In his social relations,--the secondary domain of life,--he saw his desires flatteringly gratified in an increasing degree, his goings and comings announced like those of a king, the eyes of the throng turned after him wherever he went, his thoughts and passions taking electric effect on the excited crowds who gathered to gaze on his playing, choice friends suing for his leisure hours. The common estimate of him and the popular feeling towards him are accurately reflected in the sonnet addressed to him at this time by his friend Prosper M. Wetmore: "Enriched with Nature's brightest powers of mind, Deep is thy influence o'er man's feeling breast; When fiercest passions come at thy behest In all the magic strength of truth, they bind 'Neath their broad spell the pulses of the heart, Freezing the soul with horror and dismay: O'er Tarquin's corse, where Brutus leads the way, Revenge stalks darkly forth: thy potent art Recalls the aged Lear to tell his woes, Enlisting in his cause each sense that thrills: Stern Richard smiles upon the blood he spills: Tell, patriot Tell, defies his tyrant foes. "Eagle-eyed Genius round thy youthful name Flashes the brilliance of a deathless Fame!" And in the primary domain of life--his own physique--he was blessed with a basis of favorable conditions quite as rare. His clean-sinewed frame so firmly poised in its weighty centres, his rich flood of blood copiously nourishing the seats of function, his generous intelligence and his native fearlessness of temper, were the ground of a gigantic complacency in himself which was equally pleasurable to him and attractive to others so long as he intuitively experienced rather than consciously asserted it. He was vaguely aware, in an uncritical way, that his sphere was heavier than those of the men he met, that the elemental rhythms of his being were larger, that the gravitation of his personal force overswayed theirs. While this was indicated by nature without his knowledge, it made him interesting, a sort of magnet to which others swayed in loyal curiosity or affection. And such was entirely the case up to this time. His frank, fresh nature was as yet unwrung by injustice, malignity, and falsehood, unspoiled either by souring adverses or sickening satieties. He was a wholesome specimen of a man of the unperverted, untechnical human type, to whom, in his personal harmony and power, with his loving and trusted friends and his progressive grasping of the prizes of the great social struggle, the experience of each day as it came and went was a cup of nectar which he quaffed without a question, finding neither guilt at the top nor remorse at the bottom.