Page 71 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard when Lowell was there, and
afterward Lowell wrote an essay on "A Great Public Character," which

describes this distinguished president. In it he refers to college life in a way
that shows he thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Almost every one," he writes, "looks back regretfully to the days of some
Consul Plancus. Never were eyes so bright, never had wine so much wit

and good-fellowship in it, never were we ourselves so capable of the
various great things we have never done.... This is especially true of college

life, when we first assume the titles without the responsibilities of
manhood, and the president of our year is apt to become our Plancus very
early."

In another of his essays he tells one of the standing college jokes, which is

worth repeating. The students would go into one of the grocery stores of the
town, whose proprietor was familiarly called "The Deacon."

"Have you any sour apples, Deacon?" the first student to enter would ask.

"Well, no, I haven't any just now that are exactly sour," he would answer;
"but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sour apple generally
like that."

Enter the second student. "Have you any sweet apples, Deacon?"

"Well, no, I haven't any now that are exactly sweet; but there's the
bellflower apple, and folks that like a sweet apple generally like that."

"There is not even a tradition of any one's ever having turned the wary

Deacon's flank," says

Lowell, "and his Laodicean apples persisted to the end, neither one thing

nor another."

It did not take young Lowell long to find out that he had a weakness for
poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his friend Loring,