VALEDICTORY EXERCISES OF THE HARVARD CLASS OF 1838.
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Commencement fell that year on the 29th of August, and Lowell received his degree of Bachelor of Arts with the rest of his class.
I believe it is fair to tell an anecdote here of that summer, because the one person who could be offended by it is himself the only authority for it, and he used to tell the story with great personal gusto.
This cynic was in Rome that spring, where Dr. Lowell and Mrs. Lowell had been spending the winter. Indeed, I suppose if Dr. Lowell had been in Cambridge, the episode of rustication in Concord would never have come into his son’s life. The cynic was one of those men who seem to like to say disagreeable things whenever they can, and he thus described, I think in print, a visit he made to Dr. Lowell:—
“Dr. Lowell had not received his letters from Boston, and I had mine; so I thought I would go and tell him the Boston news. I told him that the parts for Commencement were assigned, and that Rufus Ellis was the first scholar and was to have the oration. But I told him that his son, James Lowell, had been rusticated and would not return to Cambridge until Commencement week! And I told him that the class had chosen James their class poet. ‘Oh dear!’ said Dr. Lowell, ‘James promised me that he would quit writing poetry and would go to work.’”
I am afraid that most fathers, even at the end of this century, would be glad to receive such a promise from a son. In this case, James Lowell certainly went to work, but, fortunately for the rest of us, he did not “quit writing poetry.”
CHAPTER V
BOSTON IN THE FORTIES
I despair of making any person appreciate the ferment in which any young person moved who came into the daily life of Boston in the days when Lowell left college. I have tried more than once, and without the slightest success. But this reader must believe me that nobody was “indifferent” then, even if he do not understand why.
Here was a little community, even quaint in some of its customs, sure of itself, and confident in its future. Generally speaking, the men and women who lived in it were of the old Puritan stock. This means that they lived to the glory of God, with the definite public spirit which belongs to such life. They had, therefore, absolute confidence that God’s kingdom was to come, and they saw no reason why it should not come soon. There were still some people, and one or two teachers in the pulpit and in what is technically called the religious press, who believed, or said they believed, that all men are born in sin and are incapable of good. But practically, and in general, the people of Boston believed in the infinite capacity of human nature, and they knew “salvation’s free,” and “free for you and me.”