ering
shrubs. In this home, for many years known as Elmwood, the great
American poet and essayist was born February 22, 1819, and it was here
that he lived during the greater part of his life. In the woods and
meadows that lay about Elmwood in the poet's childhood he spent much
time, for he liked especially to be out-of-doors; and so it was that in
his earliest years he began to feel the great love for flowers, birds
and trees that made him able in later life to show to the readers of his
poems how much beauty there is in the very commonest things of nature.

However, all of the things he liked were not out-of-doors. In his
father's library were more than three thousand books, and he began when
only a small boy to choose for himself favorite authors. He seems to
have been unusually fond of books, for in a little note written when he
was eight years old,--his first letter, so far as any one knows,--he
tells his brother, "I read French stories," and adds in a postscript, "I
have got three books." The next year, in a letter to the same brother he
writes, "I have got quite a library."

After learning his letters and other simple things at an elementary
school, Lowell was sent when about nine years old to a higher school,
where he was thoroughly taught Latin, and otherwise prepared for his
entrance into Harvard College in 1834. He was then only fifteen years of
age, yet he had such decided tastes in his studies that he was not
always willing to give attention to the work required in his college
courses, but would follow his own inclinations in his reading. The
result was, that though he gained such a reputation among his
class-mates for appreciation of literature and ability in original
composition that he was made one of the editors of _Harvardiana_, the
college paper, and was chosen in his senior year to write the class
poem, yet he was looked upon with growing disapproval by his
instructors, because of his irregular ways. At length, it is told, he
completely disgraced himself, on the day he was chosen class poet, by
rising at the close of the evening prayer service and bowing solemnly to
right and left. As punishment for this and all preceding misconduct, he
was sent to Concord to continue his studies under a private teacher, and
was not allowed to return to Harvard until after classday. Nevertheless,
he wrote his poem and later had it printed, for his friends, in a little
pamphlet.

[Illustration: JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL