And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor."

No wonder the Cambridge children, when the old chestnut-tree that
overhung the smithy was cut down, had a memento shaped into a chair
from its boughs, to present to him who had made it an immortal tree in
his verse! It bore flower and fruit for them a second time in his
acknowledgment of the gift; for he told them how--

"There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street
Its blossoms, white and sweet,
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.

"And when the wind of autumn, with a shout
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath."

In its own wild, winsome way, the song of "Hiawatha's Childhood" is one
of the prettiest fancies in poetry. It is a dream of babyhood in the
"forest primeval," with Nature for nurse and teacher; and it makes us
feel as if--were the poet's idea only a possibility--it might have been
very pleasant to be a savage baby, although we consider it so much
better to be civilized.

How Longfellow loved the very little ones can be seen in such verses as
the "Hanging of the Crane," and in those earlier lines "To a Child,"
where the baby on his mother's knee gazes at the painted tiles, shakes
his "coral rattle with the silver bells," or escapes through the open
door into the old halls where once

"The Father of his country dwelt."

Those verses give us a charming glimpse of the home-life in the historic
mansion which is now so rich with poetic, as well as patriotic
associations.

How beautiful it was to be let in to that twilight library scene
described in the "Children's Hour":

"A sudden rush from the stair-way,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded,
They enter my castle wall!

"They climb up into my turret,
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere."

Afterward, when sorrow and loss had come to the happy home, in the
sudden removal of the mother of those merry children, the father who
loved them so had a sadder song for them, as he looked onward into their
orphaned lives:

"O little feet, that such long years
Must wander on, through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load,
I, nearer to the wayside inn,
Where t