Chapter VIII · AN END AND A BEGINNING 1852-1857 (continued 2)

“Lowell was indeed very happy in his married life, and amongst the pictures Memory will keep on her tablet for me, till Death passes his sponge over it once for all, is one of his wife lying in a long chair under the trees at Dr. Howe’s, when the sun was getting cool, and laughing with her low, musical laugh at a contest in punning between Lowell and myself, haud passibus æquis, but in which he found enough to provoke his wit to activity; her almost Oriental eyes twinkling with fun, half-closed and flashing from one to the other of us; her low, sweet forehead, wide between the temples; mouth wreathing with humor; and the whole frame, lithe and fragile, laughing with her eyes at his extravagant and rollicking word-play. One would hardly have said that she was a beautiful woman, but fascinating she was in the happiest sense of the word, with all the fascination of pure and perfect womanhood and perfect happiness.”