Perhaps all this was in his mind when he wrote in his last “Biglow Paper:”-- “Ez I wuz say’n’, I hain’t no chance to speak So’s ’t all the country dreads me onct a week, But I’ve consid’ble o’ thet sort o’ head That sets to home an’ thinks wut _might_ be said.” This last paper, “Mr. Hosea Biglow’s Speech in March Meeting,” followed in the May _Atlantic_, and said over again the same lesson in the freer form of verse and with the more familiar dramatic impersonation of the Yankee countryman. It is an illustration of the greater carrying power of Lowell’s verse over his prose that the shrewd political philosophy which lies in the two series of the “Biglow Papers,” closely as it applied to the political situations in 1846-1848 and 1861-1866, has come again into play in the very different situation in national politics following the war for the independence of Cuba, so that while one would find in the newspapers but few quotations from Lowell’s “Political Essays” he would find plenty of lines from the “Biglow Papers.” These two productions were not to be the last of his political writings at this period. One more was to follow in October, but the impulse to take part in the discussion of national events was relaxed, and he was falling back into his more congenial life of devotion to letters in the quiet retreat of Elmwood. “My dear Charles,” he writes to Mr. Norton, 30 May, 1866, “I snatch a moment from the whirl of dissipation to bring up for you the annals of Cambridge to the present date. In the first place, Cranch and his daughters are staying with us--since last Saturday. On that day I took him to club, where he saw many old friends (he has not been here for twenty years, poor fellow!) and had a good time. We had a pleasant time, I guess. With me it was a business meeting. I sat between Hoar and Brimmer, that I might talk over college matters. Things will be arranged to suit me, I rather think, and the salary (perhaps) left even larger than I hoped.