nday musings in the quiet little chapel while the service
droned on he was far away.

"In the land of the Dakotas,
By the stream of Laughing Water."

Some years after came the affliction which. cast a deep shadow upon
his happy successful life. His wife one evening in light summer dress
was writing a letter, and, lighting a candle to seal it, dropped the
match among her draperies. The flame spread at once and she expired in
agony; Longfellow was himself badly burned in his effort to extinguish
the flames and always carried the scars. I did not see him in those
years but have heard that his mood changed, he was no longer careful
and debonair but often melancholy and dishevelled. Yet the sweetness
of his spirit persisted to the end. The critics of late have been busy
with Longfellow. His gift was inferior, they say, and his sentiment
shallow. Let them carp as they will, he holds, as few poets have
done, the hearts of men and women; still more he holds the hearts
of children, and the life of multitudes continues to be softened and
beautified by the gentle power of what he has written. Two or three
years since it was my good fortune to be present at the celebration in
Sanders Theatre of the centenary of Longfellow's birth. There was fine
encomium from distinguished men, but to me the charming part of the
occasion was the tribute of the school children who thronged upon the
stage and sang with fresh, pure voices, the _Village Blacksmith_,
the simple lines set to as simple music, "Under the spreading
chestnut-tree, the village smithy stands." In my time the old tree
still cast its shade over the highway which had scarcely yet ceased
to be a village street. The smithy, too, was at hand and the clink of
hammer upon anvil often audible; the blacksmith, I suppose had gone
to his account. During the children's performance a voice noticeably
clear and fine sounded in the high upper gallery, a happy suggestion
of the voice of the mother singing in paradise as the daughter sang
below. Honour to the poet who, while so many singers of our time
vex us with entanglements metaphysical and exasperating, had thought
always for the simplest hearts and attuned his lyre for them!

When I was in the Divinity School we organised a boat club, a
proceeding looked upon askance by sedate doctors of divinity and
church-goers who thought the young men would do better to stick to
their Hebrew, but T.W. Higginson exclaimed that now he had some ho