During all but the hottest months of the year, in the latter part of Grant’s second Administration, men on lower Broadway at about 8:45 every week-day morning might see a venerable figure come rapidly down toward Fulton Street. The aged pedestrian was slender and just above the middle height, but was given an impressive aspect by his heavy white beard and the long hoary hair that swept his shoulders. As he passed, it could be seen that his brow was bald; that his forehead was projecting, though not massive; that the deep-set eyes which peered from beneath his bushy brows were remarkably penetrating and observant, and that his features were rugged but benignant. He had a scholar’s stoop, but appeared wiry and vigorous far beyond his years. People glanced at him with respectful recognition--his was, as Tennyson said of Wellington, the good gray head that all men knew. On Fulton Street he turned into a tall, new building, and those who watched might see that, disdaining the elevator, he began rapidly climbing the stairs. This was William Cullen Bryant, at eighty still devoting four hours daily to the _Evening Post_. Bryant had long since become the most distinguished resident of the city, referred to and honored as its first citizen. In civic, charitable, and social movements his name was given precedence over those of men like William M. Evarts or Henry Ward Beecher. On every great public occasion an effort was made to obtain his attendance as the representative of all that was choicest in literary, artistic, and professional life. When the artist Cole, and the authors Cooper, Irving, Verplanck, and Halleck died, he was chosen to deliver memorial discourses of that kind in which the French excel; he was the chief speaker at the dedication of the Morse, Shakespeare, Scott, Goethe, and Mazzini monuments in Central Park; and he presided over the testimonial benefit given Charlotte Cushman when she was about to retire from the stage, which occasioned one of the most notable assemblages ever brought into a modern theater. No New York meeting in behalf of free trade, sound money, or civil service reform was complete without his presence or a message from him. This high position was his because he was not merely a great poet, but a great publicist. On Nov. 5, 1864, when Bryant had just attained his seventieth birthday, a celebration was held at the Century Club, of which he had been one of the earliest members. The historian Bancroft presided, and among the speakers were Emerson, Holmes, R. H. Stoddard, Julia Ward Howe, R. H. Dana, jr., and William M. Evarts; while poems were received from Whittier and Lowell. The editor as well as the poet was honored. Mrs. Howe recited: ... at his forge he wrought two-fold, On the iron shield of freedom, and the poet’s links of gold.