m I rv 
 
 DUR AMERICAN POETS 
 
FOUR AMERICAN POETS 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 A BOOK FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 
 
 BY 
 
 SHERWIN CODY 
 
 Author of "The Art of Short Story Writing," "Story Compositioa T 
 "In the Heart of the Hills," etc. 
 
 WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 
 
THE 
 
 FOUR GREAT AMERICANS SERIES 
 
 Biographical Stories of Great Americans 
 for Young Americans 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JAMES BALDWIN, Ph.D. 
 
 TN these biographical stories the lives of great Amer- 
 A icans are presented in such a manner as to hold the 
 attention of the youngest reader. In these lives the 
 child finds the most inspiring examples of good citizen 
 ship and true patriotism. 
 
 VOLUMES NOW READY : 
 
 I. FOUR GREAT AMERICANS 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 DANIEL WEBSTER, ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 BY JAMES BALDWIN, Ph D. 
 Cloth, 246 pages, - Price? so cents 
 
 II. FOUR AMERICAN PATRIOTS 
 
 PATRICK HENRY, ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 ANDREW JACKSON, U. S. GRANT 
 BY ALMA HOLMAN BURTON 
 Author of "The Story of Our Country," etc. 
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 PAUL JONES, OLIVER H. PERRY 
 ADMIRAL FARRAGUT, ADMIRAL DEWEY 
 BY MABEL BORTON BEEBE 
 Cloth, 254 pages. - p^ 5O cents 
 
 IV. FOUR AMERICAN POETS 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, HENRY WADSWORTH 
 LONGFELLOW, JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 BY SHERWIN CODY 
 Cloth, 254 pages, - Price, 50 cents 
 
 OTHER VOLUMES IN PRAPARATION 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE STORY OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE LOVE OF NATURE . . . . . 9 
 
 II. BRYANT S CHILDHOOD . . . . . , . 14 
 
 III. WHAT THE BOYS DID WHEN BRYANT WAS YOUNG 19 
 
 IV. THE YOUNG POET 23 
 
 V. THANATOPSIS .28 
 
 VI. BRYANT BECOMES A LAWYER . . . -33 
 
 VII. A LITERARY ADVENTURER .... 37 
 
 VIII. THE EDITOR OF A GREAT NEWSPAPER . . 40 
 
 IX. How BRYANT BECAME RICH ... 46 
 
 X. BRYANT AS AN ORATOR AND PROSE WRITER . 49 
 
 XI. OTHER EVENTS IN BRYANT S LIFE . . 54 
 
 XII. HONORS TO THE GREAT POET . . . .61 
 
 XIII. LEARNING TO LOVE A POET ... 65 
 
 THE STORY OF HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 
 
 I. A GREAT POET 71 
 
 II. LONGFELLOW S ANCESTORS . . . 73 
 
 III. LONGFELLOW S BOYHOOD . . . .76 
 
PAGE 
 
 4 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 IV. SOMETHING ABOUT THE TIMES WHEN LONG 
 FELLOW WAS YOUNG ... 82 
 
 V. COLLEGE DAYS 86 
 
 VI. THE YOUNG PROFESSOR . . . .91 
 
 VII. THE "BEING BEAUTEOUS" . ... 95 
 
 VIII. THE CRAIGIE HOUSE .... 98 
 
 IX. THE FIVE OF CLUBS .... . . 103 
 
 X. LONGFELLOW BECOMES A FAMOUS POET . 106 
 
 XI. How SOME OF THE GREAT POEMS WERE WRITTEN 1 1 1 
 
 XII. THE POET S SECOND MARRIAGE ., -. . u 7 
 
 XIII. EVANGELINE, HlAWATHA, AND THE COURTSHIP 
 
 OF MILES STANDISH . . 9 . I2 2 
 
 XIV. THE GOOD OLD MAN . I2 S 
 
 THE STORY OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 I. THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME . . . 133 
 
 II. A FARMER S BOY . . . . ^8 
 
 III. WHITTIER S FAMILY . . , . . , .144 
 
 IV. STORIES OF THE POET S CHILDHOOD . . 148 
 V. SCHOOL DAYS . . ,.. . ... -151 
 
 VI. HAVERHILL ACADEMY . . . . 157 
 
 VII. THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOOD WOMEN . . 161 
 
CONTENTS 5 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VIII. POLITICAL AMBITION ..... 166 
 
 IX. THE GREAT QUESTION OF SLAVERY . .171 
 
 X. How WHITTIER WAS MOBBED . . . 175 
 
 XI. SOME OF WHITTIER S FAMOUS POEMS . .182 
 
 11. THE END OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE . . . 187 
 
 THE STORY OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 I. THE TRUE HUMORIST ..... 195 
 
 II. THE BIRTH OF OLIVER HOLMES . . 198 
 
 III. AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT .... 202 
 
 IV. CAMBRIDGE 207 
 
 V. SCHOOL LIFE 213 
 
 VI. COLLEGE LIFE 218 
 
 VII. A BUDDING POET 223 
 
 VIII. DOCTOR HOLMES 228 
 
 IX. THE AUTOCRAT 235 
 
 X. "THE FAMOUS CLASS OF 29" . . . 242 
 
 XL A FEW STRAY FACTS . . . . .247 
 
 XII. THE END COMES 252 
 
THE STORY OF 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
BRYANT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LOVE OF NATURE 
 
 Do you know what is meant by "the love of 
 Nature"? Yes? But are you quite sure? Think 
 a little. It is not an easy thing to understand, and 
 many older people than you do not know what it 
 means. 
 
 Bryant was the great American poet of Nature. 
 His poetry is best understood and enjoyed by 
 those who have first learned to love Nature as 
 he loved her. To all such it appears to be very 
 simple and grand. 
 
 In order that we may come by easy steps to a 
 true appreciation of Bryant s poetry, let us take a 
 lesson in the love of Nature. 
 
 1 Man made the city, God made the country, " 
 
IO 
 
 * 
 
 i^dic ,old saying. Look at the long rows of city 
 houses: how ugly they are! How dirty are the 
 streets, from which on windy days clouds of dust 
 sometimes rise and almost choke you as you walk 
 along! Even the sky above is not often clear and 
 blue as it ought to be, but it seems filthy with 
 smoke and soot. And what sounds you hear! 
 The noise of the cars as they buzz and jar 
 along the street, the monotonous roar of human 
 traffic, and the rough words of teamsters and 
 hackmen as they try to crowd by one another 
 all these grate upon the sensitive ear. 
 
 How different is everything in the country! 
 What a clear, brilliant blue the sky is; and what a 
 vast variety of color the surface of the earth 
 presents! 
 
 Here is the light, fresh green of the grass, 
 and over there are the darker greens of the 
 pines and cedars. In the autumn we observe 
 the gorgeous hues of the maples and the 
 oaks as their leaves change with the frost 
 from green to crimson and gold. Think, too, of 
 the flowers! Here are fields white with daisies, 
 
II 
 
 and there are other fields filled with yellow butter 
 cups or red clover blossoms! Farther away are 
 fields of the graceful, slender-stalked wheat, or of 
 the tall, rustling corn ! 
 
 Have you ever been in the woods in June? In 
 stead of the harsh sounds of the streets, you 
 hear the tumultuous but harmonious songs of 
 birds ; instead of the steady roar of traffic, 
 you hear the deep note of the wind through 
 the trees, or the murmur of a little brook flowing 
 over stones or dashing down a waterfall. All 
 around you the trees rise, like columns in a cathe 
 dral, but more beautiful and majestic; and the air 
 is filled with a sweet scent fit to be used for 
 incense in the churches. 
 
 Now read what Bryant has to say in his In 
 scription for the Entrance to a Wood." There are 
 many hard words in it, and you must read very 
 carefully and thoughtfully; but it will make you 
 feel that on entering such a wood you are indeed 
 going into God s own natural church, a place even 
 more magnificent and wonderful than Solomon s 
 temple: 
 
12 
 
 Stranger, if them hast learned a truth which needs 
 
 No school of long experience, that the world 
 
 Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
 
 Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares 
 
 To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 
 
 And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade 
 
 .Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze 
 
 That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 
 
 To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 
 
 Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men, 
 
 And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse 
 
 Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 
 
 But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt 
 
 Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence these shades 
 
 Are still the abodes of gladness ; the thick roof 
 
 Of green and stirring branches is alive 
 
 And musical with birds, that sing and sport 
 
 In wantonness of spirit ; while below 
 
 The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, 
 
 Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade 
 
 Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam 
 
 That waked them into life. Even the green trees 
 
 Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend 
 
 To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 
 
 Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 
 
 Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy 
 
13 
 
 Existence, than the winged plunderer 
 
 That sucks its sweets. The mossy rocks themselves, 
 
 And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees 
 
 That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude 
 
 Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, 
 
 With all their earth upon them, twisting high, 
 
 Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 
 
 Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o er its bed 
 
 Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, 
 
 Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 
 
 In its own being. Softly tread the marge, 
 
 Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren 
 
 That dips her bill in water. The cool wind 
 
 That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, 
 
 Like one that loves thee, nor let thee pass 
 
 Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.* 
 
 This is one of the hardest things in Bryant s 
 poetry. When you can see all its beauties, and 
 take pleasure in reading it, you will have learned 
 to love both Nature and Nature s poet-priest. 
 
 *To help in the mastery of this poem, the student is advised to make 
 a careful list of all the natural objects mentioned in it, such as birds, 
 brooks, trees, and flowers, and try to recollect having seen something 
 of the same sort. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BRYANT S CHILDHOOD 
 
 Bryant was the first great American poet, having 
 been born fourteen years before Longfellow. Like 
 Longfellow, he could trace his descent (on his 
 mother s side) from John Alden and Priscilla Mul 
 lens, who came over in the Mayflower; and through 
 two other branches he was descended from Pilgrim 
 stock. The first Bryant in America did not come 
 in the Mayflower, but he was in Plymouth in 1632, 
 and was chosen town constable in 1663. 
 
 The poet s father and grandfather were both 
 doctors; so when Dr. Peter Bryant was married to 
 * sweet Sallie Snell, " as the poet has it, and their 
 second child was born, the good doctor named 
 him William Cullen, after a great medical authority 
 who had died four years before. This happy 
 event that is, the birth of William Cullen Bryant 
 occurred November 3, 1794, in the small town 
 of Cummington, Massachusetts. But instead of 
 growing up to be a doctor the boy became a poet, 
 and his father was rather proud of the fact, too. 
 
15 
 
 Cummington is a small town among the Berk 
 shire hills, in the western part of Massachusetts. 
 The country around it is mountainous, with wide 
 valleys which in the early days were very fertile. 
 Bryant s grandfather, Snell, had come here in 
 1774, just before the Revolution, with a handful of 
 other settlers, to take up a homestead. There is a 
 story that Eben Snell, Jr. , an uncle of the poet, 
 while working in the cornfield put his ear to the 
 ground and heard the sounds of the distant battle 
 of Bunker Hill. 
 
 Little William Cullen was very quick and 
 bright, though puny. In his autobiography he 
 says he could go alone when he was but a year 
 old, and knew all the letters of the alphabet 
 four months later. His older brother, Austin, did 
 even better than this, however; for he began to 
 read the Bible before he was three years old, and 
 in just about a year from the time he began, he had 
 read it all through, from Genesis to Revelation. 
 William Cullen as a small child learned many of 
 Watts s hymns, and used to recite them as he 
 stood by his mother s knee. 
 
i6 
 
 It is probable that so much study was not good 
 for him, for he suffered from terrible headaches, 
 and was so puny his father and mother thought 
 he would not live long. His head seemed to 
 be too big for his body. There is a story that 
 some medical students, who were studying in 
 Dr. Bryant s office when William was a child, 
 were ordered to give him a cold bath every morn 
 ing in a spring near the house. They kept this 
 up so late in the fall that they had to break the 
 first skim of ice on the top of the water. The 
 treatment cured him, and after he was fourteen, 
 he says, he never had a headache in his life. 
 
 He began to go to school before he was four years 
 old. It was not unnatural that a little fellow of 
 that age should get sleepy during school hours. 
 One day he woke from a sound nap to find him 
 self in his teacher s lap. When he realized where 
 he was he became furiously angry at the thought 
 that he should be treated so like a baby. 
 
 About this time, too, he was kicked by a horse. 
 A lady had come to call on his mother, and had 
 tied her horse to a tree near the door. There were 
 
fresh chips scattered about, and William and his 
 elder brother amused themselves by throwing them 
 at the horse s heels to make him caper. William 
 got too near and at last the horse kicked him over. 
 He soon recovered, and went to school with a 
 bandaged head, but a scar from the wound on his 
 head he carried to the day of his death. 
 
 When he was five years old, the family went to 
 live on Grandfather Snell s old homestead, where 
 Dr. Peter Bryant remained as long as he lived. 
 Years afterward, when the poet became rich, he 
 bought this place for a country home. 
 
 He began now to go regularly to the district 
 school, where he learned reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic, a little grammar and geography, and 
 the Westminster Catechism. He was a fine 
 speller, seldom missing a word, and he got on well 
 in geography. The catechism, however, did not 
 interest him and he could not understand it. 
 
 Those were very strict Puritanic days. Says 
 Bryant, in his autobiography: " One of the means 
 of keeping boys in order was a little bundle of 
 birchen rods, bound together with a small cord, 
 
i8 
 
 and generally suspended on a nail against the 
 kitchen wall. This was esteemed as much a part 
 of the necessary furniture as the crane that hun* 
 
 o 
 
 in the kitchen fireplace, or the shovel and tongs. " 
 And he tells us that sometimes the boy was sent 
 out to cut the twigs with which he himself was to 
 be whipped. 
 
 Not only was whipping thought to be good for 
 boys, but even grown-up people were whipped in 
 public for petty crimes. 
 
 About a mile from the Bryant home was a 
 public whipping-post. Says the poet: I remember 
 seeing a young fellow, of about eighteen years of 
 age, upon whose back, by direction of a justice of 
 the peace, forty lashes had just been laid, as the 
 punishment for a theft which he had committed. 
 His eyes were red, like those of one who had been 
 crying, and I well remember the feeling of curios 
 ity, mingled with pity and fear, with which I gazed 
 on him." 
 
 This was the last time the whipping-post was 
 used in that neighborhood, but it stood there for 
 several years longer. 
 
19 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WHAT THE BOYS DID WHEN BRYANT WAS YOUNG 
 
 Life in the time of Bryant s boyhood was rather 
 hard and rough. New England country life was 
 never easy. The chairs were very straight-backed, 
 the beds were hard, and the food was not very 
 delicate, though there was always plenty of it 
 plenty of pork and beans, if nothing else. For all 
 that, the boys in Bryant s day had a very good 
 time, which he tells about in the account of his 
 early life to which we have already referred. 
 
 Among the pleasant occurrences of those old- 
 fashioned times were the neighborhood ( raisings. " 
 When a man intended to build a house he got 
 all the big, heavy timbers together for the frame, 
 and then called in the neighbors to help him put 
 them up. The minister always made a point of 
 being present; and the young men thought it great 
 sport, as did the boys, who could only look on. It 
 was a spectacle for us, " says Bryant, next to that 
 of a performer on the tight-rope, to see the young 
 men walk steadily on the narrow footing of the 
 
20 
 
 beams at a great height from the ground, or as 
 they stood to catch in their hands the wooden pins 
 and the braces flung to them from below. Each 
 tried to outdo the other in daring, and when the 
 frame was all up, one of them would usually cap the 
 climax by standing on his head on the ridge-pole. " 
 
 Another good time was had at the maple sugar 
 frolic. In spring, when the sap begins to come 
 up in the maple trees, men go about, and bore two 
 or three holes in every maple tree in a sugar 
 camp. In these they stick little spigots with holes 
 through them, and underneath they set a pail to 
 catch the sap. Soon it begins to drop. When the 
 pails are filled, the men bring fresh ones, and carry 
 off the sap to an enormous iron kettle hung on a 
 pole over a hot fire. 
 
 "From my father s door," says Bryant, "in the 
 latter part of March and the early part of April, 
 we could see a dozen columns of smoke rising over 
 the woods in different places, where the work was 
 going on. After the sap had been collected and 
 boiled for three or four days, the time came when 
 the thickening liquid was made to pass into the 
 
21 
 
 form of sugar. This was when the syrup had be 
 come of such a consistency that it would feather 
 that is to say, when a beechen twig, formed at the 
 small end into a little loop, dipped into the hot 
 syrup and blown upon by the breath, sent into the 
 air a light, feathery film." The syrup was then 
 lifted off and poured into moulds, or else stirred 
 rapidly until cooled, when it became delicious brown 
 sugar in loose grains. The boys had a great deal 
 of fun " trying" the syrup to see if it was ready to 
 " sugar off." 
 
 Then there were husking-bees and apple-parings 
 and cider-making ; and in the winter all the young 
 people went to singing school. 
 
 Bryant in his boyhood was also fond of fishing 
 for trout in the small streams, where there were 
 plenty of fish to catch. Another sport was squirrel 
 shooting. The young men would divide into two 
 equal parties and see which party could shoot the 
 most squirrels. 
 
 Of course, in those days everybody went to 
 church. Young Bryant began when he was only 
 three years old. History does not say how he 
 
22 
 
 behaved, but there was not much chance to be 
 naughty in church in those times. Every parish 
 had its tithing man, whose business it was to 
 maintain order in the church during divine serv 
 ice, and who sat with a stern countenance through 
 the sermon, keeping a vigilant eye on the boys in 
 distant pews and in the galleries. Sometimes 
 when he detected two of them communicating 
 with each other, he went to one of them, took him 
 by the arm, and leading him away, seated him 
 beside himself. He was also directed by law to see 
 that the Sabbath was not profaned by people 
 wandering in the fields or fishing in the brooks. 
 
 When he was eight years old, young Cullen 
 began to make poetry. His grandfather thought 
 him rather bright at this, and a year or two later 
 asked him to turn the first chapter of the Book 
 of Job into verse. He did it all. Here are two 
 sample lines : 
 
 His name was Job, evil he did eschew. 
 
 To him were born seven sons ; three daughters, too. 
 
 For this he received a ninepenny piece, though 
 his father thought the lines rather bad. 
 
23 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE YOUNG POET 
 
 Bryant s poetic career began when he was twelve 
 years old. Besides some " Enigmas" and a trans 
 lation from the Latin of Horace, he made a copy 
 of verses to be recited at the close of the winter 
 school, "in the presence of the master, the minis 
 ter of the parish, and a number of private gentle 
 men. " The verses were printed in the Hamp 
 shire Gazette, March 18, 1806, the year before 
 Longfellow was born. This same newspaper 
 had other contributions also from the pen of 
 "C B." 
 
 Dr. Peter Bryant was something of a politician. 
 He was several times a representative in the 
 Massachusetts legislature, and finally a senator. 
 He belonged to the Federal party, which was then 
 in opposition to the president. Jefferson was pres 
 ident, and in 1807, for the purpose of protecting 
 American interests, he laid an embargo on ship 
 ping. This brought on severe hard times, and 
 caused great indignation among the Federalists. 
 
24 
 
 Dr. Bryant thought his young son might write a 
 satirical poem about it. So The Embargo ; or, 
 Sketches of the Times," was written and printed 
 in a volume. There was a line on the title page 
 saying the poem was written by * a youth of thir 
 teen." One of the great periodicals of that time, 
 called the Anthology, reviewed the book, and while 
 speaking well of it, said it seemed impossible that 
 such a poem had been written by a " youth of 
 thirteen." So when the first edition was sold and 
 a second was printed the following year, young 
 Bryant s friends prefixed an ( * Advertisement, " as 
 they called it a paragraph in which they assured 
 the public that the author was only thirteen, and 
 there were plenty of people who would vouch for 
 it. In this edition the name William Cullen 
 Bryant was boldly printed. 
 
 Of course this was not very good poetry. There 
 is a story that years afterward some one asked 
 Bryant if he had a copy of his first book, The 
 Embargo. " * No, " said he. Afterward the friend 
 who had asked him said he had found a copy in 
 Boston. "I don t see how you can spend your 
 
25 
 
 time with such rubbish, " said the poet, and turned 
 away. 
 
 During the next few years he wrote other boyish 
 and patriotic poems, some of which were printed 
 in the Hampshire Gazette. One, written when he 
 was sixteen, was entitled * The Genius of Colum 
 bia"; another was, "An Ode for the Fourth of 
 July, 1812." 
 
 In 1812 he entered the Sophomore Class in 
 Williams College, where he remained only a year. 
 There were only the president, one professor, and 
 two tutors at Williams College in those days, and 
 so Bryant s room-mate decided to go to Yale, 
 where he could get a better education. Bryant 
 thought he would go, too. He left Williams 
 College and went home to prepare himself to pass 
 the examinations for entrance to the Junior Class 
 in Yale. 
 
 During this summer, while he was studying at 
 home, he often wandered about in the woods; and 
 here he wrote Thanatopsis. " At this time 
 Bryant was a very meditative young man, fond of 
 reading poetry, a fair Greek and Latin scholar, 
 
26 
 
 and devotedly fond of the country and all its 
 beauties. 
 
 Just how or when he wrote "Thanatopsis" 
 nobody ever knew. In the autumn his father 
 decided that he could not afford to send him to 
 Yale, as he was poor and had a large family. So 
 the young man went away to study law. After he 
 was gone, Dr. Bryant was looking over some 
 papers in his desk, and found in one of the pigeon 
 holes some poems which his son Cullen had writ 
 ten. One of them was " Thanatopsis. " He read 
 it over, and thought it so good that he took it to a 
 lady friend of his. 
 
 "Here are some poems, "said he, " which our 
 Cullen has been writing." 
 
 She took them and began to read. When she 
 had finished "Thanatopsis" she burst into tears; 
 and Dr. Bryant found his eyes rather watery, too. 
 
 At that time Dr. Bryant was a member of the 
 senate in the Massachusetts legislature ; and so, 
 going up to Boston, he took this and some other 
 poems along. The North American Review was 
 the great magazine in those days, and Dr. Bryant 
 
27 
 
 knew slightly one of the editors, whose name was 
 Phillips. He went to call on him, but not finding 
 him at home left the package of manuscript with 
 his own name on it. When Mr Phillips came 
 home he found it, and after reading the poems 
 concluded that Dr. Bryant must have written 
 Thanatopsis, " while the other poems were by his 
 son Cullen. But he regarded this poem as such a 
 find that he hurried over to Cambridge to see his 
 two fellow-editors and read them the wonderful 
 lines. When he had finished, one of them, Richard 
 H. Dana, himself a poet, said : 
 
 "Oh, Phillips, you have been imposed on. 
 There is no one in America who can write such 
 a poem as that. " 
 
 "Ah, but I know the man who wrote it, " said 
 Phillips. " He is in the senate." 
 
 "Well, I must have a look at the man who 
 wrote that poem," said Dana; and off he posted to 
 Boston. He went to the state house, and to the 
 senate chamber, and asked for Senator Bryant. 
 A tall, gray-bearded old man was pointed out 
 to him. Dana looked at him for a few minutes 
 
28 
 
 and said to himself: "He has a fine head; but 
 that man never wrote Thanatopsis. So without 
 speaking to him he returned to Cambridge. 
 
 The poem was printed in the North American 
 Review. It was the -first great poem ever pro 
 duced in America ; it was the work of a young 
 man not eighteen years of age, and it has since 
 been said to be the greatest poem ever written by 
 one so young. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THANATOPSIS 
 
 Every child at school becomes familiar with this 
 grand poem, because it is in many of the higher 
 readers. But that is not enough. You should 
 learn to understand its meaning. As you read 
 this poem, are you not reminded of the deep notes 
 of a church organ, as the organist, left alone, 
 plays some mighty fugue in preparation for the 
 funeral of a great man? Thanatopsis (made up 
 from two Greek words) means a view of death. 
 The poem opens by calling to our minds the 
 
29 
 
 grandeurs and the beauty of a cathedral-like 
 wood, where Nature rules supreme. 
 
 To him who in the love of Nature holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
 A various language ; for his gayer hours she 
 Has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
 Into his darker musings with a mild 
 And healing sympathy, that steals away 
 Their sharpness ere he is aware. 
 
 We should hardly expect a young man of seven 
 teen to be meditating on death; but even very 
 young people often think about it. 
 
 When thoughts 
 
 Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
 Over thy spirit, and sad images 
 Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
 And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 
 Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart 
 
 These are the things we all think of when father 
 or mother or brother or sister or young friend dies 
 and is laid away in the earth. It is sad and ter 
 rible, and we cannot help weeping. At those times 
 
30 
 
 strong men and women shed tears, and we do not 
 think it strange. But, says Bryant, 
 
 Go forth under the open sky and list 
 
 To Nature s teachings, while from all around 
 
 Earth and her waters, and the depths of air 
 
 Comes a still voice: Yet a few days, and thee 
 
 The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
 
 In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 
 
 Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 
 
 Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 
 
 Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
 
 Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again ; 
 
 And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
 
 Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
 
 To mix forever with the elements, 
 
 To be a brother to the insensible rock 
 
 And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
 
 Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
 
 Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould. 
 
 Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
 Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 
 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
 With patriarchs of the infant world with kings, 
 The powerful of the earth the wise, the good, 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 All in one mighty sepulchre. 
 
Being turned back to earth again does not seem 
 so terrible when we think that all must have the 
 same fate. There is a suggestion of grandeur 
 in the thought that George Washington, King 
 Solomon, Sir Isaac Newton, Napoleon all lie in 
 the same bed which Nature, the all-ruling, ever 
 lasting power, has provided. 
 
 The hills, 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales, 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 The venerable woods, rivers that move 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all. 
 Old Ocean s gray and melancholy waste, 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great tomb of man. 
 
 When we reflect on how many have lived and 
 died, the earth seems but one great tomb. There 
 are said to be over 1,200,000,000 persons on the 
 earth to-day. In a few years they will all have 
 passed away, and others will have taken their 
 places; and this change has been going on for thou 
 sands and thousands of years. In the graveyards 
 
32 
 
 of any city will be found but a few hundred or at 
 most a few thousand graves; yet hundreds of thou 
 sands of people have died there and been buried. 
 Where are their graves? Lost and forgotten. 
 
 All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
 Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
 Save his own dashings yet the dead are there: 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 In their last sleep the dead reign there alone. 
 So shalt thou rest ; and what if thou withdraw 
 In silence from the living, and no friend 
 Take note of thy departure? All that breathe 
 Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
 When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
 Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
 His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
 And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
 Of ages glides away, the sons of men, 
 The youth in life s green spring, and he who goes 
 In the full strength of years, matron and maid t 
 
33 
 
 The speechless babe, and the grey-headed man- 
 Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 
 By those who in their turn shall follow them. 
 
 So live that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan, which moves 
 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but .sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BRYANT BECOMES A LAWYER 
 
 Always of a studious turn, always reading in 
 his father s well-stocked library, or wandering 
 through the woods and writing poetry, Bryant nat 
 urally tended towards some learned profession. 
 He did not care to be a doctor; he would have 
 liked to be a literary man, if such a career had 
 then existed or been dreamed possible. As it was 
 not, he finally decided to become a lawyer. 
 
34 
 
 A classmate who remembers him at this time 
 describes him as singularly handsome and finely 
 formed. He was tall and slender, and had a pro 
 lific growth of dark brown hair. He was also 
 quick and dextrous in his movements, so much 
 so that his younger brother sometimes boasted 
 about his stout brother, " though he afterward 
 learned that his strength was not so remarkable as 
 his skill and alertness in the use of it. 
 
 When his father s poverty compelled him to 
 abandon college, he entered the law office of a Mr. 
 Howe, of Worthington, a quiet little village four 
 or five miles from Cummington. 
 
 Bryant s friend and biographer, John Bigelow, 
 says : A young man s first year s study of the 
 law commonly affects him like his first cigar or 
 his first experience before the mast." In other 
 words, Bryant didn t like it at all. He was a con 
 scientious young man, and kept at the work; but 
 he felt that he would almost as soon go out as a 
 day laborer. In a letter he speaks of Worthington 
 as consisting of a blacksmith shop and a cow 
 stable, " where his only entertainment was reading 
 
35 
 
 Irving s Knickerbocker. " Mr. Howe complained 
 that he gave more time to Wordsworth s lyrical bal 
 lads than to Blackstone and Chitty, the great 
 authorities on law, which he should have been 
 studying. 
 
 Young Bryant wanted to go to Boston to con 
 tinue his studies; but finally, as his father was too 
 poor to support him in Boston, he went to Bridge- 
 water, where his grandfather, Dr. Philip Bryant, 
 lived. He liked this place better. He was poet for 
 a Fourth of July celebration, and became inter 
 ested in politics. The War of 1812 was going on. 
 Madison was President, and Bryant, in his letters 
 to his friends, speaks of him as "His Imbecility." 
 His Imbecility " was warned that if he imposed 
 any more taxes the people would revolt. 
 
 At one time, Bryant thought of entering the 
 militia for the defense of states rights. It seems 
 that he then advocated the policy of Massachu 
 setts seceding from the Union, as the Southern 
 states afterwards did. 
 
 His father actually got him a commission as 
 adjutant in the Massachusetts militia, but the war 
 
36 
 
 ended, and Bryant kept on with his law studies. 
 That same year he came of age and was admitted 
 to practice at the bar. 
 
 He now went home and began to look about 
 for a place where he could begin the practice of law. 
 He decided on Plainfield, a small village four 
 or five miles from Cummington. Plainfield had 
 been the home of his father for a short time when 
 the future poet was a child ; but it was a very 
 small place, with not more than two hundred inhab 
 itants. 
 
 He drudged here for a few months, earning 
 quite a little money ; but he decided that the 
 place was too small, and went to Great Barring- 
 ton, where he had a chance to go into partnership 
 with a lawyer already established, whose practice 
 was worth $1,200 a year. 
 
 Here he settled down to hard work, and here 
 he remained as long as he continued to practice 
 law. After the success of Thanatopsis, " he con 
 tributed various articles to the North American 
 Review, and in it were published some of his most 
 famous poems. He was chosen one of the tithing 
 
37 
 
 men of the town, and soon afterwards town clerk, 
 an office he held for five years. As town clerk he 
 received a salary of five dollars a year. The gov 
 ernor of Massachusetts also made him Justice of 
 the Peace. 
 
 When Bryant was twenty-five years old his father 
 died. This caused him great grief ; but about this 
 time, great happiness came to him also. Soon 
 after going to Great Barrington he had become 
 acquainted with a Miss Fairchild, who was an 
 orphan visiting in the neighborhood. He liked 
 her, and the year after his father s death they were 
 married. She was his devoted wife and friend 
 for forty-five years, until she died. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A LITERARY ADVENTURER 
 
 Gradually Bryant had become known in the 
 small literary circle that had sprung up around 
 the North American Review, though his name was 
 not known outside this small circle in Boston. He 
 
38 
 
 had a great desire to become a literary man ; but 
 he knew he must support his wife and family, and 
 verse-making offered no money return. 
 
 His friends, Richard H. Dana, Miss Cathe 
 rine Sedgwick, and one or two others, tried to 
 persuade him to go to New York and engage in 
 literature. Finally he made a visit to New York. 
 A publishing firm there offered him two hundred 
 dollars a year to write one hundred lines of poetry 
 a month for them. He thought this might keep 
 him from starvation. He went back to Great 
 Barrington and stayed for some time longer, con 
 tributing to the United States Literary Gazette, 
 for which Longfellow was then writing. 
 
 In 1825 he visited New York again, and was 
 offered the editorship of a monthly periodical, the 
 New York Review and Athen&um Magazine, which 
 some publishers were proposing to start. His sal 
 ary was to be one thousand dollars a year. This 
 offer he accepted, and he went to New York to 
 live, leaving his wife and family in Great Barring- 
 ton until ( he should find out whether he was going 
 to succeed. He considered that if literature failed, 
 
39 
 
 he could drudge at the law in New York as well as 
 at Great Barrington. 
 
 James Fenimore Cooper, who was now becom 
 ing a famous novelist, was a friend of Bryant s. 
 So was William Ware, who wrote a novel based 
 on the life of Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, a 
 very famous book in its day and one still worth 
 reading. Bryant worked very hard. He liked 
 literature a great deal better than he did the law ; 
 and though it was uncertain, he thought that for 
 tune would favor him in the end. The magazine 
 he edited did not succeed very well, and at the 
 end of a year was united with another one, the 
 New York Literary Gazette. A few months later 
 the United States Gazette in Boston was united with 
 the magazine which Bryant was editing, under the 
 title, United States Review and Literary Gazette. 
 
 Bryant was allowed one quarter interest in 
 the business and five hundred dollars a year 
 salary. The five hundred dollars was probably 
 all he got, and this sum was so small he could 
 not make it support his family very well. If 
 this magazine should succeed, he would get more 
 
40 
 
 money; but it did not, and Bryant really thought 
 he would have to quit literature for law once 
 more. 
 
 He was licensed to practice in New York; but 
 just then fortune favored him : he was asked to 
 to do some work on the New York Evening Post. 
 The assistant editor had gone to Cuba, and 
 finally died there. So Bryant was soon made the 
 assistant editor, and was allowed an interest in the 
 paper. 
 
 At that time the paper was favorable to the 
 federal party; but a few years later it became 
 decidedly democratic in tone. So long as Mr. 
 Bryant controlled it, it was an advocate of free 
 trade and a bold champion of human liberty. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE EDITOR OF A GREAT NEWSPAPER 
 
 Bryant s life work proved to be, not writing 
 poetry, but editing a great New York daily paper. 
 For many years he went to his office at seven 
 o clock every morning. He was never strong in 
 
body, and he had to take very great care of 
 his health. 
 
 Every young reader should learn a useful 
 lesson from him, although it is not easy to follow 
 the rigorous mode of life he laid out for himself 
 and followed to the end of his days. He himself 
 tells in a letter what he did : 
 
 " I rise early at this time of the year (March), 
 about half-past five ; in summer, half an hour or 
 even an hour earlier. Immediately, with very little 
 encumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exer 
 cises, for the most part designed to expand the 
 chest, and at the same time call into action all the 
 muscles and articulations of the body. These are 
 performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, 
 covered with flannel, with a pole, a horizontal 
 bar, and a light chair swung around my head. 
 After a full hour and sometimes more passed in 
 this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at 
 my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my 
 exercise in the chamber, and, going out, occupy 
 myself in some work which requires brisk motion. 
 After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit 
 
42 
 
 down to my studies till I am called. My breakfast 
 is a simple one hominy and milk, or, in place of 
 hominy, brown bread, or oatmeal, or wheaten grits, 
 and, in season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat 
 cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of veg 
 etable food, but animal food I never take at break 
 fast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time ; 
 sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, which has no 
 narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At 
 breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural 
 state or freshly stewed. 
 
 After breakfast I occupy myself for a while 
 with my studies, and, when in town, I walk down 
 to the office of the Evening Post, nearly three 
 miles distant, and after about three hours return, 
 always walking. * * * In town, where I dine 
 late, I take but two meals a day. Fruit makes a 
 considerable part of my diet. My drink is water. 
 
 "That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed 
 early ; in town as early as ten ; in the country 
 somewhat earlier. * * * I abominate drugs 
 and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided 
 anything which spurs nature to exertions which it 
 
43 
 
 would not otherwise make. Even with my food I 
 do not take the usual condiments, such as pepper 
 and the like." 
 
 A man who was so conscientious about eating 
 and drinking and going to bed and getting up in 
 the morning, was the kind of man who would be 
 conscientious in editing a newspaper. In Bryant s 
 early newspaper life a great daily paper was not so 
 much a machine to gather news from every quarter 
 of the globe and serve it up in a sensational style, as 
 a medium for discussing public questions. Nowa 
 days, people often do not even look at the editorial 
 column ; but in those days there was so little news 
 they were obliged to read this. It was about the 
 only fresh thing in the paper. Once a week, per 
 haps, a sailing vessel from Europe would come 
 in with a bundle of European newspapers, from 
 which the editor would clip and reprint a summary 
 of foreign news. It took several days to get news 
 from Washington to New York. Local items were 
 generally sent in by friends of the editor. For 
 years Bryant had but one assistant, and they two 
 did all the reporting, editing, and editorial writing. 
 
44 
 
 Reviews of books were sometimes done outside, 
 and the shipping and financial news was furnished 
 by a sort of City Press Association. It was Bry 
 ant s work to write a brilliant editorial or two every 
 morning. Many of these were on politics, others 
 on questions of local public interest. But Bryant 
 tried always to be on the side of right and justice. 
 For years the Post was regarded as the leading 
 paper of the people, standing for the rights of the 
 people. Many a time it fought the battles of the 
 great public, and sometimes it won. 
 
 A daily paper lasts but for a day; then it is dead 
 and another takes its place. To know how com 
 pletely a daily paper dies when its day s work is 
 done, so to speak, suppose you try to buy a copy 
 three months old, or a year old. You remember 
 three months ago there were hundreds of thousands 
 of copies printed and distributed. You suppose 
 that you can get a copy at the office of the paper, 
 at any rate. But no; all more than three months 
 old have been destroyed. 
 
 In New York there was once a little old shop, 
 kept by a queer old mulatto, known as " Back 
 
45 
 
 Number Bud," who charged a dollar and a half 
 for a one cent paper, less than a year old. This 
 shop of "Back Number Bud s" was, a few years 
 ago, the only place in New York City where back 
 numbers of newspapers could be purchased at any 
 price ; and in smaller cities no copies whatever 
 could be obtained, except by chance. 
 
 A daily newspaper influences the people to-day, 
 and then dies, and another paper takes its place. 
 But if one man is making that paper every day for 
 fifty years, at the end of fifty years, doing a little 
 every day, he may have succeeded several times in 
 completely revolutionizing public opinion. 
 
 Besides Bryant, there were other great newspa 
 per editors in New York. One was Horace 
 Greeley, whose name every child has heard. 
 There were others, too. But none were more 
 faithful than Bryant. For years his newspaper 
 work took so much of his time that he wrote 
 scarcely any poetry at all. But as those numbers 
 of the Evening Post are dead and forgotten, we 
 shall never know how much good he did during 
 those years and years of faithful leadership. 
 
4 6 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOW BRYANT BECAME RICH 
 
 We have already seen that Bryant was born a 
 poor country boy ; that his father was so poor he 
 could not send his son to college more than a year; 
 and that Bryant himself, when he first went to 
 New York, worked for a time at a salary of only 
 five hundred dollars a year. 
 
 When he became assistant editor of the Evening^ 
 Post, the editor-in-chief, William Coleman, who 
 was also the chief proprietor, thought it would be 
 well to give a small interest in the paper to one or 
 two young men, so that when the older proprie 
 tors died others would be coming on to take their 
 places. An eighth part was given to Bryant, who 
 was to pay for it gradually from the money he 
 could save. Another portion was offered to a 
 friend of his, who decided not to take it. 
 
 Three or four years later, when Mr. Coleman 
 died, Bryant was made editor-in-chief, and bought 
 a larger interest in the paper. He finally secured 
 one half. The other half was owned for a time by 
 
47 
 
 a "Mr. Burnham, a practical printer. Later, one 
 of Bryant s assistants, whose name was Leggett, 
 owned a part interest. 
 
 In those days newspapers were not such costly 
 properties as they are to-day. Bryant always 
 made a good living, but he regarded the work in 
 which he was engaged as drudgery. 
 
 After he had been in the newspaper work for 
 some years, he wrote to his brother, who was a 
 pioneer in Illinois, saying he thought of retiring 
 from the Post, and asking what could be done in 
 the West with four or five thousand dollars. His 
 interest at this time was two fifths, so that he 
 must have valued the paper at about twelve thou 
 sand dollars. 
 
 About this time, while he was away from 
 New York, his partner and assistant editor, Mr. 
 Leggett, nearly ruined the paper. When Bryant 
 returned he found that it was earning no money, 
 and that he could not sell his interest at any price. 
 
 He therefore set to work to win popularity for 
 the paper once more. This he succeeded gradu 
 ally in doing, and during the next ten years there 
 
48 
 
 was an average yearly profit of over $10,000, of 
 which Bryant received a little less than half. In 
 1850 the yearly profit was $16,000, and in 1860 it 
 was $70,000. If Bryant received $30,000 for his 
 share of the profits of a year s business, he might 
 be regarded as a rich man. After his death, the 
 Evening Post was sold for $900,000, of which 
 Bryant s share was half. 
 
 During his later years he bought a great deal 
 of land and many houses on Long Island, where 
 he had a country home. He had another country 
 home at Cummington, his grandfather s homestead, 
 where he built a beautiful house. He also traveled 
 a great deal, going to Europe many times, and to 
 other parts of the world. 
 
 Thus, by faithful, plodding work for many years 
 Bryant, though a poet, became rich. He was del 
 icate and sympathetic, like all true poets, but he 
 did not indulge in what some have supposed to be 
 the poet s liberty to be reckless and careless. He 
 worked faithfully and very diligently all his life; 
 and in his old age he was well rewarded for all his 
 labor. 
 
49 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 BRYANT AS AN ORATOR AND PROSE WRITER 
 
 When Bryant went to New York it was a com 
 paratively small city. As years passed, it grew in 
 size and wealth, and its newspapers became more 
 important. We have seen how Bryant became 
 rich by his ownership of the Evening Post. He 
 also gained in honors. He was the editor of a 
 great daily paper, and he was also a noted poet. 
 His poems had been published both in this country 
 and in London, and many thousands of copies were 
 sold. Bryant was often asked to write poems for 
 great celebrations, or in honor of well-known 
 people. This he always refused to do. But he 
 often made public addresses. When James Feni- 
 more Cooper died, he acted, as it were, as the 
 spokesman of the nation s grief. He pronounced 
 the funeral eulogy upon Irving, and upon many 
 noted people. He was not a great orator like 
 Daniel Webster; but such speeches as these upon 
 the lives of great men have seldom been surpassed. 
 
 We must remember, too, that all his life Bryant, 
 
50 
 
 in his editorials, was writing prose. From these 
 editorials it would be easy to select some of the 
 finest pieces of prose writing in our language. As 
 most of them were on the passing events of the 
 day, they have never been reprinted, they have 
 died with the newspaper. But here is a passage 
 on the emancipation of the slaves which has the 
 ring of true eloquence. 
 
 President Lincoln had proposed gradual eman 
 cipation. 
 
 Gradual emancipation!" exclaims Bryant. 
 * Have we not suffered enough from slavery with 
 out keeping it any longer? Has not blood enough 
 been shed? My friends, if a child of yours were 
 to fall into the fire, would you pull him out gradu 
 ally? If he were to swallow a dose of laudanum 
 sufficient to cause speedy death, and a stomach 
 pump were at hand, would you draw out the poison 
 by degrees ? If your house were on fire, would 
 you put it out piecemeal? And yet there are men 
 who talk of gradual emancipation by force of 
 ancient habit, and there are men in the slave 
 states who make of slavery a sort of idol which 
 
51 
 
 they are unwilling to part with; which, if it must 
 be removed, they would prefer to see removed 
 after a lapse of time and tender leave-takings. 
 
 Slavery is a foul and monstrous idol, a Jugger 
 naut under which thousands are crushed to death; 
 it is a Moloch for whom the children of the land 
 pass through fire. Must we consent that the 
 number of the victims shall be diminished gradu 
 ally? If there are a thousand victims this year, 
 are you willing that nine hundred shall be sacri 
 ficed next year, and eight hundred the next, and 
 so on until after the lapse of ten years it shall 
 cease? No, my friends, let us hurl the grim image 
 from its pedestal. Down with it to the ground! 
 Dash it to fragments; trample it in the dust. 
 Grind it to powder as the prophets of old com 
 manded that the graven images of the Hebrew 
 idolaters should be ground, and in that state scatter 
 it to the four winds and strew it upon the waters, 
 that no human hand shall ever gather up the 
 accursed atoms and mould them into an image to 
 be worshiped again with human sacrifice. " 
 
 This eloquent passage is taken from an editorial 
 
52 
 
 in the Evening Post. The following is from a 
 speech delivered at a dinner given to Professor 
 Morse, the inventor of the telegraph : 
 
 * There is one view of this great invention which 
 impresses me with awe. Beside me at this board, 
 along with the illustrious man whom we are met to 
 honor, and whose name will go down to the latest 
 generations of civilized man, sits the gentleman to 
 whose clear-sighted perseverance, and to whose 
 energy an energy which knew no discouragement, 
 no weariness, no pause we owe it that the tele 
 graph has been laid which connects the Old World 
 with the New through the Atlantic Ocean. My 
 imagination goes down to the chambers of the 
 middle sea, to those vast depths where repose the 
 mystic wire on beds of coral, among forests of 
 tangle, or on the bottom of the dim blue gulfs, 
 strewn with the bones of whales and sharks, 
 skeletons of drowned men, and ribs and masts of 
 foundered barks, laden with wedges of gold never 
 to be coined, and pipes of the choicest vintages of 
 earth never to be tasted. 
 
 1 Through these watery solitudes, among the 
 
53 
 
 fountains of the great deep, the abode of per 
 petual silence, never visited by living human 
 presence and beyond the sight of human eye, 
 there are gliding to and fro, by night and by 
 day, in light and in darkness, in calm and in 
 tempest, currents of human thought borne by the 
 electric pulse which obeys the bidding of man. 
 That slender wire thrills with the hopes and fears 
 of nations; it vibrates to every emotion that can be 
 awakened by any event affecting the welfare of the 
 human race. 
 
 "A volume of contemporary history passes 
 every hour of the day from one continent to 
 another. An operator on the continent of Europe 
 gently touches the keys of an instrument in his 
 quiet room, a message is shot with the swiftness of 
 light through the abysses of the sea, and before 
 his hand is lifted from the machine the story of 
 revolts and revolutions, of monarchs dethroned and 
 new dynasties set up in their place, of battles and 
 conquests and treaties of peace, of great statesmen 
 fallen in death, lights of the world gone out and 
 new luminaries glimmering on the horizon, is writ- 
 
54 
 
 ten down in another quiet room on the other side 
 of the globe. 
 
 "Mr. President, I see in the circumstances 
 which I have enumerated a new proof of the 
 superiority of mind to matter, of the independent 
 existence of that part of our nature which we call 
 the spirit, when it can thus subdue, enslave, and 
 educate the subtilest, the most active, and in 
 certain of its manifestations the most intractable 
 and terrible, of the elements, making it in our 
 hands the vehicle of thought, and compelling it to 
 speak every language of the civilized world. I infer 
 the capacity of the spirit for a separate state of 
 being, its indestructible essence and its noble 
 destiny, and I thank the great discoverer whom we 
 have assembled to honor for this confirmation of 
 my faith." 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 OTHER EVENTS IN BRYANT S LIFE 
 
 Among the remaining important events of the 
 poet s life, we must first speak of the publica 
 tion of his poems. In 1822, the year after his 
 
55 
 
 marriage and while he was trying to practice law at 
 Great Barrington, he was invited to deliver the usual 
 poetical address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society 
 of Harvard College. For this occasion he wrote 
 the poem of < The Ages, " with which his collected 
 works now open. This poem secured him so 
 much reputation that he published a very small 
 volume of his works. There were but forty-four 
 pages, but in that small space were printed some 
 of the finest poems Bryant ever wrote. The 
 copies did not sell very rapidly, and Bryant s profit 
 was not large. When he was old and famous, a 
 young man said to him, "I have just bought a 
 copy of the first volume of your poems. I paid 
 twenty dollars for it. " 
 
 Hm!" said Bryant. "A good deal more 
 than I got for writing it! " 
 
 Of his other poems, a large number were writ 
 ten for the United States Literary Gazette, and 
 the various magazines he edited in New York. 
 When he became editor of the Evening Post he 
 continued to edit the United States Review and 
 Literary Gazette, until it was discontinued. After 
 
56 
 
 that he assisted in editing an annual called The 
 Talisman, which appeared regularly until 1829. 
 To this he contributed a considerable number of 
 poems. But now for several years he wrote but 
 little poetry, giving all his time and energy to the 
 newspaper. 
 
 In 1831, however, he published a second collec 
 tion of his poems. There were eighty in the 
 volume. Then he thought he w6uld see how 
 they would be received in England. He had a 
 friend who knew Washington Irving. Irving was 
 a famous writer at this time, and his publisher was 
 John Murray, one of the greatest of English pub 
 lishers. Bryant obtained an introduction to Irving 
 by letter, and asked him to assist in getting Mur 
 ray to bring out a London edition of his poems. 
 Murray would not do it, however. But Irving 
 admired Bryant s work, and after a time he found 
 another publisher who was willing to bring out the 
 volume. He himself wrote an introduction, and 
 dedicated the book to Rogers, the fashionable poet 
 of England at that time. But before the book 
 game out the publisher, a fussy old man, came to 
 
57 
 
 Irving and said it would never do to print in Eng 
 land the line, 
 
 And the British foeman trembles. 
 
 That would be sure to offend the stolid Briton s 
 pride. So Irving changed the line to 
 
 The foeman trembles in his camp. 
 
 Years afterward there was some controversy over 
 this change on the part of Irving ; but Irving and 
 Bryant always remained good friends. 
 
 Other volumes of his collected poems were pub 
 lished from time to time after this ; but they are 
 not important. The only other great poetic work 
 that Bryant attempted was his translation of Ho 
 mer s Iliad and Odyssey. When he translated these 
 grand Greek poems into English blank verse he was 
 already quite an old man. His wife had died, and 
 he wished some regular work, aside from his paper, 
 that would claim his thoughts. So he made it a 
 practice to translate a few lines every day. This 
 he kept up for a number of years, until he had 
 translated the whole of both these long poems. 
 
 For this he probably received more money than 
 
58 
 
 for all his other poems put together over seven 
 teen thousand dollars in all. 
 
 We must next speak of his travels ; for Bryant 
 was a great traveler. His first long journey was 
 made in 1832 to visit his brothers, who had become 
 the proprietors of a large landed estate in Illinois. 
 He was three weeks on the journey out. While 
 crossing the prairies between the Mississippi River 
 and his brothers plantation he met a company 
 of Illinois volunteers, who were going to take 
 part in the Black Hawk War. They were led by 
 a tall, awkward, uncouth lad, whose appearance 
 attracted Bryant s attention, and whose conversa 
 tion pleased him, it was so breezy and original. 
 He learned many years afterward that this captain 
 was Abraham Lincoln. When in 1860 it was pro 
 posed to nominate Lincoln for President, Lincoln 
 came to New York to speak, and Bryant intro 
 duced him to the audience. 
 
 It was during his visit to his brothers that he 
 wrote of 
 
 The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
 For which the speech of England has no name, 
 
59 
 
 He evidently liked the West, for we have seen that 
 later he proposed to sell out his paper and go there 
 to live. 
 
 In 1834 he made his first trip to Europe. While 
 he was gone he wrote letters regularly for his 
 paper ; but he traveled leisurely and enjoyed him 
 self. He took his wife and daughters with him. 
 He remained two years, when he was called home 
 by the illness of the associate editor, who had 
 charge of the paper in his absence. 
 
 After this, at various times, he visited Europe 
 again, crossing the Atlantic in all six times. One 
 of these journeys, made in 1857, was chiefly for 
 Mrs. Bryant s health. They landed at Havre, and 
 journeyed through Belgium and Holland, France 
 and Spain to Madrid, whence they crossed to 
 Naples, where Mrs. Bryant was ill for four months. 
 She recovered somewhat, but when at last they 
 returned to the United States she was not much 
 better. Bryant had bought the old homestead 
 at Cummington, and had invited all his relatives 
 from Illinois to join him in hanging the pot." In 
 July, 1858, he had to notify his brothers, some of 
 
6o 
 
 whom were already at Cummington, that his wife 
 was too ill to go there ; and on the 2;th of that 
 month she died. In regard to her death he wrote 
 to a friend, I lived with my wife forty-five years, 
 and now that great blessing of my life is with 
 drawn, and I am like one cast out of paradise and 
 wandering in a strange world. " 
 
 Nearly ten years before this, in 1849, he made a 
 visit of two months to Cuba, going by way of 
 the Carolinas and Florida. He was received 
 by the governor-general of Havana, and passed 
 several days on a coffee estate at Matanzas, 
 going then by rail to San Antonio in a car built at 
 Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, 
 and worked by an American engineer. He 
 breakfasted at the inn of La Punta on rice 
 and fresh eggs and a dish of meat. He witnessed 
 a cock-fight, a masked ball, a murderer garroted, 
 and slavery in some of its most inhuman 
 phases." 
 
 He also visited Mexico, Egypt, and the Shet 
 land Islands, and was everywhere an. interested 
 observer of men and manners. 
 
6i 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HONORS TO THE GREAT POET 
 
 We have seen that Bryant was not only a great 
 poet, but a great newspaper editor, an eloquent 
 orator, and a rich man. So he came to be a 
 noted public character, one of the leading citizens 
 of the great city of New York. From this time 
 forward until his death in extreme old age, prom 
 inent statesmen, politicians, poets, people of soci 
 ety, hastened to shower honors upon him. He 
 was asked to be a regent of the University of 
 New York, but declined. Banquets were also 
 tendered him, which he also declined. But on 
 his seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, the 
 Century Club of New York, of which he had been 
 one of the founders, resolved to make a great fes 
 tival in his honor. Bancroft, the historian, was 
 president of the club, and greeted Bryant with a 
 graceful speech on that great occasion. In Bry 
 ant s reply is the following passage, which will be 
 of interest to all young people as showing that 
 this great and wise man believed in placing 
 
62 
 
 responsibility on the young, and not in keeping 
 them in the background for wise old heads. 
 
 "Much has been said of the wisdom of Old 
 Age, " said he. Old Age is wise, I grant, for it 
 self, but not wise for the community. It is wise 
 in declining new enterprises, for it has not the 
 power nor the time to execute them ; wise in 
 shirking from difficulty, for it has not the strength 
 to overcome it ; wise in avoiding danger, for it 
 lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by 
 which dangers are parried and converted into 
 advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind 
 at large, by whom new enterprises must be under 
 taken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted. 
 What a world this would be if it were made up 
 of old men ! " 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes was there, and read a 
 beautiful poem composed for the occasion. There 
 were also other poems read by their authors, 
 and Whittier and Lowell, who could not be there, 
 sent their poems to be read, while Longfellow and 
 a great many other famous people wrote letters of 
 congratulation. 
 
63 
 
 Here are some of the beautiful lines from the 
 poem which Dr. Holmes read : 
 
 How can we praise the verse whose music flows 
 With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
 Pure as the dew that filters through the rose? 
 
 How shall we thank him that in evil days 
 He faltered never, nor for blame nor praise, 
 Nor hire nor party, shared his earlier days ? 
 
 But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, 
 So to his youth his manly years were true, 
 All dyed in royal purple through and through. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson was there, and made a 
 speech, which he closed with this verse, written by 
 the poet Crabbe : 
 
 True bard, and simple as the race 
 Of heaven-born poets always are, 
 
 When stooping from their starry place 
 They re children near but gods afar. 
 
 This means that great poets seem very great and 
 magnificent when we think of them after they are 
 dead and gone, or when they live by themselves 
 
6 4 
 
 at a great distance ; but really, when you know 
 them, they are as natural and human as children. 
 That perfectly describes William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 In 1874 Bryant was elected an honorary member 
 of the Russian Academy of St. Petersburg. The 
 same year, on his eightieth birthday, he was pre 
 sented with an address of honor, signed by thou 
 sands and thousands of people. This was accom 
 panied by a special vase, completed sometime 
 afterward, which commemorated his literary 
 career. A little later in the same year he visited 
 Governor Tilden at Albany, and was tendered a 
 public reception. After that some of his friends 
 proposed that he should be nominated as one of 
 the electors on the Tilden electoral ticket, when 
 Tilden was a candidate for the presidency of the 
 United States. 
 
 These and many other public honors were 
 heaped upon him in his old age. When over 
 eighty-three years of age he was invited to deliver 
 an address on the unveiling of a statue of Maz- 
 zini, the Italian patriot, in Central Park, New 
 York City. After it was over, he was very much 
 
65 
 
 exhausted, but walked across the park to the house 
 of a friend. On the steps he fell, being old and 
 feeble and very tired. His head hit on a stone and 
 he fainted away. Less than two weeks later, 
 June 12, 1878, he died from the effects of this fall. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LEARNING TO LOVE A POET 
 
 It is not uncommon to hear young people say, 
 " I don t like poetry at all. It is dry, horrid stuff, 
 and I don t understand it." No doubt some of 
 you will say or think this about Bryant s poetry. 
 It is true that he used a great many long, hard 
 words; and his poems are sometimes rather solemn. 
 What is more, they are not musical like Longfellow s. 
 It is said that Bryant had no ear for music. For 
 this reason you cannot read his poetry as you do 
 Longfellow s, swinging along from line to line. 
 Young people who read in the sing-song style will 
 find that they cannot do that when they come to 
 Bryant. At first you may think his poetry is, for 
 this reason, not good poetry at all. Perhaps it 
 
66 
 
 would be better to call Bryant a prose poet instead 
 of a musical poet. But when you get used to hi? 
 prose-like poetry, you will like it if you have in 
 you the least love of nature or natural beauty. 
 
 Take some one poem that you like and read it 
 over and over again, until you have it almost if not 
 quite by heart for instance, that beautiful poem, 
 1 The Death of the Flowers, " written on the occa 
 sion of his sister s death : 
 
 The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the 
 
 year, 
 Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown 
 
 and sere. 
 Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the nitumn leaves 
 
 lie dead; 
 They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit s 
 
 tread. 
 The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs 
 
 the jay, 
 And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the 
 
 gloomy day. 
 
 Other poems that are well worth reading many 
 times, until you really understand and love them, 
 are The Waterfowl, " Autumn Woods, " * No- 
 
6; 
 
 vember," "The Gladness of Nature," "The 
 Past," "To the Fringed Gentian," "The Con 
 queror s Grave," "An Invitation to the Country," 
 -The Wind and the Stream," "The Poet," 
 -May Evening," "The Flood of Years," and 
 "Our Fellow-Worshipers." To have mastered 
 one of these poems is better than to have read the 
 whole of Bryant carelessly. Take one, and read 
 it until by very force of habit you learn to love it; 
 and then the next poem you take up will reveal 
 beauties which you never suspected when you 
 first read it. 
 
 There is also a city poem of Bryant s, "The 
 Crowded Street," well worth learning to love : 
 
 Let me move slowly through the street, 
 
 Filled with an ever-shifting train, 
 Amid the sound of steps that beat 
 
 The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 
 
 How fast the flitting figures come! 
 
 The mild, the fierce, the stony face ; 
 Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some 
 
 Where secret tears have left their trace. 
 
 And here is one more short poem, which may you 
 
68 
 
 all remember, long after you have forgotten that 
 you ever read this little history of the poet s life ! 
 
 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN. 
 
 Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 
 
 Gentle and merciful and just ! 
 Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 
 
 The sword of power, a nation s trust! 
 
 In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 
 
 Amid the awe that hushes all, 
 And speak the anguish of a land 
 
 That shook with horror at thy fall. 
 
 Thy task is done ; the bond are free : 
 We bear thee to an honored grave, 
 
 Whose proudest monument shall be 
 The broken fetters of the slave. 
 
 Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 
 
 Hath placed thee with the sons of light ? 
 
 Among the noblest host of those 
 Who perished in the cause of Right. 
 
THE STORY OF 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 
 
HENR Y WA DS WOR TH LONGFELLO W 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A GREAT POET 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 Footprints on the sands of time ; 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 Sailing o er life s solemn main, 
 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 Seeing, shall take heart again. 
 
 You doubtless remember how Robinson Crusoe 
 one day found footprints in the sand on the 
 shore of his desert island. * * I am not alone ! " 
 said he to himself. Another human being has 
 been here before me." Soon afterward he had 
 the good fortune to find his * man Friday. " 
 
 In geology we learn of footprints in rocks. Liv 
 ing beings ages ago walked on the soft sand, an4 
 
72 
 
 that sand, lying for a long time undisturbed, was 
 at length hardened into rock. 
 
 The poet Longfellow has left footprints on the 
 sands of time " in the shape of his poems, and we 
 may say those poems are like footprints hard 
 ened into rock, which will last for ages. Many an 
 unhappy soul, after reading the sad, sweet, beauti 
 ful verses of the Psalm of Life, " has taken heart 
 to go on fighting life s battle nobly, and doing 
 good instead of yielding to the temptation to be 
 weak and careless. 
 
 To realize what it is to be a great poet, think of 
 the millions of boys and girls, old and young, in 
 the United States, and in Great Britain and other 
 foreign countries, who have learned by heart such 
 famous poems as The Village Blacksmith," 
 The Wreck of the Hesperus, " and The Build 
 ing of the Ship." You, yourself, no doubt, dear 
 reader, when you want something to memorize, 
 turn to a volume of Longfellow s poems. You have 
 learned to love the poems : therefore let me introduce 
 to you the man who first lived the poems in his own 
 life, and you will certainly learn to love him, too. 
 
73 
 
 The poet was born February 27, 1807, in Port 
 land, Maine. At the time of his birth his parents 
 were living in Captain Stephenson s house, Mrs. 
 Stephenson being a sister of the elder Mr. Long 
 fellow. But this was only temporarily, indeed 
 only while the Stephenson family were visiting the 
 West Indies. The Longfellows soon moved into 
 the house of General Peleg Wadsworth, where Mrs. 
 Longfellow had spent part of her girlhood. It 
 is said to have been the first brick house ever 
 built in Portland, and it was one of the finest. 
 Here they lived until the baby grew into a man. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LONGFELLOW S ANCESTORS 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow belonged to a 
 good old New England family. His father was a 
 lawyer in Portland, Maine; his grandfather had 
 been a schoolmaster; and his great-grandfather 
 had been a blacksmith, 
 
74 
 
 The Longfellows were most of them tall, strong 
 men, who had been soldiers, sailors and the like, 
 and none of them had shown the slightest talent 
 for poetry. But Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
 was small and delicate, though he always stood 
 very erect and was a finely formed man. 
 
 His grandfather on his mother s side was Gen 
 eral Peleg Wadsworth, who was once captured by 
 the British and came near being shipped off to 
 England; but he escaped and joined his wife and 
 family as they were going to Boston. The poet 
 also had an uncle Henry (for whom he was 
 named), who had been a lieutenant with Com 
 modore Preble and was killed at Tripoli a 
 short time before his namesake was born. An 
 other uncle was a second lieutenant on the frigate 
 Constitution when it captured the British ship 
 Guerriere in 1812. 
 
 On his mother s side, Longfellow could trace his 
 origin straight back to John Alden and Priscilla 
 Mullens, who came over in the Mayflower, and 
 whom he has made immortal in his poem of "The 
 Courtship of Miles Standish, " 
 
75 
 
 In short, Longfellow belonged to quite an 
 aristocratic family, as New England aristocracy 
 goes, and it was a fairly wealthy family also. 
 His father was once a member of Congress, and 
 afterward was chosen to make the speech welcom 
 ing Lafayette when he visited Portland in 1825. 
 
 The house where Longfellow was born is still 
 standing and is well known to the children of Port 
 land. In the old days it was in the fashionable 
 part of the town, facing the ocean beach. But 
 now land has been filled in for a long distance out 
 into the ocean, and on this new land stand the 
 engine-house and tracks of the Grand Trunk rail 
 way. So the house is now in a very poor neigh 
 borhood. 
 
 One day a teacher in a Portland school asked 
 her pupils if they knew where Longfellow was born. 
 
 I know, " said a little girl. In Patsey Con 
 nor s bedroom." 
 
 Many poor people lived in the house, and the 
 room where Longfellow was born was now Patsey 
 Connor s bedroom; but all the children of Port 
 land knew where it was. 
 
7 6 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 LONGFELLOW S BOYHOOD 
 
 Our poet seems to have been a quiet, well 
 behaved child, rather slight, but always standing 
 up perfectly straight. He was careful of his clothes, 
 and learned his lessons well. Some people seem 
 to think that a very good little boy will never grow 
 up to be worth anything. Certainly it is a good 
 thing to have plenty of spirit and energy; but 
 Longfellow is an example of a boy who was as good 
 as George Washington is said to have been, and 
 he grew up to be the greatest poet in America, just 
 as Washington grew up to be the greatest presi 
 dent. 
 
 When he was three years old little Henry was 
 sent to school. For a good many years a certain 
 Ma am Fellows had kept a school in a little brick 
 schoolhouse not far from the Wadsworth mansion, 
 and it was she who taught the poet his first 
 lessons. Ma am Fellows was a firm believer in 
 the doctrine that one should never smile in school 
 hours." Years afterward Longfellow told what he 
 
77 
 
 remembered of her. "My recollections of my 
 first teacher," said the poet, "are not vivid: but I 
 recall that she was bent on giving me a right start 
 in life; that she thought that even very young chil 
 dren should be made to know the difference be 
 tween right and wrong; and that severity of 
 manner was more practical than gentleness of 
 persuasion. She inspired me with one trait, that 
 is, a genuine respect for my elders. " 
 
 He afterward went to several other schools, in 
 cluding one in Love Lane. When he grew a little 
 older he had to write compositions, and there is a 
 story about the first one he ever wrote. His 
 teacher told him to write a composition; but he 
 thought he couldn t do it. 
 
 "But you can write words, can you not?" asked 
 the teacher. 
 
 " Yes," was the response. 
 
 "Then you can put words together?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Then," said the instructor, "you may take 
 your slate and go out behind the schoolhouse, and 
 there you can find something to write about; and 
 
78 
 
 then you can tell what it is, what it is for, and what 
 is to be done with it; and that will be a composi 
 tion." 
 
 Henry took his slate and went out. He went 
 behind Mr. Finney s barn, which chanced to be 
 near; and, seeing a fine turnip growing, he thought 
 he knew what it was, what it was for, and what 
 would be done with it. 
 
 A half hour had been allowed young Henry for 
 his first undertaking in writing compositions. 
 Before that time had expired he carried in his work, 
 very neatly written on his slate. It was so well done 
 that his teacher was both surprised and pleased. 
 
 There has been published in the newspapers a 
 very funny poem about a turnip, and some have 
 said that it is the one which Longfellow wrote at 
 this time. But the truth is, he never wrote it, for 
 that first composition was rubbed off the slate and 
 lost forever. This other poem was written years 
 afterward by somebody for a joke. Here is the 
 poem, however, for you to laugh about. You will 
 clearly see that Longfellow could not have writ 
 ten it himself. 
 
79 
 
 MR. FINNEY S TURNIP 
 
 Mr. Finney had a turnip, 
 
 And it grew, and it grew; 
 And it grew behind the barn, 
 
 And the turnip did no harm. 
 
 And it grew and it grew, 
 
 Till it could grow no taller; 
 Then Mr. Finney took it up, 
 
 And put it in the cellar. 
 
 There it lay, there it lay, 
 
 Till it began to rot ; 
 When his daughter Susie washed it, 
 
 And put it in the pot. 
 
 Then she boiled it, and she boiled it, 
 
 As long as she was able ; 
 Then his daughter Lizzie took it, 
 
 And she put it on the table. 
 
 Mr. Finney and his wife 
 
 Both sat down to sup; 
 And they ate, and they ate, 
 
 Until they ate the turnip up. 
 
 When he was only thirteen years old Longfellow 
 wrote a real poem, which, though it has never been 
 
8o 
 
 published, is said to have been preserved in manu 
 script. It was entitled Venice, an Italian Song." 
 The manuscript is dated "Portland Academy, 
 March 17, 1820," and is signed with the full name 
 of the writer. 
 
 It was not long after this that his first published 
 poem appeared. It was entitled * The Battle of 
 Lovell s Pond, " and was printed in one of the news 
 papers of Portland. 
 
 There were only two papers in that city then. 
 Having written the ballad very carefully and 
 neatly, Henry thought he would like to see it in 
 print; but he was afraid to take it to the editor. 
 One of his school-mates persuaded him, however, 
 and he stole up one night and dropped it into the 
 editorial box. 
 
 He waited patiently for the next issue of the 
 paper, and then scanned its columns for his poem, 
 which he thought surely would be there. But 
 it wasn t. Many weeks passed and it did not 
 appear. At last he went and asked to have his 
 manuscript returned. 
 
 It was given him and he took it over to the other 
 
8i 
 
 paper, the Portland Gazette, by whose editor it 
 was accepted and immediately published over the 
 signature " Henry." Here are the first two stanzas: 
 
 Cold, cold is the north wind and rude is the blast 
 That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast, 
 As it moans through the tall waving pines, lone and drear, 
 Sighs a requiem sad o er the warrior s bier. 
 
 The war-whoop is still, and the savage s yell 
 
 Has sunk into silence along the wild dell; 
 
 The din of the battle, the tumult is o er, 
 
 And the war-clarion s voice is now heard no more. 
 
 After that the young poet could have his verses 
 printed in that paper as often as he liked, and he 
 wrote a number of pieces for this purpose. 
 
 He went to Portland Academy, and was ready 
 to enter college at fourteen. One of his teachers 
 at the academy, who, no doubt, did a great deal 
 to impress his young mind, was Jacob Abbott, 
 the author of the "Rollo Books." Some years ago 
 these were the most popular books for boys and 
 girls then known, and perhaps some of the young 
 people of this generation have read them. If they 
 have, they will know what fine books they are. 
 
82 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT THE TIMES WHEN LONGFELLOW 
 WAS YOUNG 
 
 In the days when Longfellow was a child, people 
 were just changing from the old fashioned style of 
 living to ways that were new and more modern. The 
 older men wore knee breeches and silk stockings, 
 and shoes with big buckles, and had their long 
 hair gathered in a knot or "club " behind. 
 
 Those were strict Puritan days, too. Everybody 
 was very careful about going to church and keeping 
 Sunday, and theaters were prohibited until a few 
 years later. They do say, however, that the peo 
 ple drank a good deal of Jamaica rum and did 
 other things that we should not approve of to-day. 
 
 Portland was quite a seaport, and had formerly 
 enjoyed great business prosperity. But in the 
 year that Longfellow was born, the embargo was 
 put on shipping, and severe "hard times" came 
 on. It is said " the grass literally grew upon the 
 wharves. " 
 
 Five years after his birth, came the war of 1812. 
 
83 
 
 Fortifications were thrown up on Munjoy s Hill, 
 and privateers were fitted out in the harbor. In 
 his beautiful poem, My Lost Youth, " Longfellow 
 refers to this. 
 
 This poem is very interesting when we think of 
 the actual places to which Longfellow refers. Of 
 course he is thinking of Portland when he writes: 
 
 Often I think of the beautiful town 
 
 That is seated by the sea; 
 # ***** 
 
 I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 
 
 And catch, in sudden gleams, 
 The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, 
 And islands that were the Hesperides 
 
 Of all my boyish dreams. 
 ****** 
 I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
 
 And the sea-tides tossing free ; 
 And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 
 And the magic of the sea. 
 
 In the following lines he refers to the fortifica 
 tions that were put up when he was five years old: 
 
8 4 
 
 I remember the bulwarks by the shore, 
 
 And the fort upon the hill ; 
 The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, 
 The drum-beat repeated o er and o er. 
 
 And the bugle wild and shrill. 
 
 On the 4th of September, 1813, the Boxer, British 
 brig of war, was captured off the Maine coast by the 
 American brig Enterprise, and a few days later was 
 brought into Portland harbor. On the next day 
 both commanders, who had been killed in the 
 encounter, were buried in the cemetery at the foot 
 of Munjoy s Hill. The poet thus records his recol 
 lections of that event: 
 
 I remember the sea-fight far away, 
 
 How it thundered o er the tide! 
 And the dead captains, as they lay 
 In their graves, o erlooking the tranquil bay, 
 
 Where they in battle died. 
 
 While referring to this poem, it may be noted 
 that Longfellow was very fond of the country, as 
 well as of the sea, and he never lived in a city 
 larger than Cambridge, which is really no city at 
 all, but merely a college town. Near his home in 
 
85 
 
 Portland was a large piece of woodland where he 
 was very fond of roaming about with some of his 
 friends. He thus speaks of it in the poem: 
 
 I can see the breezy dome of groves, 
 The shadows of Deering s Woods ; 
 And the friendships old and the early loves 
 Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves 
 
 In quiet neighborhoods. 
 ****** 
 
 I remember the gleams and glooms that dart 
 
 Across the schoolboy s brain ; 
 The song and the silence in the heart, 
 That in part are prophecies, and in part 
 
 Are longings wild and vain. 
 
 At the end of each verse comes the beautiful 
 refrain 
 
 And the voice of that fitful song 
 Sings on, and is never still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 Several other poems were suggested by the 
 sights and sounds of the poet s boyhood. One was 
 "The Ropewalk," describing a building that he 
 
86 
 
 often passed. There was also a factory where 
 crude pottery was made and where he went and 
 watched the turning wheel that suggested to him 
 many years later the beautiful poem entitled 
 Keramos. " 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 Longfellow went to college when he was very 
 young, indeed only fourteen years old. In those 
 days the requirements for entering college were not 
 so severe as they are now; yet they were by no 
 means easy, and only a bright scholar could 
 pass the examinations. Longfellow was one of 
 the bright boys. He stood second in his class. 
 He had an elder brother, Stephen, who entered col 
 lege at that same time. 
 
 His father and grandfather were graduates of 
 Harvard College; but as his father was then a 
 trustee of Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, Maine, 
 he was sent there. It happened that in the class 
 
which he entered there were several other youths 
 who became very famous men. One was Haw 
 thorne, the greatest American novelist; and in the 
 class just above was Franklin Pierce, who after 
 wards became President of the United States. 
 Not quite so famous as these two was another class 
 mate of Longfellow s, John S. C. Abbott, whose 
 histories for young people have been only less pop 
 ular than the * Rollo Books" written by his brother, 
 Jacob Abbott, a somewhat older man. 
 
 In those days no one suspected that there were 
 in that college men destined to become so great. 
 Longfellow was merely an aristocratic young man 
 who stood well in his classes and * wrote verses as 
 a pastime." The poet of the class was a young 
 man named Mellen. Hawthorne was very shy and 
 never learned his lessons. He studied in his own 
 way, and his professors had a very good opinion of 
 him, but he was not a good scholar. 
 
 There were in college two different kinds of 
 students, the country boys and the city fellows. 
 The country boys were usually rough, brown, and 
 not very well dressed. They would lumber along 
 
88 
 
 the streets like farmers, as they were. It may 
 easily be imagined that they were not rich. The 
 lads from the seaports, on the other hand, the 
 city fellows, had white hands and faces, were fash 
 ionably dressed, and were usually considered rich. 
 
 Longfellow was a city lad, and had plenty of 
 money. Hawthorne was more of a country fellow. 
 While in college the two were not intimate. Both 
 were naturally modest and shy, and each had only 
 a few friends with whom he associated. But some 
 years after they left college, Hawthorne sent his 
 first volume of stories, the Twice-told Tales, " to 
 Longfellow, then a professor at Harvard College, 
 and Longfellow wrote a very kind article about it, 
 which was published in the North American Review. 
 It was the first worthy recognition Hawthorne had 
 received, and he was very grateful to Longfellow. 
 This made them warm friends, and such they 
 remained for the rest of their lives. 
 
 During his first year Longfellow did most of his 
 studying at home. He was doubtless a little home 
 sick at Brunswick, at first. That town is not very 
 far from Portland, but it took some time to get 
 
8 9 
 
 there, for in those days there were no railroads. 
 The two Longfellow boys went up the coast in a 
 sailing boat to a town not far from Brunswick, and 
 from there they went by stage. 
 
 While in college young Henry had no great 
 adventures. He was a well behaved young man, 
 never hazed anybody, and was generally thought 
 rather a good fellow, but not remarkable in any 
 way. He wrote a good deal of poetry, which was 
 printed in the United States Literary Gazette, 
 without his name; but his cousin John Owen, then 
 at college with him, told him to his face one day 
 that poetry was not his forte. 
 
 One other thing remains to be said of his college 
 life. Though rich, he was generous toward his 
 poorer classmates, and at the same time very 
 modest and quiet about it. Here is one case, and 
 there are a good many others. 
 
 There was a student who had worked hard to 
 finish his college course; but one day he received 
 word that owing to the death of his father he would 
 have to leave college and earn his own living; the 
 family could spare him no more money to help him 
 
through. This was sad news to him, for he had great 
 ambitions and hopes concerning his future career. 
 A friend of his, belonging to the class below 
 Longfellow s, went to the poet and asked him 
 if he would not head a subscription, or do some 
 thing of the kind. At this time the poet had been 
 contributing pretty regularly to the United States 
 Literary Gazette, and had never received any pay 
 for it. Many of the poems had been copied in the 
 daily and weekly papers. 
 
 He wrote a note to the editor saying that he 
 thought he deserved in the future to be paid for 
 his contributions. His intention was to give the 
 money to his college mate. But the editor re 
 plied that poems were generally printed gratis, 
 and made some vague promises. 
 
 This was a disappointment; but the classmate 
 who tells the story, Longfellow, and his brother 
 Stephen drew up a subscription paper, put down 
 such sums as they could afford, and passed the 
 document about among the college men. Enough 
 money was raised to carry the poor fellow through 
 his college course, 
 
"For some reason or other," says his cousin John 
 Owen, the poet never liked to speak of this act of 
 his earlier career. He and I have talked about it, 
 to be sure; but one day he suggested that the sub 
 ject be forever dropped. It was one of his peculiar 
 habits always to be doing some one a favor, and 
 to wish that it be kept a profound secret. " 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE YOUNG PROFESSOR 
 
 When Longfellow graduated from college he 
 was a young man of nineteen, slender, well built, 
 and graceful. He had blue eyes and light-brown 
 hair which he wore rather heavy about his head. 
 In his dress he was somewhat fastidious, and after 
 ward certain people were inclined to make fun of his 
 variety of neckties and light vests. But he always 
 showed the best of taste. 
 
 His father wished him to be a lawyer. But in 
 the year that he graduated a new professorship 
 
92 
 
 was founded at Bowdoin, the professorship of 
 modern languages, and he was chosen to fill it. 
 Before that, Latin and Greek had been considered 
 the only languages worth studying. But French, 
 German, Italian, and Spanish were demanding 
 attention. 
 
 The story is that, while a student in college, 
 Longfellow had written a metrical translation of 
 one of Horace s odes, which he had read at a gen 
 eral examination. One of the examiners, the 
 Hon. Benjamin Orr, a distinguished lawyer of 
 Maine, was greatly struck with this translation, 
 which seemed to him especially beautiful. He 
 was one of the board of trustees, and when the 
 new professorship was created he nominated the 
 future poet, speaking of this translation as evi 
 dence of his ability to fill the position. 
 
 Longfellow was only nineteen years old, and the 
 proposition came to him as a great surprise. As a 
 preparation he was to be allowed to spend three 
 years in Europe. By this time he was anxious to 
 enter a literary career, and this seemed to be just 
 the chance. His father consented and he pre- 
 
93 
 
 pared to set out for Europe, though he did not 
 start until the following spring. 
 
 What his experiences were abroad, you may 
 learn by reading Outre-Mer. " This book is 
 partly a story, but in reality it describes Long 
 fellow s journeyings through Germany, France, 
 Italy, and Spain. He went from New York on a 
 slow sailing vessel ; but his trip was a pleasant one, 
 and he seemed always to be lucky, as he was 
 through life. 
 
 At last, at twenty-two, he found himself a pro 
 fessor in Bowdoin College, and quite a distin 
 guished young man. His April Day " and 
 * Woods in Winter, " two short poems, had been 
 copied in many newspapers, and had even got 
 into the reading books of that day. His name 
 was not attached to any of these, and no one 
 thought of him as a great poet. It must be re 
 membered that teaching was hereafter the business 
 of his life; and a very faithful teacher he was. 
 Up to this time, and for long afterward, he did 
 not receive any money whatever for his poetry, 
 though occasionally some was promised him. 
 
94 
 
 He studied very hard. He knew German thor 
 oughly well, and also French, Italian, Spanish, 
 Swedish, Finnish, and even something of other 
 modern languages. In those days people knew 
 very little about these languages, and few sup 
 posed they had literature that was worth any 
 thing. Longfellow became a great scholar in 
 them, however, and translated poetry from nearly 
 all of them. If you look in his complete works you 
 will find a great many poems marked as transla 
 tions from German, or Spanish, or Swedish, or 
 some other language. Many of these were printed 
 in learned essays which he wrote and published 
 in the North American Review. 
 
 He was very popular as a teacher. He seemed 
 to, the boys like one of themselves, and he was very 
 sympathetic with them. Yet they all respected 
 him, and treated him politely. They thought that 
 he would some time be a famous man, and yet it 
 seemed more as if he would be a great scholar, 
 than a popular poet whom everybody, boys and 
 girls as well as grown-up people, could under 
 stand and like. 
 
95 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE "BEING BEAUTEOUS" 
 
 When he had been a professor at Bowdoin Col 
 lege but little over a year, Longfellow married a 
 young lady named Mary Storer Potter. She was 
 the daughter of a well-known judge who lived in 
 Portland, and was something of a scholar too. It 
 is said she was especially fond of mathematics, 
 and had been taught to calculate eclipses. In 
 those days girls were sent to school very little, 
 and none of them ever went to college. The old 
 Puritan fathers thought girls were better off at 
 home doing housework. But Longfellow s wife 
 was more fortunate. 
 
 She was at the same time good-looking and very 
 pleasant to every one, and so the young professor 
 and his young wife were invited about a great deal, 
 and everybody thought them a very happy pair. 
 
 They were very happy together for two or three 
 years; then Longfellow was asked to go to Har 
 vard College to be professor of modern languages 
 there. To prepare for this new and more promi- 
 
9 6 
 
 nent position he went to Europe again. Of course 
 his wife went with him. They traveled about for 
 some time; but she was not well, and finally she 
 died. 
 
 Most of the poem entitled " Footsteps of Angels " 
 is about her, and it shows just what he thought of 
 her. It is worth remembering that this is the 
 poet s own real wife who died when they were both 
 quite young. Here is a part of the poem. The 
 last stanzas refer to her. 
 
 When the hours of day are numbered, 
 
 And the voices of the Night 
 Wake the better soul, that slumbered, 
 
 To a holy, calm delight ; 
 
 Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
 And, like phantoms grim and tall, 
 
 Shadows from the fitful firelight 
 Dance upon the parlor wall ; 
 
 Then the forms of the departed 
 
 Enter at the open door; 
 The beloved, the true-hearted, 
 
 Come to visit me once more; 
 
97 
 
 And with them the Being Beauteous, 
 Who unto my youth was given, 
 
 More than all things else to love me, 
 And is now a saint in heaven. 
 
 With a slow and noiseless footstep 
 Comes that messenger divine, 
 
 Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
 Lays her gentle hand in mine. 
 
 And she sits and gazes at me, 
 With those deep and tender eyes, 
 
 Like the stars, so still and saint-like, 
 Looking downward from the skies. 
 
 Uttered not, yet comprehended, 
 Is the spirit s voiceless prayer, 
 
 Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 
 Breathing from her lips of air. 
 
 Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, 
 All my fears are laid aside, 
 
 If I but remember only 
 
 Such as these have lived and died! 
 
9 8 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CRAIGIE HOUSE 
 
 Longfellow came back from Europe and was 
 installed as professor of modern languages and 
 belles-lettres at Harvard College, in the beautiful 
 town of Cambridge, two miles from Boston. Soon 
 after he began his life there he went to live at the 
 Craigie House, which has become so famous as the 
 home of Longfellow that it deserves a little descrip 
 tion. 
 
 It will be remembered that Longfellow was now 
 a widower without children, his wife having died 
 during his second journey to Europe. When he 
 came to settle in Cambridge he was attracted by 
 the spacious rooms and the quiet and aristocratic 
 air of the Craigie House, famous as the head 
 quarters of Washington when he was in Cambridge 
 as commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary 
 War. George William Curtis has told the story 
 of Longfellow s first visit to this house and how he 
 came to live there, and we give it here very nearly 
 in Mr. Curtis s own words. 
 
99 
 
 In the summer of 1 83 7, a young man passed down 
 the elm-shaded walk that separated the old Craigie 
 House from the high road. Reaching the door he 
 paused to observe the huge old-fashioned brass 
 knocker and the quaint handle, relics, evidently, 
 of an epoch of colonial state. To his mind, how 
 ever, the house, and these signs of its age, were 
 not interesting from the romance of antiquity 
 alone, but from their association with the early days 
 of our Revolution, when General Washington, 
 after the battle of Bunker Hill, had his headquar 
 ters in the mansion. Had his hand, perhaps, lifted 
 the same latch, lingering, as he pressed it, in a 
 whirl of myriad emotions? Had he, too, paused 
 in the calm summer afternoon, and watched the 
 silver gleam of the broad river in the meadows, 
 the dreamy blue of the Milton hills beyond? And 
 had the tranquillity of that landscape penetrated 
 his heart with "the sleep that is among the hills," 
 and whose fairest dream to him was a hope now 
 realized in the peaceful prosperity of his country? 
 
 He was ushered in and found himself face to 
 face with Mrs. Craigie, a good old lady who had 
 
IOO 
 
 seen better days. He asked if there was a room 
 vacant in the house. 
 
 "I lodge no students, " was her reply. Long 
 fellow was so young-looking she took him to be 
 a student. 
 
 "I am not a student," answered the visitor, "but 
 a professor in the university. " 
 
 "A professor?" she inquired. She thought a 
 professor ought to be dressed like a clergyman. 
 
 "Professor Longfellow," continued the guest, 
 introducing himself. 
 
 "Ah! that is different," said the lady, her 
 features slightly relaxing, as if professors were 
 naturally harmless and she need no longer barri 
 cade herself behind a stern gravity of demeanor. 
 "I will show you what there is." 
 
 She preceded the professor upstairs, and going 
 down the hall she stopped at each door, opened it, 
 permitted him to perceive its delightful fitness for 
 his purpose, then quietly closed the door, observ 
 ing, "You cannot have that." The professorial 
 eyes glanced restlessly around the fine old-fashioned 
 points of the mansion, marked the wooden carvings, 
 
IOI 
 
 the air of opulent respectability in the past, which 
 corresponds in New England to the impression of 
 ancient nobility in Old England, and wondered if 
 he were not to be permitted to have a room at all. 
 The old lady at length opened the door of the 
 southeast corner room in the second story; and 
 while the guest looked wistfully in and awaited 
 the customary You cannot have that," he was 
 agreeably surprised by hearing that he might 
 have it. 
 
 The room was upon the front of the house and 
 overlooked the meadows to the river. It had an 
 atmosphere of fascinating repose, in which the 
 young man at once felt at home. 
 
 "This, "said the lady, " was Washington s cham 
 ber." 
 
 Here Longfellow lived for the rest of his life. 
 He was merely a lodger in one of the rooms until 
 he married the second time, six years after first 
 going there. On his marriage his wife s father, Mr. 
 Nathan Appleton, who was a rich old gentleman, 
 bought the house and gave it to him as a wedding 
 present, and also gave him the lot opposite, so 
 
IO2 
 
 that no one should ever build a house that would 
 shut off his view of the river Charles. 
 
 It was the view from the front of this house that 
 inspired the poet to write that beautiful poem, "To 
 the River Charles." How sweet and suggestive 
 the opening verses, which note that he wrote the 
 poem four years after he moved into the Craigie 
 House ! 
 
 River! that in silence windest 
 
 Through the meadows, bright and free, 
 
 Till at length thy rest thou findest 
 In the bosom of the sea ! 
 
 Four long years of mingled feeling, 
 
 Half in rest, and half in strife, 
 I have seen thy waters stealing 
 
 Onward, like the stream of life. 
 
 Thou hast taught me, Silent River! 
 
 Many a lesson, deep and long; 
 Thou hast been a generous giver ; 
 
 I can give thee but a song. 
 
 It may be said that Joseph Worcester, who 
 wrote Worcester s Dictionary, had once lived in 
 this house, and Miss Sally Lowell, an aunt of 
 
103 
 
 James Russell Lowell, as well as Jared Sparks, who 
 wrote a great life of Washington and was president 
 of Harvard College. Mr. Sparks and Edward 
 Everett both brought their wives there when they 
 were married. 
 
 It seemed that Longfellow was always getting 
 into famous houses. When he was at Bowdoin 
 College he lived in the house in which " Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin " was afterward written. It is said that 
 Talleyrand, the famous French diplomat, and the 
 Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria s father, had been 
 entertained at dinner at the Craigie House when it 
 belonged to the original owner, Colonel John Vassal. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FIVE OF CLUBS 
 
 Now began the finest years of Longfellow s life. 
 It was in the early years at the Craigie House that 
 he wrote the Psalm of Life " and most of his 
 other world-famous and world-loved poems, and it 
 was here that he enjoyed his best friendships, 
 
104 
 
 When he first came to Cambridge to see about 
 accepting the professorship, he was introduced to 
 Charles Sumner, the great lawyer, orator, and 
 statesman, then a young man beginning to prac 
 tice law in Boston. The introduction took place in 
 Professor Felton s rooms, who was also about the 
 same age, that is, under thirty, and who as a Greek 
 scholar and the writer of Greek textbooks has 
 become famous. Felton was a big, good-natured 
 fellow; and he and Charles Sumner at once took a 
 fancy to Longfellow. As soon as the poet was 
 settled in his new home a club was formed, con 
 sisting of Longfellow, Sumner, Felton, George S. 
 Hillard ( Sumner s law partner), and Henry R. 
 Cleveland, who was also a teacher. These five, 
 who called themselves " The Five of Clubs, " met 
 usually every Saturday afternoon in Longfellow s 
 room, sometimes in Felton s, and occasionally in the 
 law offices of Sumner and Hillard in Boston. 
 They were all ambitious, all good fellows who 
 met for a feast of reason, " but who nevertheless 
 knew how to have a royal good time. These meet 
 ings were kept up regularly for several years. 
 
It was about this time that Longfellow s friend 
 ship for Hawthorne began. 
 
 There were many other famous people here, 
 too, with whom Longfellow formed life-long friend 
 ships. Holmes was becoming known as a young 
 poet as well as medical professor in Harvard Col 
 lege, and Lowell, then a boy, was soon to come 
 upon the scene, and at last to take Longfellow s 
 professorship when Longfellow should resign. 
 
 Charles Sumner was destined to be one of the 
 great antislavery agitators, and it was chiefly to 
 his influence that we owe Longfellow s poems on 
 slavery. Longfellow was not of a very fiery nature. 
 He did not get excited even in those hot times 
 before the war, and Sumner had to urge him a 
 long time before he composed the poems entitled 
 "The Slave s Dream," "The Slave in the Dismal 
 Swamp," and others on slavery. 
 
 Emerson was also one of his friends, and so 
 were several others among those who started the 
 Brook Farm experiment. These people had taken a 
 farm, and all had gone to live together on it, each 
 doing a little work, and all doing a great deal of 
 
io6 
 
 talking. Some of Emerson s friends rather disliked 
 Longfellow because he took no interest in this 
 scheme, which proved a terrible failure. While 
 he was intimate with the Brook Farm people, and 
 always friendly as far as listening to them was con 
 cerned, he kept on the even tenor of his ways quite 
 unmoved by their arguments. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LONGFELLOW BECOMES A FAMOUS POET 
 
 When Longfellow went to live in Cambridge he 
 was just thirty years old. He had not then writ 
 ten any of the poems that are famous to-day, but 
 he began at once to produce most of those that we 
 love best. A good many of them were sent to the 
 Knickerbocker Magazine. One of them was the 
 Psalm of Life, " for which he was promised 
 five dollars, which, however, was never paid. him. 
 A poem then called * Floral Astrology, " but now 
 known as ( Flowers, " was the first to have his full 
 
name attached ( Harvard College, H. W. Long 
 fellow." The Psalm of Life" was signed sim 
 ply L. " Both of these poems and The Reaper 
 and the Flowers " ( published in the same magazine 
 in the same way, at the same price, which was 
 never paid) had been copied into hundreds of news 
 papers and were public favorites without the author s 
 being in the least known. His friends knew 
 Longfellow wrote the poems, but the public did 
 not. 
 
 His cousin, John Owen, kept a bookstore in 
 Cambridge. One day Owen went to him and told 
 him he ought to have some of his poems printed 
 in a little volume, and with his name. Longfellow 
 objected to having his name appear, though he 
 thought it might be a good idea to have the poems 
 published if a publisher could be found. His 
 cousin said he should like to publish them; to this 
 Longfellow assented, but for some time refused 
 to have his name appear. At last he said, Well, 
 bring them out in your own way!" That meant, 
 with his name on the title page. 
 
 That little volume, entitled " Voices of the 
 
io8 
 
 Night," and including the poems still printed in 
 Longfellow s collected works under that title, was 
 published in 1839, when Longfellow was thirty-two 
 years old. It contained the " Psalm of Life," 
 The Reaper and the Flowers," "The Light of 
 Stars, " Footsteps of Angels, " < < Flowers, " The 
 Beleaguered City," and "Midnight Mass to the 
 Dying Year." There were also some transla 
 tions, and a few of the poems he had published 
 while in college. 
 
 That book made Longfellow famous as a poet. 
 A few critics found fault with it, but not many, and 
 hundreds of others liked it and praised it. Long 
 fellow himself tells a pretty story of the Psalm 
 of Life." (< I was once riding in London," said he, 
 when a laborer approached the carriage and 
 asked, Are you the writer of the Psalm of 
 Life?" I am. Will you allow me to shake 
 hands with you? We clasped hands warmly. 
 The carriage passed on, and I saw him no more; 
 but I remember that as one of the most gratifying 
 compliments I ever received, because it was so 
 sincere." 
 
109 
 
 In a published letter from Charles Sumner, there 
 is another touching story of the power this wonder 
 ful poem possesses over men. 
 
 A man who had been very unlucky, an old class 
 mate of Sumner s, went to his office to prove some 
 debts in bankruptcy. Sumner asked him what he 
 read. He replied that he read very little; that he 
 hardly found anything that was written from the 
 heart and was really true. Have you read Long 
 fellow s Hyperion?" Sumner asked him. "Yes," 
 he replied, and I admire it very much ; I think 
 it a very great book." He then added in a very 
 solemn manner, I think I may say that Longfel 
 low s Psalm of Life saved me from suicide. I 
 first found it on a scrap of newspaper, in the 
 hands of two Irish women, soiled and worn ; and I 
 was at once touched by it. " 
 
 The Chinese translator and noted scholar, Tung 
 Tajen, a great admirer of Longfellow, sent the 
 poet a Chinese fan, upon which was inscribed in 
 Chinese characters a translation of the Psalm of 
 Life." The fan is one of the folding kind, and the 
 characters are inscribed on it in vertical columns. 
 
no 
 
 An Englishman serving on the staff of the Amer 
 ican minister in China found this beautiful poem 
 in Chinese and translated it back into English, not 
 knowing that it had been written originally in Eng 
 lish. Here is a verse of the translation he made. 
 You will scarcely recognize the familiar 
 
 Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
 ! Life is but an empty dream ! 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 And things are not what they seem. 
 
 AS TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE. 
 
 Do not manifest your discontent in a piece of verse : 
 
 A hundred years (of life) are, in truth, as one asleep (so 
 
 soon are they gone) ; 
 The short dream (early death), the long dream (death 
 
 after long life), alike are dreams (so little is the 
 
 body concerned ; after death) 
 There still remains the spirit (which is able to) fill the 
 
 universe. 
 
 The words in parenthesis were not in the Chinese 
 and the translator supplied them to complete the 
 sense in English. 
 
Ill 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW SOME OF THE GREAT POEMS WERE WRITTEN 
 
 We have already often spoken of the * Psalm of 
 Life, " perhaps the greatest poem Longfellow ever 
 wrote. He composed it in his room at the Craigie 
 House, which had been Washington s chamber. 
 The death of his young wife had afflicted him 
 deeply, and one day as he sat between two win 
 dows, looking sadly out, this poem came into his 
 mind and he wrote it. For a long time no one 
 knew of its existence, and it was not until many 
 months later that he sent it to be published. "The 
 Reaper and the Flowers" was written in much the 
 same way, and "The Light of Stars" was com 
 posed on a serene and beautiful summer evening, 
 exactly suggestive of the poem. 
 
 Longfellow himself tells how "The Wreck of 
 the Hesperus" was written. Says he: 
 
 This is one of the poems which I like to recall. 
 It floats in my mind again and again, whenever I 
 read of some of our frightful storms on the coast. 
 Away back in the year when the Voices of the 
 
I 12 
 
 Night was published, in the closing month of the 
 year, the New England coast was lashed by a 
 terrible tempest: and there were numerous ship 
 wrecks recorded. I remember reading in the 
 newspapers one day of the loss of a schooner on 
 the reef of Norman s Woe, called The Hesperus. 
 Norman s Woe is, as you are aware, a frowning 
 mass of rocks, surrounded by the ocean, not far 
 from Gloucester. It occurred to me to write a 
 ballad, which I did some days afterwards, while I 
 was sitting alone one night by the fire in the room 
 above." 
 
 The fact is, after writing part of it he went to 
 bed, and being unable to sleep, got up and wrote 
 the remainder. 
 
 "Excelsior" probably stands next to the "Psalm 
 of Life" as a popular favorite. One evening, also 
 in that chamber of Washington s at the Craigie 
 House, after he had been at a party, Longfellow 
 caught sight of this word on a torn piece of news 
 paper. Lying near was a letter from Charles 
 Sumner, and immediately he began to write on the 
 back of this, crowding the stanzas in as best he 
 
"3 
 
 could. Later he carefully rewrote the poem, and 
 changed it in many parts. The next time Sumner 
 visited the Craigie House he was shown the letter, 
 and he asked to have it back. Longfellow gave it 
 him, and Sumner always kept it as a treasure. When 
 he died he left it by will to Harvard College. 
 
 Once in answer to a letter Longfellow gave the 
 following explanation of the meaning of the 
 poem: 
 
 My intention in writing it was no more than to 
 display, in a series of pictures, the life of a man of 
 genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all 
 fears, heedless of all warnings, and pressing right 
 on to accomplish his purpose. His motto is Ex 
 celsior higher. He passes through the Alpine 
 village, through the rough, cold paths of the world, 
 where the peasants cannot understand him, and 
 where his watchword is an unknown tongue. He 
 disregards the happiness of domestic peace, and 
 sees the glaciers his fate before him. He dis 
 regards the warnings of the old man s wisdom and 
 the fascinations of woman s love. He answers to 
 all, Higher yet! The monks of St. Bernard are 
 
the representatives of religious forms and cere 
 monies; and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles 
 the sound of his voice, telling them there is some 
 thing higher than forms or ceremonies. Filled 
 with these aspirations, he pushes forward; and the 
 voice heard in the air is the promise of immortality 
 and progress ever upward, without having reached 
 the perfection he longed for." 
 
 "The Village Blacksmith" is another poem with 
 a history. It will be remembered that we have 
 already said that Longfellow s great-grandfather 
 was a blacksmith. The village smithy" under 
 a spreading chestnut tree " the one about which 
 Longfellow wrote the poem, though his grandfather 
 was never there stood on Brattle Street, in Cam 
 bridge. After a time it had to be removed. Some 
 of the branches were cut off the chestnut tree, 
 that a dwelling-house might be put up, and it 
 then looked so ugly that the town authorities 
 ordered it to be cut down. 
 
 This made Longfellow feel very sad. The year 
 before he made a sketch of the shop and the tree, 
 just as they stood, and this rough sketch has been 
 
"5 
 
 published. On the morning the tree was cut down, 
 every one crowded out to see the choppers at work, 
 and gaze at the tree as it tumbled over. 
 
 On his seventy-second birthday the children of 
 Cambridge presented Longfellow with an arm-chair 
 made out of the wood of the old chestnut tree. It 
 was a handsome chair, jet black and finely carved 
 with horse chestnuts and leaves. Inscribed around 
 it was a verse from the poem: 
 
 And children coming home from school 
 
 Look in at the open door; 
 They love to see the flaming forge, 
 
 And hear the bellows roar, 
 And catch the burning sparks that fly 
 
 Like chaff from a threshing-floor. 
 
 The chair was upholstered in green leather, and 
 there was a brass plate under the cushion, on which 
 was inscribed: 
 
 <( To the author of ( The Village Blacksmith, 
 this chair, made from the wood of the spreading 
 chestnut tree, is presented as an expression of grate 
 ful regard and veneration by the children of Cam- 
 
n6 
 
 bridge, who, with their friends, join in the best 
 wishes and congratulations on this anniversary, 
 Feb. 27, 1879" 
 
 Longfellow was very much pleased by this and 
 wrote a poem to the children, entitled From My 
 Arm-chair." You may read it in any volume of 
 his poems. 
 
 One more poem of which we must speak is 
 The Skeleton in Armor. " Said Longfellow once, 
 This ballad was suggested to me while riding on 
 the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous 
 a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in 
 broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred 
 to me of connecting it with the round tower at 
 Newport, generally known, hitherto, as the Old 
 Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as 
 a work of their early ancestors. " 
 
 When the poem was written some of Longfel 
 low s friends, probably the members of that * Five 
 of Clubs," thought it was beneath his dignity; but 
 others were so enthusiastic about it that when one 
 of them read it aloud to him very appreciatively 
 he sprang to his feet and embraced him, and paid 
 
no more attention to the criticisms. He was think 
 ing about the subject, after his visit to the skeleton 
 that had been dug up, for more than a year before 
 the poem flashed into his mind. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE POET S SECOND MARRIAGE 
 
 You will remember that at the time his first 
 wife died Longfellow was in Holland. For a long 
 time after that he kept very much secluded, and 
 in the Footsteps of Angels " we have seen how 
 deeply the thought of his first wife was impressed 
 on his memory. But while he was traveling in 
 Switzerland the year after her death, he met Mr. 
 Nathan Appleton, a rich man of Boston who was 
 traveling with his family. His daughter Frances 
 Elizabeth was very beautiful and had many admir 
 ers. Perhaps Longfellow fell in love with her then, 
 but if he did, it was doubtless because she seemed 
 very cold toward him. 
 
u8 
 
 When he got back to Cambridge and was set 
 tled in the Craigie House, he wrote a sort of novel 
 entitled " Hyperion," which, like (< Outre-Mer", 
 described his journeyings in Europe, but which 
 also had a romantic love story, in which most 
 people thought that the hero, Paul Flemming, a 
 young American man of letters, was Longfellow 
 himself and the heroine, Mary Ashburton, was 
 Miss Appleton. In the story, Mary Ashburton 
 refused Paul Flemming s offer of marriage. It is 
 not probable, however, that Longfellow said any 
 thing about love at that time; but when the novel 
 was published and became popular it was whis 
 pered about that the young lady was very indignant. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Appletons and Longfellow had 
 had a very pleasant time together in Europe. 
 Once they stopped at the hotel called The 
 Raven." It was in the town of Zurich. First 
 Mr. Appleton wrote his name in the register with 
 some compliment to the house. Then the land 
 lord presented a very long bill, which made Mr. 
 Appleton angry and he was vexed because he had 
 written something complimentary to the house. 
 
H9 
 
 But I have not written my name, " said Mr. 
 Longfellow; "and, if you will allow me, I will 
 treat the innkeeper as he deserves. " 
 
 He took the register, and this is what he wrote 
 in it: 
 
 Beware of the Raven of Zurich! 
 
 Tis a bird of omen ill, 
 With a noisy and unclean nest, 
 And a very, very long bill. 
 
 Longfellow went home first, and for six or seven 
 years lived, as we have seen, in Cambridge; but 
 later he often visited Pittsfield, where the Apple- 
 ton summer mansion was and where Miss Frances 
 Elizabeth was staying, and there she finally con 
 sented to be his wife. They were married, and 
 Mr. Appleton bought the Craigie House and pre 
 sented it to them to keep house in. 
 
 Longfellow had five children, two sons and 
 three daughters. When the Appletons lived at 
 Lynn, one of the sons, Charles, was tipped over 
 while in a sailboat and of course got soaking wet. 
 In place of his shoes Mr. Appleton gave him a 
 pair of old slippers. Longfellow returned them 
 
I2O 
 
 later with this parody of his own "Psalm of 
 Life " : 
 
 Slippers that perhaps another, 
 
 Sailing o er the Bay of Lynn, 
 A forlorn or shipwrecked nephew, 
 
 Seeing, may purloin again. 
 
 His daughters, who became the comfort of his 
 old age, are beautifully referred to in the poem 
 called "The Children s Hour" : 
 
 I hear in the chamber above me 
 
 The patter of little feet, 
 The sound of a door that is opened, 
 
 And voices soft and sweet. 
 
 From my study I see in the lamp light, 
 
 Descending the broad hall stair, 
 Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 
 
 And Edith with golden hair. 
 
 In 1 86 1, twenty years before the poet himself 
 died, Mrs. Longfellow was burned to death. She 
 was sitting at her library table amusing her two 
 youngest children by making seals. A bit of the 
 burning wax fell on her light gauze dress, which 
 was in a moment all aflame. She cried out, and 
 
121 
 
 Longfellow came running from the next room and 
 threw a rug about her; but she was so burned that 
 she soon died, though several doctors came almost 
 immediately. Longfellow himself was also fright 
 fully burned, but not dangerously. 
 
 This, and the death of his other wife, were the 
 two great sorrows of his life. Except for these 
 two misfortunes, it would seem as though he were 
 always fortunate, living, as it were, in a bed of 
 roses always successful, never poor, never discon 
 tented with his lot. But after the death of his 
 second wife he was very gloomy for a long time. 
 
 It may be said that the sadness of the deaths 
 of both wives made him write some of his best 
 poems. 
 
 Three years after the death of Mrs. Longfellow, 
 Hawthorne died. 
 
 Longfellow wrote a beautiful poem called l Haw 
 thorne," which closes with this stanza: 
 
 Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic power, 
 
 And the lost clew regain? 
 The unfinished window in Aladdin s tower ? 
 
 Unfinished must remain , 
 
122 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 EVANGELINE, HIAWATHA, AND THE COURTSHIP 
 OF MILES STANDISH 
 
 After his first marriage we have seen that Long 
 fellow wrote his most famous short poems. After 
 his second marriage he wrote his most famous long 
 poems. The first was Evangeline. " It was 
 published in 1847, four years after his marriage; 
 but he had been a long time writing it. He once 
 wrote, I had the fever burning a long time in my 
 brain before I let my hero take it. * Evangeline 
 is so easy for you to read, because it was so hard 
 for me to write." 
 
 The story of the Acadians is a familiar one. 
 Acadia was the French name for Nova Scotia. 
 But after the French had settled there the English 
 claimed the land as having been discovered by 
 John Cabot. There was much fighting between 
 the French and English over the disputed ground, 
 and finally the English made a settlement of their 
 own at Halifax ; but the country villages were 
 made up mostly of the French. At last the rights 
 
I2 3 
 
 of the English to the territory were acknowledged 
 by the French government; but in the treaty that 
 was made it was provided that the French settlers 
 should not be obliged to pay taxes or take up arms 
 against their fellow Frenchmen. Most of them 
 also refused to take the customary oath of alle 
 giance to the King of England. 
 
 To make up for the loss of this territory the 
 French erected fortifications at Louisburg and 
 Cape Breton, and they encouraged the Indians to 
 keep up a raiding warfare on the English settle 
 ments. In this border warfare the English 
 claimed that the French neutrals " (as the 
 Acadians were called) acted as spies and stirred up 
 the Indians to revenge. 
 
 At last in 1755, a few years before the Ameri 
 can Revolution, the colony of Massachusetts pro 
 posed an expedition against Acadia, and the British 
 government fitted it out, They captured the 
 neighboring French forts, and all the American 
 people rejoiced at the easy victory. Then came 
 the question, What should they do with those 
 treacherous " neutrals, " who were British subjects 
 
124 
 
 though they would not swear allegiance to Great 
 Britain, and in heart and act remained loyal to 
 France after France had been beaten off the 
 ground. 
 
 Scatter them through all the British colonies! " 
 ordered the governor. 
 
 Accordingly, eighteen thousand of them were 
 shipped off wherever it happened to be convenient 
 to send them, and in such haste that families were 
 separated, mothers and children parted, lovers torn 
 from each other, and all thrown into a new world 
 without money or property of any kind; for their 
 houses and barns were burned, their crops de 
 stroyed, their money and goods confiscated. It 
 was a horrible retribution for a very natural and 
 simple-mined loyalty to their own native land 
 and government. 
 
 A friend of Hawthorne s heard a story of a young 
 couple who were about to be married on the day 
 the proclamation was made; but as the young men 
 were separated from their friends and families to 
 prevent their taking up arms for their defense, the 
 two were sent to different colonies, and spent the 
 
12 
 
 rest of their lives in a vain search for each other. 
 At last they meet in a hospital, where the hero is 
 dying. The story was offered to Hawthorne for a 
 novel, but he did not care for it. One day when 
 the friend, Hawthorne, and Longfellow were dining 
 together, the story was told again to Longfellow 
 and he was very much touched by it, especially by 
 the constancy of the heroine. 
 
 If you are not going to use it for a novel, 
 give it to me for a poem," said Longfellow; and 
 Hawthorne gladly consented. 
 
 The heroine of the poem was at first called 
 Gabrielle; and the poet located the scene of the 
 climax at a poorhouse in Philadelphia, with the 
 charming surroundings of which he had been fas 
 cinated years before. While waiting for the 
 sailing of the packet for Europe at the time of his 
 first voyage, he wandered up Spruce street, where 
 his attention was attracted to a large building with 
 trees about it, inside of a high enclosure. He 
 walked along to the great gate and stepped inside. 
 The charming picture of a lawn, flower beds, and 
 shade which it presented made an impression 
 
126 
 
 which never left him. When twenty-four years 
 afterward he came to write Evangeline, " he 
 located the final scene at this poorhouse, and the 
 burial in an old Catholic graveyard not far away, 
 which he had found by chance on another walk at 
 the same period. 
 
 His next great poem was Hiawatha. " For ten 
 years Longfellow had been thinking about writing an 
 Indian poem. At last a young man who had been 
 a pupil in one of his classes came back from the 
 West, where he had been living among the Indians. 
 One day while he was dining with the poet, he 
 told many of his experiences among the red men. 
 Longfellow was very much impressed, and looked 
 about for a book where he might read old Indian 
 legends. He found that a Mr. Schoolcraft had 
 published such a book, entitled Algic Researches. " 
 For three years, he says, he read and reread this 
 volume. At last he began to write, and composed 
 nearly five hundred lines, when he changed 
 his mind and destroyed what he had written. 
 He began again and continued writing to the 
 end. 
 
127 
 
 When Hiawatha " was published, some critics 
 claimed that it was stolen from a Finnish poem, 
 and a great many people said unpleasant things 
 about it. Already Poe had written very un 
 kindly of " Evangeline," as he seemed to be jeal 
 ous of Longfellow s success. But both Evange 
 line" and " Hiawatha" soon became immensely 
 popular, thousands of copies being sold and 
 read. 
 
 Two years after "Hiawatha" appeared, the 
 Atlantic Monthly was started. Longfellow, 
 Holmes, Whittier, Emerson, Prescott and others, 
 were called together at a dinner, and Lowell was 
 chosen editor of the magazine. After the period 
 ical was started and became so famous, the men 
 who wrote for it met regularly once a month at a 
 dinner. Longfellow was a contributor and an 
 attendant at the dinners for a long time. 
 
 The year after the Atlantic Monthly was 
 started, The Courtship of Miles Standish " was 
 published as a little volume. The poem professes 
 to be a love poem, but the love is not so warm and 
 sincere as that in the songs of Robert Burns. 
 
128 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE GOOD OLD MAN 
 
 Longfellow was one of the best-natured men in 
 the world. He was always pleasant and obliging 
 to everybody who came to see him. He wrote 
 his autograph for all the children who asked 
 him. Once there was a school celebration in his 
 honor. He was present and made a beautiful little 
 speech, in which, among other things, he thanked 
 the children of Cambridge for the arm-chair. 
 When the exercises were over the children crowded 
 about him and he wrote his name in their albums 
 until he could write no more, his hand was so tired. 
 But he told those who had not got his autograph 
 that he would write it for them if they would come 
 around to his house. 
 
 Many children went to see him on other occa 
 sions, and he was always very kind to them. Every 
 body loved him. 
 
 We have mentioned many of the men who were 
 his friends. Another was Professor Agassiz, the 
 great scientist and professor at Harvard College, 
 
129 
 
 who was a warm and intimate friend of Longfel 
 low s. 
 
 After a time these friends began, one by one, to 
 die. Agassiz died, Sumner died, and a number of 
 others. Hawthorne had died some years before. 
 
 Longfellow lived a sad life after the terrible acci 
 dent that killed his wife, and was getting to be a 
 very old man. Every one tried to honor him. He 
 knew that he was accounted the greatest poet 
 America had produced. His sons and daughters 
 were about him and took excellent care of him. 
 Nevertheless, he began to weary of life a little, 
 and longed to join the dear ones who had gone 
 before. 
 
 It is autumn ; not without, 
 
 But within me is the cold. 
 Youth and spring are all about ; 
 It is I that have grown old. 
 
 He still wrote many beautiful poems, such as 
 the "Tales of a Wayside Inn," "Keramos, " and 
 others. He even wrote a poem on the death of 
 Garfield a short time before he himself died. But 
 none of these poems became as famous as those he 
 
130 
 
 had written in earlier years in the prime of his 
 manhood. 
 
 At last, on the 24th of March, 1882, he died, and 
 the whole country went into mourning for him. 
 
 His soul to him who gave it rose; 
 God lead it to its long repose, 
 
 Its glorious rest! 
 
 And though the poet s sun has set, 
 Its light shall linger round us yet, 
 
 Bright, radiant, blest. 
 
 NOTE. The thanks of the publishers are due Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 for their kind permission to use selections from the copyrighted works of I,ong- 
 fellow. 
 
THE STORY OF 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
WHITTIER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME 
 
 The Quaker of the olden time ! 
 
 How calm and firm and true, 
 Unspotted by its wrong and crime, 
 
 He walked the dark earth through! 
 
 The Quaker, with his broad-brimmed hat, his 
 queer, old-fashioned coat, and his habit of saying 
 "thee must" and "thee must not, "was not only 
 an honest man, but a good-natured, sensible 
 man as well. The poet Whittier was a good 
 Quaker, as "calm and firm and true" as the 
 Quaker in his poem. He was also fond of children, 
 and his best poems are about children and child 
 hood days. 
 
 It is only a little over two hundred years since 
 the first Quakers appeared. Whittier s great-great- 
 
 133 
 
134 
 
 grandfather, Thomas Whittier, was said to be a 
 Huguenot by descent. He came from England, 
 however, as a Puritan, and held various offices in 
 the Puritan church in Salisbury and Haverhill, in 
 northeastern Massachusetts, where he settled. 
 
 It happened that two Quakers, Joseph Peasley 
 and Thomas Macy, who had come to Haverhill, 
 were arrested and fined for "exhorting" on the 
 Lord s day. They did it in their own houses; but 
 in those Puritan times, all the exhorting had to 
 be done in church by regular ministers. Thomas 
 Whittier thought these men had been treated rather 
 unjustly, and he and others petitioned the legis 
 lature, or General Court, to pardon them. But the 
 old Puritans thought these petitioners about as bad 
 as the heretics" themselves, as the Quakers were 
 regarded, and notified them that they must take 
 back their petition or be punished. Thomas Whit 
 tier and Christopher Hussey, though not Quakers, 
 refused, and were deprived of their right to vote, 
 or, as it was called, "their rights as freemen." 
 
 Thomas Whittier was such a good, sensible man, 
 however, that the people, although he was sus- 
 
pended from voting, had to ask him to help them do 
 various things in the church; and after a while the 
 General Court restored his rights as a freeman. " 
 He himself never became a Quaker, but his son 
 married a daughter of Joseph Peasley, and so most 
 of the Whittiers after that were Quakers. Yet 
 there were some who were not; for history tells of 
 a Colonel Whittier about the time of the Revolu 
 tion. He could not have been a Quaker, for no 
 good Quaker ever goes into the army. 
 
 The Quakers are a peculiar people. They do 
 not believe in fighting or going to war on any 
 account. They are always for peace. The poet 
 Whittier was opposed to war, and often wrote 
 against it; and he refused to favor the Civil War, 
 which freed the slaves, although he had himself 
 been for many years a great anti-slavery reformer, 
 along with his friend William Lloyd Garrison. But 
 he admits that he had a sort of diabolical liking for 
 the army and war, and once he wrote a war poem 
 and had it published anonymously. He thought 
 no one would ever know who wrote it, for it didn t 
 ound much like a Quaker; but when he had 
 
136 
 
 become an old man some one did find it out, and 
 he had to admit that he was its author. 
 
 Another thing the Quakers will not do is to swear, 
 either in a profane way, or before a court of justice. 
 They declare that the Scriptures say, * Swear not 
 at all," and that it is just as wrong to swear in 
 court as in anger. They are not great talkers ; and 
 in meeting, if no one has anything to say that is 
 worth saying, they think it much better to sit in 
 silence for an hour than to listen to a dull sermon. 
 
 Your grammars will tell you that it is just as 
 incorrect to say thee is, " or thee must, " as it is 
 to say "me is," or "him ought." It seems strange 
 that most of the Quakers in the world, from the 
 earliest time, should make a grammatical blunder 
 like this. Of course Whittier, and many others, 
 -knew it was not correct; but they said that Quakers 
 had used this form of speech from the very first, 
 and they would not try to change the custom. 
 
 These queer people also said they were plain, 
 sensible folk, and therefore would not cater to the 
 world and the devil" by wearing fine clothes. All 
 dressed in the same way, in what was called 
 
137 
 
 Quaker drab, the men with broad-brimmed beaver 
 hats, the women with plain bonnets of black or 
 dove-colored" silk, unadorned with ribbons or 
 other ornaments. 
 
 Neither did they have any music, nor indulge 
 themselves in any unnecessary luxuries. They 
 were sharp and shrewd, however, and as we 
 shall see in the case of Whittier, did not forbear to 
 have a little fun now and then. 
 
 The Puritans had revolted from the Church of 
 England, and came to America for religious free 
 dom. The Quakers had likewise revolted from 
 the established forms of worship, but their belief 
 was very different from that of the Puritans. 
 
 At first the Puritans in Massachusetts thought 
 they would keep the Quakers out of their colony. 
 They therefore punished severely every one who 
 dared to come among them. They condemned 
 four of them to death, and others they whipped and 
 imprisoned and banished. But these persecutions 
 did not prevent the Quakers from coming to Massa 
 chusetts, and finally the Puritans became ashamed 
 of their intolerance, and left them to themselves, 
 
138 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A FARMER S BOY 
 
 The first Thomas Whittier, after he married, 
 built a log house, not far from the present Whittier 
 homestead; but when he grew old and became 
 well-to-do he put up what was then a fine house. 
 This was as long ago as 1688, or thereabouts. 
 
 In this house, which is still standing, the poet 
 John Greenleaf Whittier was born, December 17, 
 1807. His father was nearly fifty at the time of 
 his birth, and twenty-one years older than his 
 mother. His grandfather was about the same 
 age when his father was born, and his great 
 grandfather and great-great-grandfather were 
 equally old at the births of their sons. 
 
 On his mother s side Whittier was descended 
 from a remarkable old preacher named Stephen 
 Bachiler. This man had deep-set, bright eyes, 
 and handsome features, which were inherited by 
 most of his descendants, many of whom became 
 famous men. One was Daniel Webster, who 
 
139 
 
 looked very much indeed like Whittier. Both had 
 the Bachiler eye and brow. 
 
 New England farm life is not easy or pleasant, 
 though Whittier never admitted that he didn t 
 have a first-rate time when he was a boy, as you 
 may see by reading Snow-Bound. " His father s 
 family had to raise most of the food they ate. 
 They had no comfortable sofas, and the chairs 
 were very straight-backed. Besides, they did not 
 succeed very well in keeping warm in the winter. 
 As they thought it was necessary to toughen them 
 selves, they went out on very cold days without 
 much clothing on. Indeed, they probably had 
 but very few warm clothes. There were no such 
 things in those days as heavy flannels or great 
 overcoats. The cloth in their garments was spun 
 and woven at home by the mother, and she did 
 not always get the threads very close together. 
 So there were a great many spaces for the wind 
 to blow through. Of course they had to go to 
 meeting every First-day (Sunday), and as there 
 were no fires in the meeting-house, they suffered 
 much from the cold in winter. 
 
140 
 
 Even the dwelling houses were not very warm. 
 There was only one fire, and it was built in a 
 chimney-place so large that there was room for 
 benches inside the chimney next to the fire. Then 
 the wind would come in through the cracks and 
 crevices; and while it was very hot before the fire 
 place, a little way back it was cold. It would often 
 happen on cold, windy nights that their faces 
 would burn while their backs were almost freezing. 
 
 o 
 
 And the bedrooms were like ice-chests, and never 
 warm except in summer, when they were sure to be 
 too hot. Whittier was sickly all the latter part of 
 his life ; and he laid his trouble largely to exposure 
 in childhood; for he was always delicate. He lived 
 to be very old, however, as did all his ancestors. 
 
 This was the unpleasant side to his boyhood; of 
 the pleasant side Whittier himself has told us. If 
 you wish to know what good times he had in the 
 summer season, read the " Barefoot Boy": 
 
 Blessings on thee, little man, 
 Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan ! . . . 
 From my heart I give thee joy 
 I was once a barefoot boy ! 
 
It is only the country boy who knows 
 
 How the tortoise bears his shell, 
 How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
 And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
 How the robin feeds her young, 
 How the oriole s nest is hung; 
 Where the whitest lilies blow, 
 Where the freshest berries grow, 
 Where the groundnut trails its vine, 
 Where the wood-grape s clusters shine. 
 
 But it is in Snow-Bound, " his greatest and most 
 beautiful poem, that we hear of all the pleasant 
 times which the farm boy has in winter, and also all 
 about the members of Whittier s own family. He 
 begins the poem by telling how the snowstorm 
 came up, and then goes on 
 
 Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, 
 Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
 Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
 Raked down the herd s-grass for the cows. 
 
 Every farmer boy knows what "chores" are. 
 The fun came the next morning when their father, 
 
142 
 
 a prompt, decisive man, " wasting no breath, said, 
 "Boys, a path!" You must go to the poem itself 
 to read about the Aladdin s cave they dug in the 
 snow, and the other things they did. "As night 
 drew on, " says the poet, 
 
 We piled with care our nightly stack 
 Of wood against the chimney back, 
 The oaken log, green, huge and thick 
 And on its top the stout back stick ; 
 The knotty forestick laid apart, 
 And filled between with curious art 
 The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 
 We watched the first red blaze appear, 
 Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
 On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
 Until the old, rude-furnished room, 
 Burst flower-like into rosy bloom. . . . 
 Shut in from all the world without, 
 We sat the clean- winged hearth about 
 Content to let the north wind roar 
 In baffled rage at pane and door; 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 The frost line back with tropic heat ; 
 And ever, when a louder blast 
 Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
 
143 
 
 The merrier up its roaring draught 
 The great throat of the chimney laughed. 
 The house dog on his paws outspread 
 Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
 The cat s dark silhouette on the wall 
 A couchant tiger s seemed to fall ; 
 And, for the winter fireside meet, 
 Between the andirons straddling feet, 
 The mug of cider simmered slow. 
 The apples sputtered in a row, 
 And, close at hand, the basket stood 
 With nuts from brown October s wood 
 
 Whittier was nearly sixty years old when he 
 wrote this poem, and perhaps he had forgotten 
 partly the hardships of his boyhood; but the poem 
 is so great because it is so simple and natural and 
 true. It may seem strange that the greatest work 
 of a great poet is no more than a description of his 
 every-day home when he was a boy. Whittier s 
 home was not finer nor better than anybody else s 
 home than yours or mine; in fact, in comparison 
 with what we have, it was very poor indeed. Yet 
 Whittier made this wonderful poem about it. That 
 shows how great a poet he was. Only a great 
 
144 
 
 poet could take a barefoot boy, or a snowstorm, or 
 a common farmhouse and write such beautiful 
 verses about it. Think of this carefully, and you 
 will come to understand what good poetry really is. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WHIT-TIER S FAMILY 
 
 Most people are blessed with brothers and sisters, 
 with whom they grow up. First one and then the 
 other is sent away to school. Soon they are all out 
 in the world, earning livings for themselves; they 
 get married and have families of their own; and 
 before long they seem to forget the home of their 
 childhood But Whittier did not get married, and 
 one of his sisters did not marry. He lived on the 
 farm most of the time till he was thirty years 
 old, when he moved with his mother and sister to 
 Amesbury. We are therefore more than usually 
 interested in knowing about the members of the 
 family in which he was born. 
 
 First, there was his father. He was a 
 
H5 
 
 matter-of-fact man, and did not believe in poetry; 
 and so, in this, young Greenleaf received very little 
 encouragement from him. 
 
 The encouragement in his poetic efforts, which 
 the father failed to give, he got from his mother, 
 sisters, and brother, who were all proud of him. 
 His mother was a dear, sweet Quaker lady, as 
 saintly as she was lovely. Her face was full and 
 fair, and she had fine, dark eyes. She appreciated 
 poetry and all fine and delicate sentiments, and 
 for fifty years she was the guide, counselor, and 
 friend of her illustrious son. 
 
 Greenleaf had a brother, Matthew Franklin, 
 several years younger than himself, who outlived 
 every one else in the family except the poet. He 
 had also two sisters, the eldest of the family, and 
 the youngest. The elder sister, Mary, married 
 and lived in Haverhill; but the younger never mar 
 ried, and was the poet s intimate friend and house 
 keeper until both were old. In Snow-Bound " 
 the reader will find this beautiful description of 
 her, lines as sweet and beautiful as the poet ever 
 wrote : 
 
146 
 
 Upon the motley-braided mat 
 Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
 Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
 Now bathed within the fadeless green 
 
 And holy peace of Paradise 
 
 I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
 I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
 Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
 The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
 Yet following me where er I went 
 With dark eyes full of love s content. 
 
 And yet, dear heart! remembering thee, 
 
 Am I not richer than of old? 
 Safe in thy immortality, 
 
 What change can reach the wealth I hold? 
 
 What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
 Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
 And when the sunset gates unbar, 
 
 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
 And, white against the evening star, 
 
 The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 
 
 The poem * Snow-Bound " was written perhaps 
 as a memorial of her. He and she had been for 
 fifty years as loving and fond as husband and 
 
147 
 
 wife, but held together by a purer, more spiritual 
 bond. 
 
 She was a poet like her brother; and to this 
 day, in any complete edition of Whittier s poems 
 you will find, towards the end of the volume, 
 Poems by Elizabeth H. Whittier, " which he 
 wished to be always printed with his. 
 
 In this family there were two other kindly souls. 
 One was Uncle .Moses, a brother of the poet s 
 father, innocent of books, but rich in lore of 
 fields and brooks. " The other was Aunt Mercy, 
 Mrs. Whittier s sister: 
 
 The sweetest woman ever Fate 
 Perverse denied a household mate, 
 Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
 Found peace in love s unselfishness, 
 And welcome wheresoe er she went. 
 
 Such was the Whittier family, all good Quakers, 
 dressing in Quaker fashion, and talking in the 
 quaint Quaker way; but they were all cheerful and 
 ready for enjoyment, and all were fond and de 
 voted and gentle and ambitious to live well. 
 
148 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 STORIES OF THE POET S CHILDHOOD 
 
 The Whittiers seem to have been a simple- 
 minded family. Some stories told of the poet in 
 his childhood would almost make you think him 
 stupid, but no one seems ever to interpret them in 
 that way. 
 
 He remembered nothing that happened before 
 he was six years old; but about that time he heard 
 that a neighboring farm had been sold at auction. 
 The next morning he went out and was surprised 
 to find the land still there, instead of a big hole in 
 the ground; for he seemed to think that after the 
 farm was sold it would be taken away. 
 
 When he was nine years old, President Monroe 
 visited Haverhill, and happened to be there on the 
 same day that a menagerie came to town. The 
 Quaker boy was not allowed to see either. He 
 thought he did not care much for the wild beasts, 
 but he would have liked to see the greatest man in 
 the United States. The next day he trudged over 
 
to the village, hoping to see at least some foot 
 prints that the great man had left behind him. 
 He found at last the impressions of an elephant s 
 feet in the road, and supposing these to be the 
 tracks of the President, he followed them as far 
 as he could make them out. * Then he went home 
 satisfied that he had seen the footsteps of the 
 greatest man in the country. 
 
 5 At another time he and his brother calculated 
 that if each could lift the other by his boot straps, 
 first one lifting and then the other, they might lift 
 themselves up to the ceiling, and no telling how 
 much higher. Of course when they tried it they 
 didn t get very far. 
 
 In later life he used to tell a story of how 
 children sometimes suffer needlessly, and in ways of 
 which their parents little dream. When he went to 
 ride with his father, they used to walk up a certain 
 hill, in order to rest the horse. By the side of the 
 road there was a gander, which had come out from 
 a neighboring farmyard; and he says he would 
 rather in later life have walked up to a hostile can 
 non than as a child go by that gander. But he 
 
150 
 
 was ashamed to let his father know his fear, and 
 so walked past in an agony of dread. 
 
 There is also told an interesting story of an ox 
 named Old Butler. One day Greenleaf went out 
 with some salt for the oxen. He was climbing up 
 the side of a steep hill when Old Butler, on top, 
 saw him, and came plunging down. The hill was 
 so steep that the ox could not stop, and in a 
 moment he would have crushed the young master; 
 but gathering himself together at the right 
 moment, the creature by a great effort leaped 
 straight out into the air over the head of the boy. 
 It was the wonderful intelligence of this ox that 
 saved young Greenleaf s life. 
 
 Another amusing story is also told of this ox. 
 Once a Quaker meeting was being held in the 
 kitchen. Unexpectedly the ox stuck his head in 
 at the window. While a sweet-voiced sister was 
 speaking he listened quietly; but when a loud- 
 voiced brother began to speak, he drew out his 
 head, flung up his tail, and went off bellowing. 
 This the children thought very funny and a good 
 joke on the brother. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SCHOOL DAYS 
 
 Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
 The master of the district school 
 Held at the fire his favored place. 
 Its warm glow lit a laughing face, 
 Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
 The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
 He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 
 Played cross-pins on my uncle s hat, 
 Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
 In classic Dartmouth s college halls. 
 
 A careless boy that night he seemed; 
 But at his desk he had the look 
 
 And air of one who wisely schemed, 
 And hostage from the future took 
 In trained thought and lore of book. 
 
 Large-brained, clear-eyed of such as he 
 
 Shall Freedom s young apostles be. 
 
 Snow-Bonna 
 
 Until he was nineteen Whittier went only to the 
 
152 
 
 district school, and he used to say that in all that 
 time only two of the teachers were worth anything 
 at all. Both of these were Dartmouth students, 
 and are fairly well described in the above quotation 
 from " Snow-Bound." One was Joshua Coffin, 
 Whittier s first teacher. He came back again 
 some years later, and often spent his evenings at 
 the Whittier homestead. In later years he was 
 the poet s friend and helper in the antislavery 
 cause. 
 
 Little Greenleaf started to school when he was 
 very small, and before he had learned his letters. 
 Among his poems is a sweet little one, entitled 
 "In School Days." He begins by describing the 
 schoolhouse: 
 
 Within, the master s desk is seen, 
 
 Deep scarred by raps official ; 
 The warping floor, the battered seats, 
 
 The jack-knife s carved initial. 
 
 You must read for yourself the story of the little 
 boy and the little girl, and how the latter said; 
 
153 
 
 " I m sorry that I spelt the word: 
 
 I hate to go above you, 
 Because," the brown eyes lower fell, 
 " Because, you see, I love you!" 
 
 Of books to read they had not many in the 
 Whittier household, and most of them were the 
 works of saintly Quakers. The Bible was the 
 chief book, and that they read until they had it by 
 heart. Joshua Coffin used to bring various books 
 which he had and read them aloud to the older 
 people, not paying much attention to the boy of 
 fifteen who sat in the corner and listened. Once 
 he brought a volume of Burns s poems and read 
 page after page, explaining the Scotch dialect. 
 Greenleaf, then a tall, shy lad, listened spellbound. 
 He had got into what his Uncle Moses called his 
 stood. " The teacher saw that he was interested, 
 and offered to leave the book with him. That was 
 about the first good poetry he had ever heard. It 
 kindled the fire of poetic genius in his own mind 
 and heart, and he soon began to write poetry him 
 self. But he was only a farmer s lad, and writing 
 
154 
 
 poetry does not come easy to one in such sur 
 roundings. 
 
 While he was in his teens he made his first visit 
 to Boston, staying with a relative who was post 
 master of the city. You may imagine how he 
 looked, a gawky country boy, with broad-brimmed 
 Quaker hat and plain, homespun clothes. But he 
 wore for the first time in his life boughten but 
 tons" on his coat, and his Quaker hat had been 
 covered by his Aunt Mercy with drab velvet. 
 These made him feel very fine. 
 
 He was induced to buy a copy of Shakespeare; 
 and at the table of his relative was a brilliant lady, 
 who was very kind to him. He had been warned 
 against the temptations of the town, and you can 
 imagine how shocked he was to find out that this 
 fine lady was an actress. She invited him to go to 
 the theater; but he hastily declined, and was 
 almost ashamed of himself for having bought a 
 volume of plays, even if they were Shakespeare s. 
 Somehow or other a copy of one of the Waverley 
 novels came into the Quaker home, and Whittier 
 and his sister read it together without Jetting their 
 
155 
 
 parents know. They read late into the night; and 
 atone time, just as they were getting to an exciting 
 part, the candle burned out and they had to go to 
 bed in the dark, for it was quite impossible to get 
 another. 
 
 There is a story that Whittier s first verses were 
 written on the beam of his mother s loom. At any 
 rate he wrote verses on his slate in school, and 
 passed them around among the scholars. One 
 stanza his sister remembered, and repeated after 
 ward : 
 
 And must I always swing the flail, 
 And help to fill the milking-pail? 
 I wish to go away to school ; 
 I do not wish to be a fool. 
 
 The desk on which the poet wrote his first verses 
 was built by that original Thomas Whittier, more 
 than a hundred years before Greenleaf was born. 
 It stood in the kitchen for many years; then it was 
 packed away. But a few years before Whittier 
 died, a niece of his had it taken out and repaired, 
 and he used it until the end of his life. 
 
156 
 
 In those old days his sister Mary thought his 
 verses exceedingly fine, quite as good as those she 
 read in the -Poet s Corner "of the Free Press. 
 This paper had just been started in Newburyport 
 by William Lloyd Garrison, who was only three 
 years older than Whittier, but had had every 
 advantage of education. John Whittier, the 
 father, liked the solid tone of it, and subscribed. 
 Without letting her brother know, Mary got one 
 of his poems and sent it anonymously to the editor 
 of the paper. When, a week or so afterward, the 
 postman came along by the field where the Whit- 
 tiers were at work and flung the paper over the 
 fence, Greenleaf looked at once to see what was in 
 the < Poet s Corner, " and was immensely surprised 
 to see his own poem there. He says he simply 
 stood and stared at it, without reading a word. 
 His father suggested that he had better go to 
 work; but he couldn t help opening the paper again 
 and looking at his own poem. 
 
 Another poem was sent, and Garrison wrote a 
 note to introduce it, in which he said: His poetry 
 bears the stamp of true poetic genius, which, if 
 
157 
 
 carefully cultivated, will rank him among the bards 
 of his country." How strange a prophecy, and 
 how strange the fortune that brought together the 
 great reformer, William Lloyd Garrison, and the 
 great poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, when both 
 were so young and inexperienced! 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HAVERHILL ACADEMY 
 
 It was a happy day for Whittier when his sister 
 sent that stolen poem to the paper edited by 
 William Lloyd Garrison, for Garrison immediately 
 took a fancy to the author. After printing the 
 second poem sent, he learned from what part of 
 Haverhill the poems came, and drove out fourteen 
 miles to see the young author. 
 
 He was a neatly dressed, handsome, and affable 
 young gentleman, and came with a lady friend. 
 As it was a hot summer day, Whittier was at work 
 in the fields, wearing doubtless little beside an old 
 straw hat, a shirt, and a pair of overalls. His bash- 
 
58 
 
 fulness made him wish to avoid seeing the fine city 
 visitor; but his sister persuaded him. He slipped 
 in at the back door and changed his clothes, and a 
 long and interesting visit with Garrison followed. 
 They became fast friends, and in later years were 
 workers together in the cause of the slave. 
 
 Friend Whittier, the old gentleman, came into 
 the room while the two were having their first 
 talk, and Garrison told him he ought to send his 
 son away to school. The old gentleman was not 
 at all pleased by the turn affairs were taking, and 
 told young Garrison that he ought not to put such 
 notions into the boy s head. As we have already 
 said, Friend Whittier, being a matter-of-fact 
 Quaker, did not approve of poetry anyway. 
 
 So this time passed by, and Greenleaf was kept 
 at work on the farm. Garrison gave up his paper 
 in Newburyport and went to Boston, and the young 
 poet sent his verses to the Haver/till Gazette. A 
 Mr. Thayer was the editor of this paper, and he 
 conceived the same opinion of the lad that Garrison 
 had. He also went to the old gentleman and urged 
 him to give his son a classical education. An acad- 
 
159 
 
 emy was to be opened in Haverhill that fall, and 
 young Whittier could attend it and spend part of 
 each week at home. Two years before, Greenleaf 
 had seriously injured himself by undertaking some 
 very hard work on the farm ; indeed from this strain 
 he suffered all his life. On account of this, his 
 father considered the matter more favorably. 
 
 Mr. Thayer, the editor, promised to board the 
 young man in his family; but it was a serious ques 
 tion as to where the small amount of money needed 
 was to come from. There was a mortgage of $600 
 on the farm, and nearly all the ready money that 
 could be obtained went to pay taxes and interest 
 on the debt. The young man received permission 
 to attend the academy; but he must pay his own 
 way. 
 
 It was not an easy thing to pick up spare change 
 in those days, as the elder Whittier well knew; but 
 Greenleaf looked cheerfully about. An opportunity 
 soon appeared. A hired man on his father s farm 
 occupied his winters in making a kind of cheap 
 slippers, which he sold for twenty-five cents a pair. 
 He promised to teach the young poet the art of 
 
i6o 
 
 making them. It was not hard to learn. During 
 the winter of 1826-27 ne made enough to keep him 
 at the academy six months. He calculated so 
 closely that he thought he would have twenty-five 
 cents more than enough to pay his expenses of 
 board, books, and clothes. At the end of the term, 
 sure enough, he had that twenty-five cents left. 
 
 James F. Otis, a noted lawyer, read some of 
 Whittier s poems, and, like Garrison, determined 
 to go and find him. He was told that he was a 
 shoemaker in Haverhill. He says that he found 
 him at work in his shoe shop, and making himself 
 known to him, they spent the day together in wan 
 dering over the hills, and on the shores of the Mer- 
 rimac River, talking about matters literary. Like 
 Garrison, Otis later became an intimate friend of 
 Whittier. 
 
 When the Haverhill academy was opened, Whit- 
 tier was not only to become a pupil; but he con 
 tributed the ode that was sung. This gave him a 
 sort of social send-off in the town, and henceforth 
 he was something of a personage in Haver 
 hill. In the year 1827 he contributed forty-seven 
 
poems to the Haverhill Gazette alone, and forty- 
 nine in 1828. 
 
 So the young poet that William. Lloyd Garrison 
 discovered and went fourteen miles to see was 
 beginning to become famous. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOOD WOMEN 
 
 If Whittier ever had a real love affair, no one 
 seems to have known about it. The fact is, he 
 was not of the passionate kind. But all his life 
 his best friends were women, and many a good 
 woman he knew and was fond of, and he and she 
 became real friends. And of that friendship with 
 him, all those women, without exception, were 
 proud indeed. In a letter written a dozen years 
 after his school life began, he says: 
 
 For myself, I owe much to the kind encourage 
 ment of female friends. A bashful, ignorant boy, 
 I was favored by the kindness of a lady who saw, 
 or thought she saw, beneath the clownish exterior 
 
162 
 
 something which gave promise of intellect and 
 worth. [This was the wife of Mr. Thayer, with 
 whom he boarded. ] The powers of my own mind, 
 the mysteries of my own spirit, were revealed to 
 myself, only as they were called out by one of those 
 dangerous relations called cousins, who, with all 
 her boarding school glories upon her, condescended 
 to smile upon my rustic simplicity. She was so 
 learned in the, to me, more than occult mysteries 
 of verbs and nouns, and philosophy, and 
 botany, and mineralogy, and French, and all that, 
 and then she had seen something of society, and 
 could talk (an accomplishment at that time to 
 which I could lay no claim), that on the whole I 
 looked upon her as a being to obtain whose good 
 opinion no effort could be too great." 
 
 One of these young lady friends, perhaps the 
 very cousin of whom he speaks, wrote of him years 
 afterwards : 
 
 "He was nearly nineteen when I first saw him. 
 He was a very handsome, distinguished-looking 
 young man. His eyes were remarkably beautiful. 
 He was tall, slight, and very erect; a bashful 
 
i6 3 
 
 youth, but never awkward, my mother said, who 
 was a better judge of such matters than I. ... 
 
 "With intimate friends he talked a great deal, 
 and in a wonderfully interesting manner; usually 
 earnest, and frequently playful. He had a great 
 deal of wit. It was a family characteristic. . . . 
 The influence of his Quaker bringing-up was mani 
 fest. I think it was always his endeavor 
 
 to render less 
 The sum of human wretchedness. 
 
 This, I say, was his steadfast endeavor, in spite of 
 his inborn love of teasing. He was very modest, 
 never conceited, never egotistic. One could never 
 flatter him. I never tried, but I have seen people 
 attempt it, and it was a signal failure. He did 
 not flatter, but told some very wholesome and 
 unpalatable truths." 
 
 An amusing story is told of Whittier s love of 
 teasing. At the time it happened he must have 
 been between thirty and forty. A Quaker sister 
 named Sophronia Page, who went about preach 
 ing to little gatherings of the Friends, stopped 
 one night at his mother s house. As most Quaker 
 
164 
 
 bonnets are precisely alike, there is no way of tell 
 ing them apart except by the name inside. When 
 Sophronia Page went away she put on Mrs. Whit- 
 tier s bonnet by mistake. When she got to the 
 next stopping place and saw the name inside, she 
 sent the bonnet back. Whittier noticed it in a 
 box in the hall, and thought he would have some 
 fun with his mother. 
 
 "What does thee think Sophronia Page has 
 done?" he asked her, sitting down. 
 
 "I don t know, Greenleaf, " she said quietly. 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Something I m much afraid she will be called 
 up in Yearly Meeting for." 
 
 "I hope she hasn t been meddling with the 
 troubles of the Friends," said Mrs. Whittier, 
 anxiously, referring to some church quarrels. 
 
 "Worse than that!" said the young man, while 
 his mother got more and more excited. "She has 
 been taking other people s things, and has just 
 begun to send some of them back." 
 
 With that he went into the hall and brought 
 back the bonnet. 
 
165 
 
 ( If thee were twenty years younger I would take 
 thee over my knee!" said his mother when she saw 
 what it was all about. 
 
 Among his other famous women friends was Mrs. 
 Sigourney, the poetess, with whom he became ac 
 quainted in Hartford while he was editing a paper 
 there. He also knew Lucy Larcom; and it was 
 said at one time that he was engaged to marry 
 Lucy Hooper, but there was no truth in this. Her 
 death, shortly afterwards, made him feel very sad. 
 In his poetic works you may find poems addressed 
 to both these women. 
 
 While speaking of women we must not omit a 
 description of that woman who was to him dearest 
 of all women in the world, his sister Lizzie. This 
 gifted sister Lizzie was the pet and pride of the 
 household, one of the rarest women, her brother s 
 complement, possessing all the readiness of speech 
 and facility of intercourse which he wanted; taking 
 easily in his presence the lead in conversation, 
 which the poet so gladly abandoned to her, while 
 he sat rubbing his hands and laughing at her 
 daring sallies. She was as unlike him in person as 
 
i66 
 
 in mind; for his dignified erectness, she had end 
 less motion and vivacity; for his regular and hand 
 some features, she had a long Jewish nose, so full 
 of expression that it seemed to enhance, instead of 
 injuring, the effect of the large and liquid eyes that 
 glowed with merriment and sympathy behind it. 
 . . . Her quick thoughts came like javelins ; a saucy 
 triumph gleamed in her great eyes; the head moved 
 a little from side to side with the quiver of a weapon, 
 and lo! you were transfixed." 
 
 During his long life this sister was to Whittier 
 more than sweetheart or wife, for she had the wit 
 and the sympathy of all womankind in her one 
 frail form; and Whittier knew it and depended on 
 it for his happiness. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 POLITICAL AMBITION 
 
 Young Whittier remained at Haverhill academy 
 only two terms. We have seen that he paid for 
 the first one by making shoes. The second he paid 
 for by teaching school. When he went to the 
 
i6 7 
 
 committee to be examined for this school he felt 
 rather nervous; but the committee asked him only 
 for a specimen of his handwriting, which was very 
 neat and clear. 
 
 He decided not to go to college, because he said 
 he wouldn t live on the charities of others, and it 
 would have been impossible to get through college 
 without borrowing money of friends. Poor as he 
 was, Whittier never borrowed money. 
 
 While in Haverhill he wrote a great many poems 
 and articles for the local newspaper. Garrison was 
 then in Boston editing a temperance paper. But 
 soon he thought he had something better in view, 
 and concluded to turn the editorship over to Whit- 
 tier. Whittier accepted the position and went to 
 Boston; but he was to edit the Manufacturer, not 
 the Philanthropist. Both were published by the 
 same people. This is the way he writes about his 
 work : 
 
 "The Manufacturer goes down well, thanks to 
 the gullibility of the public, and we are doing well, 
 very well. Have had one or two rubs from other 
 papers, but I have had some compliments which 
 
168 
 
 were quite as much as my vanity could swallow. 
 Have tolerable good society, Mrs. Hale and her 
 literary club, etc. I am coming out for the tariff 
 
 by and by have done something at it already 
 
 but the astonisher is yet to come! Shall blow 
 Cambreling and McDuffie sky-high." 
 
 Cambreling and McDuffie were politicians whom 
 he was going to oppose. 
 
 We should hardly think that the gentle poet 
 Whittier, Quaker as he was, would conceive the 
 ambition to become a politician; but he was editing 
 a political newspaper, and soon got deep into poli 
 tics and liked it. 
 
 He had not been in Boston long when, his father 
 becoming ill, he went back to the farm and 
 remained there until the old gentleman died, in 
 June, 1830. He spent all his time in study and 
 writing, however, and after his father s death he 
 was asked to edit a political paper in Hartford, 
 Connecticut. He didn t know anything about 
 Connecticut politics; but he took hold and soon 
 learned how matters stood. Everybody liked him 
 and he made some excellent friends there. 
 
169 
 
 Of course rival political newspapers are always 
 saying sharp things about one another. After he 
 had been in Hartford a few weeks he opened a copy 
 of the Catskill Recorder and saw a long article 
 headed "John G. Whittier," in which he was 
 abused and ridiculed unmercifully. He hid the 
 paper so that no one should see it, and went around 
 in fear and trembling, thinking every one would 
 know about it. Finally he wrote to the editor of 
 the paper, protesting; but the editor had another 
 paragraph, saying that, if he was as "thin-skinned" 
 as that, he had better keep out of politics. Soon 
 after this the New York papers, among them 
 Bryant s Evening Post, spoke of him and his editor 
 ship in a very complimentary manner, and he felt 
 better. 
 
 The fact is, Whittier was a good politician. He 
 managed affairs in Haverhill for years, and had a 
 sort of party of his own which controlled things. 
 Once on election day a tipsy man asked for a ride 
 with him into town, and said that if Whittier would 
 give him the ride he would vote for his candidate. 
 Usually the man had voted on the other side. 
 
i ;o 
 
 Whittier said, "All right, "and took him along. He 
 supported the man to the polls, put the right ballot 
 in his hand, and told him to vote. But the fellow 
 was so intoxicated he was obstinate, and deter 
 mined to vote the other way. At the last moment 
 somebody handed him the wrong ballot, and he 
 put it in the box. 
 
 There was in Haverhill district a politician who 
 did not really belong to Whittier s party, but who 
 had always been elected after giving written 
 pledges. After he had been elected in this way for 
 several terms, and had been forced by Whittier to 
 live up to his promises, he determined to go in 
 without pledges. Whittier was away, and so he 
 wrote a noncommittal letter, referring to his past 
 record, and saying he didn t intend to pledge him 
 self any further. But Whittier came back in the 
 nick of time, saw the danger, and went over to see 
 the man, whose name was Caleb Gushing. Whit 
 tier told him he would not be elected unless he 
 signed the desired pledges. After a while he said 
 he would sign anything Whittier wrote. So the 
 young politician sat down and wrote a letter, which 
 
171 
 
 Mr. Gushing copied and signed. It was printed as 
 a circular and sent all around town, and Gushing 
 was elected. Then after he was elected Whittier 
 watched him closely, and saw that he made good 
 the promises in that letter. Some time after, he 
 was on the point of being made a cabinet officer by 
 the party to which Whittier was opposed; but 
 by the use of this letter Whittier prevented it. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE GREAT QUESTION OF SLAVERY 
 
 It is altogether probable that Whittier would 
 have been elected to Congress, and have had per 
 haps a great political career, had it not been for 
 an act of genuine sacrifice on his part, made for 
 the sake of right and conscience. 
 
 In 1833 Garrison pointed out to him that the 
 country must be roused on the question of slavery. 
 As a good Quaker, Whittier was already an aboli 
 tionist. He felt deeply the insufferable wrong 
 
172 
 
 that American citizens, even though black, should 
 be slaves under the whip of a master. In an early 
 poem he cries passionately: 
 
 What, ho! our countryman in chains! 
 
 The whip on woman s shrinking flesh! 
 Our soil yet reddening with the stains 
 
 Caught from her scourging warm and fresh ! 
 What! mothers from their children riven! 
 
 What! God s own image bought and sold! 
 Americans to market driven, 
 
 And bartered as the brute for gold ! 
 
 When Garrison s appeal came, Whittier was at 
 home on the farm, having given up the editorship 
 of the Hartford paper on account of illness. Caleb 
 Gushing, seven years younger than he, had come 
 home from Europe and through Whittier s influ 
 ence had been elected to Congress. Whittier s 
 own name was being mentioned. A life of political 
 ambition seemed to lie open before him. But with 
 Garrison s appeal, he began a thorough and careful 
 investigation of the question of slavery and its 
 abolition in the United States. At last he wrote 
 
173 
 
 a pamphlet entitled -Justice and Expediency." 
 It was a brilliant defense of the antislavery posi 
 tion. This he had published at his own expense, 
 poor as he was. When it was about ready to 
 appear he hesitated, and considered the situation 
 carefully. The abolitionists were a poor, despised 
 party. If he cast in his lot with them, none of the 
 great political parties would have anything to do 
 with him : he must give up his political ambition, 
 and devote himself to a cause that would require 
 years for its success, even if it should ever 
 succeed. 
 
 In after times a boy of fifteen, who was am 
 bitious in a political way, came to him for advice. 
 Whittier said that as a young man his ideal had 
 been the life of a prominent politician. From 
 this he had been persuaded only by the appeals 
 of his friends chiefly Garrison. Taking their 
 advice, he had united with the persecuted and 
 obscure band of abolitionists, and to this course he 
 attributed all his after success in life. Then, turn 
 ing to the boy, he placed his hand on his head, 
 and said in his gentle voice: -My lad, if thou 
 
174 
 
 wouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular 
 but noble cause. " 
 
 From this time on, for thirty years, Whittier 
 continued to be a very poor man. He made anti- 
 slavery speeches sometimes, edited antislavery 
 papers, wrote antislavery poems, was secretary of 
 antislavery societies. For all this he was paid 
 very little, and at the same time his health was 
 poor. He sold the farm which had been his 
 father s, and moved to Amesbury, where he lived 
 for the remainder of his life. 
 
 His mother and his sister approved of his course, 
 and supported him in every way. Their enthusi 
 astic help made his life even pleasant. He thought 
 nothing of poverty or hardship, but only of the 
 great work into which he had thrown himself. At 
 one time he thought he must mortgage his home; 
 but a friend came to his assistance, and at last in 
 his old age he had money and comfort and all 
 that success brings with it. 
 
 From this time on, Whittier went through times of 
 terrible struggle and conflict. Garrison had started 
 his well-known paper, the Liberator,w Boston. To 
 
175 
 
 it Whittier contributed the poem from which we 
 have quoted the verse on page 44. In 1835 he was 
 elected to the legislature by his fellow townsmen of 
 Haverhill. 
 
 While attending a special session of the legisla 
 ture that year, he saw the mob which came near 
 hanging Garrison, and saw the rope about his 
 friend s neck as the crowd hurried him around the 
 corner of a street. The riot started in an attempt 
 to break up a meeting of the Female Antislavery 
 Society, which Whittier s sister was attending. 
 When he heard of the outbreak he hurried off to 
 the rescue of his sister; but she and the other 
 women had escaped; and the police finally saved 
 Garrison and took him to the jail for protection. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HOW WHITTIER WAS MOBBED 
 
 We must now mention a few exciting events in 
 which Whittier himself took part. At the time 
 of the occurrences referred to in the last chapter, 
 George Thompson, an eloquent English reformer 
 
1 7 6 
 
 who had helped to secure the abolition of slavery 
 in the British colonies, came to Boston to speak 
 against slavery in the United States. It hap 
 pened that the good people of the churches 
 thought that the easy way to remove slavery was 
 to send the slaves back to Africa, and for this they 
 took up collections. Garrison and Whittier came 
 out strongly against this weak-kneed plan, and 
 George Thompson helped them. Of course, the 
 church folk were angry; and all the business men 
 were angry, because they said it spoiled business 
 to stir up this agitation. As a result, the rough 
 characters in every town saw a chance to have 
 sport, and did all they could to break up the 
 meetings of abolitionists. The good church peo 
 ple and all the well-to-do and solid members of 
 the community were so angry that they wouldn t 
 do anything to stop the mobs; and the result was 
 that, wherever the speakers went, stones and rotten 
 eggs were thrown at them, and abuse of all sorts 
 was heaped upon them. 
 
 They got up a cry against George Thompson 
 especially, that he was an Englishman who had 
 
177 
 
 come over to try to steal American business; for 
 in those days Americans were very jealous of 
 England. They said Thompson s antislavery 
 speeches were intended simply to stir up a quar 
 rel between the Northern people and the South 
 ern, so that England could step in and get their 
 business. Handbills were thrown broadcast in 
 Boston offering one hundred dollars to the first 
 person that would lay violent hands on him. 
 
 The first mob was the one Whittier saw in 
 Boston, from which his sister narrowly escaped. 
 The rioters were after Thompson; but not find 
 ing him, they took Garrison instead. 
 
 A little later Thompson came to Haverhill and 
 stopped with the Whittiers. He and the poet 
 immediately set out on a tour into New Hamp 
 shire. With Thompson had come a clergyman 
 named Samuel J. May. He was to have held 
 a meeting one Sunday in the First Parish 
 meeting-house in Concord, but the committee 
 refused to allow him to speak on slavery, and 
 another church was obtained. 
 
 At half-past seven he began to speak. Every 
 
1 7 8 
 
 one was listening with breathless attention, when 
 a stone came through a window. He paid no 
 attention, but kept steadily on. In a moment 
 another stone came through the pulpit window, 
 and another big one fell among the audience and 
 frightened them so they all started for the door. 
 Rev. Mr. May then decided to close the meet 
 ing, and called to the people to receive the bene 
 diction. 
 
 It was a good thing he did so, for the steps 
 of the church had been taken away, and if the 
 crowd had poured out they would have fallen 
 headlong. A heavily loaded cannon had also 
 been brought up, and would have been used with 
 terrible effect had the meeting lasted much longer. 
 Whittier s sister took one arm of the clergyman, 
 and another young lady the other, and they got 
 him through the crowd without injury. 
 
 Whittier and Thompson had in the meantime 
 gone to meet a still more violent mob. A man 
 named George Kent arranged a meeting for them 
 in Concord, Massachusetts, since famous as the 
 home of Hawthorne and Emerson. Handbills 
 
179 
 
 were circulated announcing that George Thomp 
 son and John G. Whittier would hold a meeting 
 at which the principles, views, and operations 
 of the abolitionists would be explained." The 
 selectmen warned the people who were promoting 
 it that there would be trouble if they held it; but 
 they persisted. 
 
 As the hour for the meeting approached, a 
 great crowd gathered. The selectmen ordered 
 that the doors should not be opened. Thereupon 
 the crowd determined that they would find the 
 incendiary George Thompson," and punish him 
 as he deserved; and, with loud threats, they ac 
 cordingly set off for the house of George Kent and 
 his wine cellar. " 
 
 On the way they met Whittier. They thought 
 he was Thompson, in spite of his Quaker coat 
 and the assurances of a gentleman who was with 
 him that he was not the man, and began to 
 pelt him with rotten eggs, mud, and stones. 
 Whittier was only lamed a little; but his coat was 
 spoiled by the decayed eggs so that he could not 
 wear it any more. Years afterward, when clothes 
 
i8o 
 
 were being sent to the negroes in the South, he 
 donated this coat. 
 
 At last Whittier and his companion escaped 
 into the house of Colonel Kent, a brother of 
 George Kent, and the colonel convinced the crowd 
 that Thompson was not there. They therefore 
 pushed on to the house of George Kent, where 
 he really was. Quite a little company of anti- 
 slavery people had assembled there to see 
 Thompson, among them two nieces of Daniel 
 Webster. But when the crowd arrived, he had 
 left the house by a back street. 
 
 When the mob found that he was gone, they 
 went away to celebrate with fireworks and bon 
 fires. In the meantime Whittier, anxious for his 
 friend, changed his hat, and escaping through 
 the crowd went to the house of George Kent. 
 After a time Thompson came back. So did the 
 crowd, all the time firing guns, throwing stones, 
 and making a great noise. 
 
 At last, early in the morning, a horse and 
 buggy were brought around to the back door, 
 and Thompson and Whittier got into the vehicle. 
 
Then the gates were thrown open, and, before 
 the crowd knew what was being done, they drove 
 away at a furious rate and escaped. 
 
 They drove fast; but the news had spread be 
 fore them. They came to an inn at some dis 
 tance from Concord. A number of men were 
 telling about the riot, and exhibiting a handbill 
 calling upon all good citizens to assist in captur 
 ing George Thompson and giving him his deserts. 
 
 "How will you recognize the rascal? " asked 
 Whittier. 
 
 "Easily enough; he is a tonguey fellow," said 
 the landlord. 
 
 When they were in their carriage ready to 
 drive away, Whittier said, "I am John G. Whittier, 
 and this is George Thompson. " 
 
 The men stared at them until they were out 
 of sight, but did not offer to lay hands on them. 
 
 A year or two later Whittier went to Philadel 
 phia to edit an antislavery paper. The aboli 
 tionists had put up a large, fine building, called Penn 
 sylvania Hall. Whittier moved his editorial office 
 into it as Soon as it was finished. A series of 
 
182 
 
 meetings were at once held in it; but they did not 
 last long, for one night a mob burned the build 
 ing, and of course Whittier s office, with all his 
 papers, was destroyed. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOME OF WHITTIER S FAMOUS POEMS 
 It is not necessary to tell all the events of those 
 years of struggle and hardship and poverty. 
 Whittier wrote a great many poems on slavery. A 
 volume containing one hundred of them was pub 
 lished without his knowledge in 1837 by Isaac 
 Knapp, publisher of the Liberator in Boston. It 
 was entitled Poems Written during the Progress 
 of the Abolition Question in the United States, 
 between the years 1830 and 1838. By John G. 
 Whittier." He was in New York when it 
 came out. It was the first edition of his poems 
 ever published. The next year he edited a volume 
 of antislavery poems entitled The North Star, " 
 only a few of which he contributed. In 1839 the 
 
financial agent of the antislavery society, Joseph 
 Healy, published a volume of poems by Whittier. 
 There were 180 pages in the book, half of which 
 was devoted to poems on slavery, the remainder to 
 miscellaneous poems. 
 
 So the years passed by, and Whittier and his 
 friends kept up the great fight against slavery. 
 The poet wrote hundreds of pieces, poetry and 
 prose, which were published in all sorts of papers 
 all over the country. Now he was at Haverhill 
 in politics, always working for the cause of the 
 slave, now in Philadelphia or somewhere else 
 editing a paper; and again at his home in Ames- 
 bury recovering his health. 
 
 In the meantime the great cause to which he 
 devoted himself moved steadily on until the Civil 
 War came and all the negroes were set free. 
 Whittier did not believe in war; but when it 
 came he urged the Quakers, who were opposed 
 to fighting, to become nurses, like the nuns and 
 sisters of the Catholic church, and minister to 
 the sick and wounded. 
 
 In 1857 the Atlantic Monthly was started in 
 
1 84 
 
 Boston. All the great writers of the day were to 
 have a hand in it Longfellow, Lowell, Emer 
 son, Holmes, and others. Whittier was also 
 invited to take part, and an edition of his col 
 lected poems was published. The Atlantic 
 Monthly paid more for contributions than most 
 other periodicals in those days. Whittier got fifty 
 dollars for each poem, and had a poem published 
 nearly every month. He was in very delicate health 
 at this time, and was so poor that this small 
 amount was a godsend to him. He did not 
 attend the monthly dinners in Boston, to which 
 all the other literary men went, for he was a 
 Quaker and did not approve of wine and luxuries; 
 and besides he was not well enough to go. He 
 sent his poems, however, with modest little notes, 
 asking Lowell if he thought they would do, and 
 telling him not to hesitate in rejecting them if he 
 thought them silly. He seemed always to be 
 afraid lest his beautiful simple poems would be 
 so simple that some people would consider them 
 foolish. 
 
 In 1858 his mother died, and now he lived 
 
1 85 
 
 alone with his sister. She, too, died in 1864, the 
 last year of the war, and the next year he wrote 
 1 Snow-Bound" as a sort of tribute to her memory. 
 It was published in Boston in 1866 and at once 
 proved very popular. Whittier made $10,000 out 
 of the royalties on it. His great regret was that 
 his mother and sister had not lived to enjoy the 
 benefit of his good fortune. 
 
 Two famous poems deserve mention. One is 
 Barbara Frietchie. " A lady friend of Whittier 
 heard the story in Washington, and at once said, 
 "That is a beautiful subject for a ballad by 
 Whittier. It is almost like a scrap of paper lying 
 around with his signature on it." So she wrote it 
 out and sent it to him. Not long after that he 
 wrote the poem, following the original story almost 
 exactly. Some people afterward declared that it 
 was not true ; but there was certainly an old Ger 
 man woman who kept the Union flag waving over 
 the rebel troops. 
 
 The other poem is "The Barefoot Boy." Whit 
 tier wrote it in memory of his own boyhood. For, " 
 says he, I was once a barefoot boy." It pleased 
 
1 86 
 
 him very much, and he sent it up to Mr. Fields, 
 who was then editing the Atlantic, and asked if 
 he thought it would do." Mr. Fields thought it 
 very fine, and said it must go into the edition of 
 Whittier s works which he was then publishing. 
 
 Whittier was now sixty years old. The struggles 
 of war and politics were over. The dear ones he 
 loved were dead. To amuse and relieve himself 
 he wrotetho.se simple, beautiful ballads, which every 
 person has read and admired. They were among 
 the finest things he ever did. Among them were 
 "Maud Muller," "Skipper Ireson s Ride," and 
 others equally familiar. They were cheerful and 
 happy, and some were about the days of his child 
 hood. There was occasionally a tinge of sadness 
 in them, but sadness mingled with hope. 
 
 Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
 
 The saddest are these: "It might have been!" 
 
 Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
 Deeply buried from human eyes ; 
 
 And, in the hereafter, angels may 
 Roll the stone from its grave away ! 
 
i8 7 
 
 Whittier s life might have been much easier and 
 much happier. But he had helped much in the 
 accomplishment of a great work, and he was not 
 one to regret all his hardships and sufferings. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE END OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE 
 
 Before closing this short biography we must 
 refer briefly to one or two interesting anecdotes 
 and circumstances. Whittier was color-blind, at 
 least as to red and green. He could see no differ 
 ence between the color of ripe strawberries and the 
 leaves of the vine. Yellow he thought the finest 
 color in the world, and perhaps for this reason he 
 preferred the golden-rod. 
 
 When the Peace Jubilee was to be celebrated 
 after the Civil War, Patrick S. Gilmore, the 
 famous bandmaster, asked Whittier to write an 
 ode for the occasion. He declined, and then Gil- 
 more offered a prize to the poet who would con- 
 
1 88 
 
 tribute the best one. Whittier thought he would 
 write one and send it anonymously. No notice 
 was taken of it. Some people will point a moral 
 to this tale by saying, "See what a reputation 
 is!" 
 
 Whittier was very fond of pets. Once he had a 
 gray parrot. It was trained on shipboard and 
 would swear occasionally; but it soon fell into the 
 quiet ways of its home. One Sunday morning, 
 however, it got on top of the chimney while the 
 church bells were ringing, and began to dance and 
 scream and swear, while the poor Quakers inside the 
 house came out and looked helplessly up at him, 
 wondering how they would get him down. After 
 that he fell down the chimney and remained in 
 the soot two days. When he was discovered and 
 taken out he was nearly starved, and died not long 
 after. 
 
 Whittier also had a little bantam rooster which 
 he trained to crow when he placed it at the door of 
 his niece s room in the morning. Every morning 
 Whittier would push open her door and put the 
 rooster on top of it; and the little fowl would 
 
1 89 
 
 crow lustily until his young mistress was quite 
 awake. 
 
 One day not long after the war the Whittiers 
 received a small box, and on opening it they were 
 astonished to see little spikes sticking out all over. 
 Whittier s niece at once guessed it must be an 
 infernal machine, and took it out and buried 
 it in the garden. A few days after there came a 
 letter saying a paperweight, made out of the bullets 
 from a famous battlefield, had been sent. Then 
 they knew it must be the thing they thought an 
 infernal machine, and went and dug it up; and 
 after that it always stood on the poet s desk. 
 
 During the time of the war, Gail Hamilton, a 
 friend of Whittier s, embroidered a pair of slippers 
 for him. They were in Quaker gray, but on them 
 was pictured a fierce eagle, with a bunch of thun 
 derbolts in one claw. He was looking knowingly 
 around, as much as to say that if he got a good 
 chance when nobody was looking, he would hurl 
 those thunderbolts. This was intended as a joke 
 on Whittier, who was a Quaker and opposed to 
 war, but still had a good deal of the warlike spirit 
 
190 
 
 in him ready to break out at any moment. Whit- 
 tier used to say, referring to the slippers, that Gail 
 Hamilton was as sharp with her needle as with her 
 tongue. 
 
 On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 
 Whittier was given a great dinner at the Hotel 
 Brunswick in Boston. Nearly all the famous 
 writers of the day were present. When it came 
 the poet s turn to respond to the address of con 
 gratulation, he said Longfellow would read a short 
 poem he had written. He handed a paper to that 
 poet, who read the response. 
 
 After that, his birthdays were celebrated more or 
 less regularly, and often Whittier had to make 
 great efforts to escape the pilgrims" who came to 
 Amesbury to see him. Once a party of boys from 
 Exeter Academy started over to visit him and get 
 his autograph. By accident they were delayed, 
 and when they reached his house it was the dead 
 of night and the poet was in bed. He got up, how 
 ever, and gave them hospitality, writing in all their 
 books. Before he had finished, one of the boys 
 said, * You have written only John in my book. " 
 
1 I am afraid some of you haven t even got as 
 much as that," said he drily, and took up the 
 candle and went off to bed. 
 
 He died on the ;th of September, 1892, at the 
 house of some friends in New Hampshire, with 
 whom he was staying. 
 
 We cannot close this account of the life of the 
 dearest and sweetest of poets better than by quot 
 ing his own words about himself: 
 
 And while my words are read, 
 Let this at least be said : 
 "Whate er his life s defeatures, 
 He loved his fellow-creatures. 
 
 "To all who humbly suffered, 
 His tongue and end he offered ; 
 His life was not his own, 
 Nor lived for self alone. 
 
 " Hater of din and riot, 
 He lived in days unquiet; 
 And, lover of all beauty, 
 Trod the hard ways of duty. 
 
192 
 
 4 He meant no wrong to any, 
 He sought the good of many, 
 Yet knew both sin and folly, 
 May God forgive him wholly!" 
 
 Also these lines from "My Soul and I": 
 
 I have wrestled stoutly with the wrong, 
 
 And borne the right 
 From beneath the footfall of the throng 
 
 To life and light. 
 
 Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, 
 
 God speed, quoth I ; 
 To Error amidst her shouting train 
 
 I gave the lie. 
 
 NOTE. The thanks of the publishers are due Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 for their kind permission to use selections from the copyrighted works of Whittier. 
 
THE STORY OF 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
OLIVER WEN DEI 
 
HOLMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TRUE HUMORIST 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes was the humorist among 
 American poets, always with a smile around his 
 mouth and a twinkle in his eye, and a kindly little 
 half-hidden joke in everything he had to say. He 
 was a humorist of the genuine good-humored sort, 
 the " genial Autocrat," the kindly and obliging 
 friend (for did he not write a poem on every pos 
 sible occasion at the request of all sorts of people?) 
 How kind, how pathetic, yet how amusing, are the 
 sweet, quaint lines of "The Last Leaf": 
 
 My grandmamma has said 
 Poor old lady, she is dead 
 
 Long ago 
 
 That he had a Roman nose, 
 And his cheek was like a rose 
 
 In the snow; 
 
 195 
 
196 
 
 But now his nose is thin, 
 And it rests upon his chin 
 
 Like a staff; 
 
 And a crook is in his back, 
 And a melancholy crack 
 
 In his laugh. 
 
 I know it is a sin 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here; 
 
 But the old three-cornered hat 
 And the breeches, and all that, 
 
 Are so queer! 
 
 And if I should live to be 
 The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, 
 
 Let them smile, as I do now, 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling. 
 
 Dear Doctor Holmes! He did indeed live to be 
 the last leaf upon the tree ; but to the very end he 
 went scattering his humorous and good-humored 
 words among his friends wherever he was, making 
 people happier as well as wiser, more light-hearted 
 
197 
 
 as well as more thoughtful, until they turned from 
 crying to laughing. "The Last Leaf" is a little 
 sad, notwithstanding its lightness and fun. But 
 there is no sadness in this, the funniest poem that 
 Holmes ever wrote: 
 
 THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS 
 
 I wrote some lines once on a time 
 
 In wondrous merry mood, 
 And thought, as usual, men would say 
 
 They were exceeding good. 
 
 They were so queer, so very queer, 
 
 I laughed as I would die; 
 Albeit in the general way, 
 
 A sober man am I. 
 
 I called my servant, and he came; 
 
 How kind it was of him 
 To mind a slender man like me, 
 
 He of the mighty limb! 
 
 "These to the printer," I exclaimed, 
 
 And, in my humorous way, 
 I added (as a trifling jest), 
 
 "There 11 be the devil to pay." 
 
198 
 
 He took the paper, and I watched, 
 
 And saw him peep within; 
 At the first line he read, his face 
 
 Was all upon the grin. 
 
 He read the next, the grin grew broad, 
 
 And shot from ear to ear; 
 He read the third, a chuckling noise 
 
 I now began to hear. 
 
 The fourth, he broke into a roar; 
 
 The fifth, his waistband split; 
 The sixth, he burst five buttons off, 
 
 And tumbled in a fit. 
 
 Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, 
 I watched that wretched man; 
 
 And since, I never dare to write 
 As funny as I can. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BIRTH OF OLIVER HOLMES 
 
 " In the last week of August used to fall Com 
 mencement day at Cambridge," remarks the 
 doctor. "I remember that week well, for some- 
 
199 
 
 thing happened to me once at that time, namely, 
 I was born." 
 
 It was in the year 1809 the same year that 
 Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, and Lincoln were 
 born and on August 29. There is still in exist 
 ence an old and yellow almanac that belonged once 
 to Dr. Abiel Holmes, Oliver s father. On the page 
 given to August the numbers of the days run down 
 the left-hand side, i, 2, 3, down to 28, 29, 30, 31. 
 Opposite 29 are two little parallel lines, used as a 
 star or mark of reference, and at the bottom of the 
 page the two little lines are repeated, and after 
 them is written in ink son b. " Of course * 6" 
 stands for born. " A few grains of black sand 
 were scattered over the wet ink to prevent it from 
 blotting, and some of those grains of sand may be 
 seen glistening there to this day. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes was born, and the fact of his birth was 
 thus recorded in the almanac "son b." 
 
 Samuel Johnson was born in 1 709 ; or, as Holmes 
 expresses it, the year 1 709 was made ponder 
 ous and illustrious in English history by his birth. " 
 It appeared to strike Holmes as a huge joke that 
 
200 
 
 he had been born just one hundred years after Dr. 
 Johnson, and he amused himself by following out 
 the parallel of their lives. Every year he used 
 to take down his copy of Boswell s Life of John 
 son" to see what the big, wise old grumbler was 
 doing in that year, just a hundred years before. 
 At last, in the year 1884, when he came to the 
 end of Johnson s life, he said that he felt that 
 the incubus was raised; he had outlived the pon 
 derous parallel. 
 
 The birth of the " laughing philosopher," as 
 Holmes has been called, took place in a very old 
 house in Cambridge, close to Harvard College, and 
 made famous in his poems as "the old gambrel- 
 roofed house." After the battle of Lexington, 
 General-in-chief Artemas Ward had made this 
 house the headquarters for the rallying of the 
 patriots, and General Warren had stopped there 
 on his way to Bunker Hill. George Washington 
 and other famous men in those days must often 
 have darkened its doors. 
 
 For years it stood, this quaint old house in which 
 Holmes was born and grew to manhood, and from 
 
201 
 
 which he went to Harvard College; but before he 
 died the property was sold to the University and 
 the house was torn down. Holmes admitted that 
 it was "a case of justifiable domicide." He went 
 to pay it a last visit, and " found a ghost in each 
 and every chamber and closet," and to each he 
 said a fond goodbye. When the land was leveled 
 down he did not care to go that way again. 
 
 Oliver s father, Dr. Abiel Holmes, was an ortho 
 dox clergyman of the strictest kind. But he was 
 nearly as good-natured as his son. He was a hand 
 some young man, and all the girls used to say, 
 " There goes Holmes look !" 
 
 Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson once 
 found a letter written by his mother when she was 
 a girl, in which she gives some gossip about Dr. Abiel. 
 He sent it to his friend Oliver Wendell and you 
 can imagine the doctor s amusement when he read 
 the following paragraph: 
 
 Now, mamma, I am going to surprise you. 
 Mr. Abiel Holmes, of Cambridge, whom we so 
 kindly chalked out for Miss N. W., is going to be 
 married and, of all folks in the world, guess who 
 
202 
 
 to!. Miss Sally Wendell! I am sure you will not 
 believe it. However, it is an absolute fact, for Harriet 
 and M. Jackson told Miss P. Russell so, who told 
 us; it has been kept secret for six weeks, nobody 
 knows for what. I could not believe it for some 
 time, and scarcely can now; however, it is a fact, 
 they say." 
 
 Evidently girls a hundred years ago wrote much 
 as they do now. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes belonged to one of 
 the most aristocratic families of Boston, and he 
 seemed proud of it. But he was an aristocrat 
 of the right sort. Said he : " I go for the man 
 with the family portraits against the one with the 
 twenty-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that 
 the latter is the better of the two." He said also: 
 "I like to see worthless rich people yield their 
 places to deserving poor ones, who, beginning 
 with sixpence or nothing, come out at last on 
 
203 
 
 Beacon street and have the sun come into their 
 windows all the year round." 
 
 He inherited good blood through three lines, 
 each of which was represented in his own name. 
 The Oliver represents his Boston blue blood, " 
 which came to him from both his father s and his 
 mother s family. One of his ancestors was Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor Andrew Oliver, the distributor of 
 stamps in Boston, whom the people hated so, 
 though he was one of the richest of the old 
 Bostonians, had coaches, a chariot, and negro 
 slaves, as well as good sterling silver plate that 
 exists in the Holmes and Oliver families to this 
 day. 
 
 The Wendell stands for the old Dutch family 
 of Wendells, who had moved from Albany to 
 Boston, and who came originally from Embden, 
 in East Friesland, just on the border line between 
 Germany and the Netherlands. The Wendells 
 are still a wealthy and influential family in Albany, 
 solid old Dutch burghers. Two of Dr. Holmes s 
 Dutch ancestors were shoemakers ; one was a fur 
 trader. 
 
2O4 
 
 Another of Holmes s forefathers on his mother s 
 side was Governor Thomas Dudley, of whom the 
 famous Cotton Mather wrote these verses : 
 
 " In books a prodigal, they say; 
 A living cyclopedia ; 
 Of histories of church and priest, 
 A full compendium, at least ; 
 A table-talker, rich in sense, 
 And witty without wit s pretense." 
 
 Governor Dudley s daughter, Mrs, Anne Brad- 
 street, from whom Holmes was descended, was 
 the first American poet. In 1650 she published 
 the first volume of verse ever written by an 
 American. It came out in London, and was enti 
 tled "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in 
 America," and so popular was it that it went 
 through eight editions. Among the other descend 
 ants of this first American poetess were William 
 Ellery Channing and Wendell Phillips. 
 
 The first Holmes in the genealogy was a lawyer 
 of Gray s Inn, London. John Holmes was born 
 near Boston, and went in 1686 to help settle 
 Woodstock, Connecticut. Holmes s great-grand- 
 
205 
 
 mother Bathsheba, the wife of David Holmes, 
 was a most remarkable lady. She was famous as 
 a doctor and nurse. 
 
 They tell a fine story of her daring, how once, 
 in 1717, when the snow almost buried the houses 
 after a terrible storm, she climbed out of the 
 upper window of her house in Woodstock and 
 traveled on snowshoes over hill and dale to 
 Dudley, Massachusetts, to attend a sick woman. 
 She was accompanied by two men, who held the 
 ends of a long pole, while she held on in the 
 middle. 
 
 There is another remarkable story told of her. 
 Those were the days of Indian massacres. When 
 the men went out to work they took their guns 
 with them, leaving the women in the fort or gar 
 rison house. 
 
 Once the women when alone asked, "Who will 
 go to the garden for vegetables?" Bathsheba 
 Holmes alone dared venture out. She got her 
 vegetables and came back, but not until years 
 afterward did she know in what danger she had 
 been. Then a solitary, decrepit Indian, broken 
 
2O6 
 
 in spirit, called at her door to beg for cider, prom 
 ising to tell her a story if he got his drink. 
 
 She gave him the cider and he told his story. 
 It related to the brave lady herself. He said that 
 when she went to the garden for vegetables, on 
 that occasion long ago, he had been hidden in 
 the woods and had seen her, and had determined 
 to kill her. He had bent his bow and aimed his 
 arrow well, and in a moment he would have let 
 it fly ; but a mysterious power stayed his arm ; he 
 couldn t shoot. When she had gone safely into 
 the garden he called himself a coward and deter 
 mined to have her life when she came out. 
 But, as she passed on her way back to the fort, the 
 same power stayed his arm again, and he won 
 dered that he could not kill a squaw. He had 
 always thought that it was the Great Spirit who 
 held his arm and saved her life. It was in this 
 mysterious way that God preserved the line that 
 was finally to give us the genial autocrat, " the 
 1 good doctor. " 
 
 Our poet s grandfather Holmes was a captain 
 in the French and Indian war, and a surgeon in 
 
207 
 
 the Revolution, dying a year or two before the 
 close of the latter war. 
 
 So you see what a thorough aristocrat, of the 
 true American kind, Oliver Wendell Holmes was. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Holmes, the poet, was born and brought up in a 
 poetic town. The old, yellow, hip-roofed house 
 stood close beside the grounds of Harvard College ; 
 and all around were homes of men who were 
 famous or were to be famous. Cambridge has 
 always been a quaint, quiet, peaceful, well-bred 
 town. It stands at the back door of Boston, a half 
 hour s walk from that "hub of the solar system. " 
 Elms and poplars line its streets, its houses look 
 like rich old relics, and everywhere are evidences 
 of comfort and culture. Imagine how George 
 Washington and General Warren, and all the Rev 
 olutionary heroes walked up and down these streets! 
 Already in the time of Washington many famous 
 
208 
 
 people had lived there ; and after him came a whole 
 procession of great men, one after another Long 
 fellow, Emerson, Sumner, Garrison, Motley their 
 names are too many to mention. 
 
 In the center of the town are the Harvard Col 
 lege buildings, of brick and stone, some old, some 
 new, surrounded by broad green lawns, and some 
 of them overrun with ivy. Then, running out from 
 the college grounds as a hub, are streets like the 
 spokes of a wheel. In one direction is Mount 
 Auburn cemetery, where hundreds of the famous 
 dead lie buried, and which is the most beautiful 
 cemetery in the United States. In another direc 
 tion are Lexington and Concord, while on another 
 side the Charles River flows serenely along 
 towards Boston Bay. 
 
 Everywhere about are to be seen college students 
 and professors. Here is a dapper young man with 
 a pointed beard the new professor of Eng 
 lish; there is a bent old man, white-haired, totter 
 ing in his gait he is the famous professor of Greek. 
 Some of the students are gay and always cracking- 
 jokes ; others have deepset eyes and shabby 
 
209 
 
 clothes "plugs " the others call them, for they are 
 very serious minded young fellows and never waste 
 a moment of time. Then there are many more 
 who go singing and shouting through the streets at 
 late hours in the night, causing the people who are 
 abed and asleep to be aroused from their slumbers 
 only to stick their heads out of the windows and 
 silently wish the young fellows were anywhere but 
 in Cambridge. 
 
 Such is this famous college town ; and a very en 
 joyable place it is to live in. A great many famous 
 people come here to preach in the churches, or to 
 lecture, or to speak at banquets and meetings. A 
 great many pretty girls come here to see the sights 
 and visit their brothers and look at the crowds of 
 handsome young men. 
 
 In this old college town, this young aristocrat, 
 the descendant of patriots and governors and men 
 of wealth and women of beauty, grew quietly up 
 to manhood. He went to school, learned his les 
 sons well, but not too well, never got into trouble, 
 had a good time, and did not fret or worry about 
 anything, or annoy anybody, even his teachers. 
 
210 
 
 There is a story of a famous feruling that he got 
 only one and years afterward the teacher came to 
 him to apologize. Holmes in a letter tells in his 
 humorous way how the repentant master came and 
 introduced himself to the now famous poet, how in 
 an embarrassed manner he recalled old days, and 
 finally the feruling, and then said he was sorry he 
 had given it. Holmes declared he had richly de 
 served it; but the schoolmaster was glad to get 
 away. Apologizing to a pupil for whipping him is 
 indeed an embarrassing thing. 
 
 It was not at school, however, but in his father s 
 library that Oliver learned most. That room in 
 the corner of the old house where were the dents 
 of the British muskets, was the study, and it was 
 filled from floor to ceiling, every wall, with books. 
 He says he bumped about among books from the 
 time when he was hardly taller than one of his 
 father s or grandfather s folios. " 
 
 Beside the library, there was the old garden, 
 which he himself has quaintly described. There 
 were old lilac bushes at the right of the entrance, 
 and in the corner at the left that remarkable moral 
 
21 I 
 
 pear tree which gave me one of my first lessons in 
 life. Its fruit never ripened, but always rotted at 
 the core just before it began to grow mellow. It 
 was a vulgar specimen at best, and was set there 
 no doubt to preach its annual sermon. But in the 
 northern border was a high-bred Saint Michael 
 pear tree, which taught a lesson that all of gentle 
 blood might take to heart; for its fruit used to get 
 hard and dark, and break into unseemly cracks, so 
 that when the lord of the harvest came for it, it 
 was like those rich men s sons we see too often, who 
 have never ripened, but only rusted, hardened, and 
 shrunken. We had peaches, lovely nectarines, 
 and sweet white grapes, growing and coming to 
 kindly maturity in those days. 
 
 "As for the garden beds, they were cared 
 for by the Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, 
 sometimes assisted by one Rube, a little old 
 Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a 
 lively temper. Nothing but old-fashioned flowers 
 in them hyacinths pushing their green beaks 
 through as soon as the snow was gone, or 
 earlier; tulips, coming up in the shapes of cornu- 
 
2 12 
 
 copise; peonies, butting their blunt way through the 
 loosened earth; lilies, roses damask, white, blush, 
 cinnamon; larkspurs, lupines, and gorgeous holly 
 hocks. 
 
 The yellow-birds used to be very fond of some 
 sunflowers that grew close to the pear tree with 
 a moral. I remember their flitting about, golden 
 in the golden light, over the golden flowers, as if 
 they were flakes of curdled sunshine." 
 
 Oliver had a younger brother John, who was as 
 light of heart and full of fun as he; and gay times 
 they had together in this quiet old town, and this 
 old house with its books and its garden. He says 
 that as a boy he was afraid of the tall masts 
 of ships that used to come up the river, and he 
 would hide his eyes from them. And he was 
 afraid, too, of a great wooden hand, the sign of a 
 glove-maker whose shop he sometimes passed. 
 
 So in happiness and comfort he dreamed his 
 early years away, with his brothers and sisters and 
 father and mother. He was like a fine, luscious 
 pear in that old garden, ripening without rotting at 
 the core, or yet getting hard and full of cracks. 
 
213 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SCHOOL LIFE 
 
 When young Oliver was ten, he was sent about 
 a mile away to a school where one of the pupils 
 was Margaret Fuller, who afterwards became a 
 famous writer. As a girl, says Holmes, she had 
 the reputation of being smart. " Once she wrote a 
 school essay which was shown to the father of 
 Oliver. It began, "It is a trite remark." But 
 Oliver didn t know what trite meant. It was to him 
 a crushing discovery of her superiority. She was 
 stately and distant, as if she had great thoughts of 
 her own ; she was a diligent student, and read a great 
 many of what she called naw-vels. " A remark 
 able point about her," says Holmes, "was that 
 long, flexile neck, arching and undulating in 
 strange sinuous movements, which one who loved 
 her compared to those of a swan, and one who 
 loved her not to the serpent that tempted Eve." 
 
 After five years at this school, Oliver was taken 
 to Andover, and left at the house of a professor in 
 the theological seminary. He went to Phillips 
 
214 
 
 Academy, where he studied a year preparatory to 
 entering Harvard College. There he met a rosy- 
 faced boy named Phineas Barnes, and the two 
 became great friends. Phineas did not go to Har 
 vard College, and they were soon separated; but 
 they always remained friends, and kept up a cor 
 respondence as long as they lived. 
 
 At this time, says one of his biographers, he was 
 an energetic and lively youngster, full of fun and 
 mischief, with tendencies in the way of flageolets 
 and flutes, and with a weakness for pistols and 
 guns and cigars, which latter he would hide in the 
 barrel of the pistol, where his mother s eyes would 
 never care to look for them. 
 
 One of the objects of most interest to the boys 
 at this school was a tutor who had had a dream 
 that he would fall dead while he was praying. He 
 regarded the dream as a warning, and asked the 
 boys to come in turn to see him before he died. 
 Says Holmes, "More than one boy kept his eye 
 on him during his devotions, possessed by the same 
 feeling the man had who followed Van Amburgh 
 about with the expectation, let us not say hope, 
 
215 
 
 of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or 
 later." 
 
 Years later he revisited these scenes. He says 
 that the ghost of a boy was at his side as he wan 
 dered among the places he knew so well : * + Two 
 tickets for Boston, I said to the man at the station. 
 
 "But the little ghost whispered, When you 
 leave this place you will leave me behind you/ 
 
 One ticket for Boston, if you please. Good 
 bye, little ghost. " 
 
 At last Holmes returned to Cambridge and 
 immediately entered Harvard College, in "the 
 famous class of 29." He had many well-known 
 classmates, among them the Rev. Samuel Francis 
 Smith, the Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and 
 others. Smith was afterwards famous as the 
 author of My Country, Tis of Thee, " and Dr. 
 Holmes, in one of his poems, thus writes about 
 him: 
 
 And there s a nice youngster of excellent pith, 
 Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; 
 But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, 
 Just read on his medal, My country of theej 
 
216 
 
 Charles Sumnerwas in the next class below, and 
 the famous historian Motley two classes below. 
 Though Motley was the youngest student in the 
 college, he and Holmes afterward became the most 
 intimate of friends, and so remained through life; 
 and when Motley was dead Holmes wrote his 
 biography. 
 
 Holmes said Motley looked the ideal of a young 
 poet, and he goes on to describe him: "His 
 finely shaped and expressive features, his large, 
 luminous eyes, his dark waving hair, the singu 
 larly spirited set of his head, his well outlined 
 figure, gave promise of manly beauty." 
 
 After this description of Motley, read the follow 
 ing which Holmes gives of himself in a letter to 
 Phineas Barnes: 
 
 "I, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior in Harvard 
 University, am a plumeless biped of exactly five 
 feet three inches when standing in a pair of sub 
 stantial boots made by Mr. Russell of this town, 
 having eyes which I call blue, and hair which I do 
 not know what to call. 
 
 Secondly, with regard to my moral qualities, 
 
I am rather lazy than otherwise, and certainly 
 do not study as hard as I ought to. I am not 
 dissipated and I am not sedate, and when I last 
 ascertained my college rank I stood in the humble 
 situation of seventeenth scholar. " 
 
 In another letter written when in college to his 
 friend Phineas he says: 
 
 < What do I do ? I read a little, study a 
 little, smoke a little, and eat a good deal. What 
 do I think ? I think that s a deuced hard ques 
 tion. What have I been doing these three 
 years ? Why, I have been growing a little in 
 body, and I hope in mind; I have been learning a 
 little of almost everything, and a good deal of some 
 things. " 
 
 And in still another letter, he says: "I have 
 been writing poetry like a madman, and then I 
 have been talking sentiment like a turtle-dove, 
 and gadding about among the sweet faces, and 
 doing all such silly things that spoil you for 
 everything else. This month of May is too good 
 for anything but love." 
 
2l8 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE 
 
 Holmes was not only born within the present 
 grounds of Harvard, he grew up there, was a stu 
 dent of Harvard, and a loyal member of the 
 " famous class of 29," a lecturer and professor at 
 Harvard, and he became Harvard s most famous 
 poet and man of letters, though Harvard has had 
 so many that were great. So the life at Harvard 
 College was always a part of his life; and perhaps 
 that is why he was so merry. 
 
 College students are great jokers. In the days 
 of Holmes the students decidedly objected to going 
 to chapel early in the morning, rising as they had 
 to do before daylight on cold winter days. To 
 show that they didn t like this idea of early prayers, 
 they would sometimes fasten firecrackers to the 
 lids of the big Bible, so that when the president 
 or a professor came to lead the exercises and 
 opened the book, they would go off with a snap. 
 
 In those days, too, they had only candles, and 
 as prayers were held before daylight the chapel 
 
219 
 
 candles had to be lighted. Sometimes the stu 
 dents would put pieces of lead where the wick 
 ought to be, and when the candles burned down 
 to the lead the lights went oat, of course leaving 
 the chapel in darkness. At other times the presi 
 dent would be startled on entering the pulpit by 
 seeing a pig s head standing upright and bristly on 
 his desk. 
 
 The rooms in the college dormitories were very 
 poorly furnished. Instead of matches they had 
 flint and steel and a tinder-box; and in almost 
 every room was a cannon ball, which the boys 
 would heat red-hot and set on a metal frame of 
 some sort to help keep the room warm. Some 
 times in the middle of the night a wicked student 
 or two would send one of these cannon balls rolling, 
 bump, bump, bump, down the stairs, waking every 
 one and getting the proctor out of bed. Some 
 times, too, the cannon ball was hot and burned the 
 ringers of the proctor when he tried to pick it up. 
 Then woe to the young lad who was caught and 
 proved to be the culprit. 
 
 In college, Holmes belonged to two or three 
 
220 
 
 clubs. One was the Hasty Pudding Club, which 
 met in the rooms of the members. A worthy old 
 lady of the village called Sister Stimson prepared 
 the pudding in two huge pots; and the "providers" 
 of the evening would sling these, filled with the 
 boiling mush, on a stout pole, and, resting the ends 
 upon their shoulders, mount gallantly to the room 
 where the members were assembled, often in the 
 third or fourth story. A bowl of hasty pudding 
 was always carried to the officer in the entry, as a 
 sort of peace offering; and when the members had 
 eaten as much as they could, and had told all the 
 stories they had to tell, the occupants of nearby 
 rooms were invited to help finish up the repast, 
 
 Another club to which he belonged was called the 
 " Med. Facs.," and each member or officer had the 
 title of a supposed professor in the Medical Faculty 
 of the University. The first meeting of the year 
 was held in an upper room, draped in black cotton 
 and decorated with death s-heads and cross-bones 
 in chalk; a table, also hung in black, extended 
 lengthwise through the room. In the center sat 
 the mock president and about him were the "pro- 
 
221 
 
 fessors" and assistant professors," all in black. 
 Near at hand stood two policemen, usually the two 
 strongest men in the class, dressed in flesh-colored 
 tights. On the stairs outside were crowds of 
 Juniors, from which twenty or thirty were to be 
 initiated into the society. This initiation consisted 
 usually in answering disagreeable questions put by 
 the professors, " or in doing such things as 
 standing on one s head, crawling about the floor, 
 singing Mother Goose melodies, or making a 
 Latin or Greek oration. 
 
 College Commencement in those days was like 
 a country fair. The people pitched tents on the 
 western side of the college yard (for there were then 
 no hotels, and boarding was expensive), and opposite 
 them were various stands and shows, making a 
 street which by nightfall was paved with water 
 melon rinds, peachstones, and various refuse, on a 
 ground of straw, all flavored with rum and tobacco 
 smoke. 
 
 Holmes himself has well "described this festival 
 of the college year: 
 
 "The fair plain (the Common), not then, as now, 
 
222 
 
 cut up into cattle pens by the ugliest of known 
 fences, swarmed with the joyous crowds. The 
 ginger-beer carts rang their bells and popped their 
 bottles, the fiddlers played Money Musk over and 
 over and over, the sailors danced the double-shuffle, 
 the gentlemen of the city capered in rusty jigs, the 
 town ladies even took a part in the lusty exercise, the 
 confectioners rattled red and white sugar plums, 
 long sticks of candy, sugar and burnt almonds into 
 their brass scales, the wedges of pie were driven 
 into splitting mouths, the mountains of (clove- 
 sprinkled) hams were cut down as Fort Hill is being 
 sliced to-day; the hungry feeders sat still and con 
 centrated about the boards where the grosser viands 
 were served, while the milk flowed from cracking 
 cocoanuts, the fragrant muskmelons were cloven 
 into new-moon crescents, and the great water 
 melons showed their cool pulps sparkling and roseate 
 as the dewy fingers of Aurora. " 
 
 And besides all this, there were the orations of 
 the students, and the speeches of old graduates 
 who now came back famous, and all the bustle and 
 importance of the college men themselves, hurry- 
 
223 
 
 ing to entertain their fair lady friends, their mothers, 
 and their fathers, who had come up to see how 
 they behaved. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A BUDDING POET 
 
 We have already seen in one of Holmes- s letters 
 to Phineas Barnes that while in college he was 
 1 writing poetry like mad." In the appendix to 
 the latest complete edition of his poems you will 
 find some lines translated from the ^Eneid while 
 he was a student at Andover, not yet sixteen years 
 old. In college he was poet to the Hasty Pudding 
 Club; had a poem at Exhibition, one at Commence 
 ment, and was elected class poet; besides that, he 
 joined several classmates in a volume of satirical 
 poems on the first regular art exhibition in Boston. 
 
 When he finished his college course he studied 
 law for a year, though his father rather wished him 
 to be a clergyman. Says he, " I might have been 
 a clergyman myself, for aught I know, if a certain 
 clergyman had not looked and talked so like an 
 
undertaker. " Think of the little smooth-voiced joker 
 in the pulpit! In another place he says, "How 
 grandly the procession of old clergymen who filled 
 our pulpit from time to time, and passed the day 
 under our roof, marches before my closed eyes!" 
 You must remember that Holmes was the son of 
 the orthodox clergyman of Cambridge, and these 
 were the men who exchanged pulpits with his father. 
 At first, as an experiment, he studied law for a 
 year; but he did not work very hard. He was 
 writing poetry. A paper called the Collegian was 
 started, and he contributed twenty-five or more 
 poems to it, among which were some of his fun 
 niest and best. "The Last Leaf" and "The 
 Height of the Ridiculous " were among the work of 
 that first poetic year of his. He never thought 
 much of these poems, though some people consider 
 them quite as good as the poems of the famous 
 Thomas Hood, who wrote 
 
 "Take her up tenderly, 
 
 Lift her with care, 
 Fashioned so slenderly, 
 Young and so fair!" 
 
225 
 
 Because he didn t like them, or thought them 
 too rollicking, he did not reprint many of them. 
 Here is one, perhaps the first of his poems ever 
 printed with his name, which appeared in Feb 
 ruary, 1830, under the title "Runaway Ballad": 
 
 I 
 
 Wake from thy slumbers, Isabel, the stars are in the sky, 
 And night has hung her silver lamp, to light her altar by; 
 The flowers have closed their faded leaves, and drooped 
 
 upon the plain; 
 Oh! wake thee, and their dying hues shall blush to life 
 
 again. 
 
 II 
 
 Get up! get up! Miss Polly Jones, the tandem s at the 
 
 door; 
 Get up and shake your lovely bones, it s twelve o clock 
 
 and more; 
 
 The chaises they have rattled by, and nothing stirs around, 
 And all the world but you and me are snoring safe and 
 
 sound. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I ve got my uncle s bay, and trotting Peggy, too, 
 I ve lined their tripes with oats and hay, and now for love 
 and you! 
 
226 
 
 The lash is curling in the air, and I am at your side; 
 To-morrow you are Mrs. Snaggs, my bold and blooming 
 bride. 
 
 Here is another, entitled " Romance": 
 
 Oh! she was a maid of a laughing eye, 
 And she lived in a garret cold and high; 
 And he was a threadbare, whiskered beau, 
 And he lived in a cellar damp and low. 
 
 But not all his early poems were nonsense like 
 these. One day, in the fall of 1830, he read in the 
 Boston Advertiser a paragraph saying that the 
 Navy Department at Washington intended to 
 break up the frigate Constitution, which had 
 fought so bravely in the War of 1812, and won 
 such glory for the American people. Immediately 
 he wrote the following poem, which stands at the 
 beginning of his collected works: 
 
 OLD IRONSIDES. 
 
 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! 
 
 Long has it waved on high, 
 And many an eye has danced to see 
 
 The banner in the sky; 
 
227 
 
 Beneath it rung the battle shout, 
 
 And burst the cannon s roar; 
 The meteor of the ocean air 
 
 Shall sweep the clouds no more. 
 
 Her deck, once red with heroes blood, 
 
 Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
 When winds were hurrying o er the flood 
 
 And waves were white below, 
 No more shall feel the victor s tread 
 
 Or know the conquered knee; - 
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
 
 The eagle of the sea! 
 
 Oh, better that her shattered hulk 
 
 Should sink beneath the wave; 
 Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
 
 And there should be her grave; 
 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 
 The lightning and the gale! 
 
 This stirring poem was published on the next 
 day but one, and was immediately copied into 
 nearly every newspaper in the United States. 
 Copies were even printed as handbills and distrib- 
 
228 
 
 uted about the city of Washington. Because 
 the people felt so badly about it, the Navy 
 Department at last decided not to break up Old 
 Ironsides. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DOCTOR HOLMES 
 
 Young Mr. Holmes wrote so much poetry he 
 had little time for law during the twelve months 
 after his graduation. So at the end of the year 
 he gave up law and began to study medicine. At 
 first he felt his heart come up into his throat at 
 the sight of skeletons grinning at him from the 
 walls; and his cheek grew pale as the hospital 
 sheets when he passed among the sufferers and 
 saw the dead and dying, or helped to perform a 
 surgical operation ; but after a time these things 
 were to him as nothing, mere every-day affairs. 
 
 About the same time, too, he became a collector 
 of rare old books. In 1833, when he had finished 
 his medical education as far as he could at home, 
 he went to Europe to complete his studies in the 
 
22Q 
 
 hospitals of Paris and other cities. He remained 
 there two years and a half, and in that time he 
 had a chance to pick up some rare and queer old 
 volumes. 
 
 He returned a full-fledged doctor; but he seems 
 to have felt that he had neglected poetry long 
 enough, and soon published his first book, which 
 is dated 1836. He had been invited to read a 
 long and serious poem before the Phi Beta 
 Kappa society of Harvard, and this he made the 
 chief poem of his little volume, including more 
 than forty others. Beside the early humorous 
 poems which we have already referred to, there 
 was the well-known poem "The September 
 Gale," beginning, 
 
 I m not a chicken ; I have seen 
 Full many a chill September, 
 
 and ending, 
 
 And not till fate has cut the last 
 
 Of all my earthly stitches, 
 This aching heart shall cease to mourn 
 
 My loved, my long-lost breeches ! 
 
230 
 
 George Ticknor Curtis describes the youtnful 
 poet in the following bright paragraph: 
 
 "Dr. Holmes had then just returned from 
 Europe. Extremely youthful in his appearance, 
 bubbling over with the mingled humor and pathos 
 that have always marked his poetry, and spark 
 ling with coruscations of his peculiar genius, his 
 Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1836, delivered with a 
 clear, ringing enunciation, which imparted to the 
 hearers his own enjoyment of his thoughts and 
 expressions, delighted a cultivated audience to a 
 very uncommon degree. " 
 
 Here is another description of the reading of 
 the same poem, which was printed in The Atlantic 
 Monthly: 
 
 "A brilliant, airy, and spirituMe manner, 
 varied with striking flexibility to the changing 
 sentiment of the poem, now deeply impassioned, 
 now gayly joyous and nonchalant, and anon 
 springing up almost into an actual flight of rhap 
 sody, rendered the delivery of this poem a rich, 
 nearly a dramatic, entertainment, such as we have 
 rarely witnessed." 
 
231 
 
 Abraham Lincoln read and admired the poems 
 in this first little volume. Once, in conversation, 
 he remarked, " There are some quaint, queer 
 verses, written, I think, by Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, entitled The Last Leaf, one of which 
 is to me inexpressibly touching." He then re 
 peated the poem from memory, and as he finished 
 this much-admired stanza, 
 
 The mossy marbles rest 
 
 On the lips that he has prest 
 
 In their bloom ; 
 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 
 On the tomb, 
 
 he said, "For pure pathos, in my judgment, 
 there is nothing finer than those six lines in the 
 English language." Perhaps Lincoln was thinking 
 of the lonely grave of his own first love in Illinois, 
 for he once said, < Oh, I cannot bear the thought 
 of her lying out there with the storms beating 
 upon her." 
 
 Holmes, having received his degree of M.D. 
 from Harvard College, began practicing med- 
 
232 
 
 icine in Boston. He was young and popular, 
 he was related to the best families, and he had 
 the best medical education the world could give. 
 The result was that he had plenty of practice. 
 He didn t believe much in giving medicine, and 
 his doses were usually very small. He would 
 enter the sick-room with a bright, cheerful smile 
 on his face that of itself made the patient soon 
 feel better. In one of his books he gives this 
 maxim : * When visiting a patient enter the sick 
 room at once, without keeping the patient in the 
 torture of suspense by discussing the case with 
 others in another room." 
 
 Prize medals were offered in Boston for medical 
 essays, and in the first two years after he began 
 practicing medicine he gained three of these 
 medals. In 1838, after two years in Boston, he 
 was appointed professor of anatomy and physiol 
 ogy in Dartmouth College. He remained there two 
 years, at the end of which time he resigned. He 
 then came back to Boston and married the daugh 
 ter of Judge Charles Jackson. He and his wife 
 took a house in the very heart of Boston, in a 
 
233 
 
 little court leading out of Tremont street, and 
 there they lived for nearly twenty years. When 
 he first entered that house two shadows glided 
 over the threshold ; five lingered in the doorway 
 when he passed through it for the last time, and 
 one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to 
 be longer than his own." Those other shadows 
 were his children, his eldest son being taller than 
 the doctor himself. In the surrounding houses 
 there had been sorrow and disappointment and 
 death. The whole drama of life was played in 
 that stock company s theatre of a dozen houses, 
 one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe 
 calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to 
 those walls, forever, " the professor said, for 
 the many pleasant years he has passed within 
 them." 
 
 He had two sons and a daughter. The oldest 
 son was named Oliver Wendell, and became a 
 judge. The other son, Edward, was also a law 
 yer. The daughter, named after his wife Amelia 
 Jackson, married Mr. John Turner Sargent, and 
 it was at her country home at Beverly Farms that 
 
234 
 
 Holmes spent much of his time toward the end of 
 his life. 
 
 He practiced medicine again in Boston for seven 
 years, when he accepted an appointment as pro 
 fessor of anatomy and physiology in Harvard 
 Medical School. This professorship he held for 
 thirty-five years, when he resigned on account of 
 old age. 
 
 He had a beautiful country home called Canoe 
 Place, in the Berkshire Hills, in western Massa 
 chusetts. There he spent "seven happy summer 
 vacations, which, " he declares, stand in his 
 memory like the seven golden candlesticks seen in 
 the beatific vision of the holy dreamer." Some 
 famous literary people lived near by, among them 
 Herman Melville, the novelist and traveler, and 
 not far away were Miss Sedgwick and Fanny 
 Kemble, and for a short time Hawthorne. The 
 doctor s dwelling was a modest one, he tells us, 
 "not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its 
 drab and mahogany, full of great and little boys 
 playthings." This place had come to him by 
 inheritance from his mother, 
 
. 235 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE AUTOCRAT 
 
 In 1852 Holmes delivered a course of lectures 
 on the "English Poets of the Nineteenth Cen 
 tury," Wordsworth, Moore, Keats, Shelley, and 
 others. At the end of each lecture he read a 
 poem, and these poems now appear in his collected 
 works as "After a Lecture on Wordsworth," 
 After a Lecture on Moore, " etc. 
 
 In a letter to an official he states the terms on 
 which he is willing to give this course of lectures in 
 various towns and cities: 
 
 < My terms for a lecture, when I stay over 
 night, are fifteen dollars and expenses, a room 
 with a fire in it, in a public house, and a mattress to 
 sleep on, not a feather bed. As you write in 
 your individual capacity, I tell you at once all my 
 habitual exigencies. I am afraid to sleep in a cold 
 room ; I can t sleep on a feather bed ; I will not 
 go to private houses ; and I have fixed upon the 
 sum mentioned as what it is worth to go away for 
 the night to places that cannot pay more." 
 
236 
 
 The landlady in the Autocrat of the Break 
 fast Table " also has something to say about his 
 lectures : 
 
 "He was a man that loved to stick around 
 home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. 
 He used to say he d as lief have a tooth pulled as 
 go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, 
 when he went away, and never sick when he 
 didn t. Pretty nigh killed himself goin about 
 lecturing two or three winters, talkin in cold 
 country lyceums, as he used to say, goin home 
 to cold parlors and bein treated to cold apples and 
 cold water ; and then goin up into a cold bed in a 
 cold chamber, and comin home next mornin with 
 a cold in his head as bad as the horse distemper. 
 
 Perhaps this is why Holmes was not more of a 
 traveler, going to Europe but twice, and hardly 
 ever leaving his birthplace of Cambridge or his 
 home in Boston. 
 
 So twenty years passed by after he published 
 his first volume of poems before he did anything 
 else very literary. His fellow professor Long 
 fellow had become famous ; and so had Haw- 
 
237 
 
 thorne ; and so, too, had Lowell and Whittier. 
 But Holmes seemed to have no desire for fame. 
 He had written a few amusing poems, and delivered 
 some lectures. 
 
 But when the Atlantic Monthly was about to be 
 started, all the literary folk turned to Holmes and 
 said, " That jolly old fellow could write something 
 good, if he only would. " 
 
 The young publishers, Phillips & Sampson, were 
 enthusiastic about the new magazine. Lowell was 
 chosen editor, and Francis H. Underwood was 
 assistant, though the idea was originally his. 
 They called in Longfellow and Emerson, and 
 Motley and Holmes. This distinguished company 
 met at a dinner and talked over the new project. 
 Holmes suggested the name Atlantic Monthly. 
 Longfellow would contribute a poem now and 
 then, and Emerson an essay from time to time ; 
 but poems and essays do not fill up a magazine 
 very fast. So Lowell determined to get some 
 thing from Holmes, some light, gossipy prose, 
 that should continue on from month to month. 
 The doctor remembered that he had written some 
 
2 3 8 
 
 papers twenty-five years before for the New Eng 
 land Magazine, and he determined to shake the 
 same bough again" and see what fruit he could 
 get. So he began where he had left off all those 
 years before with an " As-I-was-saying." And for 
 a year or more, every month in the Atlantic, the 
 Autocrat " gave his opinions of life, cracked his 
 little jokes on men and things, recited a poem, or 
 gossiped with his landlady and fellow boarders. 
 And each month that distinguished literary com 
 pany met at some hotel or restaurant in Boston 
 and had a dinner which was a feast of reason and 
 good things for the mind and heart as well as for 
 the stomach ; and Holmes was the wit and soul of 
 every banquet. 
 
 At last Oliver Wendell Holmes had come before 
 the world as a great poet and a great humorist. 
 The "Autocrat" is the very soul of humor, so 
 genial, so wise in his good advice, so gay in his 
 good nature, so light and sparkling and kind. 
 Now was published "The Deacon s Masterpiece, 
 or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay"; and by its 
 side that most beautiful of all the poems Holmes 
 
239 
 
 ever wrote, "The Chambered Nautilus." When 
 the Princess of Wales asked him to write in her 
 album, he copied the last verse of "The Cham 
 bered Nautilus, " as he had done in the album of 
 many a subject of our great republic. Listen ! 
 Holmes could be stately and beautiful as well as 
 gay and humorous : 
 
 Build thee more stately mansions. O my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll! 
 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life s unresting seal 
 
 If you wish to know the wise things Holmes 
 said about anything and everything, read The 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." Here are a 
 few bright sayings which you will not find in that 
 book, but which will give you an idea of the kind 
 of things with which the volume is filled : 
 
 "An Indian is a few instincts on legs, and hold 
 ing a tomahawk." 
 
 If a doctor has the luck to find out a new 
 
240 
 
 malady, it is tied to his name like a tin kettle to a 
 dog s tail, and he goes clattering down the highway 
 of fame to posterity with his seolian attachment 
 following at his heels." 
 
 Gunpowder : * Chemistry seals up a few dark 
 grains in iron vases, and lo! at the touch of a 
 single spark, rises in smoke and flames a mighty 
 Afrit with a voice like thunder and an arm that 
 shatters like an earthquake." 
 
 The scholar s mind is furnished with shelves 
 like his library. Each book knows its place in the 
 brain as well as against the wall or in the alcove. 
 His consciousness is doubled by the books which 
 encircle him, as the trees that surround a lake 
 repeat themselves in its unruffled waters. Men 
 talk of the nerve that runs to the pocket, but one 
 who loves his books, and has lived long with them, 
 has a nervous filament which runs from his sen- 
 sorium to every one of them. " 
 
 Slang is the way in which a lazy adult shifts 
 the trouble of finding any exact meaning in his (or 
 her) conversation on the other party. If both 
 talkers are indolent, all their talk lapses into the 
 
241 
 
 vague generalities of childhood. It is a prevalent 
 social vice of the time, as it has been of times that 
 are past." 
 
 Perhaps the most famous expression in the 
 "Autocrat" is that in which he calls Boston 
 "the hub of the solar system" (often wrongly 
 quoted as "the hub of the universe"). 
 
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " was 
 such a success that it sold the Atlantic Monthly 
 by the thousands of copies. The editors and pub 
 lishers both said, "This is just the thing : give us 
 more, give us more." So Holmes wrote another 
 book, which he called "The Professor at the 
 Breakfast Table"; and then "The Poet at the 
 Breakfast Table. " 
 
 In the "Autocrat" Holmes said that every man 
 had in him the writing of at least one novel. As 
 the demand for his work was great, he thought he 
 would write one. So he produced Elsie Venner, 
 a Romance of Destiny." It is a strange story of 
 a girl who has the nature of a snake. Holmes 
 had heard of cases like that of Elsie Venner, and 
 he worked her story out in a scientific manner. 
 
2 4 2 
 
 We read it as if it were really true, and it exer 
 cises a weird fascination over us. 
 
 Later he wrote another novel, entitled "The 
 Guardian Angel." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 "THE FAMOUS CLASS OF 29" 
 
 Holmes was the poet of the occasional, if ever 
 there was one. If anybody held a meeting about 
 anything, and Holmes was asked to read a poem, 
 he kindly consented to do so. Who ever heard of 
 opening a meeting of a medical society with a poem? 
 Yet Holmes read an original poem at many a 
 meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 
 It was at the yearly meeting of "the famous 
 class of 29" that he read his poems oftenest. 
 Every year for sixty years, this loyal poet remained 
 true to class traditions. A poem from Holmes 
 was always expected, and the class always got it. 
 
 A college class is a band of friends, friends who 
 have passed the merriest years of their lives 
 together. They come to college from the country 
 over, from homes poor and rich, distant and near. 
 
2 43 
 
 For four years they live together, all on an equal 
 footing, all together blooming into manhood. 
 Then they scatter to their various duties in the 
 world. One is a lawyer, another a journalist, 
 another a clergyman, another a doctor, and others 
 are business men. Yet how can they ever forget 
 those happy years together? 
 
 Each year all those members of the class of 29 
 who could do so would come together at Com 
 mencement time to renew old memories. Some of 
 the class were perhaps over seas and in foreign 
 lands; some, alas! were dead. So, as the years 
 passed by, the number grew smaller and smaller, 
 and the gathering became sadder and sadder; yet 
 none of them would have missed it. 
 
 The first class poem in Holmes s works is en 
 titled "Bill and Joe," and begins thus: 
 
 Come, dear old comrades, you and I 
 Will steal an hour from days gone by, 
 The shining days when life was new, 
 And all was bright with morning dew, 
 The lusty days of long ago, 
 When you were Bill and I was Joe. 
 
244 
 
 Most of these verses are of sad memories of 
 happy times gone forever: 
 
 Where, oh, where are the visions of morning, 
 
 Fresh as the dews of our prime? 
 Gone, like the tenants that quit without warning, 
 
 Down the back entry of time. 
 
 But some are poems of dear friendship and 
 pleasure at seeing friends again, like this, called 
 Indian Summer " : 
 
 You ll believe me, dear boys, tis a pleasure to rise, 
 With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; 
 To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone 
 Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. 
 
 One poem entitled The Boys" is well worth 
 remembering, especially the last stanzas: 
 
 Then here s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 
 The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! 
 And when we have done with our life-lasting toys. 
 Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys! 
 
 During the times of the great Civil War the 
 poems were mostly of a patriotic kind. Here, for 
 
245 
 
 instance, is the way he opens his poem in 1862, 
 entitled "The Good Ship Union ": 
 
 Tis midnight: through my troubled dream 
 
 Loud wails the tempest s cry; 
 Before the gale, with tattered sail, 
 
 A ship goes plunging by. 
 What name? Where bound? The rocks around 
 
 Repeat the loud halloo. 
 The good ship Union, Southward bound: 
 
 God help her and her crew ! 
 
 In 1878 he wrote a poem on "The Last Sur 
 vivor," which opens with these beautiful lines: 
 
 Yes! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast, 
 And the thought comes strangely o er me, Who will live to 
 be the last ? 
 
 Let us add one more verse, a humorous verse 
 in which the joker pretends he s not so very old: 
 
 I don t think I feel much older; I m aware I m rather gray; 
 But so are many young folks, I meet em every day. 
 I confess I m more particular in what I eat and drink, 
 But one s taste improves with culture; that is all it means, 
 I think. 
 
246 
 
 Can you read as once you used to? Well, the printing is so bad, 
 No young folks eyes can read it like the books that once 
 
 we had. 
 Are you quite as auick of hearing? Please to say that once 
 
 again. 
 Don 7 1 use plain words, your Reverence? Yes, I often use 
 
 a cane. 
 
 Ah, well, I know at every age life has a certain charm, 
 You re going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you ll take 
 
 my arm. 
 \ take your arm! Why take your arm? I d thank you to 
 
 be told 
 I m old enough to walk alone, but not so very old. 
 
 At last, in 1889, the poems stopped, because 
 there were so few of the class left, and the meet 
 ings were so sad. In 1891, Holmes writes to a 
 friend: "Our old raft of eighteen-twenty-niners is 
 going to pieces; for the first time no class-meeting 
 is called for the 8th of January. I shall try to get 
 the poor remnant of the class together at my 
 house; but it is doubtful whether there is life 
 enough left for a gathering of half a dozen. I 
 have a very tender feeling to my coevals. " 
 
247 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A FEW STRAY FACTS 
 
 In 1858 Holmes moved from his house in Mont 
 gomery Place to 21 Charles street, near the 
 Charles River; and here he was neighbor to Gov 
 ernor Andrew, the war governor of Massachusetts, 
 and James T. Fields,the publisher. He afterward 
 occupied another house on Charles street, and 
 finally, in 1871, moved to Beacon street, where 
 was his home to the end of his life. 
 
 In 1882 he resigned his professorship at Har 
 vard and devoted himself to literary work, writing, 
 after this, his last book of table talks, which he 
 called "Over the Teacups." In 1886 he visited 
 Europe. With the exception of the journey which 
 he took when a young man studying medicine, this 
 was his only trip abroad. He was gone only four 
 months, including the voyage both ways, and spent 
 most of his time in the little isle of Britain. It 
 seemed as if he disliked being long away from 
 home, or even away from Boston. 
 
 Dr. Holmes was an ingenious man, and had 
 
248 
 
 many fads and fancies. He was the inventor of 
 the small stereoscope for hand use, such as those 
 used for looking at photographs. The first one he 
 made himself entirely, all but the lenses, and he 
 often used to say that he might have made a for 
 tune out of this invention if he had patented it. 
 Yet, he seems never to have regretted that he had 
 not done so, thinking perhaps that the public had 
 been the gainer by his loss. 
 
 A life-long hobby of his was photography be 
 ginning in the days when this art was not so easy 
 and common as it is now. He became a really 
 skillful artist in it, and made many pictures of the 
 old gambrel-roofed house and scenes about Harvard 
 College, which have been preserved and may prove 
 useful to future historians. 
 
 Once he thought he could learn to play on 
 the violin. As a matter of fact, he had no ear 
 for harmony, and could never produce music. 
 Still, he shut himself up in his study and 
 scraped away hour after hour, for two or three 
 winters. At the end of that time he could play 
 two or three simple tunes so that they could be 
 
249 
 
 recognized; then he gave it up and never played 
 any more. 
 
 One of his fads was the measuring of large 
 trees. When he traveled about the country he 
 always had a measuring tape in his pocket, and 
 this he would stretch around the trunk of every 
 big tree he saw. When he went to England he 
 pulled out his bit of string to see if the giant trees 
 of Old England were as big as the giant trees of 
 New England. He tells with what bated breath 
 and beating, fearful heart he measured one tree in 
 particular in England with a string on which he had 
 measured off the trunk of another big tree in 
 America. * Twenty feet, and a long piece of 
 string left !" he exclaims, when telling of it. 
 Twenty-one feet twenty-two twenty-three, 
 an extra heart-beat or two, twenty-four twenty- 
 five, and six inches over ! ! " 
 
 He finally became so noted as an authority on 
 big trees that he was consulted even by the 
 famous botanist, Professor Asa Gray. 
 
 In "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" 
 you may read of a slice of a hemlock tree, going 
 
2 5 
 
 straight to the center, and showing three hundred 
 and forty-two rings, each ring representing a year 
 of life. Holmes really had this tree section, and 
 spent much time sticking pins in at the various 
 rings, each pin tagged with the date of some event 
 that was taking place when the ring was forming. 
 
 We have already spoken of his love for old 
 books. In the " Autocrat" he says: "I like 
 books I was born and bred among them, and 
 have the easy feelings, when I get into their pres 
 ence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don t 
 think I undervalue them, either as companions or 
 instructors." He was not only an expert in judg 
 ing an old and beautiful book, but he understood 
 the art of bookbinding, and sometimes practiced 
 it. Here is a sentence of his about books that we 
 should all remember: "Some books are edifices, 
 to stand as they are built ; some are hewn stones, 
 ready to form a part of future edifices ; some are 
 quarries, from which stones are to be split for 
 shaping and after use." 
 
 Any one who has read the stirring ballad of 
 "Old Blue," entitled " How the Old Horse Won 
 
251 
 
 the Bet, " will guess that Holmes knew something 
 about horse-racing. What could be more vivid 
 than this: 
 
 "Go !" Through his ears the summons stung 
 
 As if a battle-trump had rung; 
 
 The slumbering instincts long unstirred 
 
 Started at the old familiar word; 
 
 It thrills like flame through every limb,- 
 
 What means his twenty years to him? 
 
 The savage blow his rider dealt 
 
 Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt; 
 
 The spur that pricked his staring hide 
 
 Unheeded tore his bleeding side; 
 
 Alike to him are spur and rein, 
 
 He steps a five-year-old again ! 
 
 One of his most cherished memories was that of 
 seeing the famous steed Plenipotentiary win the 
 Derby; this was when Holmes was in England as 
 a young man; and indeed he knew "a neat, snug 
 hoof, a delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep 
 chest, a close ribbed-up barrel, as well as any 
 other man in the town." 
 
 Besides these things, he was fond of boxing, of 
 
252 
 
 boating, and other forms of sport; and he knew the 
 fine points about all of these manly pastimes. 
 
 You must not think, however, that Holmes was 
 not a hard worker and a careful student. He 
 wrote easily and freely, but revised with the great 
 est care; and he prepared his college lectures over 
 every year, keeping them up to date while he was 
 constantly studying and reading and learning new 
 things about his profession. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE END COMES 
 
 The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes flowed like 
 a placid river, with scarcely a ripple upon its sur 
 face. He was born and grew up and passed all his 
 life near that hub " he has made so famous, sur 
 rounded by throngs of friends, never visited by 
 sorrow, always fortunate, always happy. He 
 found amusement in everything, for he looked 
 on the bright side of life and turned everything into 
 humor. And at last he died, painlessly, serenely, 
 
253 
 
 sitting in his chair, having been up and about to 
 the very last day. This final event we cannot 
 call it sad occurred October 7, 1894. He was 
 eighty-five years old. 
 
 We cannot better close this study of America s 
 most genial poet-humorist than by quoting the fol 
 lowing appreciative and most touching lines from 
 an English journal: 
 
 "THE AUTOCRAT" 
 
 " The Last Leaf ! " Can it be true, 
 We have turned it, and on you, 
 
 Friend of all ? 
 
 That the years at last have power ? 
 That life s foliage and its flower 
 
 Fade and fall ? 
 
 Was there one who ever took 
 From its shelf, by chance, a book 
 
 Penned by you, 
 
 But was fast your friend for life, 
 With one refuge from its strife 
 
 Safe and true ? 
 ***** 
 
254 
 
 From the Boston breakfast table 
 Wit and wisdom, fun and fable, 
 
 Radiated 
 
 Through all English-speaking places 
 When were science and the Graces 
 
 So well mated ? 
 
 Of sweet singers the most sane, 
 Of keen wits the most humane, 
 
 Wide, yet clear. 
 Like the blue, above us bent, 
 Giving sense and sentiment 
 
 Each its sphere ; 
 
 With a manly breadth of soul, 
 And a fancy quaint and droll, 
 
 Ripe and mellow ; 
 With a virile power of "hit," 
 Finished scholar, poet, wit, 
 
 And good fellow ! 
 
 Years your spirit could not tame, 
 And they will not dim your fame; 
 
 England joys 
 
 In your songs, all strength and ease, 
 And the "dreams" you "wrote to please 
 
 Gray-haired boys." 
 
 London Punch. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 T 2 6 
 
 OCT 
 
 LD 21-100m-9, 48(B399sl6)476 
 
YB 37031 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY