"Book of Beauty" beside "Hannah More." Yet it was doubtless the only
house in Cambridge which then held complete sets of Voltaire and
Diderot, of Moliere, Crebillon, and Florian, Madame de Sevigne and
Madame de Stael. Some of the books thus sold form a part to this day of
the Longfellow library at Craigie House; but there is no reference to
the poet in the original catalogue, except that it includes "Outre-Mer,"
No. 1, doubtless the same copy which he saw lying on the sideboard.

Mr. J. E. Worcester, the lexicographer, shared the house with
Longfellow, as did for a time Miss Sally Lowell, an aunt of the poet.
Mr. Worcester bought it for himself, and ultimately sold it to Mr.
Nathan Appleton, father of the second Mrs. Longfellow, to whom he
presented it. Part of the ten magnificent elms of which Longfellow wrote
in 1839 have disappeared. The ground has been improved by the low-fenced
terrace which he added, and the grounds opposite, given by the poet's
children to the Longfellow Memorial Association, have been graded into a
small public park descending nearly to the river. Within the house all
remains much the same, Longfellow's library never having been scattered,
although his manuscripts and proof-sheets, which he preserved and caused
to be bound in their successive stages in the most orderly manner, have
now been transferred to a fire-proof building for greater security. The
"old clock on the stairs," which he himself placed there, still ticks
and strikes the hour; and one can see cracks in the stairway through
which the mysterious letters dropped morning after morning, as told in
the story of "Esther Wynne's Love Letters," by the accomplished author
known as Saxe Holm. The actual letters were more commonplace, but they
were apparently written by a schoolgirl under Mr. Craigie's care; and
there was a tradition, not very well authenticated, that Longfellow
himself had planned to make them the subject of a poem before Saxe Holm
or Helen Hunt--as the case may be--had anticipated him in prose.

Such was the house where Longfellow resided for the rest of his life;
seven years of which passed before his second wedded life began. The
following letter, taken from the Harvard College papers, will show the
interest he took in the estate.

MY DEAR SIR [President Quincy],--Will you have the goodness to lay
before the Corporation, at their next meeting, my request concerning
the trees, which I mentioned to you the l