year he went abroad. I do not know quite how to express my sense of
something unworldly, of something almost womanlike in his relation to
money.

He was not only generous of money, but he was generous of himself, when
he thought he could be of use, or merely of encouragement. He came all
the way into Boston to hear certain lectures of mine on the Italian
poets, which he could not have found either edifying or amusing, that he
might testify his interest in me, and show other people that they were
worth coming to. He would go carefully over a poem with me, word by
word, and criticise every turn of phrase, and after all be magnanimously
tolerant of my sticking to phrasings that he disliked. In a certain line

"The silvern chords of the piano trembled,"

he objected to silvern. Why not silver? I alleged leathern, golden, and
like adjectives in defence of my word; but still he found an affectation
in it, and suffered it to stand with extreme reluctance. Another line of
another piece:

"And what she would, would rather that she would not"

he would by no means suffer. He said that the stress falling on the last
word made it "public-school English," and he mocked it with the answer a
maid had lately given him when he asked if the master of the house was at
home. She said, "No, sir, he is not," when she ought to have said "No,
sir, he isn't." He was appeased when I came back the next day with the
stanza amended so that the verse could read:

"And what she would, would rather she would not so"