He was able to write for our class gatherings papers which he read aloud, and which reduced every one in the room to tears. This was partly due to his elocution which was truly remarkable, I used to get him to read pieces of my own aloud, because he could put more significance into them than I could myself; and he could read them at sight, no matter how illegible the condition of the manuscript might be. He had the old cultivation, the old literary passion, the old training. His favorite bits of prose and verse lived for him with a perennial life, and he could rehearse and recite them, as people used to do in 1850. —John Jay Chapman, Uncollected Memories, 2022, p. 28.