Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard when Lowell was there, and afterward Lowell wrote an essay on "A Great Public Character," which describes this distinguished president. In it he refers to college life in a way that shows he thoroughly enjoyed it.
"Almost every one," he writes, "looks back regretfully to the days of some Consul Plancus. Never were eyes so bright, never had wine so much wit and good-fellowship in it, never were we ourselves so capable of the various great things we have never done…. This is especially true of college life, when we first assume the titles without the responsibilities of manhood, and the president of our year is apt to become our Plancus very early."
In another of his essays he tells one of the standing college jokes, which is worth repeating. The students would go into one of the grocery stores of the town, whose proprietor was familiarly called "The Deacon."
"Have you any sour apples, Deacon?" the first student to enter would ask.
"Well, no, I haven't any just now that are exactly sour," he would answer; "but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sour apple generally like that."
Enter the second student. "Have you any sweet apples, Deacon?"
"Well, no, I haven't any now that are exactly sweet; but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sweet apple generally like that."
"There is not even a tradition of any one's ever having turned the wary Deacon's flank," says
Lowell, "and his Laodicean apples persisted to the end, neither one thing nor another."
It did not take young Lowell long to find out that he had a weakness for poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his friend Loring, probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, 1836, he says, "Here I am alone in Bob's room with a blazing fire, in an atmosphere of 'poesy' and soft coal smoke. Pope, Dante, a few of the older English poets, Byron, and last, not least, some of my own compositions, lie around me. Mark my modesty. I don't put myself in the same line with the rest, you see…. Been quite 'grouty' all the vacation, 'black as Erebus.' Discovered two points of very striking resemblance between myself and Lord Byron; and if you will put me in mind of it, I will propound next term, or in some other letter, 'Vanity, thy name is Lowell!'"