Chapter and Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Edmund Rosenkrantz writes, “The views of Grant [Vita, January-February, page 42] brought to mind a description I recall from years ago, that to me fully captured him: ‘The man with the sad eyes and the iron mouth.’ Anyone know the author and the publication?” Vita author Elizabeth Samet did not recognize that phrase, but wrote: “Nineteenth-century biographer Hamlin Garland several times uses the phrase ‘man of iron’ in quotation marks, ventriloquizing contemporaries. Not always a term of praise. Twentieth-century biographer Jean Edward Smith notes that in 1878, when news circulated that Grant might run for a third presidential term, The St. Louis Globe-Democrat proclaimed Grant ‘A man of iron’ in preference to Rutherford B. Hayes, ‘a man of straw’ (Smith, Grant, 614).” Can any reader provide a precise citation?

Send inquiries and answers to Chapter and Verse, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via email to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

You might also like

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

Studying ChatGPT Like a Psychologist

Cognitive science helps penetrate the AI “black box”

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Most popular

Diagnosis by Fiction

The “Healing Quartet,” by “Samuel Shem,” probes medicine—and life.

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy