The tone of distrustfulness which is an undercurrent in this passage is familiar enough to the conscientious teacher, and Lowell, measuring the vastness of literature and his own inadequacy to press it home to his students, was fearful that the outcome was slight in proportion to the cost to himself. Yet he did not therefore spare himself. During the years of his teaching, he was more than ever the scholar, taking generous draughts of the literature he was to teach, for long stretches of time even engaged with his books twelve hours out of the twenty-four. And so quickening was his imagination that he went to his classes not to decant the wine of learning from bottles just filled, but to give them of his own rare essence distilled from the hours of study. Hence he was a strong and vivifying influence to the best men under him, and to all he communicated something of that rich culture which is not easily measured by lessons learned and recited. No one could listen to his teaching, as has been well said, without becoming conscious that he was listening to a man not less wise than accomplished and gifted. In this matter of teaching, as in all the other undertakings of his life, Lowell kept no strict debit and credit account. He gave his measure not according to the stipulated return, but freely, generously. Especially did he overflow in friendliness. As he turned the lecture and recitation hour into a _causerie_, and was careless in his exactions, so he not only suffered but encouraged encroachment on his unprofessional hours. At first in Kirkland Street, afterward at Elmwood, he made his students welcome, and the only difference it may be between an hour in University Hall and an hour by the wood fire at Elmwood, was in the wider range of talk. It was here that his students came nearest to him, for it was the men he quickened in the class-room who were avid of more just such talk, and sought him in the greater intimacy of his study. Yet, nearer as they came to him as he sat with his pipe in slippered ease, and much as they drew from him, it is doubtful if there was much reciprocity in the intercourse. As a comparative stranger might draw from Lowell one of his most delightful letters, if some question he sent him happened to catch him at a favorable moment, when he needed only an occasion for the letter that was on tap, so these students, one or more, offered an easy audience, and Lowell, rarely out of the mood for talk, would spin his gossamer or weave his strong fabric for them as well as for any one else, without paying very close heed to them personally. In fine, the twenty years of college work made little inroad on Lowell himself. He was furnished with occupation, he was made comparatively easy in his simple need of a livelihood, and for the rest his class-room work offered a natural outlet for his abundant intellectual activity. He grumbled sometimes over its demands on his time, but it is doubtful if