Monday, November 10, 2014

Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell, June 3, 1860

Newport, 3 June, 1860.

. . . Are you pleased that Mr. Everett has consented to take the nomination for the Vice Presidency? His letter reminds me of the advertisement of “the retired Doctor whose sands of life have nearly run out.” We have patriots left. In the view of the Union party it would seem that the Union itself were in a similar condition to the English gunboats, planks rotted, sham copper bolts not driven half through, and a general condition of unsoundness making them wholly unsafe in a sea.

Yet if the Vengeur should go down under the waves, Bell and Everett will be seen upon the upper deck waving their hands in a graceful oratorical way, and crying with melancholy voice, Vive la République....

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 208-9

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