He went to California and became afterward unquestionably
the greatest lawyer they have ever had on the Pacific Coast.
He was in the class after mine. I knew him slightly in our
undergraduate days. But when I went to the Law School in
September, 1847, we boarded together in the same house. We
speedily became intimate and used to take long walks together
of three or four hours every day. We rambled about Watertown
and Brighton and Somerville and West Cambridge and had long
discussions about law and politics and poetry and metaphysics
and literature and our own ambitions and desires. We were
constantly in each other's rooms, and often sat up together,
sometimes until the constellations set, with the wasteful,
time-consuming habits of boyhood.
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights
In search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence and poetry,--
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.
John came of a distinguished family. His brother Cornelius
was a famous Greek professor, one of the most striking figures
about Cambridge.
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