Page 73 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

This was not the sort of work, however, that the college authorities
expected of him. He was lazy and got behind his classes, so that near the

end of his course he was rusticated, or suspended from college for some
weeks. He had been chosen class poet, but on account of his suspension he

could not read his poem, though it was printed.

He was sent to Concord during this interval to carry on his studies under

the minister of the town. Here he found it pretty dull, though Emerson and
Thoreau were there. But he did not then care for either one of them. In one

of his letters he said, "I feel like a fool. I must go down and see Emerson
and if he doesn't make me feel more like one, it won't be for want of
sympathy. He is a good-natured man in spite of his doctrines."

Of Thoreau he said, "I met (him) last night, and it is exquisitely amusing to

see how he imitates Emerson's tone and manner. With my eyes shut I
shouldn't know them apart."

In the autumn he came back to Cambridge and took his degree of Bachelor
of Arts with his class.

CHAPTER IV

HOW LOWELL STUDIED LAW

While at Concord, Lowell wrote to his friend Loring, as though explaining
himself.

"Everybody almost is calling me 'indolent.' 'Blind dependent on my own
powers' and 'on fate.' Confound everybody! since everybody confounds me.

Everybody seems to see but one side of my character, and that the worst.
As for my dependence on my own powers, 'tis all fudge. As for fate, I

believe that in every man's breast are the stars of his fortune, which, if he
choose, he may rule as easily as does the child the mimic constellations in
the orrery he plays with. I acknowledge, too, that I have been something of

a dreamer, and have sacrificed, perchance, too assiduously on that altar to