When Henry came home again, he was chosen for a college professor. He was only twenty-two, and it began to look as if the Portland boy would be a success even if he did not study law.
The students at Harvard College loved young Professor Longfellow. He was so handsome, so lively, so exquisitely neat in dress, that they were very proud to introduce him to their parents, and best of all, he made their lessons so interesting that they were actually sorry when the class was dismissed. He proved a fine teacher. But, besides teaching in the college, Henry wrote poem after poem. It was not long before his verses were liked in other countries as well as in America. French people began to say: "Why, we want our children to know Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems!" And Spanish ladies and Italian noblemen declared they were beautiful. Finally so many countries were asking for these poems they were translated into fifteen languages.
Longfellow was soon called "The Poet of Every Land."
You will think that was the right name for him, when you hear what happened on a big ocean steamer. Once a large party of travelers were sailing from Greece to France. As they sat talking one evening, somebody praised the great French poet, Victor Hugo. A lovely Russian lady spoke up: "Victor Hugo is fine, but no poet is so well known as the American Longfellow. I want to go to Boston to see the Bridge about which he wrote." Then she repeated every word of "I stood on the Bridge at Midnight." Upon that, an English captain just back from the Zulu war, recited a Longfellow poem. A gray-haired Scotchman said another, an American remembered one, a Greek sang some verses of Longfellow's that had been set to music, and when the French captain of the steamer declaimed "Excelsior", there was great handclapping, and it showed that Henry Longfellow was indeed a favorite poet.
Henry Longfellow liked Cambridge. He boarded in a fine old place, Craigie House, where General George Washington had once stayed. And when he was married to a Boston girl, her father gave them Craigie House for a wedding present. Longfellow was so happy as the years went on, that he wrote better than ever. You will like his "Hiawatha", which tells about the Indians, his "Evangeline", and the story of Myles Standish. Do not forget to read "The Children's Hour." Longfellow was never too busy to play with his children and saw to it that they were kept happy. Once when he took the three girls to England, Charles Dickens, the great English writer, asked them to visit at his grand place, Gads Hill. He sent a wonderful coach, all glittering with gold trimmings and driven by men in scarlet livery, to the station for them, and had a Swiss chalet in his garden for them to use as a playhouse. Many great people gave them dinners and parties. But what pleased them most of all was the respect shown their father. One of the daughters still lives in Craigie House, which is often visited by people who love Longfellow's poems and who wish to see the rooms in which he lived.
Longfellow could sell his verses as fast as he wrote them. A New York editor once paid Longfellow three thousand dollars for one short poem. And imagine how proud his wife and children must have been to overhear people saying: "I wonder if Mr. Longfellow has written anything lately. If he has, I must read it!" Imagine how happy it made his father that he had kept his word: "If you will let me have my way, I will promise to be famous in something." And surely all the Americans who were on that steamer and heard the Russian, the Greek, and other foreigners reciting Longfellow's poems must have been proud that a man from their own country had won the name of "The Poet of Every Land."
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER
It was about seventy-five years ago that the Emperor of Russia, Nicolas I., made up his mind that he wanted a railroad between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He meant to have it one of the best in the world. So he called an officer into his council chamber and said: "Now take plenty of time to look about in the different countries, have all the men you want to help you, but find me, somewhere, an engineer that will lay out a perfect railroad line." Men appointed by this colonel traveled some months. They visited many cities, wrote letters, and asked advice. Then the colonel went back to the emperor and said: "The man you need to do this piece of work lives in the United States of America."