Moreover he seemed to detect in the protagonists a Roman simplicity pleasing to a good classic.
Mr.Hamilton was sombrely but fashionably dressed and wore a gold eyeglass on a black ribbon, because he fancied that a monocle adroitly used was a formidable weapon in debate.

He had neat small sidewhiskers, and a pleasant observant eye.

With him were young Major Endicott from Boston and the eminent Mr.Russell Lowell, who, as Longfellow's successor in the Smith Professorship and one of the editors of The North American Review, was a great figure in cultivated circles.

Both were acquaintances made by Mr.Hamilton on a recent visit to Harvard.
He found it agreeable to have a few friends with whom he could have scholarly talk.
The three watched the procession winding through the mourning streets.
Every house was draped in funeral black, the passing bell tolled from every church, and the minute-guns boomed at the City Hall and on Capitol Hill.

Mr.Hamilton regarded the cortege at first with a critical eye.
The events of the past week had wrought in him a great expectation, which he feared would be disappointed.