book was the Sketch Book of Washington Irving. ... How many delightful books the same author has given us. . . . Yet still the charm of the Sketch Book remains unbroken; the old fascination remains about it; and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth." Of Cowper's poetry, Moore's Lalla Rookh, Don Quixote, and Ossian, the lad was very fond.

In the summer vacations he used to go to his grandfather Wadsworth's estate of seven thousand acres, just out of Portland, and listen with delight to the stirring tales of '76. The story of a fight with the Indians made a deep impression upon him, and at thirteen he wrote his first poem, "The Battle of Lovell's Pond."

"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.

"The warriors that fought for their country — and bled
Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed,
No stone tells the place where their ashes repose,
Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes.

"They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest."
HENRY.

He cautiously slipped the manuscript into the letter-box, telling no one but his sister, and waited anxiously to see if the important production appeared in the columns of the "Portland Gazette." Scarcely able to wait, he soothed his mind by going to the newspaper office, and walking in front of the building, shivering in a cold November morning, and fancying, as the types were set, that his poem was going into immortal print.

The next day it appeared, and Henry read and re-read it, while each time it seemed more beauti ful. In the evening, going to the house of a friend, Judge Mellen, the host said, "Did you see the piece of poetry in to-day's paper? Very stiff, remarkably stiff; moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of it."

The boy's heart sunk within him, and he hurried home to sob himself to sleep. No wonder that he wrote, years later, in "Kavanagh": "I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of." . . . Long afterward he said, "The ill-will of anybody hurts

me. If a critic cannot speak well of a book, why speak of it at all? The best criticism of an unworthy book . . . is silence."

These were all precious years, leaving their impress for a great work in the future. "My Lost Youth" exquisitely tells of these.

"Often I think of the beautiful town

That is seated by the sea;

Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:

'A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

"I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

Across the school-boy's brain;

The song and the silence in the heart,

That in part are prophecies, and in part

Are longings wild and vain.

And the voice of that fitful song

Sings on, and is never still:

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'"

When Henry was fourteen, he entered Bowdoin College, his father being one of the Trustees. Here he was an earnest student, especially fond of Horace, but not skilled in mathematics. He had, says Professor Packard, "unblemished char

acter as a pupil, and was a true gentleman in all his relations with the college and its teachers."

To his mother he wrote his ideas of Johnson, Gray, and other authors; and she in turn wrote. back her opinions, thus showing the stimulus and help of an educated woman. During his college course he wrote several poems, only five of which he cared to publish in book form afterward. Of these, the "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem," and "Burial of the Minnisink," written before he was nineteen, were much liked. For most of these he was promised pay at the rate of two dollars a column, but received finally, instead of money, Chatterton's works, in three volumes, which gave great pleasure as they were the first earnings of his pen.

As the time drew near for him to leave college, he wrote his father, "I want to spend one year at Cambridge for the purpose of reading history and of becoming familiar with the best authors in polite literature. . . . The fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres in it. Whatever I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul, — for I will be eminent in something. . . . I have a most voracious appetite for knowledge. To its acquisition I will sacrifice everything."

His father wrote back: "A literary life, to one who has the means of support, must be very pleas

ant. . . . As you have not had the fortune (I will not say whether good or ill) to be born rich, you must adopt a profession which will afford you subsistence as well as reputation."

Young Longfellow graduated fourth in a class. of thirty-eight, which comprised such men as Hawthorne and J. S. C. Abbott, and reluctantly turned toward the law.

Fortunately, there was something more congenial in store for him. One of the Trustees had been especially pleased with his translation of an ode from Horace, and proposed his name for the Professorship of Modern Languages, just created at Bowdoin, suggesting that he spend three years in study in Europe to make himself ready for the position. This was joyous news indeed.

At nineteen the young man started for the Old World, and after a thirty-day voyage in a sailing packet, ocean steamers being unknown, reached the beautiful city of Paris. His first letter from his mother read, "May you hold fast your integrity, and retain that purity of heart which is so endearing to your friends. I feel as if you were going into a thousand perils." And a cheerful letter came back: "I feel as happy as possible; am in the best health in the world, and am delighted with Paris, where a person, if he pleases, can keep out of vice as well as elsewhere."

He lived economically, worked hard at his studies, and was as conscientious as when a child.