When he was in college and in the Law School the boys used to enliven all social gatherings by repeating his good jests as, in later years, the lawyers did those of Rufus Choate, or the people in public life in Washington still later, those of Evarts.

Such things lose nine-tenths of their flavor in the repetition and nine parts of the other tenth when they are put in writing.

Curtis was quite small in stature but he was plucky as a gamecock, and a little dandyish in his dress.

It is said that when he was a freshman, the boys at the Cambridge High School, a good many of whom were much bigger than he was, undertook to throw snowballs at him one day as he went by.

Whereupon Curtis marched up to the biggest boy and told him if another snowball were thrown at him he would thrash him and he might pass it over to the boy who did it.