He had, nevertheless, a real and genuine sense of humor. We
can see it in his letters, and it comes out in a thousand ways in the
details and incidents of his private life. When he had thrown aside the
cares of professional or public business, he revelled in hearty, boisterous
fun, and he had that sanest of qualities, an honest, boyish love of pure
nonsense. He delighted in a good story and dearly loved a joke, although
no jester himself. This sense of humor and appreciation of the ridiculous,
although they give no color to his published works, where, indeed, they
would have been out of place, improved his judgment, smoothed his path
through the world, and saved him from those blunders in taste and those
follies in action which are ever the pitfalls for men with the fervid,
oratorical temperament.
This sense of humor gave, also, a great charm to his conversation and to
all social intercourse with him. He was a good, but never, so far as can be
judged from tradition, an overbearing talker. He never appears to have
crushed opposition in conversation, nor to have indulged in monologue,
which is so apt to be the foible of famous and successful men who have a
solemn sense of their own dignity and importance.
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