He described the time of his poverty in his youth when he used to work in a mill five days in a week, and on Saturday walk ten miles to Boston to spend the day in the Athenaeum Library and ten miles back at night.
He told how he used to peer in through the gate as he passed Harvard College with an infinite longing for the treasures of learning that were inside.

That refined and fastidious audience was stirred by an unwonted emotion.
The older public men of Massachusetts did not take very kindly to Banks.

He was a man of the people.

He was sometimes charged, though unjustly, with being a demagogue.

He sometimes erred in his judgment.