never hea= rd him profess a preference for the Charles River flats to the finest Alpin= e scenery, I could well believe he would do so under provocation of a fit l= istener's surprise. He had always so much of the boy in him that he liked t= o tease the over-serious or over-sincere. He liked to tease and he liked to= mock, especially his juniors, if any touch of affectation, or any little e= xuberance of manner gave him the chance; when he once came to fetch me, and= the young mistress of the house entered with a certain excessive elasticit= y, he sprang from his seat, and minced towards her, with a burlesque of her= buoyant carriage which made her laugh. When he had given us his heart in t= rust of ours, he used us like a younger brother and sister; or like his own= children. He included our children in his affection, and he enjoyed our fo= ndness for them as if it were something that had come back to him from his = own youth. I think he had also a sort of artistic, a sort of ethical pleasu= re in it, as being of the good tradition, of the old honest, simple materia= l, from which pleasing effects in literature and civilization were wrought.= He liked giving the children books, and writing tricksy fancies in these, = where he masked as a fairy prince; and as long as he lived he remembered hi= s early kindness for them.</p>=20 </div>=20 <hr width=3D"50%" />=20 <div style=3D"text-align: center; "> <font size=3D"2">Change your options by visiting <a href=3D"= http://www.jdfvy.com/89f8*i9w33cBY7aFhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONW32d/condenses-colossal">here</a><br /> 2220 Meridian Blvd.,Suite #763, Minden, NV 89423</fo= nt> </div> =20 <img src=3D"http://www.jdfvy.com/ecology-raucous/5ee8ms53V3fqx7aBhvVdVKyxdhVtFMuKmji0hvV0ONW693" alt=3D""/></body> </html>
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