seated with Coleridge's inkstand before him,
perhaps answering one of the vast accumulations of letters from the
school children of Western cities--an enormous mass of correspondence,
which was a little while a delight, and then became a burden. Before him
was a carved bookcase containing a priceless literary treasure,--the
various editions of his works, and, which was far more valuable, the
successive manuscripts of each, carefully preserved and bound under his
direction, and often extending to three separate copies: the original
manuscript, the manuscript as revised for the printer, and the corrected
proofs. More than once his friends urged him to build a fireproof
building for these unique memorials, as Washington did for his own
papers elsewhere; but the calm and equable author used to reply, "If the
house burns, let its contents go also."

The wonder of Mr. Longfellow's later years was not so much that he kept
up his incessant literary activity as that he did it in the midst of the
constant interruptions involved in great personal popularity and fame.
He had received beneath his roof every notable person who had visited
Boston for half a century; he had met them all with the same affability,
and had consented, with equal graciousness, to be instructed by Emerson
and Sumner, or to be kindly patronized--as the story goes--by Oscar
Wilde. From that room had gone forth innumerable kind acts and good
deeds, and never a word of harshness. He retained to the last his
sympathy with young people, and with all liberal and progressive
measures. Indeed, almost his latest act of public duty was to sign a
petition to the Massachusetts legislature for the relief of the
disabilities still placed in that State upon the testimony of atheists.

Mr. Longfellow's general health remained tolerably good, in spite of
advancing years, until within about three months of his death. After
retiring to bed in apparent health one night, he found himself in the
morning so dizzy as to be unable to rise, and with a pain in the top of
his head. For a week he was unable to walk across the room on account of
dizziness, and although it gradually diminished, yet neither this nor
the pain in the head ever entirely disappeared, and there was great loss
of strength and appetite. He accepted the situation at once, retreated
to the security of his own room, refused all visitors outside of the
family, and had a printed form provided for the acknowledgment of