We rambled about Watertown and Brighton and Somerville and West Cambridge and had long discussions about law and politics and poetry and metaphysics and literature and our own ambitions and desires.

We were constantly in each other's rooms, and often sat up together, sometimes until the constellations set, with the wasteful, time-consuming habits of boyhood.
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights, How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights In search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence and poetry,-- Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.
John came of a distinguished family.

His brother Cornelius was a famous Greek professor, one of the most striking figures about Cambridge.

Another brother was Samuel M.Felton, the most distinguished civil engineer in the country of his time; builder of the Fitchburg railroad, afterward builder and President of the Pennsylvania Railroad; the man who conceived the plan of getting the New England troops into Washington by the way of Annapolis when Baltimore was in the power of the Rebels.
Another brother was quite distinguished in college in the class of 1851.

John after he graduated went to California and never came back from the Pacific Coast or kept up his communication with his old friends, although he received them with great hospitality, I am told, when they went out there.
I think he had a fancy that he would keep to himself until he could come back in some great place, like that of Senator or Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.