Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/57

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34
AN EPISTLE TO POSTERITY

ing; but it made no difference how he looked, he was always the same delightful, witty, and distinguished man.

Together the lovers might have played Romeo and Juliet, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, or indeed anything Italian and romantic. I visited them at their home at Elmwood afterwards, and they drove me to Mount Auburn, hearing that I had never seen it. Only the other day, after many years, I went to lay a rose on their graves.

Mr. Lowell was very fond of telling stories, of writing funny verses; and once after his sister and myself returned from a journey to Lake Superior, bringing with us some moss-agates and the account of a gentleman named Moss, he burst out with an impromptu supposed to have been written by that gentleman:

"Together once we chanced to cross
Ontario's inland sea.
What wonder that a lonely Moss
A lichen took to thee!

"And as our boat went pitch and toss,
Thou on my arm wouldst lean;
Forgive my hopes! how could a moss
Be otherwise than green?

"And if again our paths should cross,
Thou there wilt surely see
All withered hang a lonely Moss
Dependent from a tree!"

I do not think the lovely Maria had so much love of humor as her lover husband; their sympathy was rather on the poetic and humanitarian side. She was an earnest abolitionist, and drew him over to work and feel with her. They spent the first year of their married