Note 814 — Chapter XXVIII · CONKLING AND CURTIS AT ROCHESTER 1877
Reading edition
Curtis declined chiefly from the motive ascribed in Lowell's lines:
"At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain. Refusing posts men grovel to attain." —Lowell's Poems, Vol. 4, pp. 138-139.