He was fond of anecdote, and told his stories with the fluency of a man
accustomed to public speaking, and the animation and point of a man
accustomed to the society of men of wit as well as of men of action.
His recollections were wonderfully distinct, and it always gave me a
peculiar thrill to hear him talk about the great men he had lived and
acted with in both hemispheres, as familiarly as if he had parted from
them only an hour before. It was bringing history very close to me, and
peopling it with living beings,--beings of flesh and blood, who ate and
drank and slept and wore clothes as we do; for here was one of them, the
friend and companion of the greatest among them all, whom I had known
through books, as I knew them long before I knew him in actual life,
and every one of whose words and gestures seemed to give me a clearer
conception of what they, too, must have been.

Still he never appeared to live in the recollections of his youth, as
most old men do. His life was too active a one for this, and the
great principles he had consecrated it to were too far-reaching and
comprehensive, too full of living, actual interest, too fresh and
vigorous in their vitality, to allow a man of his sanguine and active
temperament to forget himself in the past when there was so much to do
in the present. This gave a peculiar charm to his conversation; for,
no matter what the subject might be, he always talked like a man who
believed what he said, and whose faith, a living principle of thought
and action, was constantly kept in a genial glow by the quickness
and depth of his sympathies. His smile told this; for it was full of
sweetness and gentleness, though with a dash of earnestness about it, an
under-current of serious thought, that made you feel as if you wanted to
look behind it, and reminded you, at times, of a landscape at sunset,
when there is just light enough to show you how many things there are