The following extract from a letter written by Emerson to one of his children, is reprinted from Cabot's "A Memoir of R. W. Emerson," by permission of the publisher, G. W. Dillingham.

"You are bound to be healthy and happy. I expect so much of you, of course, and neither allow for nor believe any rumors to the contrary. Please not to give the least countenance to any hobgoblin of the sick sort, but live out-of-doors and in the sea-bath and the sail-boat, and the saddle, and the wagon, and, best of all, in your shoes, so soon as they will obey you for a mile. For the great mother Nature will not quite tell her secret to the coach or the steamboat, but says, 'One to one, my dear, is my rule also, and I keep my enchantments and oracles for the religious soul coming alone, or as good as alone, in true love.'"[Back to Contents]

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW[15]
By Hezekiah Butterworth
(1807-1882)

That was a memorable scene in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, when the veil was lifted from the bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the first American upon whom England had conferred such distinguished honor. James Russell Lowell was there, and made the eulogy, and left in all minds the impression of these simple words; "The most beautiful character that I have ever known." Mr. Lowell knew men, and among the great spirits of the age with whom he had been associated, he perhaps had known no literary man more intimately than Longfellow. The original families of Lowell and Longfellow in America had grown side by side on the banks of the Merrimac. The younger poet had succeeded the elder in the professorship of literature at Harvard College; the two had lived side by side in historic houses in the old Cambridge neighborhood on the Charles, and there had shared the amenities of suburban life and had studied the world together. It was said that Longfellow came to live in a house "on the way to Mt. Auburn;" Lowell lived in a house on the same road, and the two poets sleep together there now in the loving shadows of Boston's "Field of God."

Since the days of Horace, friendship has found no more sympathetic and beautiful expression in verse than in the lines inscribed by Lowell to Longfellow and in the poems written by Longfellow in reference to Lowell.

Says Lowell in his lines to H. W. L——:

"Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet
As gracious natures find his song to be;
May age steal on with softly-cadenced feet
Falling in music, as for him were meet
Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!"