We must not
suggest to Michel Angelo, or Machiavel, or Rabelais, or Voltaire,
or John Brown of Osawatomie (a great man), or Carlyle, how they
shall suppress their paradoxes and check their huge gait to keep
accurate step with the procession on the street sidewalk. They
are privileged persons, and may have their own swing for me.
I did not mean to chatter so much, but I wish you would come out
hither and read our possibilities now being daily disclosed, and
our actualities which are not nothing. I shall like to show you
my near neighbors, topographically or practically. A near
neighbor and friend, E. Rockwood Hoar, whom you saw in his youth,
is now an inestimable citizen in this State, and lately, in
President Grant's Cabinet, Attorney-General of the United States.
He lives in this town and carries it in his hand. Another is
John M. Forbes, a strictly private citizen, of great executive
ability, and noblest affections, a motive power and regulator
essential to our City, refusing all office, but impossible to
spare; and these are men whom to name the voice breaks and the
eye is wet.
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