He was totally without personal thought, personal self-consciousness, and more like a disembodied spirit than a man. This impersonal quality gave him the power of telling home truths to people without offending them. To strangers, to acquaintances, to intimate friends, to proud spoiled egotists, to bad men with whom he is at odds—he can always tell the exact truth without conveying any personal ill-feeling. He flashes in through the walls and turrets of Charles Sumner, or of Theodore Parker, and puts the house in order with lightning strokes of wit, and with bold home-thrusts of spontaneous ridicule. He touches his friend’s soul with celestial surgery, then quickly rubs salve upon the wounds, and is back again at his desk before the patient has discovered his visitation. To say that he is the warmestnature that ever came out of New England would not be expressive. He is the warmest Anglo Saxon of whom I have ever read or heard tell. Constant expressions of love and affection flow from him, effusive, demonstrative, emotional. It is not necessary to cite them. Open the book. The German romanticists of whom Jean Paul Richter is a type come into one’s mind; but there was a literary tang to their sentiment. I must, however, quote two passages illustrative of Howe’s ordinary state of mind:—
“My Well-beloved Friend:—
“Your note from New York found me last evening, and gave me a feeling as near akin to pure joy as I ever expect to feel on earth. Why is it that we men are so shy about manifesting a natural feeling in a natural way, and letting down the flood-gates of the eye to the flow of tears? I feared to go and bid you adieu on Wednesday, lest I should not be able to conceal my emotion, hide my tears. I succeeded, however; I wept not until I was alone!”
Dr. Howe’s aged friend, Mr. F. W. Bird, has left an anecdote of their last meeting which would add a beauty to Homer:
“As I rose to leave, he followed me into the hall, threw his arms around my neck and with a beautiful smile said: ‘My dear old fellow, let me kiss you,’ and gave me a warmkiss. Within two days the thick curtain fell.” At the time of this parting Bird was sixty-six, and Howe seventy-five.
Is it not evident from all that has gone before that Dr. Howe was a saint? He constantly suggests one or other of the great saints in the Roman Calendar. And I will predict that the world has rather begun than finished with its interest in him. His work in charity will never be superseded. Succeeding penologists will recur to it to save them from the science of their times.