A hundred Marys, and that only oneThese statistics of admiration were not thought altogether suitable to an academic poem, and the claim itself in regard to the young lady may have proved a little premature, inasmuch as she subsequently married Holmes's friend Motley, the historian. He had undoubtedly in his manners to young ladies of that period a tone of airy love-making, suitable to one lately returned from gay Paris; and his poem βTo a lady,β boasting of the change in her manner since he first left America βa pallid boy,β may easily have had an actual foundation. It is to be remembered, however, that he had at this period a look of physical insignificance, which his middle years greatly amended by additional flesh; at Phi Beta Kappa dinners he used to stand up in a chair to sing his songs, and his juvenile look was even considered something of an obstacle to his early
Whose smile awaits me when my song is done.
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passage in which he gallantly enumerated the probable names of the various young ladies in the gallery, mentioning, for instance,
Macmillan, 1900.
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