As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent
as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a
poet,--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and
stood there quietly for a long time, watching the dead-white landscape.
No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him; the conversation
flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to
be respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain the silent man
imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at
his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me nothing was
lost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me, to the
exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but
this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said
by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness
of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently
rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his
face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the
night.'"
He was not a lover of argumentation. "His principle seemed to be, if a
man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk,
because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not." And the
same writer says:----
"His own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been
said for hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye,
nor a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society, failed to
thrill his heart.
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