A · DAY · WITH

LONGFELLOW

A DAY WITH LONGFELLOW

The expression of serious and tender thoughtfulness, which always characterized the quiet face of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had deepened during his later years, into something akin to melancholy. The tragic loss of his beloved wife,—burned to death while she was sealing up in paper little locks of her children's hair,—had left its permanent and irrevocable mark upon his life. Still, he did not seclude himself with his sorrow: the professor of Modern Languages at Harvard could hardly do that. He remained the selfsame kindly, gentle, industrious man, welcoming with ready courtesy the innumerable visitors to the Craigie House.

This is a large old-fashioned house in Cambridge, Massachusetts—a place of grassy terraces, long verandahs, lilac bushes, and shady trees—a perfect dwelling for a man of cultured tastes, as the interior also testifies.

From the Poet's study, a spacious, sunny room upon the ground floor, he could look across the meadows behind the house to the distant silver windings of the River Charles. It was a most orderly room. Every book and paper lay where he could put his hand on it in a moment. Book-cases full of valuable volumes—precious first editions—busts and portraits,—were to be seen on every side. A certain austere simplicity was noticeable all over Longfellow's house. "His private rooms," it has been said, "were like those of a German professor." But the attractiveness and delightfulness of Craigie House arose not from any intrinsic opulence of its contents, but from the personality of the man who lived there. "By his mere presence he rendered the sunshine brighter, and the place more radiant of kindness and peace."

The Poet began his day, so long as age and health permitted, by a brisk morning walk. He would be out and about by six, observing and enjoying the beauty of earth and air, and subsequently recording his exquisite impressions:

The morning's post brought the first consignment of that enormous number of epistles which were at once an affliction and an amusement to him. The Poet was besieged by letters from ambitious aspirants seeking advice, and from self-styled failures, desirous of help. To these last he was peculiarly drawn, for he was distinguished by "a grace almost peculiar to himself at the time in which he lived—his tenderness towards the undeveloped artist, struggling towards individual expression." In short, his first desire was to help on people, and bring out the best in them.

Of apparent failure or success he recked little, believing, like Stevenson, that the true success is labour,—that pursuit, and not attainment is the worthiest object of existence; and his philosophy is summed up in the well-known words of The Ladder of Saint Augustine,