[57] The curious reader may see here one of the little idiosyncrasies in which Lowell indulged throughout his life, though this is one of the first instances I have noted. [58] Mr. Gay had written: “I do not know how you feel about the Imprint, but my own opinion is that there had better be either no name, or only one there. Every one will know that yourself, Mrs. Chapman and Quincy and Briggs and others contribute to its columns. The more we can make believe contribute to it the better, and to put three or four names in the Imprint will seem to limit the number. I wish that all its readers shall believe that a variety of people have had a hand in the making up of every number, and not only those whose names are before them. For the same reason I wish that the initial system shall be done with. The readers will be prone to believe the best if they are not certain, and if there are none of these ‘small caps,’ as the printers say, to guide, they may sometimes be humbugged into eating my chaff for your and others’ wheat.” Mr. Gay had his way at first, but before long his readers’ curiosity drove him into the use of initials as signatures. [59] See _Letters of James Russell Lowell_, i. 111-116. Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. [60] A little of this jest is preserved in Parson Wilbur’s note to the second _Biglow paper_, as published in book form. [61] In his address on “The Place of the Independent in Politics,” delivered forty years later, Lowell pithily says: “A moral purpose multiplies us (Independents) by ten, as it multiplied the early Abolitionists. They emancipated the negro; and we mean to emancipate the respectable white man.” [62] There is a reference to Jefferson in a letter written ten years later, which is interesting as one of the rare apprizements by Lowell of American public men. “I have run through Randall’s _Jefferson_ with the ends of my fingers--a perfect chaos of biography--but enough to confirm me in the belief that Jefferson was the first _American_ man. I doubt if we have produced a better thinker or writer. His style is admirable in general, warmed with just enough enthusiasm for eloquence, not too much for conviction.”--J. R. L. to C. E. Norton, 11 October, 1858. [63] “A steam-engine in breeches,” was Sydney Smith’s characterization. [64] _Letters_, i. 157, 21 May, 1849.