Nor was this excitement always wasted in words--not a few, when yet a
boy, have regretted the awakening of his wrath. It was upon occasions
like this, that his eye assumed an expression which I have never seen
in the eye of any other human being. His eyes were beautifully blue,
large, and round, and were always changing and varying in their
expression, as the mind would suggest thought after thought; and so
remarkable were these variations, that, watching him in repose, one who
knew him well could almost read the ideas gathering and passing through
his mind. There was a pleasant vein of satire in his nature, sometimes
expressed, but always in words and in a manner which plucked away its
sting:
An abstract wit of gentle flow,
Which wounds no friend, and hurts no foe.
He was my school-fellow and companion in childhood, my friend and
associate in early manhood; our intimacy was close and cordial, and in
after life this friendship became intense--and I knew him perhaps
better than any man ever knew him.
All the peculiarities of the boy remained with the man, distinguishing
him in all his associations.
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