s desk, took
a card, and wrote his name on it.

"There are a good many of these every day," said Longfellow, "but I
always like to do this little favor. It is so little to do, to write
your name on a card; and if I didn't do it some boy or girl might be
looking, day by day, for the postman and be disappointed. I only wish
I could write my name better for them. You see how I break my letters?
That's because I never took pains with my writing when I was a boy. I
don't think I should get a high mark for penmanship if I were at
school, do you?"

"I see you get letters from Europe," said the boy, as Longfellow opened
an envelope with a foreign stamp on it.

"Yes, from all over the world," said the poet. Then, looking at the
boy quickly, he said: "Do you collect postage-stamps?"

Edward said he did.

"Well, I have some right here, then;" and going to a drawer in a desk
he took out a bundle of letters, and cut out the postage-stamps and
gave them to the boy.

"There's one from the Netherlands. There's where I was born," Edward
ventured to say.

"In the Netherlands? Then you are a real Dutchman. Well! Well!" he
said, laying down his pen. "Can you read Dutch?"

The boy said he could.

"Then," said the poet, "you are just the boy I am looking for." And
going to a bookcase behind him he brought out a book, and handing it to
the boy, he said, his eyes laughing: "Can you read that?"

"Yes, indeed," said Edward. "These are your poems in Dutch."

"That's right," he said. "Now, this is delightful. I am so glad you
came. I received this book last week, and although I have been in the
Netherlands, I cannot speak or read Dutch. I wonder whether you would
read a poem to me and let me hear how it sounds."

So Edward took "The Old Clock on the Stairs," and read it to him.

The poet's face beamed with delight. "That's beautiful," he said, and
then quickly added: "I mean the language, not the poem."

"Now," he went on, "I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll strike a
bargain. We Yankees are great for bargains, you know. If you will
read me 'The Village Blacksmith' you can sit in that chair there made
out of the wood of the old spreading chestnut-tree, and I'll take you
out and show you where the old shop stood. Is that a bargain?"

Edward assured him it was. He sat in the chair of wood and leather,
and read to the poet several of his own poems in a language in which,
when he wrote them, he never dreamed they