that. Whatever his feelings may have been toward other sorts and conditions of men, his manner was one of entire democracy. Once your friend, Longfellow was always your friend; he would not think evil of you, and if he knew evil of you, he would be the last of all that knew it to judge you for it. This may have been from the habit of his mind, but I believe it was also the effect of principle, for he would do what he could to defend others from judgment, and would soften the sentence passed in his presence. As for his goodness, I never saw a fault in him. I do not mean to say that he had no faults, or that there were no better men, but only to give my knowledge concerning him. But as a man shows himself to those often with him, and in his known relations with other men, he showed himself without blame. In the years when I began to know him, his long hair and the beautiful beard mixed with it were of iron-gray, which I saw blanch to a perfect silver. When he walked, he had a kind of spring in his gait, as if now and again a buoyant thought lifted him from the ground. It was fine to meet him coming down a Cambridge street; you felt that the encounter made you a part of literary history, and set you apart with him for the moment from the poor and mean. You could meet him sometimes at the market, if you were of the same provision-man as he; Longfellow remained as constant to his tradespeople as to any other friends. He rather liked to bring his proofs back to the printer himself, and we often found ourselves together at the University Press, where the Atlantic Monthly used to be printed. But outside of his own house, Longfellow seemed to want a fit atmosphere, and I love best to think of him in his study, where he wrought out his lovely art with a serenity expressed in his smooth, regular, and perfect handwriting. His writing was quite vertical, and rounded with a slope neither to the right nor left. At the time I knew him first, he was fond of using a soft pencil on printing paper, though commonly he wrote with a quill. Each letter was distinct in shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an inch. I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, Stery. Mr. Longfellow but whether they were the first drafts or not I cannot say. Toward the last he no longer sent his poems to the magazines in his own hand, but they were always signed in autograph. His hair is crisp and black and long, His brow is wet with honest sweat, And looks the whole world in the face, Week in, week out, from morn till night, And children coming home from school And catch the burning sparks that fly He goes on Sunday to the church, He hears the parson pray and preach, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, And with his hard, rough hand he wipes Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Write about some kind of work that you have watched, done by a RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "MERRIMAC" A great rush of water came up the gangway, settling and gurgling out of the deck. The mass was whirling from right to left "against the sun;" it seized us and threw us against the bulwarks, then over the rail. Two were swept forward as if by a momentary recession, and one was carried down into a coal-bunker. In a moment, however, with increased force, the water shot him up out of the same hole and swept him among us. The bulwarks disappeared. We charged about with casks, cans, and spars. The life-preservers stood us in good stead, preventing chests from being crushed, as well as buoying us up on the surface. When we looked for the life-boat we found |