Anecdote: A Poet and the Electoral College:
“[James Russell Lowell] was in fact one of the Massachusetts electors chosen by the Republican majority in 1876, and in that most painful hour when there was question of the policy and justice of counting Hayes in for the presidency, it was suggested by some of Lowell’s friends that he should use the original right of the electors under the Constitution, and vote for Tilden, whom one vote would have chosen president over Hayes. After he had cast his vote for Hayes, he quietly referred to the matter one day, in the moment of lighting his pipe, with perhaps the faintest trace of indignation in his tone. He said that whatever the first intent of the Constitution was, usage had made the presidential electors strictly the instruments of the party which chose them, and that for him to have voted for Tilden when he had been chosen to vote for Hayes would have been an act of bad faith.”
— as recorded by Lowell’s friend, William Dean Howells in Literary Friends and Acquaintance
Think of that pipe being lit when you’re next in traffic on Fresh Pond Parkway waiting to cross Brattle Street. That is, look to the yellow house on the right.
Oh well. . .