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AUTHORS AND FRIENDS by ANNIE FIELDS
'"The Company of the Leaf" wore laurel chaplets "whose lusty green maynot appaired be." They represent the brave and steadfast of all ages,the great knights and champions, the constant lovers and pure women ofpast and present times.'
Keping beautie fresh and greene
For there nis storme that ne may hem deface.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
CONTENTS
LONGFELLOW: 1807-1882
GLIMPSES OF EMERSON
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS AND UNPUBLISHED LETTERS
DAYS WITH MRS. STOWE
CELIA THAXTER
WHITTIER: NOTES OF HIS LIFE AND OF HIS FRIENDSHIPS
TENNYSON
LADY TENNYSON
LONGFELLOW: 1807-1882
Every year when the lilac buds begin to burst their sheaths and untilthe full-blown clusters have spent themselves in the early summer air,the remembrance of Longfellow—something of his presence—wakes withus in the morning and recurs with every fragrant breeze. "Now is thetime to come to Cambridge," he would say; "the lilacs are gettingready to receive you."
It was the most natural thing in the world that he should care forthis common flower, because in spite of a fine separateness from dustylevels which everyone felt who approached him, he was first of all aseer of beauty in common things and a singer to the universal heart.
Perhaps no one of the masters who have touched the spirits of humanityto finer issues has been more affectionately followed through his waysand haunts than Longfellow. But the lives of men and women "who ruleus from their urns" have always been more or less cloistral. Publiccuriosity appeared to be stimulated rather than lessened in Longfellow'scase by the general acquaintance with his familiar figureand by hisunceasing hospitality. He was a tender father, a devoted friend, and afaithful citizen, and yet something apart and different from all these.
From his early youth Longfellow was a scholar. Especially was hispower of acquiring language most unusual.
As his reputation widened, he was led to observe this to be a gift aswell as an acquirement. It gave him the convenient and agreeable powerof entertaining foreigners who sought his society. He said oneevening, late in life, that he could not help being struck with thelittle trouble it was to him to recall any language he had everstudied, even though he had not spoken it for years. He had foundhimself talking Spanish, for instance, with considerable ease a fewdays before. He said he could not recall having even read anything inSpanish for many years, and it was certainly thirty since he had givenit any study. Also, it was the same with German. "I cannot imagine,"he continued, "what it would be to take up a language and try tomaster it at this period of my life, I cannot remember how or when Ilearned any of them;—to-night I have been speaking German, withoutfinding the least difficulty."
A scholar himself, he did not write for scholars, nor study for thesole purpose of becoming a light to any university. It was the energyof a soul looking for larger expansion; a spirit true to itself andits own prompting, finding its way by labor and love to the free useand development of the power within him. Of his e