Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1

‘ [163] C. Sumner to-day, who is going to Europe soon. When he goes, there will be one more good fellow on that side, and one less on this.’¹ They were afterwards to be fellow combatants in the causes of education and freedom. Among Sumner's papers was found a sketch, written during the last autumn of his life, of his friend's career. This tribute was intended for a municipal celebration in Wrentham, the birthplace of Horace Mann, but some circumstances prevented Sumner's attendance on the occasion.²

Sumner's social range in Boston was, at this period, quite limited; but the few families he visited were those on whose fidelity and sympathy he could always count. He was on a familiar footing in the houses of Hillard, Samuel Lawrence, Robert B. Forbes, and Park Benjamin, then living with his sisters, who afterwards became Mrs. J. Lothrop Motley and Mrs. Stackpole. Hillard's kind words had opened the doors of some of these houses to Sumner. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then a young physician, visited most if not all of these families. There was no want of good talking at a dinner or supper where Hillard, Benjamin, Holmes, and Sumner were gathered. Sumner was accustomed to call at William Sullivan's and Judge William Prescott's, both friends of his father; at Jeremiah Mason's, Samuel Austin's, and Mrs. James Perkins's.

He frequented the rooms of Mr. Alvord, his former teacher at Cambridge, who passed the winter of 1837 in Boston when serving as a member of the Legislature from Greenfield.³ The latter used to say of him and Wendell Phillips, whom he called his ‘boys,’ that the State and the country would one day be proud of them.

Those who saw much of Sumner at this time recall him as appearing to be a very hard student, thoroughly informed on all topics of conversation, wanting in humor, never speaking unkindly to any one or of any one; and winning all hearts by his transparent nature, his absolute good faith, and his knightly sense of honor and fidelity in friendship.