GIFT OF Robert Warren Jones o , vf. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIETHDAY. PROCEEDINGS OP THE jHaine FEBRUAKY 27, 1882. PORTLAND: HOYT, FOGG AND DONHAM, 193 MIDDLE STREET. Copyright, 1882, Br MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. All rights reserved. Gin RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : ELECTRO-TYPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. IIOUGHTON AND COMPANY b 1807 1882. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. V MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. M769928 Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. My Lost Youth. But the poet s memory here Of the landscape makes a part. Oliver Basselin. PREFACE. THE poems, papers, and letters included in this volume were published in the " Portland Daily Advertiser/ on the day following the meeting at which they were read; but the edition was at once exhausted. Since Mr. Longfellow s death their republication has been frequently requested. Worthy tributes have been paid to the poet s memory. It is a pleasing thought to the members of the Maine Historical Society that the proceed ings of this meeting on Mr. Longfellow s last birthday, in the city in which he was born, came under his own eye, and reawakened thoughts of his " Lost Youth." H. S. B. PORTLAND, May 18, 1882. TABLE OF CONTENTS. RECORD OF MEETING 9 OPENING ADDRESS. HON. W. G. BARROWS, Brunswick 15 LAUS LAUREATI. JAMES PHINNEY BAXTER, ESQ., Port land 22 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, AND HIS PATERNAL ANCESTRY. REV. HENRY S. BURRAGE, Portland . 29 GENERAL PELEG WADSWORTH, AND THE MATERNAL AN CESTRY OF HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. HON. WILL IAM GOOLD, Windbam 52 THE PORTLAND OF LONGFELLOW S YOUTH. EDWARD H. ELWELL, ESQ., Portland 81 LONGFELLOW AS A STUDENT AND PROFESSOR AT BOWDOIN COLLEGE. A. S. PACKARD, D. D., Brunswick . . 99 THE GENIUS OF LONGFELLOW. HON. GEORGE F. TALBOT, Portland 107 LETTER FROM HON. JAMES W. BRADBURY . . .126 LETTER AND POEM FROM HON. ISRAEL WASHBURN, JR. . 130 TRIBUTE FROM HON. JOSEPH WILLIAMSON . . . .133 IN MEMORIAM. PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY AT ITS SPRING MEETING, MAY 25, 1882 137 ADDRESS BY REV. THOMAS HILL, D. D 157 ADDRESS BY HON. JOSEPH W. SYMONDS .... 160 ADDRESS BY REV. ASA DALTON 165 EECOED OF MEETING. AT a meeting held in Portland on Monday evening, February 27, 1882, the Maine Historical Society celebrated the seventy-fifth birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was the desire of the members that Mr. Longfellow himself might honor the Society by his presence on that occasion, and the President, Hon. J. W. Bradbury, extended to him an earnest invitation, to which Mr. Long fellow sent the following reply : CAMBRIDGE, February 12, 1882. DEAB- MR. BRADBURY, I am extremely obliged to you for your cordial invitation to attend the meeting of the Maine Historical Society, on the 27th of this month, and greatly regret that I am prevented by illness from accepting it. Rest assured that I highly appreciate the honor the Society has done me in calling this meeting on the anniversary of my birthday, and that I shall always hold it in grateful remembrance. Reciprocating your good wishes, I am Yours faithfully, HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 10 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. It was intended that the meeting should be held in the rooms of the Society, in City Building, and the walls had been adorned with portraits of dis tinguished members of the Longfellow and Wads- worth families, while in a case had been arranged the following articles : Letter of Stephen Longfellow, of Newbury, born 1685, the blacksmith and ensign. Letter of Stephen 2d, the school-master, son of the above. Letter of Stephen 3d, the judge, son of the above. Letter of Stephen 4th, the statesman, son of the above and father of Henry, the poet. The original letter of Parson Thomas Smith, inviting Stephen, the school-master, to visit Portland. Silver tankard and silver porringer, marked " S. L. Ex Dona Patris" made in 1770. Autograph letter of General Peleg Wadsworth. Stereoscopic views of the house built by General Peleg Wadsworth in the town of Hiram, Maine, in 1800. Silhouette portrait of General Peleg Wadsworth in 1784. Portrait of Stephen Longfellow, the statesman, painted by King, in Washington, about the year 1826. The 4th of July, 1804, oration, delivered by Long fellow, father of the poet, MS. and print. A drawing of the Wads worth-Longfellow House on Congress Street, as it stood when completed in 1785, then only two stories. An autograph poem, entitled " Venice, an Italian SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 11 Song," one stanza, dated Portland Academy, March 17, 1820, and signed Henry W. Longfellow, written at the age of thirteen years. Early printed books by Longfellow: "Manuel de Proverbes Dramatiques," 1832; " Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique," 1833 ; Outre-Mer," 1833. The poetical works of Longfellow, two volumes quarto, splendidly illustrated and bound, loaned by the publish ers, Messrs. Houghton, MifHin & Co., Boston. Sundry autograph poems of Longfellow. Portrait of Henry W. Longfellow, painted by Badger, in Brunswick, Me., about the year 1830. Sketch of the village smithy at Cambridge, 1840, with the chestnut-tree. Photograph of the chair presented to the poet by the children of Cambridge in 1879, made from the wood of the chestnut-tree near the village smithy. But at an early hour the Library was crowded, and it was found necessary to adjourn to Reception Hall, which was at once filled, while many who sought admission were turned away. Among those present were the poet s brother, Alexander Long fellow, and family, of Portland ; his two sisters, Mrs. Annie L. Pierce, of Portland, and Mrs. Mary L. Greenleaf, of Cambridge, Mass.; and his nephew, Mr. William P. P. Longfellow, of Boston. In the absence of the President of the Society, Hon. J. W. Bradbury, of Augusta, the Vice-Presi- dent, Hon. W. G. Barrows, of Brunswick, presided. 12 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. On a table before him was a bust of Longfellow, by Paul Akers ; at his right was a large and beau tiful bouquet, the gift of Mrs. John B. Brown ; on the wall in the rear of the Vice-President was sus pended the sword presented to Commodore Alex ander Samuel Wadsworth by the citizens of Port land ; on a frame at the left were drawings of the old Longfellow and Wadsworth houses. Judge Barrows delivered the opening address. At the close of the address, on motion of E. H. El- well, Esq., of Portland, the following telegram was sent to Mr. Longfellow : PORTLAND, February 27, 1882. To H. W. LONGFELLOW, Cambridge, Mass. : The members of the Maine Historical Society, assem bled with friends, in honor of your seventy-fifth birthday, send greetings and congratulations. H. W. BRYANT, Recording Secretary. James P. Baxter, Esq., of Portland, then read a poem, " Laus Laureati," and near the close, at the words, " And now, I may This wreath from Deering s woods, O Master, lay Upon thy brow," he placed a chaplet of oak leaves upon the bust of the poet, amid long-continued applause. Kev. Henry S. Burrage, of Portland, followed with a paper on " Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his Paternal Ancestry." SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 13 Hon. William Goold, of Windham, read a paper on " Gen. Peleg Wadsworth, the Maternal Grand father of Henry W. Longfellow." Edward H. Elwell, Esq., of Portland, read a paper on " The Portland of Longfellow s Youth." Prof. A. S. Packard, D.D., of Bowdoin College, read a paper on " Longfellow as a Student and Professor at Bowdoin College." Hon. George F. Talbot, of Portland, read a paper on "The Genius of Longfellow." At the close of the reading of these papers, the following telegram from Mr. Longfellow was read : CAMBRIDGE, February 27, 1882. To H. W. BRYANT, Recording Secretary of Maine His torical Society, Portland, Me. : Your telegram received. I return cordial thanks to the members of the Society, and am grateful for this signal mark of their remembrance and regard. HENKY W. LONGFELLOW. The Secretary announced letters from Hon. J. W. Bradbury and Hon. Israel Washburn, Jr., but their reading was omitted on account of the late ness of the hour. They will be found at the close of the papers : also a tribute to Mr. Longfellow, by Hon. Joseph Williamson, of Belfast, which was received too late for the meeting. It is proper to add in this connection that in 14 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. the city, during the day, flags and other decora tions were displayed on the public buildings ; on the house at the corner of Fore and Hancock streets in which Mr. Longfellow was born; and on many private residences ; while the English steamers in port, in their holiday dress, bore beau tiful testimony to the fact that in England as well as in America the poems of Longfellow have en deared him to the hearts of the people. OPENING ADDRESS. BY HON. W. G. BARROWS, BRUNSWICK. BRETHREN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I bespeak your kind indulgence for my inex perience, and your prompt and zealous coopera tion, in undertaking the performance of my duties on this occasion. To the members of the Society it is well known that the punctual attendance of our President has made the Vice-Presidency prac tically a sinecure, and this, with my own enforced absence at most of the extraordinary meetings of the society, must be my apology for my deficien cies now, which I look to your kindness to supply. I feel that it would not be quite proper for me to direct the crier to proclaim that all who have anything to do here to-night may draw near and give their attendance, and they shall be heard, and then quietly await the result : but I have an im pression that, in presiding at such a gathering, the best form is the nearest possible approach to a want of form, or at least of formality, and I have no fear that in this assembly the divine law of 16 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. order would be greatly infringed even if the chair were altogether vacant. But I believe it to be a part of my pleasant duty to state the object of our meeting. The first notice of it which I saw in the news papers spoke of it, if I remember rightly, as a meeting to do honor to the poet Longfellow on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is a meet ing to testify our sense of the honor he has done to this, his birthplace. It is very little we can do to honor him whose own works have long ago crowned him a king in the hearts of men, to bear sway wherever and so long as the English lan guage is spoken or understood. We meet to claim for this good city the honor which from time immemorial has always been con ceded to the birthplaces of poets and seers, to do our part to link the name of " the dear old town" with his, as he has linked it in the loving description which he has given in the idyl of "My Lost Youth." For a more potent reason than the chiseled in scription on the ancient mill which links the name of Oliver Basselin with the Valley of the Vire, in all coming time, " shall the poet s memory here of the landscape make a part," because we know that the lyrics of our poet are indeed SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 17 " Songs of that high art Which, as winds do in the pine, Find an answer in each heart," and we meet to bear witness to this. More than this, we meet to testify our sense of personal obligation to him, not merely for the ex quisite pleasure afforded by the wonderful melody of his verse, but for the didactic force that has im pressed it on us that " All common things, each day s events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend." It is no mere gospel of idle contentment with pleasant trifles that he has preached to us. Even the dullest of us could not read him without being moved at least to strive to place ourselves on a higher plane, Excelsior. In ancient days poet and seer were convertible terms, and the best of our modern poets are prophets also. What insight was it which made him, in Jan uary, 1861, rouse us with " Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere," when all unconsciously we stood so near another and bloodier Lexington ? Philanthropy of the purest, patriotism of the most exalted kind, have by turns inspired him ; 18 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. and whether he sang of the " Slave s Dream/ or the " Warning " drawn from the " Poor, blind Samson in this land, Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel," or of the Cumberland, sunk in Hampton Roads, or of the beautiful youth slain at the ford, the lesson was timely, and it told the story well of the heroism and endurance which carried this nation through its last great struggle triumphant. We meet to pass an hour in expressing our ad miration for the bard, the scholar, and the patriot, whose every utterance from his youth up has been pure and noble, and has tended to raise this nation in the scale of humanity. I am proud to say that when he lived with us he was an active member of this Society, and the ripe and golden fruits of his historical studies we have in the story of Priscilla, the Puritan Maiden ; in the pen sive loveliness of "Evangeline," that tale of the " strength, submission, and patience " of the Aca dian refugees ; in the musical song of " Hiawa tha ; " and in many another gem evoked from the Chronicles of the Past and set in tuneful verse. But, after all, it seems to me that that which brings him nearer to our hearts, and has more to do with bringing us together here to-night, than his wide-spread renown, or the fame that attaches to his more stately and elaborate poems, is the SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 19 light which he has thrown around home and hearth and heart in some of those lighter but un- equaled lyrics, which from time to time have "gone through us with a thrill/ which are haunting our memories still, and which are and will always be dear to us because dear to those whom we love. Who of us can think of home, now, and all that we hold dear in it, without some how associating with it and them reminiscences of " The Footsteps of Angels," " The Golden Mile- Stone," " The Old Clock on the Stairs," " The Children s Hour," "The Fire of Drift-Wood," " The Wind over the Chimney," and " Daybreak," and "Twilight," and " Curfew," and the "Psalm," and the " Goblet of Life," and " The Keaper and the Flowers"? And where can I stop, having begun to enumerate ? For nearly thirty years I have occupied the house he lived in when in Brunswick, an old house whose first proprietors have long since passed away ; and I sometimes wonder whether it is, in his thought, one of the " Haunted Houses," through whose " Open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors." Since the wonderful legend of " Sandalphon " first made a lodgment in my memory, more than 20 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. a score of years ago, I cannot number the times I have been called upon to repeat it in the stillness of the evening hour and in the weary night watches, because its melodious numbers had in them a spell "to quiet the fever and pain " of one who has now for years breathed the fragrance that is " wafted through the streets of the city immor tal." And hence it is that " the legend I feel is a part of the hunger and thirst of the heart," and my warmest gratitude goes forth to him who min istered comfort to the invalid in the sweet strains that breathe unwavering faith and trust in the good All-Father. Hence I say that we meet here to express not simply our admiration of the poet, our sense of obligation to the teacher, the patriot, and the philanthropist, but also our reverent affec tion for the man who has done so much to brighten and cheer not only our own lives, but the lives of those we love, in sickness and in health. Not he the poet of despair, or morbid melan choly, or depressing doubt, misbegotten by the wild self-conceit which assumes that the finite human intellect is capable of penetrating all mys teries because it has mastered some, and madly argues that it is a proof of superior wisdom to re ject everything it cannot understand. Not so he, but the poet of a broad Christian faith and an unfading hope that " what we know not now we SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 21 shall know hereafter/ if we strive in earnest to rise above " that which is of the earth earthy." I think his motto in all his productions must have been, " Nee satis est pulchra esse poemata dulcia sunto." " T is not enough a poem s finely writ ; It must affect and captivate the soul." If success can be predicated of any mortal life, surely his has been a success. Ilacriv yap cv^>povo\i(JL crv^tx^ta^et rv^rj. The Maine Historical Society and their guests, assembled at his birthplace to celebrate the birth day of their former member, the renowned poet Longfellow, send him their fervent and united wishes for his health and happiness. LA.US IAUREATI. BY JAMES PHINNEY BAXTER, PORTLAND. I SING no common theme, but of a man, One who, full-voiced, the highway of the King Gladdens with song ; inspiring lives which span A fruitless field where little joy may spring, And which, from birth, may win no better thing Than paltry bread, and shelter from the blast, Till unto death s low house they come at last. It needs more fluent tongue than mine to sing In fitting measure of a poet born, Greater than crosiered priest or sceptred king, Since such are made, and may by chance be shorn Of all their glory by to-morrow morn ; But born a poet, he shall surely be Ever a poet to eternity. Of such I strive to sing : one who shall live In Fame s high house while stars make glad the sky, That happy house which many hapless give Life s choicest pearls to gain, since none may die Who come within its halls so fair and high. Would I might win it, with no thought but this, That I might others bring soul-health and bliss. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 23 But, Master, one who is about to die Brings thee a crown, which, though not one of bay, May haply mind thee of some things gone by Pleasant to think of matters put away In rooms forgot, where truant memories play At hide and seek ; for beareth it, forsooth, Savor of things well loved by thee in youth. Of Deering s Woods, which whisper softly still, A boy s will is the wind s will, as of yore They lisped to thee, where sweet-voiced birds would trill, In haunts wherein thou soughtest tuneful lore ; Of bluff and beach along our rugged shore Girting the bay, whose isles enchanted drew Thy venturous thoughts to havens ever new. Dear Master, let me take thy hand a space And lead thee gently wheresoe er I may ; With the salt sea s cool breath upon thy face, And in thine ears the music of the spray, Which rapt in days agone thy soul away, Where hung full low the golden fruit of truth, Within the reach of thy aspiring youth. Thou knowest well the place : here built George Cleeves Almost two centuries before thy birth ; Here was his corn-field ; here his lowly eaves Sheltered the swallows, and around his hearth The red-men crouched poor souls of little worth : Thou with clear vision seest them, I know, As they were in the flesh long years ago. 24 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. Surely the shrewd, persistent pioneer Built better than he knew : he thought to build A shelter for himself, his kith and gear ; But felled the trees, and grubbed and plowed and tilled, That in the course of time might be fulfilled A wondrous purpose, being no less than this, That here a poet might be born to bliss. Ah I could he but have tracked adown the dim, Long, weary path of years, and stood to-day With thee and me, how would the eyes of him Have flashed with pride and joy to hear men say, Here Cleeves built the first house in Casco Bay ! Here, too, was our loved laureate s place of birth, And sooth, God sent his singers upon earth. Thou canst not find Clay Cove ? T was here, wilt say, When thou didst listen to the runnet s song, Leaping to meet the full lips of the bay. Well, let us climb Munjoy; lo ! good and strong, In the same coat of red it hath so long Disported bravely, spite of flood and flame, The old Observatory, still the same. And there the forts, and farther seaward yet, A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, The light-house standeth still, as firmly set Upon its flinty throne amidst the spray As erst when thou didst dream thy soul away To the hoarse Hebrides, or bright Azore, Or flashing surges of San Salvador. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 25 And, ere we leave, look where still sleep the two Brave captains, who in bloody shrouds were brought From the great sea-fight, whilst the bugles blew, And drums rolled, and gaunt cannon terror wrought In childish hearts ; the place thou oft has sought To dream the fight o er, while the busy hum Of toil from wharf and street would strangely come. But now along the teeming thoroughfare Thread we our way. Strange faces, sayest thou ? Yet names well known to thee some haply bear, And shouldst thou scan more closely face and brow, Old looks would come well known to thee enow, Which shone on faces of the girls and boys Who shared with thee the sweets of youthful joys. And now we come where, rough with rent and scar, The ancient rope- walk stood, low roofed and gray, Embalmed with scent of oakum, flax, and tar, Cob webbed and dim, and crammed with strange array Of things which lure the thoughts of youth away To wondrous climes, where never ship hath been, Nor foot hath .trod, nor curious eye hath seen. Gone? Why, I dreamt ! A moment since twas there, Or seemed to be. Their lives frail thread, t is true, The spinners long since spun ; the maidens fair, Swinging and laughing as their shadows flew Along the grass, have swung from earthly view, And the gay mountebanks have vaulted quite Into oblivion s eternal night. 26 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. And they are gone : the woman at the well ; The old man ringing in the noontide heat ; The shameless convicts with their faces fell ; The boy and kite, and steeds with flying feet, And sportsmen ambushed midst of leafage sweet; Aye, and the ships rejoicing in the breeze Are rotting on the shores of unknown seas. But, Master, let us fare to old Bramhall, Up Free and Main streets this is State ; full well The house where Mellen lived thou must recall, Seeing a poet once therein might dwell; Though short of Fame s fair house he hapless fell, Tracing his name half listless, in the reach Of every tide which sweeps Time s treacherous beach. And here is cool Bramhall, and there still stands The Deering house, as thou hast known it long ; Where Bracket s house stood, ere with murderous hands The Indians thronged around it witched of wrong One August day, with torch and savage song, And swept it from the earth. Ah ! little hope Beamed then within poor Falmouth s horoscope. But time hath made all right now. See, where rest The eternal hills, which once, with fervid eyes, The Indian saw within the havening west, And called the crystal mountains, poetwise, Dreaming that thitherward lay Paradise ; Whither each evening went the chief of day, Bedecked with painted robes and feathers gay. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 27 T was not so far amiss, for type more grand. Of the celestial hills no eye hath seen : Towering in splendid majesty they stand, Like portals heaven s immortal courts to screen, Curtained with buoyant clouds of purest sheen, Which rise and fall, yet ever seem to hold A mystery bosomed in each shadowy fold. Pile upon pile they rise and meet the sky, Blue, over-arching, like a mighty dome. Even such a temple doth my spirit s eye Limn for those souls who through achievement come To well- won fame. Lo ! in this glorious home I see them sit august, and, crowned with bays, Across the silent centuries calmly gaze. Homer unkempt, with close, sagacious look ; Plato, in whose calm face pale mysteries bide ; Virgil, smooth-cheeked with oaten pipe and crook; Grave Sophocles, with eyes unsatisfied, Where riddles all unread in ambush hide ; Keen-eyed Euripides, whose books were men, And jovial Horace with satiric pen. And dear old Chaucer, loved of gods and men, Benign, keen-witted, child-like, quaint, and wise ; Spenser, pure knight, whose lance was his good pen, The praise of ladyes fayre his loved emprise ; Great Shakespeare, with a seer s unhindered eyes ; Blind Milton, listening for a seraph s wings ; And Burns, in whose blithe face a sky-lark sings ; 28 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Wordsworth, so simple ; and poor fragile Keats, Who poured his heart out like a nightingale, Whose affluent verse half cloys with wealth of sweets, A master, spite of faulty work and frail, Whose luckless loss the world full long shall wail ; And here, placed fairly in this hall of Fame, A glorious seat with newly-carven name. T is plain, dear Master, t is thy name, forsooth, Deep graven in the everlasting stone, There shall it be untouched of Time s sharp tooth, While sunshine kisses bud to bloom. And zone Answers to zone with fruitage all its own ; And quiring stars, with universal song, The boundless arch of heaven majestic throng. Here will I bid thee, Master, fond good-by, Wishing thee soul-health and full many a day Of blissful living, ere thou mayest try The scope of other joys. And now, I may This wreath from Deering s Woods, O Master, lay Upon thy brow. God speed thee while the sun Shines on the faithful work which thou hast done. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW AND HIS PATER NAL ANCESTRY. BY REV. HENUY S. BURRAGE, PORTLAND. IN Parson Smith s "Journal," the source of so much of what we know concerning the early his tory of Portland, occurs this entry under date of April 11, 1745: " Mr. Longfellow came here to live." This was Stephen Longfellow, the great grandfather of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Long fellow, who was born in Portland, February 27, 1807, and in honor of whose seventy-fifth birth day we are now assembled. Stephen Longfellow was a native of Newbury, Mass. His grandfather, William Longfellow, was born in Yorkshire County, England, about the year 1651. In early life he came to Newbury, where, November 10, 1678, he was married to Anne, daughter of Henry Sewall (who began the settlement of Newbury), and a sister of Samuel Sewall, afterwards Chief Justice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and Judge of Probate for Suffolk County. Concerning his occupation, we only know that he was a merchant, and resided in 30 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. that part of the town then known as the "Falls." In 1690, as Ensign of the Newbury company, he had a part in the ill-fated expedition to Quebec, under Sir William Phips. Earlier in the year Sir William had captured the French stronghold, Port Royal. It was now his purpose to strike a more decisive blow at the French power in North America. A larger command was given to him. With a fleet consisting of thirty-two vessels, hav ing on board 2,200 soldiers, he sailed from Boston Harbor, August 9th. His progress was slow, and it was not until October 5th that he appeared be fore Quebec. The attempt to capture the place failed, and the expedition was abandoned. On the return a violent storm overtook the fleet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, scattered the vessels, and one of them, containing the Newbury com pany, went ashore at Anticosti, a desolate island, and William Longfellow, with nine others, was drowned. This was on the night of the 31st of October. The sad tidings at length reached New bury. Under date of November 21st, Judge Sew- all made this entry in his diary : " T was Tuesday, the 18th of November, that I heard of the death of Cnpt. Stephen Greenleaf, Lieut. James Smith, and Ensign William Longfellow, Sergeant In crease Pilsbury, who, with Will Mitchell, Jabez Mnsgro, and four more, were drowned at Cape Britoon [an error] on Friday night, the last of October." SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 31 Of William Longfellow s six children, one, named Stephen Longfellow (for Stephen Dummer, Mrs. Longfellow s grandfather), had died in early childhood, and to another son, born September 22, 1685, the same name was given. This was the father of Stephen Longfellow, who came to Port land in 1745. Concerning his quiet, uneventful life we know but little. He became a blacksmith, and we may picture him, like the poet s hero of the village smithy, with large and sinewy hands, brawny arms, his brow wet with honest sweat, as he swings his heavy sledge " with measured beat and slow." Stephen Longfellow, the blacksmith, married, March 25, 1714, Abigail Tompson, daughter of Rev. Edward Tompson, of Marshfield, by whom he had ten children. In his son Stephen, born February 7, 1723, he seems early to have discov ered signs of intellectual promise, and he sent him to Harvard College, where he was graduated in 1742. The father was permitted to follow the honorable career of his son for nineteen years after he came to Portland ; and when he died, November 7, 1764, he left him a small legacy. It is an evidence of the son s affectionate regard for his father that, on receiving this legacy, he formed the purpose of converting it into a permanent memorial. Taking the silver coin, he sent it by 32 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. packet to Boston ; but unfortunately the vessel was lost, and the money with it. When the ti dings reached Mr. Longfellow, he made up a like amount of silver coin, which reached Boston in safety, and was manufactured by John Butler, a well-known silversmith, into a tankard, a can, and two porringers. Each bore the initials S. L., and the added words of grateful remembrance, Ex Dono Patris. The tankard has been preserved ; and one of the porringers, after a somewhat eventful history, has found its way back into the family, and is one of the treasures of the poet s brother, Alexander W. Longfellow. Before taking up his residence in Portland, Stephen Longfellow had been keeping school in York. He came to Portland on the following let ter of invitation from Parson Smith : FALMOUTII, November 15, 1744. g IR? We need a school-master. Mr. Plaisted advises of your being at liberty. If you will undertake the serv ice in this place, you may depend upon our being gener ous, and your being satisfied. I wish you d come as soon as possible, and doubt not but you 11 find things much to your content. Your humble ser t, THOS. SMITH. P. S. I write in the name and with the power of the selectmen of the town. If you can t serve us, pray ad vise us of it per first opportunity. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 33 The invitation was favorably considered, and in April following, as Parson Smith records, Mr. Longfellow came here to enter upon his work. An appropriation of fifty pounds had been voted by the town toward the salary of a grammar teacher ; and the people on the Neck, as Portland was then called, were to have his exclusive serv ices, provided they contributed the remainder of his salary. Mr. Longfellow opened his school April 17, 1745, in a building on the corner of Middle Street and School, now Pearl Street. The number of scholars is not known. In the follow ing year it was fifty, and on the list which has been preserved occur the names of the prominent families of that day, Smith, Moody, Brackett, Waite, Bradbury, Jones, Cox, Gooding, Freeman, Bryant, Coffin, Stickney, Proctor, and Motley. For that year his salary was two hundred pounds. As the currency then was at a depreciation of seven to one, it will be seen that the office was not a very remunerative one even with the tuition, which for each scholar was eighteen shillings and eight pence per year, and eight shillings per quarter. In a manuscript note, in his copy of Smith s " Journal," now in the Public Library, Mr. Willis says, " I think Mr. Longfellow boarded with Mr. Smith when he came here until his marriage." 3 34 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. This occurred October 19, 1749. His wife was Tabitha Bragdon, a daughter of Samuel Bragdon, of York. After he built his house on Fore Street, on the lot now occupied by the Eagle Sugar Ee- finery, he transferred his school thither, and he continued to be the principal instructor in the town until 1760, when he was appointed Clerk of the Judicial Court. When Mowatt destroyed the town, October 18, 1775, Mr. Longfellow s house was burned. The committee appointed to examine and liquidate the accounts of those who suffered in the burning of the town estimated his loss at 1,119. The house was not rebuilt, and the old cellar was visible on the unoccupied lot until the erection of the brick building by the Sugar Ee- finery, a quarter of a century ago. After the destruction of his house, Mr. Longfel low removed to Gorham, where he resided until his death, May 1, 1790. In a brief sketch of his life Mr. Willis says, " Mr. Longfellow filled many important offices in the town to universal accept ance. He was about fifteen years grammar-school master ; parish clerk twenty-three years ; town clerk twenty-two years ; many years clerk of the proprietors of the common land ; and from the establishment of the county, in 1760, to the com mencement of the Revolution, in 1775, he was Eegister of Probate and Clerk of the Judicial SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 35 Courts. His handwriting, in beautiful characters, symbolical of the purity and excellence of his own moral character, is impressed on all the records of the town and county through many successive years." Of his three sons, Stephen, Samuel, and William, the latter died in early life, while Samuel left no children. Stephen, the oldest son, was born Au gust 3, 1750. December 13, 1773, he married Patience Young, of York. His home was in Gor- ham, and there he died, greatly respected, May 28, 1824. He was extensively employed as a surveyor, and received appointments to various town offices. He represented Gorham in the General Court of Massachusetts eight years. For several years he was Senator from Cumberland County. He was Judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1797 to 1811, and there are those still among us who remember him as he drove into Portland in an old square-top chaise, and, dis mounting, made his way into the Court House escorted by the sheriff. He was a fine-looking gentleman, with the bearing of the old school, was erect, portly, rather taller than the average, had a strongly marked face, and his hair was tied be hind in a club with black ribbon. To the close of his life he wore the old-style dress knee-breeches, a long waistcoat, and white top boots. He was a 36 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. man of sterling qualities of mind and heart, great integrity, and sound common sense. Stephen, his second child, born in Gorham March 23, 1776, was the father of Henry Wads- worth Longfellow. He entered Harvard College in 1794. A college friend, Daniel Appleton White, two years his senior, said of him in later life, " He was evidently a well-bred gentleman when he left the paternal mansion for the University. He seemed to breathe an atmosphere of purity, as his natural element, while his bright intelligence, buoyant spirits, and social warmth diffused a sun shine of joy that made his presence always glad some." That he was a favorite in his class is the testimony of his associates. But he went to col lege for other purposes than good fellowship. He was an earnest, exemplary student. His scholar ship entitled him to high rank, and having com pleted the course he left the University with a full share of its honors. After his graduation, in 1798, Mr. Longfellow entered the law office of Salmon Chase, an uncle of Salmon Portland Chase, late Chief Justice of the United States ; and he was admitted to the bar in 1801. He at once entered upon an exten sive and lucrative practice. Three years later, January 1, 1804, he married Zilpah, eldest daugh ter of General Peleg Wadsworth, who built and SE VENTY-FIFTH BIR THDA Y. 37 then occupied the brick house which is still stand ing on Congress Street, adjoining the Preble House, and is known as the Longfellow House. In the same year he was selected by the citizens of the town to deliver an oration on the Fourth of July. After his marriage Mr. Longfellow lived a year in the Wadsworth House. During the next year his home was in a small house on the corner of Temple Street, opposite the First Parish Church. Samuel Stephenson, a rich merchant of Portland, then lived in the large square wooden house which is still standing at the corner of Fore and Hancock streets. His wife, Abigail Longfellow, was a sister of Stephen Longfellow, the lawyer, and as her husband had been suddenly called to the West Indies, on business, she invited her brother with his family to spend the winter of 1806-7 with her. Thus it was that on the 27th of February, 1807, in this house, which should be known as the Stephenson and not the Longfellow House, and during this temporary residence, was born their second son, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, named for Mrs. Longfellow s brother, Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth of the U. S. Navy, who on the night of September 4, 1804, in the harbor of Tripoli, lost his life, a voluntary sacrifice, in a gallant endeavor to destroy the enemy s flotilla by a fire-ship. In the spring of 1807, General Wadsworth, Mrs. Long- 38 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. fellow s father, having removed to Hiram in order to occupy and improve a large tract of land which he had bought, Stephen Longfellow took up his residence in the brick house which General Wads- worth had vacated, and made it henceforth his home. In 1814 he was sent to the Legislature of Massa chusetts, and while engaged in this service he was chosen a member of the celebrated Hartford Con vention. In 1816 he was made a presidential elector. In 1822 he was elected a member of the 18th Congress. At the close of his congressional term he retired from political life, and devoted his remaining years to his profession. In 1825, when Lafayette visited Portland, Mr. Longfellow was appointed to give the address of welcome. The service was fittingly performed. In his reply La fayette made this graceful allusion to Mr. Long fellow : " While I offer to the people of Portland, and to you, gentlemen, my respectful thanks, I am happy to recognize in the kind organ of their kindness to me the member of Congress who shared in the flattering invitation which has been to me a source of inexpressible honor and delight." In 1828 Mr. Longfellow received the degree of LL. D. from Bowdoin College, of which he was a Trustee from 1817 to 1836. He was Recording Secretary of the Maine Historical Society from SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 39 1828 to 1830, and in 1834 he was elected Presi dent of the Society. He died August 3, 1849, aged seventy-four years. In his " Law, Courts, and Lawyers of Maine," Mr. Willis says of him, " No man more surely gained the confidence of all who approached him, or held it firmer ; and those who knew him best loved him most. In the man agement of his causes, he went with zeal and directness of purpose to every point which could sustain it ; there was no traveling out of the rec ord with him, nor a wandering away from the line of his argument after figures of speech or fine rhetoric, but he was plain, straightforward, and effective in his appeals to the jury, and by his frank and cordial manner won them to his cause." Such, in public life, was the father of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In the domestic circle the noble traits of his character were no less ap parent. His home was one of refinement and the purest social virtues ; and she who shared its direc tion with him not only adorned it with rare wom anly grace, but gave to it many an added charm. Here the poet passed his earlier years. How well he remembers the Portland of those years he has told us in his delightful poem, "My Lost Youth : "- I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free ; 40 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still : "A boy s will is the wind s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill ; The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o er and o er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still : " A boy s will is the wind s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o er the tide ! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o er-looking the tranquil bay, "Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill : " A boy s will is the wind s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering s Woods : And the friendships old and the early loves Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves In quiet neighborhoods. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 41 And the verse of that sweet old song, It flutters and murmurs still : U A boy s will is the wind s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the school-boy s brain ; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still : " A boy s will is the wind s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." The first school that Mr. Longfellow attended was kept by Marm Fellows in a small brick school- house on Spring Street, above High, and just be low the house in which Dr. Bacon now lives. Later he went to the town school in Love Lane, now Centre Street, where Judge Goddard s house stands. Here, however, he remained only a week or two, and he was then placed in the private school of Nathaniel H. Carter, which was kept in a little one-story wooden house on the west side of Preble Street, near Congress. Afterwards he attended the Portland Academy under the same master, and also under the mastership of Mr. Bezaleel Cushman, a graduate of Dartmouth Col lege, who took charge of the school in 1815, and continued in the position twenty-six years. One 42 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. of his assistants, while Mr. Longfellow was con nected with the school, was Jacob Abbott. Under such inspiring teachers his progress was rapid, and in 1821, at the age of fourteen, he entered Bowdoin College, though, for the most part, dur ing the first year of his college course, he pursued his studies at home. The class which he entered was a brilliant one. In it were sons of some of the choicest families in Northern New England; and among them were those who were to achieve a wide reputation in the field of letters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever, John S. C. Abbott, and others at the bar and in political life, conspicuously the lamented Cilley, and our honored President, Hon. J. W. Bradbury, whose absence to-night we all so greatly regret. One of his classmates, the Rev. Daniel Shepley, D. D., referring to Longfellow as a student, says, "He gave diligent heed to all departments of study in the prescribed course, and excelled in all, while his enthusiasm moved in the direction it has taken in subsequent life. His themes, felicitous translations of Horace and occa sional contributions to the press, drew marked at tention to him, and led to the expectation that his would be an honorable literary career." When he entered college, Mr. Longfellow had already occupied the poet s corner in the Portland SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 43 newspapers. His first published poem was on Lovell s Fight. In his complete poetical works as now issued are several poems, which, Mr. Long fellow tells us, were written for the most part dur ing his college life, and all of them before he was nineteen years of age. They were first published in " The United States Literary Gazette," edited by James G. Carter, and thence found their way into the columns of the daily and weekly papers of the country. Mr. Longfellow graduated second in a class of thirty- seven. His theme Commencement Day was " Native Writers." So full was his future of promise that when, shortly after he graduated, it was proposed to establish a chair of Modern Lan guages in Bowdoin College, he was elected to the professorship, being then only nineteen years of age. But he was not asked to take the position before he had qualified himself for its duties. He accordingly went abroad, and the next three years and a half were spent in the study of the more important languages of Europe on their native soil. These were years of earnest, faithful toil, and when he returned to Brunswick, in 1829, he brought with him the rich treasures he had made his own during his residence in France, Spain, It aly, Germany, Holland, and England. His reputa tion as an instructor was soon established. Presi- 44 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. dent Hamlin, of Middlebury College, who entered Bowdoin in 1830, says, " Longfellow had occu pied the chair but one year. Our class numbered fifty-two, the largest Freshman class that had, up to that time, entered college, and many of its members were attracted by Longfellow s rep utation." In September, 1831, Mr. Longfellow was mar ried to Mary S. Potter, daughter of Judge Barrett Potter, of Portland. His first published poetical work, which appeared in 1833, was a translation of the " Coplas de Jorge Manrique," to which was prefixed an Introductory Essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain. In the same year he published the first two numbers of " Outre-Mer," and the whole work appeared two years later. During his residence at Brunswick, Mr. Long fellow became a member of the Maine Historical Society, a fact which we recall to-night with es pecial interest; and in 1834 he held the office of Librarian and Cabinet Keeper. At this time, Mr. George Ticknor, the learned professor of modern languages in Harvard Univer sity, resigned, and the publication of " Outre- Mer " and Mr. Longfellow s rapidly growing repu tation as a poet led to his appointment as Mr. Ticknor s successor. Before entering upon his professorship at Cambridge, in order to study the SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 45 languages of Northern Europe, he again visited the Old World. The summer was spent in Norway and Sweden, and the autumn and winter in Hol land and Germany. But his studies were arrested by the sudden death of his wife, at Rotterdam, November 29, 1835, and in the shadow of this sorrow he was compelled to complete his work abroad. In November, 1836, he returned to the United States, and, after a visit to the home of his childhood, he repaired to Cambridge, and en tered upon his duties as " Smith Professor of Modern Literature." Early in his Cambridge life Mr. Longfellow called one day at the Craigie House, which for a time during the Revolution was Washington s headquarters, and at a later date the residence of Edward Everett and Jared Sparks. " I lodge students no longer," said Mrs. Craigie, in answer to the inquiry if she had a vacant room for a lodger. On learning that Mr. Longfellow was not a student, but a professor in the University, she led the way to the room in the southeast corner on the second floor, once General Washington s chamber, and placed it at his disposal. In 1843, on the death of Mrs. Craigie, Longfellow bought the house, and it has since been his home. In this year he was married to Frances Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of Hon. Nathan Appleton, of 46 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Boston. In this historic dwelling Mr. Longfel low s children, two sons and four daughters, were born ; and here, too, occurred the sudden and sor rowful death of his wife, an affliction most keenly felt, and which has chastened all his subsequent years. In the University, as one of his pupils, the Kev. Edward Everett Hale, tells us, " his regular duty was the oversight of five or more instructors who were teaching French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, to two or three hundred under-gradu- ates. . . . We never knew when he might look in on a recitation and virtually conduct it. We were delighted to have him come. Any slipshod work of some poor wretch from France, who was tormented by wild-cat Sophomores, would be made straight and decorous and all right. We all knew he was a poet, and were proud to have him in the college, but at the same time we respected him as a man of affairs." Indeed, not a little of his time must have been given to literary work. His study, as now, was on the lower floor, under the southeast chamber which he occupied when he first made his home in the Craigie Mansion. It was the room in which Washington transacted the business of his office as Commander-in-Chief, a fact which the poet him self has recorded in the lines, SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 47 " Yes, within this very room Sat he in those hours of gloom, Weary both in heart and head." Dr. Lyman Abbott, in a description of Mr. Longfellow s study, published in the " Christian Union " a year ago, says, " The table is piled with pamphlets and papers in orderly confusion ; a high desk in one corner suggests a practice of standing while writing, and gives a hint of one secret of the poet s singularly erect form at an age when the body generally begins to stoop and the shoulders to grow round ; an orange-tree stands in one window ; near it a bronze stork keeps watch ; by the side of the open fire is the children s chair ; on the table is Coleridge s ink stand ; upon the walls are crayon likenesses of Emerson, Hawthorne, Felton, and Sumner; and on one of the book-shelves, which fill all the spare wall-space and occupy even one of the windows, are, rarest treasure of all, the poet s own works in their original manuscript, carefully preserved in handsome and substantial bindings." Here, amid these pleasant surroundings, have been written in successive years so many of those poems, " Voices and melodies from beyond the gates," which have charmed so many waiting hearts in many lands. Mr. Longfellow retained his professorship at 48 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Cambridge seventeen years, and then resigned, in order to give himself wholly to literary work. In 1859 he received from Harvard College the hon orary degree of LL. D. ; and on revisiting Europe in 1868-69 he received the degree of D. C. L. at both Cambridge and Oxford. This was a just rec ognition of his extended fame, an expression of the high honor in which he was held by men of letters on both sides of the Atlantic. Throughout his long career as a poet Mr. Long fellow has not been conspicuous upon public oc casions. What he has written has been by an impulse from within, not from without. His "Morituri Salutamus," read at Bowdoin College in 1875, was not an exception. It w r as the fiftieth anniversary of his college class, and though he was asked to honor the day with his verse, these words that breathe and thoughts that burn bore witness to the pure source from which they came. Of those who were present on that memorable day none will ever forget the scene in the church when the now venerable poet, surrounded by his classmates, saluted the well-known places of his youth, beloved instructors, of whom all save one had passed into the land of shadows, the students who filled the seats he and his companions had once occupied, and finally his classmates, " Against whose familiar names not yet The fatal asterisk of death is set." SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 49 One of these classmates, the Rev. David Shep- ley, D. D., referring to the poet, says, "How did we exult in his pure character and his splendid reputation ! With what delight gaze upon his in telligent and benignant countenance ! With what moistening eye listen to his words ! And what limit was there to the blessing we desired for him from the Infinite Author of mind ! " And he adds, " Just before leaving for our respective homes, we gathered in a retired college room for the last time, talked together a half -hour as of old, agreed to exchange photographs, and prayed together; then going forth and standing for a moment once more under the branches of the old tree, in silence we took each other by the hand and separated, knowing well that Brunswick will not again witness a gathering of the class of 1825." But the poet had not indulged in any vain re grets. Manifestly he revealed somewhat his own purpose when, in closing his poem, on that occa sion, he said, " Something remains for us to do or dare ; Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear. For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away, The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day." 4 50 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. That opportunity Mr. Longfellow has faithfully used, and long may it be before we shall receive the latest fruit of his noble powers. The poet does not forget the place of his birth. It is still to him " The beautiful town That is seated by the sea." And hither he comes each season, in order that again he may " Go up and down The pleasant streets," and bring back his lost youth. He was here dur ing the past summer. Strange forms, doubtless, he met, but he himself was not unknown. Indeed, he never walks these streets unrecognized. The recent action of the City Council of Portland in tendering him a public reception on this day, with the hospitalities of the city, was but the expression of a hearty desire on the part of the citizens of Portland to do honor to one who has conferred so much honor upon this "dear old town." To use his own words in the " Golden Legend," " Ah, yes ! we all Love him, from the bottom of our hearts ; " and we send him a birthday greeting, and add, " Be that sad year, O poet, very far, That proves thee mortal by the little star. Yet since thy thoughts live daily in our own, SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 51 And have no heart to weep or smile alone, Since they are rooted in our souls, and so Will live forever, whither those shall go, Though some late asterisk may mark thy name, It never will be set against thy fame ! For the world s fervent love and praise of thee Have starred it first with immortality." GENERAL PELEG WADSWORTH, AND THE MATERNAL ANCESTRY OF HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. BY HON. WILLIAM GOOLD, WINDHAM. THE pleasant duty assigned to me for this occa sion is to trace the origin and history of General Wadsworth, the maternal grandfather of Henry Wads worth Longfellow, who had the military oversight of our frontier district of Maine, imme diately after it was found that the British lodg ment at Bagaduce, in 1779, was intended to be permanent. Peleg Wadsworth was the son of Deacon Peleg Wadsworth, of Duxbury, Massachusetts, and the fifth in descent from Christopher Wadsworth, who came from England, and settled in that town pre vious to 1632, and whose known descendants in the United States are now numbered by thou sands. Peleg Wadsworth, Jr., was born at Duxbury, May 6, 1748. He graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1769, which numbered thirty-nine, and included several honorable names which added SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 53 lustre to the class, one of which was Theophilus Parsons, who came to Falmouth as a school-teacher in 1770, and studied law with Theophilus Brad bury ; but the Revolutionary troubles drove him away, and he became Chief Justice of the Massa chusetts Supreme Court. Another member of the class was Alexander Scammell, also of Duxbury, who, after a brilliant military career in the Amer ican army, received an inhuman wound, after be ing taken prisoner at the siege of Yorktown, of which he died a month after. Both Wadsworth and Scammell, after graduation, taught school at Plymouth. In 1772 Wadsworth married Elizabeth Bartlett of that town. Their children, through their mother and grandmother Wadsworth, who was Lusanna Sampson, inherited the blood of five of the Mayflower pilgrims, including Elder Brew- ster and Captain John Alden. Immediately after the outrage at Lexington, Peleg Wadsworth raised in the old colony a com pany of minute-men, of which the Continental Congress commissioned him captain in September, 1775. He was engineer under General Thomas in laying out the defenses of Roxbury in 1776. He was in Colonel Cotton s regiment, which formed a part of a detachment which was ordered to throw up intrenchments on Dorchester Heights, and was appointed aid to General Ward, when the heights 54 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. were occupied in March. These works compelled Howe s fleet to leave Boston in haste. In 1778 Wadsworth was appointed Adjutant-General of his State. In 1779 the British naval and army officers at Halifax became sensible that they were suffering from American privateers, which frequented the Penobscot waters, owing to their perfect knowl edge of the numerous coves and harbors, which they could run into at any time to avoid the Brit ish cruisers. The Admiral in command foresaw the advantage that would be gained by establishing a naval and military post in this quarter for a harbor of refuge for ships and fugitive loyalists, and to command the near coast and harbors, whence they could ob tain a supply of some kinds of ship timber for the royal dockyard at Halifax. This was the year after the French King had assumed our quarrel with the mother country, and had sent a large fleet and army to our assistance, which gave the colo nies confidence, and made them more aggressive. In June, 1779, it was decided at Halifax to send General McLane with a fleet to occupy Bagaduce, as the harbor best situated for their purpose. He arrived on the 12th of June with 900 troops and eight or nine vessels, all less than a frigate, under the command of Captain Henry Mo watt, who had SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 55 become detestable to all Americans by his cruel burning of old Falmouth, four years previous. The people of Maine appealed to the General Court of Massachusetts for protection, and to have the in vaders driven off by an immediate expedition, be fore they could have time to complete their works of defense. The Massachusetts Board of War were instructed by the Legislature to collect a fleet, state and national, and if necessary to im press any private armed vessels in the harbors of the State into their service, under the promise of fair compensation for all losses and detention. The Executive Department of the Province was then composed of the Council ; there was no State Governor until the next year. The Council or dered Brigadier-Generals Thompson, of Cumber land, and Gushing, of Lincoln, to detach severally GOO men from each of their brigades, and form them into two regiments. General Frost, of York, was directed to detail 300 men from his brigade for a reinforcement, if needed. The fleet consisted of nineteen armed vessels, carrying 344 guns, and convoying twenty -four transports. The flag-ship was the new Continental frigate Warren. Of the others, nine were ships, six brigs, and three sloops. The command of the fleet was intrusted to Kichard Saltonstall, of Con necticut, an officer of some naval experience. One 56 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. hundred Massachusetts artillerists were embarked, at Boston under their former commander, Lieu tenant-Colonel Paul Revere, who carried the news to Hancock and Adams at Lexington that the British troops were on the road from Boston, in 1775. The command of the land forces was given to Solomon Lovell, of Weymouth, Mass., the brig adier-general of the militia of Suffolk, which then included Norfolk County. He was a man of cour age but no war experience. Peleg Wadsworth, then Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, was the second in command. He had seen some service on Dorchester Heights during the siege of Boston and in other places. The ordnance was intrusted to the command of Colonel Revere. The Cumberland County regiment was under the command of Colonel Mitchell, of North Yar mouth. The expedition was popular, and the peo ple engaged in it with alacrity and zeal. Falmouth and Cape Elizabeth contributed a company each, consisting of volunteers from the most respectable families. Under date June 20th, Parson Smith of Fal mouth records : " People are everywhere in this State spiritedly appearing in the intended expedi tion to Penobscot in pursuit of the British fleet and army there." This was a state expedition, for which Massachusetts advanced 50,000. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 57 When the fleet was ready to sail from Towns- hend, now Boothbay, the place of rendezvous, General Lo veil s land forces numbered less than 1,000 men, who had been paraded together only once, then at Boothbay. They were raw militia, who had seen no former service, except, perhaps, some individuals who had been in the Continental Army for a short time. It was a spirited body of men. Their fathers had been at the siege of Lou- isburg, thirty years before. In one month from the commencement to organize the expedition, it made its appearance in Penobscot Bay. The British commander heard of the American fleet four days before its arrival, and worked night and day to render his fortification defensible, yet it was far from being completed. He at once dispatched a vessel to Halifax, asking for assist ance. On the 28th of July, after waiting two days for a calm, our vessels were drawn up in line of battle, and 200 militiamen and 200 marines were landed. The best landing-places were exposed to Mowatt s guns, and no landing could be effected except on the western side, which was a precipice 150 feet high and very steep. This was guarded by a line of the enemy posted on the summit, who opened a brisk fire as soon as the boats came within gunshot, but the shot from the vessels went over their heads. As soon as the men landed the 58 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. boats returned to the fleet, cutting off all means of retreat. No force could reach the summit in the face of such a fire of musketry, so the American troops were divided into three parties. One sought a practicable ascent at the right, one at the left, and the centre kept up a brisk fire to attract the attention of the enemy on the heights. Both the right and left parties gained the summit, followed by the centre in the face of a galling fire, which they were powerless to return. Captain Warren s company of volunteers from Falmouth was the first to form on the heights, when all closed on the enemy, who, after a sharp skirmish, made their escape, leaving thirty men killed and wounded. Of the attacking party of 400, one hundred were killed or wounded. The engage ment was short, but great pluck and courage were shown by the Americans. It has been said that no more brilliant exploit than this was accom plished by our forces during the war, but this is the only bright spot in the record of the expedi tion. After the retreat of the enemy, some slight intrenchments were thrown up by the sadly weak ened little detachment, within 700 yards of the enemy s main works. These intrenchments were held by our men, and thus was made a good be ginning. The same morning a council of war was called SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 59 of the land and naval officers. The former were for summoning the garrison to surrender, but the Commodore and the most of his officers were op posed to the measure. It was next proposed to storm the fort, but the Commodore refused to land any more of his marines, as those at the first land ing suffered severely. The land force alone was deemed insufficient for a successful attack on the works, and a whale-boat express was dispatched to Boston for a reinforcement. General Lovell now commenced a regular investment of the works by zigzag trenches for Kevere s insufficient can non, and approached to musket-shot distance of the fort, so that not one of the garrison dared to show his head above the embankments. It was afterwards ascertained that if a surrender had been demanded when first proposed the com manding general was prepared to capitulate, so imperfect were his defenses. Commodore Salton- stall was self-willed, and disagreed with Generals Lovell and Wadsworth. During the two weeks delay the British strengthened their defenses, and inclosed their works with a chevaux-de-frise and an abattis outside of all, which rendered the storm ing project impracticable, if the expected rein forcement had arrived. The American Commo dore kept up a daily cannonade with a show of an attempt to enter the harbor, but it was only a 60 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. show. A deserter from the Americans informed the British commander of an intended attack the next day, which prevented any success. On the 13th of August a look-out vessel brought General Lovell news that a British squadron of seven sails was entering Penobscot Bay, in answer to General McLane s application to Halifax on the first discovery of the American fleet. A retreat was immediately ordered by General Lovell, and conducted by General Wadsworth in the night with so much skill that the whole of the troops were on board the transports, undiscovered by the enemy. The British squadron, consisting of one 74-gun ship, one frigate, and five smaller vessels, all under the command of Sir John Collier, with 1,500 troops on board, entered the harbor the next morning. Saltonstall kept his position until the transports retreated up the river, when a broad side from Collier s ship caused a disorderly flight, and a general chase and indiscriminate destruc tion of the American fleet. Several vessels were blown up by their own crews to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy. The troops and crews of the vessels left them for the woods. Most of the officers and men of the fleet and army made their way through the woods, guided by the Penobscot Indians, who were friendly to the provinces through the war for in- SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 61 dependence. These straggling parties suffered every privation before reaching the settlements, subsisting on such game and fish as they were able to obtain. A large number were piloted by the Indians to Fort Halifax, where they were recruited, and returned home by the Kennebec. A court of inquiry as to the cause of the failure of the expedition gave as their opinion " That the principal reason of the failure of the expedition was the want of the proper spirit on the part of the Commodore. That the destruction of the fleet was occasioned essentially because of his not ex erting himself at all in the time of the retreat, by opposing the enemy s foremost ships in pursuit." " That General Lovell, throughout the expedition and retreat, acted with proper courage and spirit ; and had he been furnished with all the men or dered for the service, or been properly supported by the Commodore, he would probably have re duced the enemy." The court spoke in the highest terms of General Wadsworth. Upon this report the General Court adjudged "That Commo dore Saltonstall be incompetent ever after to hold a commission in the service of the State, and that Generals Lovell and Wadsworth be honorably ac quitted." In answer to General Lovell s appeal for assist ance by the whale-boat express to Boston, a regi- 62 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. ment under Colonel Henry Jackson proceeded to Falmouth on their way to the Penobscot, where they heard of the disaster of the expedition. When I was a boy, sixty years ago, many of the men of Cumberland County who had been in the Bagaduce expedition were then living; some of them were my own relatives. I have often heard angry discussions between those of the land and those of the naval service. The landsmen always assumed the aggressive, and had the best of the argument. It was the opinion of both that if General Wadsworth had been in chief command on shore the gallant detachments which first gained the heights could not have been restrained until they had crossed bayonets with the garrison of the half -built fortress ; and that was the time to have carried the works. After the failure of the Bagaduce expedition the British pursued a system of outrageous plundering on the shores of Penobscot Bay and the neighbor ing coast, in which they were piloted and assisted by the numerous Tories who had gathered at Bag aduce and in the vicinity. To protect the people from this plundering, the Continental Congress, in 1780, ordered 600 men to be detached from the three eastern brigades of the State, for eight months service. Every soldier was ordered to march well equipped, within twenty-four hours SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 63 after lie was detached, or pay a fine of sixty pounds currency, which was to be applied to pro cure a substitute. The command of the whole eastern department, between the Piscataqua and St. Croix, was given to General Wadsworth, with power to raise more troops if they were needed. He was also empowered to declare and execute martial law over territory ten miles in width upon the coast east of the Kennebec, according to the rules of the American army. His head quarters were established at Thomaston. For the purpose of protecting his friends, the General found it necessary to draw a line of demarkation between them and their foes. He issued a proc lamation prohibiting any intercourse with the enemy. This paper, of which I have a copy, is dated at Thomaston, 18th of April, 1780, and de clares the penalty of military execution for any infringement of it. The people of the islands east of Penobscot to Union River, " from their exposed situation," were ordered to hold themselves as neutrals. All persons joining the enemy were to be treated as deserters from the American army. This proclamation did not have the desired effect. The most bitter of the Tories supposed that they would be protected by General Campbell, who was now in command; but he disapproved of their plundering. Captain Mowatt, of detestable 64 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. memory, who was in command of the British squadron, was of a different character, and encour aged their depredations, when they became very aggressive. A stanch friend of the American cause at Broad Bay, named Soule, was shot in his bed, and his wife was wounded. This drew from General Wadsworth another proclamation, de nouncing death to any one convicted of secreting or giving aid to the enemy. Soon after a man named Baum was detected in secreting and aiding Tories to reach Castine. He was tried by court- martial, found guilty of treason, and General Wadsworth ordered his execution by hanging the next morning, which was carried into effect. This effectually checked the intercourse with Bag- aduce. A daughter of General Wadsworth, in writing of the circumstance to a son-in-law in 1834, said, " My mother has told me that my father was greatly distressed at being obliged to execute the penalty of the law." General Wads- worth s wife was with him at the time. After the term of service of the 600 troops had expired, General Wadsworth was left with only six soldiers as a guard at his house, it being his intention also to leave within a week or two. His family consisted of his wife and son of five years, and Miss Fenno, of Boston, a particular friend of Mrs. Wadsworth. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 65 Made acquainted with his defenseless condition by spies, General Campbell, at Bagaduce, dis patched a party of twenty-five men under Lieu tenant Stockton to take him prisoner. They left their vessel four miles off, and marched to his resi dence, arriving at about midnight, February 18, 1781. The General had plenty of fire-arms in his sleeping-room, and when his house was entered by the enemy he made a determined defense, un til he was shot in the arm, when he surrendered, and w r as hurried off to the vessel. When he be came weak from the loss of blood, he was set on a horse for the march. He suffered much from cold and pain from his wound. He was taken across the bay to Castine, and imprisoned in Fort George for two weeks. He knew nothing of the fate of the members of his family who had been exposed to the firing. At the request of General Wads- worth, General Campbell sent a lieutenant with a boat s crew to Camden across the bay, with letters to his family and to the Governor of the State, which were inspected previous to sealing. Fi nally, a letter was received from Mrs. Wadsworth, containing an assurance that they were unharmed. General Campbell treated his prisoner very po litely, inviting him to eat at his own table, under guard of an orderly sergeant, but refused him a parole or exchange. In the spring, four months 5 66 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. after his seizure, Mrs. Wadsworth and Miss Fenno, with a passport from General Campbell, arrived at Bagaduce, and were politely entertained at the fort for ten days. In the mean time orders had arrived from the commanding general at New York, in answer to a communication from Gen eral Campbell. Their purport was learned from a hint conveyed to Miss Fenno by an officer, that the General was not to be exchanged, but would be sent to some English prison. When Miss Fenno left she gave the General all the informa tion she dared to ; she said, " General Wadsworth, take care of yourself." This the General inter preted to mean that he was to be conveyed to England, and he determined to make his escape from the fortress, if possible. Soon after a vessel arrived from Boston with a flag of truce from the Governor and Council, asking for an exchange for the General and bringing a sum of money for his use ; but the request was refused. Major Burton, a resident of St. George s Kiver, who had served the previous summer under Gen eral Wadsworth, was a prisoner in the same room with him. After a long preparation, and by ob taining a gimlet from the fort barber, they made their escape on the night of the 18th of June, passing through an opening previously and labori ously made in the board ceiling with the gimlet, SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 67 the marks of which were filled with bread. They adroitly evaded the sentinels, but were separated in the darkness, both, however, getting off safely. They kept much in the shoal water of the shores, to prevent being tracked by the blood-hounds which were kept at the fort for that purpose. The two friends came accidentally together on the next day. Major Burton dropped a glove in the darkness, which pointed out to their pursuers the route they had taken on leaving the fort. They, however, found a canoe, got across the river, and pursued their course through the woods by a pocket compass to the settlements, and w r ere as sisted to Thomaston, after much suffering. On arriving at his former residence, General Wads- worth found that his family had left for Boston, whither he followed them, after a brief stop at Falmouth, where he finally fixed his residence. In 1797 President Dwight, of Yale College, who had been a chaplain in the American army, visited Portland, and was the guest of General Wadsworth, from whom he says he " received an uninterrupted succession of civilities." He also received from the General, and wrote out, a mi nute and thrilling account of his capture, impris onment, and escape, which cover twenty-five printed pages. General Wadsworth, at the time of its publication, vouched for its accuracy. 68 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. The record of the births of his eleven children shows the places where the General lived at the time. The oldest was born at Kingston, Mass., in 1774, and died the next year at Dorchester. Charles Lee was born at Plymouth, January, 1776, and died at Hiram, September 29, 1848. Zilpah was born at Duxbury, January 6, 1778, died in Portland, March 12, 1851. Elizabeth, born in Boston, September 21, 1779, died in Portland, August 1, 1802. John, born at Plymouth, Sep tember 1, 1781, graduated at Harvard College in 1800, died at Hiram, January 22, 1860. Lucia, born at Plymouth, June 12, 1783, died in Port land, October 17, 1864. Henry, born at Fal- mouth, Me., June 21, 1785, died at Tripoli, September 4, 1804. George, born in Portland, January 6, 1788, died in Philadelphia, April 8, 1816. Alexander Scammell, born in Portland, May 7, 1790, died at Washington, April 5, 1851. Samuel Bartlett, born in Portland, September 1, 1791, died at Eastport, October 2, 1874. Peleg, born in Portland, October 10, 1793, died at Hiram, January 17, 1875. The following letter, with a copy of the State deed of the tract of land in Hiram, was received at the last moment previous to the meeting, too late to correct dates or facts : SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 69 [Copy of a letter written by General Peleg Wadswortk to Alden Bradford, Esq.] HIRAM, 17th July, 1827. DEAR SIR: Observing your advertisement in the Columbian Sentinel of the llth inst, requesting surviv ing officers of the Revolutionary Army of the State of Mass, and of Me. to forward to you their rank in 1780, &c, in compliance, I have sketched the following though I do not know whether I come within your request, as I was not of the line of the Continental Army after the first two years of the War. I was a Captain in Cotton s and Bailey s Regiments, the two first years, and was Aid De Camp to Gen l Ward as long as he continued in the service, which I believe was till the year 1777, with the rank of major. Afterwards, I was in the Continental service (as it was called) under the appointment of the Legislature of Mass. was second in command with Gen. Lovell on the in-glorious Penobscot Expedition in 1778, with the rank of Brigadier Gen l ; the next year, viz., 1779, had the command of the whole coast of the District of Maine, by the same authority, at the close of which, or rather the beginning of 1780, 1 was taken prisoner (as you may see by looking at 210th page of Rev. Charles A. Good- rich s History of United States). After that I was not in the military service. I was 82 years old when ap pointed a Brigadier Gen l (by the Gov. and Council) and lived in Boston at that time, moved to Portland in 1784, and to Hiram in 1810, where I now reside, and am in my 80th year. I know of no widows of the description you mention, 70 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. nor do I know for what purpose you have requested the above, but as the motive is, no doubt, benevolent, I cheerfully subscribe myself your friend and serv t, PELEG WADSWORTH. ALDEN BRADFORD, ESQ. The birth of a son there in September, 1781, shows that General Wadsworth took his family to Plymouth on leaving his command in Maine. A daughter was also born there, in 1783. It is known that he came to Falmouth in 1784. In December of that year he purchased of John Ingersoll, of Boston, shipwright, for 100 pounds lawful money, the lot of land in Falmouth on which he erected his buildings for a home. In the deed he is named of that town. The purchase is described as " lying northeast of a lot now pos sessed by Captain Arthur McLellan, being four rods in front and running towards Back Cove and containing one and one half acres. Being part of three acres originally granted to Daniel Ingersoll as appears on the records of the town of Falmouth, Book No. 1, page 46." This is the Congress Street lot on which he erected his house and store. Dr. Deane, in his diary, says his store and barn were built in 1784. While he was building his house, he, with his family, lived in a building at the south corner of Franklin and Congress streets, belonging to Captain Jonathan Paine. It was built SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 71 for a barn, but probably had been occupied before as a dwelling, as it escaped Mowatt s burning, ten years before, which compelled well-to-do people to occupy very humble quarters. This building was long afterwards finished for a dwelling-house by Elijah Adams, and burned in 1866. In the spring of 1785 General Wadsworth made preparation to erect his house. There had then been no attempt in the town to construct all the walls of a building of brick ; indeed, there had been no suitable brick for walls made here. At that time brick buildings were expected to have a projecting base of several courses, the top one to be of brick fashioned for the purpose, the outer end of which formed a regular moulding when laid on edge and endwise, and the walls receded several inches to the per pendicular face. Several houses besides General "Wadsworth s were commenced in this way. In the spring of 1785 the General obtained brick for his house in Philadelphia, including those for the base and a belt above the first story. John Nich ols was the master mason. Although the house was to be only two stories, the walls were built sixteen inches thick, strong enough for a church tower. This swallowed up the bricks more rapidly than had been expected. At the close of the season they were all laid, and the walls were not completed. There was no 72 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. alternative but to secure the masonry from the weather, and wait for another spring. When that came more bricks were imported, and " the house that Jack [Nichols] built" was finished. It is yet standing, and shows good work in the artistic win dow-caps of brick. There was no other brick house built in town until three years after. The Wadsworth House, when originally finished, had a high pitched roof of two equal sides, and four chimneys. The store adjoined the house at the southeast, with an entrance door from the house, and was of two stories. Here the General sold all kinds of goods needed in the town and country trade. His name appears in the records with some forty others as licensed " retailers " of the town in 1785. What time he gave up the store is uncertain. The late Edward Howe, who occu pied it in 1805, described it to me. General Wadsworth was elected to the Massachu setts Senate in 1792, and the same year he was elected Representative to Congress, being the first from the Cumberland district, and was continuously elected to that office until 1806, when he declined a reelection. In 1798 the citizens of Portland gave him a public dinner in approbation of his official conduct. Captain William Merrill related to me the circumstance that when the seat of govern ment was removed from Philadelphia to Washing- SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 73 ton, in 1801, General Wadsworth took passage in his vessel for Baltimore, that being the most speedy and comfortable way to reach Washington. In 1790 General Wadsworth purchased from the State of Massachusetts 7,500 acres of wild land, in the township which is now Hiram, on the Saco Eiver. The price paid was twelve and a half cents per acre. He immediately commenced to clear a farm on a large scale, as is shown by a paragraph in the "Eastern Herald" of September 10, 1792, published in Portland. It says, " General Wads- worth thinks he has raised more than 1,000 bushels of corn this season on burnt land, that is now out of danger of the frost, at a place called Great Ossi- pee, about thirty-six miles from this town. This is but the third year of his improvements." In 1790 the township contained a population of 186. In 1795 General Wadsworth settled his son Charles Lee on his tract, and in 1800 he began to prepare to remove his own family there. In that year he commenced to build on his land- purchase a large house, which is yet standing, one mile from Hiram village. The clay for the bricks of the chimneys was brought down Saco River three miles in a boat. This house was of two stories, with a railed outlook on the ridge between the two chimneys. There was a very large one- story kitchen adjoining, with an immense chimney and fire-place. Years after its building, the Gen- 74 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. eral s youngest son, Peleg, said that at the time of the erection of the house he was seven years old, and was left by his father to watch the fires in the eleven fire-places, which were kindled to dry the new masonry, while he rode to the post road for his mail, and that he had not felt such a weight of responsibility since. The General took his family and household goods to his new home in the first of the winter, and commenced housekeeping in the new house January 1, 1807. He, with his son Charles Lee, engaged in lumbering and farming. General Wadsworth was a skillful land surveyor and draughtsman, and was much employed in the new township. He was chosen selectman in 1812, and reflected annually until 1818, and was twelve years town treasurer. He was a magistrate, and was looked upon as the patriarch of the town. He was a patron of education, and his home was the central point of the region for hospitality and culture. He was long a communicant of the Con gregational church, and so continued until his death in 1829, at the age of eighty-one. Mrs. Wadsworth died in 1825. Their graves are in a private inclosure on the home farm. The original modest head-stones have give place to a more con spicuous monument of marble. The son Peleg, who was thirteen years old when the family moved to Hiram, spent the remainder of his life in that SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 75 town, and died in 1875, at the age of eighty-one. It is a remarkable fact that General Wadsworth and his sons Charles Lee and Peleg, who lived and died at Hiram, each reared eleven children. For the facts relating to General Wadsworth s life at Hiram I am indebted to his great-grandson, L. W. Wadsworth, who has in preparation a history of that town. In writing to her daughter, Mrs. Longfellow described the appearance of her father, General Wadsworth, in the following postscript : Perhaps you would like to see my father s picture as it was when we came to this town after the war of the Revolution, in 1784. Imagine to yourself a man of mid dle size, well proportioned, with a military air, arid who carried himself so truly that many thought him tall. His dress, a bright scarlet coat, buff small clothes and vest, full ruffled bosom, ruffles over the hands, white stockings, shoes with silver buckles, white cravat bow in front ; hair well powdered and tied behind in a club, so called. . . . Of his character others may speak, but I cannot forbear to claim for him an uncommon share of benevolence and kind feeling. Z. W. L. January, 1848. Two of the sons of General Wadsworth were officers in the United States navy. Henry became a lieutenant at the age of nineteen, and was at tached to the schooner Scourge in Commodore Treble s squadron, before Tripoli, in 1804. The last entry in his journal before the attack in which 76 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. he lost his life was this : " We are in daily ex pectation of the Commodore s arrival from Syra cuse with the gun-boats and bomb vessels, and then, Tripoli, be on thy guard." The story of his sad death is told in the inscription on a marble cenotaph, erected by his father to his memory, in the eastern cemetery in Portland, near the graves of the captains of the Enterprise and Boxer : IS. E.face. ] Determined at once they prefer death and the destruc tion of the Enemy to captivity and torturing Slavery. Com. treble s letter. [& W.face.-] In memory of HENRY WADSWORTH, son of PELEG WADSWORTH, Lieut. U. S. Navy, who fell Before the walls of Tripoli on the eve of 4th Sept., 1804, in the 20th year of his age, by the explosion of a fire ship, which he with others gallantly conducted against the Enemy. [N. E. face. ] My country calls, This world adieu ; I have one life, That life I give for you. Capt. Richard Somers. Lieut. Henry Wadsworth. [N. W.face. ] " An honor to his Country and an example to all excellent youth." Resolve of Congress. Lieut. Joseph Israel. and 10 brave seamen volunteers were the devoted band. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 77 It is from this gallant officer, his uncle, that the poet Longfellow received his name. The General s ninth child was Alexander Scam- mell Wads worth, born in Portland in 1790. When the Constitution frigate fought her memorable battle, in August, 1812, in which she captured the British frigate Guerriere after her three masts had been shot away by the Americans, Alexander Wadsworth was second lieutenant of the victorious ship. The first lieutenant, Morris, was severely wounded early in the action, when Lieutenant Wadsworth of course took his place, then only twenty -four. So well did he acquit himself that his fellow townsmen of Portland presented him with a sword for his gallantry. Lieutenant Wads- worth was an officer on board the ship which con veyed our minister, Joel Barlow, to France in 1811, and was presented with a sword by that gentleman. The lieutenant rose to the rank of commodore, and died in Washington in 1851, aged sixty-one. Another of the children of General Wadsworth, Zilpah, performed her part in life as bravely, and died as much beloved and honored, as did her gal lant brothers of the navy. She was born at Dux- bury, January 6, 1778, while her father was in the army. When the family first occupied the brick house in Portland she was eight years old, 78 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. and recollected the inconveniences and discomforts of the unfinished quarters in which they lived while the house was building. In 1799, June 25, Zilpah Wads worth, in behalf of the ladies of Portland, presented a military standard to a volunteer company called the Fed eral Volunteers. It was the first uniformed com pany in Maine. Joseph C. Boyd was captain, and the ensign, who received the standard and replied to the presentation address, was named Wiggin. In after years, Mrs. Longfellow described to her daughters the rehearsal of her speech and the waving of the banner on the back steps of her father s house to her sister, who personated En sign Wiggin. The presentation was from the front portico of that historic mansion. The street has been filled up since then, hiding the stone steps. The motto on the flag was " Defend the laws." On one side was painted the arms of the United States, and on the other the same, united with the arms of Massachusetts. In 1804 Zilpah Wadsworth became the wife of Stephen Longfellow, and first kept house in a two- story wooden building yet standing on the south corner of Congress and Temple streets. When her father s family left the brick house for a new home in the country in 1807, she, with a family of a husband and two sons, took the old homestead. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 79 Mr. Longfellow moved the store, and in its place built the brick vestibule at the east corner, over which he placed a modest sign, which was there within my recollection ; it read " Stephen Long fellow, Counsellor at Law." He occupied the east ern front room for his law office, opening from the brick entry. In this office several young students, who became prominent lawyers of Cumberland County, read " Coke and Blackstone." One day in 1814 or 1815, while Mrs. Longfellow was indisposed and the family physician was in attendance, the servant overheated the kitchen flue, which took fire and communicated the flames to the attic. The family knew nothing of the fire until it broke out through the roof. Mr. Longfel low was the chief fire-ward of the department, but his first thought was of his sick wife, whom he hastily inquired for of Dr. Weed. He told Mr. Longfellow to look to the fire, and he would take care of his wife. When it became evident that the house must be flooded, the doctor, who was a tall, muscular man, wrapped Mrs. Longfellow in a blanket, and carried her in his arms into Madam Treble s, the next door, now the hotel. A lady of the family, who was then a child, described the scene to me. Her first realization of the danger was from seeing her father standing on a post of the front fence, with a brass trumpet to his mouth, 80 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. giving loud orders to the gathering firemen, and gesticulating violently. After it had nearly de stroyed the roof, the fire was extinguished. To increase the accommodations for his large family, Mr. Longfellow added to the house a third story, and a low four-sided or " hipped " roof took the place of the high two-sided one, with the chimneys the same. And thus repaired, the ven erable structure, around which so much of histor ical interest clusters, has remained to the present time. Although overshadowed and crowded upon by its more pretentious neighbors, it is more in quired for now by strangers than any other house in the city. May the polite and refined descend ant of its builder, who is now its mistress, long con tinue to preside there and dispense its traditional hospitalities. ,- THE PORTLAND OP LONGFELLOW S YOUTH. BY EDWARD H. ELWELL, PORTLAND. THE year 1807, made illustrious in the history of Portland by the birth of Henry W. Longfellow, was also, in other respects, a year of marked events. It witnessed the beginnings of many things whose influence still remains with us. In 1807 another poet, who became distinguished for his sprightly and graceful style, the late Nathaniel P. Willis, was born in Portland. In 1807 the Kev. Edward Payson began here, as the colleague of Eev. Elijah Kellogg, his wonderful pastorate of twenty years. In 1807 the third parish meeting house, in which the late Eev. Dr. Dwight so long officiated, was built. In 1807 the increasing de mands of commerce caused the erection of the Observatory on Munjoy s Hill. In 1807 the com merce of this port, which had gone on increasing with giant strides for a period of more than ten years, had reached a high state of prosperity ; and in 1807 the embargo fell upon and crushed it with one fell stroke, spreading ruin and disaster throuo-h- 82 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. out the community. It was the culmination of a period of great prosperity, and the beginning of a season of adversity ending in the calamities of war. The little fishing village on the Neck, ravaged by the Indians in 1676, destroyed by the French and Indians in 1690, bombarded and burned by the British in 1775, after the close of the Revolu tion again sprang into existence, and, profiting by the Napoleonic wars in Europe, in common with the whole country, entered upon a career of un exampled commercial prosperity. American bot toms, as being declared neutrals, were the only safe carriers, and largely monopolized the com merce of the world. Our merchants, no longer content with a coasting trade, engaged in foreign commerce, and did a large importing business. The tonnage of the port largely increased. Wealth flowed in, and with it came greater refinement and a more lavish style of living. The humble habita tions of the earlier period, which in 1799 the Duke de la Rochefoucauld had described as " a parcel of mean houses," began to give place to large and elegant mansions, some of which still remain to testify to the architectural taste as well as the prosperity of the period. The first brick store, built in 1792, was followed in 1799 by the erec tion of Mussey s Row, on Middle Street, and in 1801 by Jones Row, on Exchange Street, built SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 83 by the Rev. Elijah Kellogg ; for the commercial spirit of the time had seized upon the ministers of the gospel. The town was full of enterprise. New wharves were thrown out into the harbor, banks were established, and a desirable class of residents came in, bringing capital with them. The little village, which for ten years after its destruc tion by Mowatt had lain desolate, now began to take on a solid and substantial air. In 1798 the Duke de la Rochefoucauld wrote of Portland as " so remote and so rarely visited by travelers," but in 1807 Dr. D wight, traveling hither, could write : " No place in our route, hitherto, could for its improvement be compared with Portland. We found the buildings extended quite to the Cove, doubled in their number, and still more increased in their appearance. Few towns in New England are equally beautiful and brilliant. Its wealth and business are probably quadrupled." All this prosperity was suddenly checked by the non-intercourse policy of 1806, and the embargo which followed in 1807. Commerce was at once suspended, and the almost total destruction of our shipping followed. Navigation fell off nine thou sand tons in two years ; all the various classes to whom it gave support were thrown out of employ ment ; eleven commercial houses stopped payment in the latter part of 1807, and many others the 84 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. following year. Great distress fell upon the peo ple, a reverse made more gloomy by contrast with the preceding prosperity. Then came the war of 1812, bringing some activity in the way of privateering, and the movement of troops for the defense of the town. Fortifications were thrown up on Munjoy, and garrisons were established in them. Here begin the recollections of our poet, then a boy of six or seven years, as recorded in his poem of " My Lost Youth." " I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill ; The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o er and o er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still : A boy s will is the wind s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. " On the 4th of September, 1813, the British brig- of-war Boxer, Captain S. Blyth, was captured in a hard-fought action off our coast by the United States brig Enterprise, Lieutenant W. Burrows, and was brought into this port on the morning of the 7th ; and the next day the remains of both commanders, who were killed in the action, were buried in the cemetery at the foot of Munjoy s Hill. This was an event well calculated to im- SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 85 press itself upon the memory of a boy, and our poet again sings, " I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o er the tide ! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o erlooking the tranquil bay, Where they in battle died." The town did not wholly recover from the severe blow of the embargo until after the peace of 1815. Then began a period of slow recupera tion, during which its population made little in crease. In 1800 the number of inhabitants was 3,704 ; by 1810 they had increased to 7,169, but at the close of the next decade, in 1820, they were but 8,581. It is this little town of seven or eight thousand inhabitants that we have now to picture to ourselves as the scene of Longfellow s boy hood : " The beautiful town That is seated by the sea." It lay on the narrow peninsula, or "Neck," in the depression between the two hills which mark its extremities,Munjoy and Bramhall. It had been first settled nearly two centuries before, on the sea-shore at its eastern end, and in all this long period of time it had advanced scarcely half-way towards the western end. The early settlers clus tered around the fort, which stood at the foot of 86 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. what is now India Street, and the shore road ex tending eastward from India Street, forming now the easternmost part of Fore Street, was long the court end of the town. Here Major Samuel Moody, coming hither in 1716, built his house, and here in process of time sprang up a number of large square mansions, some with gambrel roofs, several of which yet remain. In one of these, standing, on the one hand, within a stone s- throw of the spot where the first settler landed and built his cabin, in 1632, and on the other not much farther from the site of old Fort Loyal, our poet was born seventy-five years ago to-day. He was thus cradled on historic ground, and sprang from amidst the earliest scenes of civilization on this peninsula. It was a pleasant site ; not then, as now, hemmed in by new-made land encroaching on the sea. It looked out on the waters of oar beautiful bay, commanding a view of those " Islands that were the Hesperides Of all ray boyish dreams." Immediately opposite, skirting the road on the seaward side, lay the beach, the scene of many a baptism on a Sabbath day. It was not here, how ever, that our poet spent his boyhood. His par ents moved on with the progress of the town, and we shall find him at a later period established in what is at present the heart of the city. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 87 Let us now take a comprehensive view of the town as it existed in the decade between 1810 and 1820. As w r e have said, it nestled in the hollow between the two hills. On the south lay the har bor, with its wharves and its shipping ; on the north the quiet waters of Back Cove, its shores nearly vacant, and its waters as yet undisturbed by commerce. On Munjoy s Hill there were but three houses, save those in old Fort Surnner. It was a pasture ground for cows in part, and in part was given up to a dense growth of alder bushes. On Indian Point, where the Grand Trunk bridge leaves the hill, stood seven or eight lofty ancient pine- trees, and in the high branches the fish hawks were w r ont to build their nests. The boys went a-gunning " back of the Neck," and shot plovers and curlews and sand-birds, which visited the shore in great numbers. At Fish Point, on the harbor side of the hill, the ledgy cliff, now blasted away to make room for the track of the Grand Trunk Railway, was cut deep with the names of boys who spent many a long summer afternoon in wandering around the solitary shore. The cliff terminated in a cove called " Abigail s Hole," after an aged Indian squaw who resided there, the last of the race that lived and died in Port land. 88 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. On the slope of the hill towards the town stood a tall signal spar, with a tar-barrel suspended from its summit, which was to be set on fire should the enemy approach the town, or assistance be needed from the country. Washington Street, overlook ing the Cove, commanding a view of the fine scenery beyond, and with its long alternating lines of Lombardy poplars and balm of gileads, was thought to be the prettiest street in town. Stand ing on the western slope of the hill, one com manded the town below at a single glance. All north of Cumberland Street was vacant land, known as the " Back Fields." Nearly all west of High Street was sunburnt pasture, where swamp alternated with huckleberry bushes. State Street had been laid out through the waste, and here and there along its line a stately mansion rose, with the huckleberry and bayberry bushes growing close up to its fences. Bramhall s Hill was a far away wilderness. At the quiet hour of sunset one standing where the jail now stands, below Munjoy, could hear the sound of Caleb Young s fife on Bramhall s Hill, two miles away, no building to obstruct sight or sound intervening. With the revival of commerce, after the war, trade with the West India islands sprang up, and low-decked brigs carried out cargoes of lumber and dried fish, bringing back sugar, rum, and mo- SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 89 lasses. This trade made lively scenes on Long Wharf and Portland Pier. From lack of sys tem and the appliances of steam, everything was then done with great noise and bustle and by main strength. The discharging of a cargo of molasses set the town in an uproar. The wharves resounded with the songs of the negro stevedores, hoisting the hogsheads from the hold without the aid of a winch the long trucks, with heavy loads, were tugged by straining horses, under the whips and loud cries of the truckmen. Liquor was lav ishly supplied to laboring men, and it made them turbulent and uproarious. Adding to the busy tumult were the teams coming into town by the two principal avenues, over Deering s bridge and up Green Street, or over Bramhall s Hill by way of Horse Tavern, bringing charcoal from Water- borough, shocks from Fryeburg, Hiram, and Bald win, hoop-poles, heading, cord-wood, and screwed hay ; and the Yermonters, in their blue woolen frocks, bringing in their red pungs round hogs, butter, and cheese. Rev. Elijah Kellogg, Jr., gives a lively picture of Portland at this time, on a winter morning, " Then you might have seen lively times : a string of board teams from George Libby s to Portland Pier; sleds growling ; surveyors running about like madmen, a shino-le in one hand and a rule-staff in the other; cattle 90 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. white with frost and their nostrils hung with icicles ; teamsters screaming and hallooing ; Herrick s Tavern and all the shops in Huckler s Row, lighted up, and the loggerheads hot to give customers their morning dram." It is with such scenes as these rising in his memory that Longfellow sings, " I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free ; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea." Portland was a lumber port, driving a brisk little trade with more tumult and hurrah than now accompanies the transaction of ten times the amount of business then done. In addition to its lumber trade, it had its distilleries, its tanneries, its rope-walks, and its pottery, the latter two of which so impressed themselves upon the memory of the boy Longfellow that in after years they suggested his poems " The Ropewalk " and " Keramos," the song of the potter. Men now living, going back in memory to those bustling days, w T ill tell you those were the times when trade was lively, and think it but a dull town now, though with five times the population and many times the amount of business. But let us push on into the heart of the " dear old town." Passing up Middle Street, where SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 91 blocks of brick stores have already begun to take the place of dwelling-houses which once lined it, we enter Market Square. It wears an aspect quite different from that which it now presents. It is surrounded by small wooden shops, for the most part of one story. On the left, as we enter, stands the two story wooden house known as Marston s Tavern, to which Mowatt was taken as a prisoner by Colonel Thompson and his men, in June, 1775. Mowatt did not succeed in burning it when, a few months later, he bombarded the town in revenge for this act of Thompson s, but when it was removed in 1833 one of his shot was found imbedded in the chimney. In the centre of the square, near where now is the eastern end of old City Hall, stands the hay scales, and next to that the market house, a wooden building ; and be yond these a row of small wooden shops, termi nating in a " heater," nearly opposite the head of Preble Street. In one of these shops we shall find Nathaniel Shaw, the saddler, accumulating about his door that stratum of leather scraps which, when an excavation is made there many years after, is viewed with wonder as an antediluvian relic. In the " heater " is the shop of " I. Gray," the barber, and around the square may be seen the familiar names of David Trull, William Rad- ford, the cabinet-maker, and E. Horton, the gin- 92 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. gerbread man, who dispensed his commodity from a wheelbarrow. At the corner of Preble Street, with its garden stretching far down that street, stands the brick mansion occupied by the widow of Commodore Edward Preble, the hero of Tripoli, dead since 1807. Next to this, " somewhat back from the village street," is the brick residence built by the poet s maternal grandfather, General Peleg Wads- worth, and occupied by his father, Stephen Long fellow, Esq. This is the home of the poet s boyhood, and in fancy we may see him playing beneath its ancient portal, which still remains un altered. Beyond the Longfellow residence, with its garden on either side, extending on the west to the corner of Brown Street, is the two-story wooden residence of Reuben Morton, on the site now occupied by Morton Block. This house, raised to three stories, now stands on Brown Street. All the old family mansions here have been made to give way to the demands of trade, save the Longfellow residence, which still sturdily maintains its position, while its ancient neighbors have given place to lofty structures, which now look down upon but cannot humble it. In front of these mansions, extending from Preble to Brown Street, is the wood market, where the teams, loaded with cord-wood brought SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 93 in from the country, stand beneath the shade of a row of trees, with a railing between them and the sidewalk. The patient oxen feed upon the hay thrown upon the ground, while the wood surveyor measures the loads, and the teamsters bargain with the townsmen. It is a rural scene in the heart of the town. Passing a few small shops be yond Brown Street, we come to " The Freema son s Arms," the tavern built by Thomas Motley, grandfather of John Lothrop Motley, the histo rian. Motley is dead since 1808, and his tav ern, which gives accommodation to the board teams which come growling and creaking down Main (now Congress) Street of a winter morning, is now kept by Sukey Barker. The Motley Block, in our day, perpetuates the memory of its builder. Oak Street, which enters Main Street a short distance above Motley s, boasts a grove of red oaks, and Green Street, next beyond, leads down to Deering s Woods, where for generations the boys of Portland have gathered acorns, and of which our poet sings, " And Deering s Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again." What was the intellectual life of the old town ? 94 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Up to the time of the Kevolution it had imported its literature as well as the necessaries of life. Parson Smith was jotting down in his journal those quaint observations on the events of daily life which were to interest the coming genera tions. His colleague, the Eev. Dr. Deane, in 1790, published his " Georgical Dictionary," long a standard work on agriculture. He was a poet, too, and sang the praises of " Pitchwood Hill." In 1816, when Longfellow was a boy of nine years, an event of marked literary importance oc curred, the publication in Portland of Enoch Lin coln s poem of "The Village," a poem of more than two thousand lines, remarkable for its ad vanced moral sentiment, anticipating many of the reforms of our day, as well as for its erudition and its evenly sustained poetical merit. But at this time the activity and energy of the people were employed in procuring means of support, and in the accumulation of wealth, rather than in culti vating the sources of intellectual improvement. Education was advancing, however, and a number of young men were coming upon the stage of action who were to shed the lustre of letters upon the town. These were Nathaniel Deering, born here in 1791; John Neal, also t a native, born in 1794 ; and Grenville Mellen, coming here from Biddeford, where he was born in 1799. Among SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDA Y. 95 these seniors walked the boy Longfellow, who was to outstrip them all. In the ranks of the professions here there were many able. men. The Rev. Dr. Deane, dying in 1S14, has left as his successor in the First Parish that scholarly divine, the Rev. Ichabod Nichols. The Rev. Dr. Payson, at the Second Parish, is preaching those powerful sermons which are to make his name famous. The Rev. Thomas B. Ripley has begun his popular pastorate over the First Baptist church. The Rev. Petrus S. Ten- broeck is rector at St. Paul s. Elder Samuel Rand is preaching to the Free- Will Baptists, and the Rev. Russell Streeter is fighting the battle of the Universalists in the newly-built church at the corner of Congress and Pearl streets. In the law there are eminent counselors, some of whom are rising to distinction. Prentiss Mel- len, Ezekiel Whitman, James D. Hopkins, Simon Greenleaf, and the poet s father, Stephen Long fellow, are names which have conferred honor on the Cumberland bar. Among physicians, Dr. Na thaniel Coffin, Jr., stands at the head of his pro fession. There are Dr. Shirley Erving, too, and Dr. Samuel Weed, and Dr. Stephen Cummings, and Dr. Aaron Porter, in his knee-breeches and green silk stockings, which, it is said, the cows mistook for cornstalks. 96 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. There are eminent merchants in the town, of whom it is sufficient to mention the familiar names of Matthew Cobb, Asa Clapp, William Chadwick, Arthur McLellan, James Deering, and Albert Newhall. These are gentlemen of the old school, sustaining the shock of commercial disaster, and extending the commerce of the town. In social life the marked distinctions of the ante- Revolutionary period are giving way under the influence of our democratic institutions. Cocked hats, bush wigs, and knee-breeches are passing out, and pantaloons have come in. Old men still wear queues and spencers, and disport their shrunken shanks in silk stockings. A homely style of speech prevails among the common peo ple. Old men are " Daddies," old ladies are "Marms," shipmasters are " Skippers," and school teachers are " Masters." There are no stoves, and open fires and brick ovens are in universal use. The fire is raked up at night, and rekindled in the morning by the use of flint, steel, and tin der-boxes. Nearly every house has its barn, in which is kept the cow, pastured during the day on Munjoy or in Eoss s pasture. The boys go after the cows at night-fall, driving them home through the streets. There are few private car riages kept in town, and fewer public vehicles. When, in 1825, General Lafayette visits the town, SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 97 and Governor Parris gives a ball in his honor, at his residence on Bridge (now Danforth) Street, the site of which is now covered by the beautiful lawn attached to the residence of H. P. Storer, Esq., a storm coming up prevents the attendance of a great part of the company invited, because of the distance out of town and the scarcity of car riages. The coin in circulation is chiefly Spanish dollars, halves, quarters, pistareens, eighths, and sixteenths, the latter two of which are known as ninepences and fourpence alfpennies. Federal money is so little recognized that prices are still reckoned in shillings and pence two-and-six, three-and-ninepence, seven-and-sixpence. It is a journey of two days, by the accommodation stage, to Boston, costing eight to ten dollars. If you go by the mail stage you may be bounced through, with aching bones, in the hours between two o clock in the morning and ten at night. Or you may take a coaster, and perhaps be a week on the passage. The old " Portland Gazette " and the " Eastern Argus " came out once a week, and the town-crier supplies the place of the daily news paper. There are few amusements. Theatri cal performances have been voted down ,in town meeting, and prohibited under heavy penalties ; but by 1820 the poor players venture to make an occasional appearance, and set up their scenery in 7 98 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Union Hall. It is not until 1830 that a theatre is built, and it is soon converted into a church. In the summer there are excursions by sailing boats to the islands, with an occasional capsize and loss of life. In the winter merry sleighing parties drive out to " Broad s " for a dance and a supper. These are merry times, especially if the party is snowed up, and compelled to remain over night. Flip and punch flow freely, and sobriety is the exception rather than the rule. Such is " the beautiful town, that is seated by the sea." Such are the scenes to which the thoughts of the poet go back, in after years, with a man s love for the haunts of his childhood. Here he recalls the sports of boyhood, and finds his " lost youth " again. The old town has not forgotten him. The city into which it has grown delights to honor him. It cherishes the memory of the days that were, and would fain recall him to their familiar scenes. May he live long to re visit the home of his boyhood, and to enjoy the immortal youth which he has made his own. LONGFELLOW AS A STUDENT AND PRO FESSOR AT BOWDOIN COLLEGE. BY A. S. PACKARD, D. D., BOWDOIN COLLEGE. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was fortunate in the inheritance of names honorable in the his tory of the State, and of high repute for talents, virtues, and all that constitutes true nobility. A school-mate informs us that when he was entering his fourteenth year he gave decided indications of poetic taste and genius, anonymous pieces from his pen, in the " Poet s Corner " of a newspaper of this town, having attracted attention. I think he and his brother Stephen must have been pupils under Mr. Nehemiah Cleaveland, who had grad uated from our college in 1813, and kept a private school for boys in Portland in 1816 and 1817, and then left the school for a tutorship in the college. They were fitted for college, I have no doubt, by Master Bezaleel Cushman, preceptor of Portland Academy, whose name is honored among teachers of that generation. I remember Mr. Cushman well, and especially the pleasure of dining with him at Hon. Stephen Longfellow s table, with 100 HENRY WADSWORTII LONGFELLOW. him, the preceptor of the academy, myself, the young assistant of Mr. Nason, principal of Gorham Academy, of which Mr. Longfellow was a trustee. It was one of the numerous proofs of the court eous and friendly interest that excellent and ad mirable gentleman manifested in young men. In September, 1821, Stephen and Henry Wads- worth became Freshmen in Bowdoin College ; Henry just entering the last half of his fifteenth year, an attractive youth, with auburn locks, clear, fresh, blooming complexion, and, as might be pre sumed, of well-bred manners and bearing. When we think of the distinction that has crowned the class of 1825, a teacher may be charged with singular lack of discrimination and interest in his pupils who is compelled to confess how scanty are his particular reminiscences of its members; and this for the plain reason that no one knew, or even dreamed, it may be, how famous some of them were to become. I think it is a tradition that Luther if not he, some renowned German teacher used to doff his hat reverently when he entered his school-room. On being asked why he did so, " Because," said he, " I see in my pupils future burgomasters and syndics of the city." Now and then a very trivial circumstance im prints the person of the pupil on the memory, the eye, or some other feature, voice, gait, or SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 101 some incident of college life. The entrance ex amination of Sergeant Smith Prentiss, of the class of 1826, I recall with entire distinctness. He came from Gorham, and I had been an assistant there and when the lad, for he was scarcely more than that, very lame, supporting his steps with a staff, of a fresh, healthful, spirited coun tenance, and offering himself for Junior standing, a heavy trial, we thought, took his seat, my sym pathy was awakened at once. I see him with perfect distinctness as he sat at the long table in a back room of the old chemical laboratory, the receptacle of chemicals and minerals for ex amination and analysis, a droll omnium gath erum it must have seemed to the young candi date; and my feelings led me to open my part of the pressure he was to undergo in the Greek of two years very gently. I soon found he needed no such favor, but that, entirely self-possessed and at his ease, he was ready at every point. No stretch of fancy would be likely to anticipate that the lad before me was to become one of the most prominent men of the South at the bar, yet more in legislative halls and on the political plat form. Were we blind and dull of appreciation that we did not forecast, during those four years, two lives, one in the front seat of the class-room, and 102 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. one in the third seat back, which were to leave names in the prose and poetry of the age, lasting as the language in which their genius found ex pression ? I recall the appearance of a few of that class of 182 5, as they sat in the old class-room of Maine Hall, Bradbury, Josiah Stover Little, Hawthorne, the Longfellows, Shepley, and others. Why ? I cannot say why. It so happened. I cannot testify concerning him whose name we, and I may add the civilized world, fondly cherish, any more than a general statement of his unblemished character as a pupil and a true gentleman in all his relations to the college and its teachers. It is a college tradition that in his Sophomore year, at the annual examination of his class, his version of an ode of Horace, which fell to him to render, so impressed Hon. Benjamin Orr, of the committee of examina tion, that when the new professorship of modern languages was established his recollection of that specimen of the young Sophomore s taste and scholarship led him to propose him for the posi tion. Of young Longfellow s standing as a scholar in college, one may judge from his assignment at Commencement of an English oration, when fewer parts of that rank were given than of late years. His was the first claim to the poem ; but as the SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 103 poem had no definite rank, it was thought due to him, since his scholarship bore a high mark, that he should receive an appointment which placed his scholarship beyond question. His English oration had for its subject " Our Native Writers." " Chatter ton and his Poems " was assigned him as a subject, and was so published in the Commence ment Order of Exercises, but was subsequently changed by a pen. The class poem was assigned to Frederic Mellen, who was in reality more than an ordinary college poet. I have just said that Longfellow had the first claim as the poet of the class. During his college life he contributed to the periodicals of the day "An April Day," "Autumn," "Hymn of the Mo ravian Nuns," " The Spirit of Poetry," " Woods in Winter," and " Sunrise on the Hills," which were received with great favor, as early blossoms of a spring of peculiar promise ; and still, I think, they retain a place in later editions of his maturer pro ductions. Some of them appeared in the " Liter ary Gazette," a Boston publication. The editor of that periodical was James G. Carter (Harvard, 1820), a gentleman of ability, whose name is honored among active promoters of popular edu cation of that time. I was spending an evening with him in Boston, when he asked me what young man in our college sent them so fine po- 104 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. etry. It was Longfellow, then a Junior, I think, in college, and I was happy to report of him as one whose scholarship and character were quite on a level with his poetry. Our two most notable literary occasions of the college year, aside from the official exhibitions and Commencement, were the fall anniversaries of the two leading societies, Athenaean and Peucin- ian, each putting forth its best. Longfellow, in November, 1824, the first term of his Senior year, pronounced the poem of the Peucinian. When Mr. Longfellow left college he began the study of law in his father s office ; but he had no heart for professional life, and in a year or two the position for which he was peculiarly fitted, and which he adorned, was opened for him. The professorship of modern language, for which Madam Bowdoin, some years before, had given a thousand dollars as a corner-stone at least for its foundation, was established, and he cheerfully accepted appointment to the professorship. He immediately took passage for Europe, where he spent nearly four years in Spain, France, Italy, and Germany, preparing himself for the inviting sphere now opening before him. In 1829 he as sumed the duties of the office, which he faithfully and successfully performed until, with the regret and disappointment of his colleagues and the SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 105 authorities of the college, he accepted a similar position at Harvard, as successor of the distin guished Professor Ticknor. And now as to the character of his work while with us, a few words will suffice. He approved himself a teacher who never wearied of his work. He won by his gentle grace, and commanded respect by his self-respect and his respect for his office, never allowing an infringement of the decorum of the recitation room. The department was a new one, and in lack of suitable text-books he prepared a transla tion of a popular French grammar, which went through several editions, an Italian grammar, Proverbes Dramatiques, Spanish Tales for the class-room, a translation of " Coplas de Jorge Manrique," with an essay on the " Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain,"- -the version highly commended by Professor Ticknor in his " History of Spanish Literature." He also contributed, while at Brunswick, arti cles to the "North American Review," which gave him reputation in literary circles. At the Commencement of 1832 he delivered the poem before the Phi Beta Kappa. I have limited myself to the special sphere of remark assigned me. Of Mr. Longfellow s social life I have said nothing. It began with us, when 106 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. he carried to Brunswick, as his bride, one of the daughters of Portland, and opened a home of taste, refinement, and graceful hospitality, which he left for another in a wider sphere, and at a centre of cherished historical associations, and which has given a welcome to his fellow country men of the world of letters. THE GENIUS OF LONGFELLOW. BY HON. GEORGE F. TALBOT, PORTLAND. EMERSON has said, " All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the prin cipal event in chronology." Of the famous bards of our time, whose songs have cheered and in spired the English-speaking race, we must assign to the illustrious poet whose birthday we com memorate the nearest place to the popular heart. It is fitting that this " Beautiful town That is seated by the sea," where he confesses, " My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again," should reciprocate by some expression of its admi ration and gratitude the affectionate sentiments he has ever cherished towards it. It is fitting that this society, whose office it is with reverent piety to study and perpetuate the memory of whatever has been worthily acted or eloquently and truth fully spoken among those whose characters or pub- 108 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. lie services have done honor to our State, should celebrate the genius of a poet whose fame has out grown the limits of the State wherein it had its birth, and the great country which it has honored. In assigning to Longfellow a popularity preemi nent among his fellows in the poetic art, I do not forget the delight with which, for a whole genera tion, the American people have read the exquisite versification and tender and lofty sentiment that especially characterize the earlier poems of Ten nyson. But while, in the growing depth of his thinking, the great English lyrist has more and more dissociated his muse from those sentiments which are the common experiences of mankind, he has at the same time, in the severer tastes of age, grown contemptuous of the ornaments of style, sobered to homely plainness of speech the inspirations that once burst forth in rhythmic mu sic, and studied only to reproduce the naked sim plicity and dramatic reality of history. Then, too, Tennyson s popularity is not a just measure of his merit, because a full consciousness of his own powers, and a sensitiveness characterizing the irritable race of poets, has hedged him about with a well-respected hauteur, that shuts out alike genial sympathy and serviceable criticism, while it preserves a seclusion as necessary to his effective work as it is grateful to his sensitive feelings. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 109 On the other hand, Longfellow has made it the inviolable maxim of his art that, as poetry is noble sentiment expressed in beautiful language, fault- lessness of expression is always a condition of high excellence. Carlyle has strenuously advised men who would instruct their age to speak out in plain prose what they have to say, or otherwise hold their peace. The capacity of language to be the vehicle of the profoundest philosophy, the noblest sentiment, the most delicate humor, Mr. Carlyle has himself successfully exemplified. But if, in spite of his invidious warning, an inspired writer chooses poetry as his medium of expression, he owes it to an art whose laws have been rigidly imposed by its great masters to conform to those laws. This requirement Mr. Longfellow has ever respected. Besides this, a thoroughly genial and friendly nature has kept him accessible to all other minds, and hospitable and courteous to all persons attracted by his genius, no matter in how homely or intrusive a form this admiration has been expressed. Thus, while in Tennyson s song we detect a tone which expresses the daintiness of his disdain for less exquisitely endowed natures, Longfellow invites the confidence of narrower and limited minds by the warmth of his human sympa thies, and by his tender appreciation of the com mon joys and sorrows of universal life. 110 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Sixty years is a long period to devote to one pursuit. Few men are so happy as Longfellow was in finding in their youth the precise work they can best accomplish, and the necessary equip ment to undertake it. In his grave and sad salu tatory, delivered at Bowdoin on the fiftieth anni versary of his graduation, he gave this counsel to the young scholars, listening spell-bound by the charm of his verse and the venerable beauty of his presence : " Study yourselves ; and most of all note well Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel." It told the story of his own splendid success. In his very boyhood, among scenes that have for us the charm of home, Nature revealed herself to his sight and soul in the beauty of sea and sky, cliff and forest, and he felt that whatever aims or ambitions were open to other men, for him there was the task to interpret those mysterious voices of the night and day dreams of a dawning fancy that had been imparted to him ; " And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, . . . Turn them to shapes, and give to airy nothing ; A local habitation and a name." He could say as Wordsworth nobly said of him self, SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. HI " On man, on nature, and on human life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of imagery before me rise Accompanied by feelings of delight, Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed." For us a new charm must come into these famil iar scenes that confront our daily sight, the graceful spires of churches, the quaint red tower of the Observatory, rising from the clustering trees that mark the sweep of the closely-built ridge of the peninsula, the great sea thrusting its shining fingers among the jutting headlands and wooded islands, the magnificent fringe of Deer- ing s Oaks, and the dusky purple of the White Mountains and the Oxford hills, when we re member that it was pictures like these that awoke in our poet s young mind the consciousness of his powers and assigned to him the work of his life. Thus he tells this early experience : " And dreams of that which cannot die, Bright visions, came to me, As lapped in thought I used to lie, And gaze into the summer sky, Where the sailing clouds went by, Like ships upon the sea ; " Dreams that the soul of youth engage Ere Fancy has been quelled ; Old legends of the monkish page, Traditions of the saint and sage, 112 HENRY WADSW011TH LONGFELLOW. Tales that have the rime of age, And chronicles of Eld. " And, loving still these quaint old themes, Even in the city s throng I feel the freshness of the streams, That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams, Water the green land of dreams, The holy land of song." It is easy to see now, and thus to account for the perfection and completeness of his work, that all his studies, all the employments and incidents of his life, more than this, the friendships and domestic joys and sorrows which have been his experience, contributed to strengthen the pow ers of his imagination, to perfect the art of his expression, and to furnish the materials for the varied music of his verse. Mr. Longfellow became a poet by the natural and delicate sensitiveness of his mind to whatever is picturesque in nature, complete in art, pathetic in incident, or romantic in history. To his rare perception * Wondrous truths, and manifest as wondrous, God hath written in those stars above ; But not less in the bright flowerets under us Stands the revelation of his love." " And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 113 Of the self-same, universal being, Which is throbbing in his brain and heart." In his youth and in the poems of that period this susceptibility to the beauty of things, and to the lessons which they teach the well-ordered and docile mind, is particularly manifest. He said then, " Oh what a glory doth this world put on For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks On duties well performed, and days well spent ! " And in another early poem this was the tonic cheerfulness he found in communion with Nature : " If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills ! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears." Emerson says, " The great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot re port the conversation they have had with Nature. There is some obstruction or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield their due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. The poet is the person in whom the powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, trav- 114 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. erses the whole scale of experience, and is repre sentative of man in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart." For us, the great majority, obstructed in faculty and feebly responsive to the impressions of nature, Longfellow has done this needed office. He sees what we dream, traverses the range of our experi ence, and by his larger power to receive and im part has become representative of all our finer sentiments. But, in saying this, we must dis criminate between greater and less. There are ranges of sublime vision from which he has sedu lously kept himself aloof, depths of philosophic speculation into which his thoroughly devout spirit has never entered, holy ground of inspira tion into which, even with unshodden feet, he has not presumed to walk. Let him ever describe his own genius, although he will do it not only tune fully, but with a too modest self-depreciation. In the " Spanish Student," a drama full of the most picturesque situations, gushing with the enthu siasm of youthful feeling and enlivened with some of the Sweetest songs in the English language, he thus depicts the poetic work he has done : " All the means of action The shapeless masses, the materials Lie everywhere about us. What we need Is the celestial fire to change the flint Into transparent crystal, bright and clear. SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 115 That fire is genius ! The rude peasant sits At evening in his smoky cot, and draws With charcoal uncouth figures on the wall. The son of genius comes, foot-sore with travel, And begs a shelter from the inclement night. He takes the charcoal from the peasant s hand, And, by the magic of his touch at once Transfigured, all its hidden virtues shine, And, in the eyes of the astonished clown, It gleams a diamond ! Even thus transformed, Rude popular traditions and old tales Shine as immortal poems, at the touch Of some poor, houseless, homeless, wandering bard, Who had but a night s lodging for his pains." It was not only a confession of his tastes, but a too modest assignment of his own rank, when, after achievements that had made him famous throughout the world, he thus sang : " Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heart-felt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. " Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. " For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life s endless toil and endeavor ; And to-night I long for rest. 116 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. " Read from some humbler poet. Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start." In a sense that is not so true of any other poet who has written in the English language, Mr. Longfellow is the poet of the people. No creative artist ever had a larger and more immediate re ward for his completed work. He sang for the men and women yes, and for the children of his country and his time ; sang with a cultivated and exquisite appreciation of their tastes, their feel ings, their ideals ; sang not of the eccentric expe riences, the insatiable ambitions, the tragic heart- breakings, of heroic souls, aloof from their kind, but of the daily cares, the simple satisfactions, and the common fates of men as men, of the hard ships of toil, of the misery of defeated endeavor, of the sombre weariness of backward-looking age, and of the pathos of death. Depicting experi ences so universal, appealing to sentiments so characteristic of humanity, the response of the people he has addressed has been immediate, uni versal, and hearty. He has not had to wait for appreciation, nor to appeal to time to bring an other age into more congenial relations with his feelings. Every chord he has struck has given quick and harmonious echoes. Now for many SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 117 years no poem of his, however brief, has been published which universal journalism did not take note of as a conspicuous event of current history. What he sends to the hands of the printer on one day on the next is a household word by a thousand firesides, and its sweet melodies are ringing among the hallowed voices of as many homes. There is a lyric sweetness, a tender, in telligible sentiment so accordant with the common experience of all lives, in all that .he has written, that no elocutionist has been required to render its simple melody, no philosophic critic to mediate between its subtle meaning and the popular intel ligence. More than any other of our poets we have waited for him to celebrate and fitly interpret the great events in our national history. Looking through the dull annals of a people in primitive combat with the hard conditions of nature, with an absorbed and patient thrift building, in the wilderness of a new world, homes into which in a later generation might come the culture and re finement which continuous prosperity brings, he has found whatever there is in their history or their legends that is heroic, or tragic, or capable of an ethical lesson, and touched it in the telling with the glory of his own genius. How noble and pathetic was the tribute he paid to his three 118 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. friends, Felton, Agassiz, and Sumner ! How sweet to a great poet s heart must be such delicate and discriminating praises as he has bestowed upon Tennyson and Whittier, the great brothers of his art ! Of the former he sings, " Not of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious dance, Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart." And the lofty piety of the latter commands this tribute : " O thou, whose daily life anticipates The life to come, and in whose thought and word The spiritual world preponderates, Hermit of Amesbury ! thou, too, hast heard Voices and melodies from beyond the gates, And speakest only when thy soul is stirred ! " The Romans had one word to signify the poet and the prophet, and all the older prophecy of the world is poetry. The converse also is true, for since poetry is the daily newspaper and court journal of the ideal world, it is the prediction of all that is yet to become fact and history. We did not heed the vaticination this prophet uttered, but uttered too late to avert the catastrophe he foreshadowed : " There is a poor, blind Samson in this land, Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel, Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, And shake the pillars of this Commonweal." SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 119 How cheering was his note in the agony of our struggle for national life ! " Ho, brave land ! with hearts like these Thy flag, that is rent in twain, Shall be one again, And without a seam ! " Emerson says, again, " The writer, like the priest, must be exempted from secular labor ; his work needs a frolic health ; he must be at the top of his condition." We have had eminent and successful poets, who have been also historians, journalists, teachers, preachers, critics, metaphy sicians, reformers, diplomats, and bankers, giving to the jealous muse a divided allegiance. It has been the good fortune of Longfellow that he has been kept, with no distracting employments, in studies that fed the fire of his poetic passion with new material, and at the top of a sound and healthy condition of productive labor. The only department of science in which he has been a successful teacher is the science of language and of the deft use of winged words, the myriad-toned instrument of poesy. Especially has his mastery of the languages, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, put within his reach those treasures of romantic story, that weird blending of history and legend in which the earlier chronicles, poems, ballads, and folk-lore of Europe abound, which 120 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. have a charm for us, thoroughly modern and secular as we are, that they have not for any other people. Mr. Longfellow has that vivid imagination which sees as realities its own illusions. He meets an other requirement of our great master of the po etic art : " He believes in his poetry. He par takes of the feast he spreads, and kindles and amuses himself with that which amuses us." Whole poems of his are devoted to the delineation of these romantic legends of our ancestors across the sea, while there is scarcely a song that is not enlivened and enriched by some legendary allu sion, some sparkling jewel picked up by him in his loving walks among the graves and monu ments of knights and saints, along the corridors of ruined abbeys, the dry moats of ivy-crowned cas tles, and the dim shadows under the arches of vast cathedrals. Indeed, it has been charged that he has so deeply imbibed the spirit of this antique and foreign romance as to be no longer either modern or national in his spirit or method. When we remember with what a pathetic tenderness he has recreated for us our own legend of the public tragedy of a pious and rural people driven into perpetual exile, a tragedy saddened by the private grief of a devoted and loving maiden enduring the exile of her race and her own deeper loss in a SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 121 hopeless search for her betrothed lover, and find ing her trysting-place only in old age, by the bed side of pestilence ; when we read the song of Hia watha, and see with what artistic faithfulness he has wrought into verse, the very wildness of which has in it a sound of the woods, those poetic ideas which have haunted the minds of all sensitive per sons in connection with the customs, costumes, character, and fortunes of the strange race of abo rigines, whom our race has supplanted on this continent, we can see that Mr. Longfellow is no less an American poet because so much of his inspiration came as a whiff of the Old World over the sea. This native material he has worked so well is only so much less abundant. Among the characteristic excellences of Mr. Longfellow as a poet, his fidelity to the estab lished canons of versification I have already spoken of. I know the liberties great masters of thought may take and have taken with expres sion. I know the modern taste that considers conformity to the regularity of measurement and the necessity of rhyme mere mechanical arts, that degrade and enslave the mind. I am aware that Emerson, himself among the order of great poets, and lacking general appreciation by his lawless ness in conforming to the established rules of ex pression, has said, "Not metres, but a metre- 122 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. making argument makes a poem, a thought so passionate and alive that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of: its own, and adorns Nature with a new thing." I know the aesthetic craze that has ennobled the howling dervishes of song. I know the fashion that insists that the metreless epigrams of Walt Whitman are noblest poetry, epigrams wherein the terse sententiousness of the proverb gives place to a stately grandiloquence, which the moment the music of the verse ceases becomes ridiculous. When on the stage the manager wishes to insure that a tender and pathetic passage of the play shall not be laughed at, he introduces an accom paniment of solemn music to lift his auditors into the required mood. It is an effect the poet can not quite disdain. But, notwithstanding these eccentricities of taste, Emerson himself confessed that he " recalled every good poem by its rhythm, and detected an unskill ful writer by the poverty of his chimes." That art cannot be a mere conventional or childish one which in all languages has charmed the human ear and stirred in the human soul the noblest en thusiasms and the most heroic actions; nor can that be a tawdry rhetorical trick, unfit to hamper the wings of genius, which Homer and Dante, Milton and Goethe, found to be such furtherance SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 123 to the effectiveness and impressiveness of their grand speech. Not a little of his fame Mr. Longfellow owes to the fact that he is a great artist in the construc tion of rhythm and rhyme. Kindred to his sus ceptibility to poetic influences, the product of a fervid and impressible imagination, there is in him a delicate sensitiveness to the music of language. I know of no writer, whose verse has this relish of melody and music, who has produced by the same kind of talent that makes a great singer, as it were by sleight of tongue, those effects of meas ured sequences of sounds, which less happily en dowed writers have inadequately achieved by the studied arrangement of dactyls and spondees, all scanning correctly, but which somehow will never sing themselves. There are lyrical effects produced on the ear by some of his stanzas, wherein the rhymes and grand flow of the rhythm are as complete as in Milton s Lycidas, while the structure of the verse is better balanced and more symmetrical. Only Tennyson s earlier odes have the same delicate and facile grace. Take this specimen from the "Quadroon Girl:"- " The Slaver in the broad lagoon Lay moored with idle sail; He waited for the rising moon, And for the evening gale. 124 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. " Under the shore his boat was tied, And all her listless crew Watched the gray alligator slide Into the still bayou." Or this, from the " Fire of Drift- Wood : " " The windows, rattling in their frames, The ocean, roaring up the beach, The gusty blast, the bickering flames, All mingled vaguely in our speech." But why select from volumes that lie on every table, from songs read by the children of all English-speaking people, when, from the earliest products of glowing youth to the faithfully wrought creations of an age that gives no token of decay, all that he has written form one grand diapason of harmony, rich in the blending of varied melodies, and show with what a master s hand " He touched the tender stops of various quills With eager thought warbling his Doric lay " ? To make this inadequate sketch of the genius of Longfellow less incomplete, let me in fine speak of the elevation, purity, and lofty piety of all that he has written, wherein can be found " no line which, dying, he could wish to blot." Not in the slightest degree has he enlarged the license the generous world always permits to genius to excite a prurient taste or corrupt the heart by the delin- SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 125 eation of unregulated passions, reveling in the glories of art or in the beauties of an unconven tional society, embosomed in primitive nature, and amenable only to its laws. The loves of his he roes and heroines have been the pure domestic loves, out of which have grown the sanctities of home, the pieties of the household, the orderly social life of man. He has been the preacher of faith in the midst of skepticism and doubt, of hope and trust when it had become a fashion of the cultured world to regret the fortune of man and criticise the appointments of nature. For the manifest evils of life, brought to his susceptible heart by a sympathetic nature, and to his own ex perience by terrible visitations of sorrow, to vary the fortunes of a favored and happy life, his uni form lesson has been patience. " Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. " " Be still, sad heart ! and cease repining ;i Behind the clouds is the sun still shining ; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary." In religion and all religions he has not only recognized with a poet s relish all that was pict- 126 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. uresque in the grand cathedral, the chanted prayers by candle-light, the dirges sung by the church over dead heroes, the lonely recluse in his cell meditating on death and God, the martyr to his faith sending his soul to heaven upon the spires of flame that is consuming his flesh, but he has recognized as well the fundamental truth and power that has been exercised in all religions to raise the souls of men from the fears, the infirmi ties, and the sins that beset the mortal life to peace, self-renunciation, and submission to the Supreme order of the universe ; while the catholic ity of his faith he has himself well expressed in this his " Law of Life : " " Live I, so live I, To my Lord heartily, To my Prince faithfully, To my neighbor honestly ; Die I, so die I." Grateful for the service his long and industrious life has enabled him to do for his country and his age, we crown with our praise his noble work, and rejoice in the serenity and peace which a well-or dered mind can gather in age from the recollection of a well-spent life. LETTER FROM HON. J. W. BRADBURY. WASHINGTON, February 25, 1882. DEAR SIR, I sincerely regret that I cannot be with you at the meeting of the Society in honor of our dis tinguished native author, and that I have not the op portunity, in the midst of my occupations on my journey to the South, to say what I would like to have said on this interesting occasion. We are all proud to recognize the fact that Longfellow has won a place in history, that his name is enrolled with the names of those who were not born to die ; and it is peculiarly appropriate that a society devoted to historic research should avail itself of an occasion like the present, in the city of his birth, to do honor to one who has reflected so much honor not only upon his native land, but also upon the republic of letters throughout the world. Let us send him our congratulations that he is spared by a kind Providence to receive on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth the testimonials of the love and veneration in which he is held by hosts of friends in the Old World and the New. I first knew Longfellow when I entered as a Sophomore in the class of which he was a member in 1822 ; and I like to think of him as I then knew him. His slight, erect figure, delicate complexion, and intelligent expression of 128 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. countenance come back to rne indelibly associated with his name. He was always a gentleman in his deportment, and a model in his character and habits. For a year or more we had our rooms out of college and in the same vicinity, and I consequently saw much more of him than of many others of our class. I recollect that at our Junior exhi bition a discussion upon the respective claims of the two races of men to this continent was assigned to Longfellow and myself. He had the character of King Philip, and I of Miles Standish. He maintained that the continent was given by the Great Spirit to the Indians, and that the English were wrongful intruders. My reply, as nearly as I can recall it, was that the aborigines were claiming more than their equal share of the earth, and that the Great Spirit never intended that so few in number should hold the whole continent for hunting- grounds, and that we had a right to a share of it to improve and cultivate. Whether this occurrence had anything to do in suggesting the subject for one of his admirable poems or not, one thing is certain, that he subsequently made a great deal more of Miles Standish than I did on that occasion. As a scholar Longfellow always maintained a high rank in a class that contained such names as Hawthorne, Little, Cilley, Cheever, Abbott, and others. Although he was supposed to be somewhat devoted to the Muses, he never came to the recitation room unprepared with his lessons. Hawthorne, on the contrary, shy and retiring in his habits, always appeared to be so much absorbed in his own thoughts, or occupied with one or the other of SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 129 his special friends, Franklin Pierce or Horatio Bridge, that he paid little attention to preparation for the reci tation room, and to us superficial observers he did not give much promise that he was to place himself in the front rank of the best writers in the English language. Cilley was a young man of great promise, and possessed qualities that would have made him eminent in civil and military life, had he not been prematurely cut off at the commencement of his career. At Commencement Longfellow had one of the three English orations assigned to the class, Josiah S. Little, from Portland, having the valedictory, which was first in rank. At that time, and for more than thirty years after wards, the English orations outranked the Latin in old Bowdoin. I allude to this fact to correct an error that occurred in a biographical notice of our worthy class mate, Benson, in giving him a rank he would never have claimed for himself, because he had the Latin salutatory at Commencement. I find that I must now close abruptly without adding anything more, or I shall fail to mail this letter of excuse in season to reach you. Please make my apology to the Society for failing to furnish them with such a letter as they ought to have received, and believe me, yours, J. W. BRADBUEY. H. W. BRYANT, ESQ., Sec y M. H. S. LETTER FROM HON. ISRAEL WASHBURN, JR. EUREKA SPRINGS, ARK., February 9, 1882. MY DEAR MR. BRYANT, I received last evening your letter of the 3d instant, from which I am happy to learn that the Maine Historical Society will hold on the 27th instant, being the anniversary of the birth of the poet Longfellow, a meeting for the purpose of testifying their appreciation of the genius, character, and works of the most widely known and illustrious of all the natives of our State. I deeply regret that I cannot be present on that occa sion to take the part in its exercises which your kind ness has suggested ; but I am here in attendance on an invalid brother, who lias come to these waters to repair, if it may be, his shattered health. I see no prospect of being able to leave him in season to be present at this meeting. Maine is exceptionally rich, I think, in great and celebrated names, from the early provincial days, when the Americans first knighted by the crown of Great Britain were those natives of Maine, Sir William Phips, a Governor of Massachusetts, and Sir William Pepperell, the hero of Louisburg, to the present time. Among these memorable men may be mentioned those heroes upon land and sea, the Prebles ; those states men of the first quarter of the present century, Rufus, SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 131 William, and Cyrus King ; and the statesmen of a later period, George Evans, a Senator of the United States when the Senate was made august by such men as Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, to the greatest of whom he was felt by his associates to be hardly second ; and William Pitt Fessenden, also a Senator, who in the most exciting debate of modern times convinced his oppo nents that the Senate contained no member who wielded a more dangerous or more polished blade. Of authors and men of letters, the names of Nathaniel P. Willis, John Neal, Seba Smith, the original Jack Downing, Henry B. Smith, and Nathaniel Deering will not be soon forgotten. While, of life-time residents, or of those who have lived long enough with us to take on local shape and complexion, or who have consecrated our soil like General Knox, by leaving their ashes to be mingled with it, we point proudly to Knox ; to Edward Payson, the theologian and preacher, whose fame has extended to two hemispheres ; and to Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose boyhood was passed on the shores of Lake Sebago, and whose later youth was occupied by his college course at Brunswick, where he was the contemporary of Long fellow. But among all these names, and all other names, we shall not, nor will posterity, hesitate to assign the supreme place which will make our State to be longest remembered, to the poet whose works, genius, and life you will meet to recognize and honor. You speak of a probable paper by Mr. Goold on Gen eral Wadsworth, the maternal grandfather of the poet, and on such an occasion his father will not be forgotten. 132 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. You know that he was one of the foremost men of the State in his day, a member of Congress, a learned lawyer, an eloquent advocate, known by his contemporaries as the " orator of the silver tongue," and particularly as one " Who bore without abuse The grand old name of gentleman." To this Society the interest and enjoyment of the occasion will be enhanced by the knowledge that the poet has never lost his love for his native State, and that he continues to take a lively interest in her people, her history, her welfare, and her honor. Very truly yours, ISRAEL WASHBUEN, JE. H. W. BEYAXT, ESQ., Sec. M. II. S. The following poem by Mr. Washburn accom panied this letter : TO HENRY W. LONGFELLOW ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. Lines suggested ~by his poem "My Lost Youth" They err who say the poet dies, Or suffers foul eclipse ; Old age is never in his eyes, Nor palsy on his lips. Nature and love and truth and faith Know no black biting frost ; The poet feels no bated breath, His youth is never lost. I. W., JR. TRIBUTE FROM HON. JOSEPH WILLIAMSON. LEIGH HUNT pleasantly says, u I cannot pass through Westminster, without thinking of Milton ; or the Bor ough, without thinking of Chaucer or Shakespeare ; or Gray s Inn, without calling Bacon to mind ; or Blooms- bury Square, without Steele and Aikenside." A similar impressiveness attaches to any locality consecrated by the genius of him whose birthday we are now cele brating. Not to go beyond his native State, who can approach this u beautiful town, that is seated by the sea," and look upon u the shadows of Deering s Woods," or wander among the pines of Brunswick, "that mur mur in low monotone," without feeling that the magic pen of the poet has imparted to them an interest which they possessed not before ? Assured that the increase of years will give a value to every object and place with which Longfellow has been associated, I beg to present to the Society some memorials of his college life : a view of the halls of Bowdoin, " in whose seclusion and repose" his fame was born, and a catalogue of the institution, published sixty years ago this month, in which his name appears as an humble Freshman. There is a story that at some Sunday-school exhibi tion the children being asked, " What is the best book in the world, next to the Bible," enthusiastically replied, 134 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. " Longfellow s poems." The expression of popular judg ment finds a ready response among many persons of all ages : not only with those who delight in his numerous short poems, but with those who dwell upon the exquisite descriptions of Evangeline, or who enjoy the marvelous translation of the " Divine Comedy." He has touched nothing which he has not adorned. While immortal izing scenes in his own country, he has gathered green wreaths of fame from the mountains of Switzerland and the valleys of the Rhine ; and painting with Homeric melody the homely features of Acadian life, he has ren dered classic the hospitable shores and primeval forests of Nova Scotia. Who has given to the world so many lines of poetic beauty and refined tenderness of feeling, and yet with such simplicity of style that they have become as familiar as household words ? Into how many saddened hearts have they not proved consolation ? How many mourning eyes have not looked up with a brightening hope from the pages in which he has written such hymns of resignation ? " It is pleasant to re member," says a recent writer, " that in all the variety of subjects, events, and emotions that Mr. Longfellow has treated with the poet s grace and art there is not one mean sentiment or base word. Nobody has been misled by him into idleness, or license, or low pleasure ; no one has had his mind debased by any verse that Mr. Longfellow ever wrote." There is " Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, he could wish to blot." His great influence has always been for good ; he has promoted health of mind and spirit, and has labored in SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. 135 his serene way for the well-being and well-doing of his race. " Some suck up poison from a sorrow s core, As naught but night-shade grew upon earth s ground ; Love turned all his to heart s-ease, and the more Fate tried his bastions, she but found a door Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound." The world offers no record of a poet s life and work lovelier than that of Mr. Longfellow. " Blessings be with him, and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares ; The poets who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." PROCEEDINGS OP THE SOCIETY AT ITS SPRING MEETING. PORTLAND, MAY 25, 1882. PEOCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY AT ITS SPKING MEETING. AT the meeting of the Maine Historical Society, held in Portland, May 25, 1882, George F. Tal- bot, Esq., presented the following resolutions com memorative of the poet Longfellow, which were adopted and ordered to be recorded : Resolved, That the Maine Historical Society, honored in counting among its members the illustrious poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, lately deceased, desire to join their fellow countrymen everywhere in paying their tribute of gratitude and admiration for those productions of his genius which have made his name immortal. Resolved, That while death has removed from associa tion with living men his revered presence, and, so far as can be seen, has arrested that assiduous labor which has so enriched the pages of permanent literature, it has ex tended his fame, and brought to millions who had not known him an appreciation of the nobility of his nature and the purity of his life. Resolved, That the society whose office it is to cherish the memory of the men of Maine who in literature, 140 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. science, politics, war, business enterprise, and the inven tive arts have shed lustre upon our history, acknowledge the indebtedness of our citizens to Longfellow for the honor his long and brilliant career in the highest depart ments of creative art has conferred upon our country, and especially upon our State that gave him birth. Resolved, That the Secretary be requested to com municate, with a copy of these resolutions, the respectful sympathy of this society to the family of the distin guished deceased. The following communication was received from the Hon. James W. Bradbury, the President of the Society, and read by the Secretary : Since the meeting of the Maine Historical So ciety on the 27th of last February, in honor of Longfellow, that great poet has ceased to live on earth except in history and in the hearts of the lovers of pure literature throughout the world. It was appropriate that this society, of which he was a member, should hold that meeting. It was the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth. He was invited to attend, but was compelled by ill health to decline the invitation in one of the last letters he probably ever wrote. It was in the city in which he was born and reared and prepared for college. It was in the State in whose oldest col lege he received his collegiate education, the State of which his ancestors were distinguished /AT ME MORI AM. 141 citizens, in which his parents were born and lived and died. By ancestry, by birth, by education, he belongs to Maine. She can justly boast that she has given to the world the most illustrious poet of the age. Genius consecrates the place of its nativity. Seven cities contended for the honor of having been the birthplace of Homer after he was dead, who while living was allowed to wander in poverty through their streets. It would have been a reproach to the Historical Society of the State to have passed such an occasion unnoticed. The services of that meeting were appropriate and interesting, and I deeply regretted my in ability to be present. Everything that has rela tion to a historical personage, and especially to one who has secured such a hold upon the heart of the public as Longfellow, becomes a matter of general interest. I was exceedingly gratified by the perusal of the papers read on that occasion. The introductory address by Judge Barrows, the early reminiscences by Professor Packard, the his tory of the Longfellow family by the Kev. H. S. Burrage, the history of the Wadsworth family, the poet s maternal ancestors, by the Hon. Wil liam Goold, the history of Portland in his early days by Edward H. Elwell, and the elaborate paper upon his writings by Mr. Talbot, are all worthy of preservation and publication. 142 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. I have been requested to give some account of my early recollections of Longfellow. I can add very little to what I communicated to the Society on a former occasion. I met him for the first time in the autumn of 1822, when I entered as Sophomore the class of which he was a member. As we both had our rooms out of college and in the same vicinity, we were often together in passing to and from the recitation room, and became well acquainted. He was genial, sociable, and agreeable, and always a gentleman in his deportment. Not meditative and shy, like his subsequently distinguished classmate Hawthorne, he was uniformly cheerful. He had a happy temperament, free from all envy and every corroding passion or vice. In personal appearance, according to my present recollection of him as I recall the scenes of those early days, his figure was slight and erect ; his complexion light and delicate as a maiden s, with a slight bloom upon the cheek; his nose rather prominent ; his eyes clear and blue ; and his well- formed head covered with a profusion of light brown hair, waving loosely in the same manner as the gray locks of age. I have seen a portrait in his parlor in Cambridge that gives a good idea of him in his early life as I remember him. While he was understood in college to be a gen- IN MEMORIAM. 143 eral reader, and more especially devoted to the Muses, he never allowed himself to come to the recitation room without thorough preparation. I have some knowledge that he found more diffi culty in mastering the hard problems in the higher branches of mathematics than he did in any of his other studies; but his purpose was never to fail. His class was one in which there was a large amount of ambition and an intense struggle for rank in scholarship. In this class, Longfellow stood justly amongst the first. At Commencement he was assigned one of the three English orations ; the valedictory, being the highest in rank, was received by his older and able scholarly classmate, Little. Gorham Deane, a young man of the most remarkable metaphysical powers I have ever known for one of his age, died before the Com mencement. I have recently seen a letter from President Allen to his father, written after his death, saying that he ranked second in his class. In that small recitation room we had Longfel low and Hawthorne and Cilley and Little and Abbott and Cheever sitting side by side. The curriculum of studies in Bowdoin College was at that time much more restricted than is found in our colleges at the present day. But the instruction was directed and calculated to teach the student to use his own mental powers rather 144 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. than to crowd the memory with the learning of others, to teach him to think, and think upon his feet rather than to store up what other men had thought. We had, too, such instructors as Cleaveland, Upham, Newman, and Packard, and the classes were brought into immediate contact with such minds, instead of being turned over to young tutors for that which is most essential in college training. Our most distinguished citizens were intensely loyal to the State and its literary institutions, and gave such encouragement to our colleges as to command for them the confidence of the public within and beyond our borders. We had in our class the sons of Judge Bridge, Simon Greenleaf, Stephen Longfellow, Jeremiah Mason, Chief Justice Mellen, and Commodore Preble; and in the preceding class were Franklin Pierce, William Pitt Fessenden, and Calvin E. Stowe. The year following his graduation, Longfellow accepted a professorship of modern languages, in which, by his careful and thorough preparation at home and abroad, he sustained the high character of which his early life gave assurance. Some eight years ago I was travelling across Nova Scotia from Halifax to Annapolis. At Wind sor a gentleman joined me in the cars, who soon engaged in conversation about the old Acadian settlement that was so cruelly dispersed by the IN MEMORIAM. 145 * English authorities. He designated the site of the old church into which the Acadians were crowded, and from which they were taken to be scattered and severed without regard to family ties ; and pointed out Grand Pre, where they farmed. He soon spoke of Longfellow s " Evangeline." He said that the character that Longfellow gave the Acadians was literally true ; there was no poetic exaggeration about it. He was so enthusiastic over Longfellow that it was difficult to determine which he admired most, the Acadians or the poem. We concluded that he was a descendant of some of the few who escaped the dispersion. It was with reluctance that Longfellow consent ed to deliver his " Morituri Salutamus" address be fore the Alumni, on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation. I had applied to him personally, two or three years previous, to meet the survivors of his class at Commencement ; but he told me there had been so many changes since his residence at Brunswick that he feared the effect upon him of revisiting those scenes. We renewed the effort in 1875, and obtained the assurance, through the per sistent efforts of Mr. Benson, that all the survivors would be present, and Longfellow finally consented to come and Deliver a poem. I called upon him in May. His health was impaired ; but he told me he had prepared his poem, and hoped that he 10 146 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. should be able to be present and read it at the time appointed. The announcement that Longfellow was to be present and deliver a poem before the Alumni the day preceding Commencement, brought together at Brunswick a large audience from all parts of the State. When the day arrived, as soon as the doors of the large church were opened, the house was literally jammed, and every space for sitting and standing was filled. The survivors of the class, eleven in number (two having been accident ally prevented from being present), who had been graduated fifty years before, with their venerable instructor at their head, were seated upon the stage to the left of the speaker, when Longfellow, after the impressive introductory services, arose, and in his modest and graceful manner read that poetic address of which Virgil might have felt proud, "Morituri Salutamus." The audience was delighted. His feeling allusion to his old instructors and to Professor Packard touched the deepest sensibilities of his hearers : " They are no longer here ; they are all gone Into the land of shadows, all save one. Honor and reverence, and the good repute That follows faithful service as its fruit, Be unto him, whom living we salute." IN MEMORIAM. 147 When the great poet turned and gracefully bowed his salutation to his aged and venerable, yet fresh and elegant instructor, the whole audi ence was moved with emotion. As soon as the applause that followed the con clusion of the address would permit, it devolved upon me to offer a vote of thanks, and I pro posed that the thanks of the Alumni be tendered to Mr. Longfellow for his eloquent poetic address, and the thanks of the college and its friends that the most illustrious American poet had brought the laurels nobly won in the Old World and the New, and gracefully placed them upon the brow of his Alma Mater. The president of the Alumni, on putting the vote, said to the audience that in the republic of letters the ladies can vote, and those in favor of the resolution would manifest it by rising. Instantly the whole audience were upon their feet, and the poet received such an ovation of applause as can never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Dr. Cheever delivered an oration on the occa sion, which was characterized by his usual great learning and ability. At the Commencement din ner, Mr. Abbott gave a history of all the deceased members of the class of 1825, which was written in his accustomed felicitous style, and in which he rigidly adhered to the maxim, " De mortuis nil 148 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. nisi bonum." In the evening a large company, embracing many distinguished persons, met Long fellow at the hospitable mansion of Professor Packard, when he received cordial greetings from friends from every part of the State. On the fol lowing morning we assembled around the historic tree, and repaired thence to a room in the college, and after a most impressive prayer by the good Dr. Shepley we parted. In letters subsequently received from Longfellow he spoke of his visit to Brunswick and meeting so many of his old col lege friends. I saw him in 1877, when he alluded to this visit with evident satisfaction. It was my intention to speak of the character of the writings of Longfellow, but that subject is too broad for casual remarks, and sudden illness has deprived me of the power of making any prepara tion. I must therefore dismiss it with the single allusion to his good fortune as an author. He must be ranked as the most fortunate of authors, with hardly a parallel in history. His genius brought him fame and competence early in life, and he lived long to enjoy both, unclouded by any feeling of envy toward his distinguished contem poraries. He could enjoy the fame of Bryant and Whittier and Tennyson, as if it were a tribute to the work in which he and they were alike en gaged. But for the sad domestic calamity that IN MEMORIAM. 149 befell him, his lot in life would seem to have been too happy for mortals here. Mr. Hubbard Winslow Bryant, the Librarian and Secretary of the Society, then offered the fol lowing : I desire to lay a wreath on the tomb of our be loved poet, and to testify with others to his endear ing qualities. I have had the honor of his friend ship for several years, and it was rny privilege to be useful to him occasionally as a book-hunter. I first called his attention to the little pamphlet, the Fourth of July oration delivered by his honored father, Esquire Longfellow, in 1804, which he had never before seen. I procured for him, also, at different times, some of the early writings of our American authors. Mr. Longfellow liked much to examine collec tions of odds and ends in literature. It was a pleasure to him to chance upon some little book of poems or fiction that had been printed, forgotten, and finally brought to the light again. After the removal of our library to this city he wrote, con gratulating us upon it, and expressing his best wishes for our prosperity. When visiting here in August last he passed an hour or two in our library, examining the shelves and cabinet with evident 150 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. satisfaction. He presented us with the moccasins worn by the Sioux warrior, Rain-in-the-Face, who killed General Ouster. They were sent to him by General Miles in acknowledgment of Longfellow s poem, " The Revenge of Rain-in-the Face : " " In that desolate land and lone, Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone Roar down their mountain path, By their fires the Sioux Chiefs Muttered their woes and griefs And the menace of their wrath." They are accompanied by the photograph of the Indian chief, who has rather an amiable counte nance. His name was evidently given him on ac count of a line of dots or raindrops on his left cheek. Mr. Longfellow s taste in the printing and illus tration of books was superlative. The early num bers of " Outre-Mer," printed under his personal supervision at Brunswick, are very handsome ; he loved to see " a rivulet of text running through a meadow of margin." At his request I made search for the date of the storm which inspired his " Wreck of the Hes perus," and found that it occurred on Sunday, 15th December, 1839. It was a local storm, which spent its force in Massachusetts Bay. The fishermen at anchor in Gloucester harbor suffered IN ME MORI AM. 151 most ; some fifty lives were lost. The schooner Hesperus hailed from Gardiner, Maine. When Professor Longfellow was here last sum mer he intimated that he possessed an invaluable relic in a lock of Washington s hair, which he would some day present to our Society. I am au thorized by his son, Mr. Ernest W. Longfellow, to state that this precious relic will be presented to us on some future occasion. Longfellow s first printed poem is believed to be a ballad on the subject of Lovewell s Fight. This we have searched for, but as yet in vain. I believe that it contains these lines, but it is pos sible they may be from some other author, as there have been a number of ballads on the same theme : " I 11 kill you, Chamberlain, said he, And scalp you when you re dead." It was probably printed between the years 1823 and 1825, and perhaps in some weekly paper that had a short life. A friend has kindly called my attention to an ode by Longfellow on the same subject, which appeared in the " Gazette of Maine " for May 24, 1825: 152 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE COMMEMORATION AT FRYEBURG. The following ode was written for the occasion by Mr. H. W. Longfellow, of Bowdoin College : ODE. Air Bruce s Address. I. Many a day and wasted year Bright has left its footsteps here, Since was broken the warrior s spear, And our fathers bled. Still the tall trees, arching, shake Where the fleet deer by the lake, As he dash d through birch and brake, From the hunter fled. IT. In these ancient woods so bright, That are full of life and light, Many a dark, mysterious rite The stern warriors kept. But their altars are bereft, Fall n to earth, and strewn and cleft, And a holier faith is left Where their fathers slept. in. From their ancient sepulchres, Where amid the giant firs, IN MEMORIAM. 153 Moaning loud, the high wind stirs, Have the red men gone. Tow rd the setting sun that makes Bright our western hills and lakes, Faint and few, the remnant takes Its sad journey on. IV. Where the Indian hamlet stood, In the interminable wood, Battle broke the solitude, And the war-cry rose ; Sudden came the straggling shot Where the sun looked on the spot That the trace of war would blot Ere the day s faint close. v. Low the smoke of battle hung ; Heavy down the lake it swung, Till the death wail loud was sung When the night shades fell ; And the green pine, waving dark, Held within its shattered bark Many a lasting scathe and mark, That a tale could tell. VI. And the story of that day Shall not pass from earth away, 154 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Nor the blighting of decay Waste our liberty ; But within the river s sweep Long in peace our vale shall sleep, And free hearts the record keep Of this jubilee. Hon. Israel Washburn, Jr., said that at a re cent meeting of some of our citizens the question of erecting a monument in Portland to the mem ory of the poet had been considered and he thought it would be fitting for this Society to unite with the people of the city in such measures as they might in common agree upon, to carry such a purpose into effect, showing thereby that not his native city only, but his native State as well, desires to have part in a work so honorable to both as this would be. The most illustrious of all the sons of Maine, Longfellow did not need the monument. His fame was already assured, not in this country alone, but in every civilized land on the globe. His genius required no such voucher. Genius had, indeed, many definitions, he would not stop to analyze or describe them, and Longfel low would not come within them all ; but he did not doubt that in those which were plainest and most universally accepted, and such as best dis tinguished the immortal poets of all ages, God s IN MEMORIAM. 155 great, like Shakespeare and Burns, he would be easily included ; for, like them, he sang of man and of life of their nearest, deepest, and highest re lations in words that the world could not choose but hear, and would never forget. How many of his lines were mottoes of the heart ! How many passages of his verse lifted the mind to its highest moods ! He was nature s simplest and truest bard ; no unintelligible metaphysician nor " howl ing dervish " of song, and yet how full his poems were of deep philosophy ! True, it was philoso phy which men did not stare at or worry them selves to find out ; for his stream was clear, not because it was shallow, but because, while deep, it was not turbid. But his genius was most distinguished in the highest things, in the true expression of all that was pure and sweet, honest and of good report, of what was gentlest yet strongest, most human yet the most divine. And no man had such a genius in the art, so to speak, of being a gentleman. Only Emerson came near him. His native State would do herself a kindness, he said, by thus testifying to her appreciation of the genius of her great son, and by cherishing his memory. And this Society should hold up his example and his works for the benefit of the people of the State, the men, women, and children of the present age and 156 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. of the ages which are to come. In no way could it better do its best work, or make a more lasting claim upon the gratitude of the future. On motion, it was voted to adopt and publish in the proceedings of this Society at the meeting to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of the poet Longfellow the addresses delivered at the memo rial service held in the First Parish Church, Port land, Sunday evening, April 2, 1882, by the pastor, the Kev. Thomas Hill, D. D., the Rev. Asa Dalton, and the Hon. Joseph W. Symonds. REV. DR. HILL S ADDRESS. THE four elements, talent, fortune, industry, and inspiration, which must combine to produce the highest success in life were all conspicuous in the poet whom our city delights to claim and to honor. The inheritor, or at least the recipient from nature, of fine powers, he had favorable op portunities for cultivating and developing them ; but, what is far more important, he opened his heart devoutly and reverently to holy influences, and gave himself with steadfast, conscientious in dustry to the improvement of his opportunities, and to the exercise of his powers. To such a man all circumstances become, as it were, favorable ; he is, in great measure, independent of fortune ; he increases his native talent ; and he insures the cooperation of that Inspiring Presence which is al ways ready to enter the heart opened to receive it. It is this peculiar moral nobility which has given our poet so strong a hold on the affection and re spect of all who know him, either personally or by report and tradition. His seniors and equals in age bear testimony that from his, boyhood he 158 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. held to his earnest purposes ; he left nothing be hind him to be regretted, nothing to be covered with a veil. The devout solemnity of that early Psalm, " Life is real ! Life is earnest ! " was nothing assumed or put on ; it was no surface emotion, expending itself in words ; it was a deep, inward choice of the way of duty, manifesting it self in a course of steadfast fidelity to the precepts of Jesus, from his youth to his old age. Duty is not satisfied with professions or with promises; it demands an unconditional, total surrender of the whole man and the whole life to the eternal prin ciples of piety, righteousness, and love. To this demand he unceasingly yielded his reverent obe dience. It seemed as though he had secretly said to himself, " That I am true my life alone can show ; My words are all unequal to the task." All that is told us of his .private life confirms us in this view of the practical reality of his religion ; and all his published writings bear witness to it. It is not simply their innocence, the absence of lines which on his death-bed he might wish to erase ; it is the unconscious betrayal, in every part, of the writer s own moral earnestness. The deep est fountains of his heart were opened early, by great sorrows ; but the streams which issued were IN MEMORIAM. 159 clear and life-giving. The flow often begins from a vein of sadness, but it never degenerates into melancholy ; and almost invariably ends with hope, faith, and charity. Those blessed Christian graces were the characteristics of his soul. And it was this moral earnestness which (in combination with his sweet, courteous dignity and his exceptionally high attainments as a scholar and achievements as a writer) made him so valua ble as a teacher; first in his Alma Mater, and afterwards in the chair at Cambridge, where his services and fame outshone the glory of his re markable predecessor and of his highly gifted suc cessor. The young men who met him were as much impressed and inspired by the moral influ ences which flowed unconsciously from his pres ence as by the direct teaching in his class-room. No wonder that the Alumni of both institutions have desired to take part in these solemn services of thanksgiving for his life and labors, and for the inspiration which has left us such valuable fruits, for our inheritance and that of our chil dren. For, through the grace that was given him, he has left a precious legacy to many succeeding generations. JUDGE SYMONDS ADDRESS. IT has fallen to me somewhat suddenly to take a brief part in this memorial service, speaking for the resident Alumni of Bowdoin. It would perhaps be strange if the Alumni of the college in which the intellectual life of Long fellow began, " and to which his name imparts charm and illustration/ were to remain in willing silence among those who are met in memory of the most illustrious of her sons, standing as it were just within the sudden darkness which has followed the sunset of his life. And yet, what is there for them to do ; what is there for the college to do now, with a heart brimming with proud and grateful emotions, better than to sit down in her sorrow for the dead, and to offer the golden tribute of silence, of gratitude and thanks, for the life that has closed, for the peerless and priceless legacy his genius and fame have left to her. To the graduates of Bowdoin (as of other col leges), who sometimes in later life go back in a sort of enchantment of memory and the imagination IN MEMOR1AM. 161 to the pleasant years passed there, to some of them, at least, there is always a halo about the col lege. There are other associations, too, connected with it, of more or less interest to all. But that Longfellow and Hawthorne, Hawthorne, whose genius Longfellow was among the first to recog nize, sending a ray of joy and sunlight into the darkness of his long seclusion by that kindly and appreciative notice of the " Twice-Told Tales," in the "North American Review" in 1837, that the footsteps of these two men, in youth and early manhood, were accustomed to loiter there, these are associations which will linger imperishably, growing richer and stronger as something of the interest and charm of antiquity shall gather about the college. It is not for me to speak in fitting terms of Longfellow s poetry, of its manifold and exceeding beauty, in spirit, in substance and form, or of the marvels of his achievement. His poems seem to me to be the best life, the highest and purest aspiration, the graceful and strong expres sion of a serene and noble mind. We read them, and all common things appear in a finer light. There is a new beauty in human life, a new glory on the earth and in the heavens. The round of daily duties is no longer sordid or dull. The op portunity, the possibility for ourselves, whatever it may be, we learn to set a new value upon it, 11 162 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. to estimate it at its best, perhaps to prize it above gold. One of the fragments which remain of the Twelve Tables of the Eoman law provides that those qualities by which the heroes were deified, virtue, piety, fidelity, shall be ranked among the divinities. Temples shall be erected to them. But let no worship ever be paid to any vice. The pristine Roman vigor and purity are in that law. But the altars to these same divinities are sacred still in Longfellow s verse, and a holier fire burns upon them forever. What an assured immortality of fame is his! His works are already the inheritance of the whole earth. Transcending the boundaries of nations, they have become the common property of man kind ; common as the light of day is common, or the glory of the sunset, or the stars at night. His is the life of books, the long life of the best books; and that is immortality. " How instantly the air will close on this arrowy path ! " once Eufus Choate exclaimed, alluding to his own professional career, brilliant as it was. And in his beautiful journal of travel he writes, 66 Some memorial I would leave yet, rescued from the grave of a mere professional man, some wise, or beautiful, or interesting page. After all, a book is the only immortality." IN MEMOPJAM. 163 " It is only letters/ said Lord Bacon, " which, as ships, pass through the vast sea of time." Something of the subtle quality of eloquence is born of the moment and expires with it. Part of the great occasion, it cannot be reproduced. Of those arts imperial, by which in great crises the emotions of the hour and the judgments of men are swayed by public speaking, only the great myth can be transmitted to posterity. I am reminded of the language of an author, by whom this contrast has been strikingly painted. He says, " The written outlives and outdazzles the spoken word. The life of rhetoric perishes with the rhetorician. . . . The bows of eloquence are buried with the archers. Where is the splen did declamation of Bolingbroke ? It has vanished, like his own image from the grass-plots of Twick enham. " Literature is the immortality of speech. It em balms for all ages the departed kings of learning, and watches over their repose in the eternal pyra mids of fame. The sumptuous cities which have lighted the world since the beginning of time are now beheld only in the pictures of the historian or the poet. Homer rebuilds Troy, and Thucyd- ides renews the war of Peloponnesus. The dart that pierced the Persian breastplate moulders in the dust of Marathon ; but the arrow of Pindar quivers, at this hour, with the life of his bow." 164 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Two thousand years and more ago, twenty-four centuries ago, and the arrow of Pindar still quiv ers with the life of his bow. It will be well for the world, for the happiness and nobility of mankind, if the costly grace and spiritual beauty of Longfellow s poetry shall con tinue to be familiar as household words, two thou sand years to come ; yes, when lights of empire have died out, " like embers on a cottager s hearth." REV. MR. DALTON S ADDRESS. THE ancients regarded the city of a man s birth as his mother, whom he was bound to love, serve, and obey by his life and his works. As such, the city claimed the right to award him suitable hon ors while he lived, and to pronounce his final eu logy immediately after death. This custom was honored by careful observance, and was believed to be due equally to the departed and to his surviving friends and fellow citizens. To the de parted, it was a tribute of love and gratitude, mer ited by the services he had rendered his native city in its corporate capacity, as well as to the in dividual citizens. To his fellow citizens, it was also an indirect but efficient call to follow in his steps, at least in intent and spirit, so far as possible, by emulating his example of well-doing, and striving to excel in their several conditions and callings. And such is the occasion of our meeting to night, and of this memorial service. Portland claims the great poet whom we have lost as the brightest and best of all her sons. The city was proud of him and loved him while he lived, and 166 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. now that he is dead she is, after his immediate family, the chief mourner at his grave, and most deeply feels of how great a son she is bereaved. His name and fame are indissolubly connected with this city by the sea. And Portland s mother- heart will not rest satisfied until she erect in " The Oaks " an enduring monument to his memory, a statue of the poet, by which his form and features may be familiar to future generations. Longfellow s life divides itself into three parts : his youth and early manhood till he was thirty years of age, a period of preparation and constant improvement; his ripe manhood, from thirty to sixty, a period of active labor, when his best work was done ; and from sixty to seventy-five, a period of calm repose and advancing old age, when he was the object of his countrymen s warm admira tion and affection. He was about forty, in the prime of manhood, when the speaker knew him in college, where he was at the head of the depart ment of Modern Languages and Literature, direct ing the teachers of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and occasionally himself teaching all these classes, to the great gratification of the students. James Russell Lowell, the successor of Long fellow at Harvard, once said to Dr. Hill, that, for his part, he still held to the Ptolemaic system, in asmuch as it makes the earth the centre of the IN MEMOR1AM. 167 universe, and man the chief of God s works, a sentiment which science goes far to confirm, as Lowell meant it. Our little planet seems to offer the most favorable conditions for the highest forms of life and the highest type of beings. And as man is the chief end of creation, so the poet is the highest type of man, rarer in his ap pearance among men, and essaying a higher flight than his fellows. Literature in general must be preferred even to science, for the same reason, namely, because its province is human life with its possibilities. Lit erature is the sum and substance of human life in all its aspects, expressed and perpetuated in " thoughts that breathe and words that burn." It includes all that is thrilling in eloquence, profound in philosophy, permanent in morality, and instructive in history, no less than the charms of poetry, the strange in romance, the mirthful in comedy, and the terrible in tragedy. Great and noble thoughts, clearly enunciated and adorned by graceful and varied imagery, are the highest style of literature, and constitute true and per manent poetry. Philosophers, divines, historians and orators have made mankind their debtors by masterpieces of eloquence, but not in the same degree as the great poets, ancient and modern. The form at least of philosophy, theology, history, 168 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. and oratory, changes from age to age. But poetry is a perennial spring whose waters never fail to quench the thirst of the soul. Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Words worth, are as fresh and refreshing to-day as in the ages which first listened to the music of their verse. To hold communion with these great sing ers through their masterpieces is the privilege of all, and is possible to all. By doing so the taste is refined, the heart purified, the imagination ex alted, and the whole man lifted to a higher plane of feeling, thinking, and being. And now what we claim for our Longfellow is, that he belongs to this glorious band of immortal bards, whose procession, as seen by Dante, he has gone to join, and by whom, we doubt not, he has been recognized, and received into their select so ciety as one of themselves, " a brother beloved." Intanto voce fu per me udita, " Onorate 1 altissimo poeta." If you ask us for the grounds of this belief, our reply is that made to those who in St. Paul s ask for the monument of Sir Christopher Wren : Circumspice, " Look around you ; " and on every side, all over the world, wherever the English tongue is spoken, you will find ample proof that Portland gave a true poet to the world in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. IN ME MORI AM. 169 More read in England than their own Laureate, in this country he is facile princeps. Not that we would disparage Bryant, whom also we have lost, or Whittier, who still lives to sing the ballads of New England as they should be sung, in a manner all his own, and with a tenderness and pathos which find a response in every New England heart. Whittier is racy of the soil, to the manor born ; no " travelled man," not " having seen many lands or men of diverse manners," but a poet of home like aptitude, tastes, and sympathies. Longfellow loved New England no less, but his culture car ried his thought into all lands and literatures, from which he derived treasures to adorn his own verse and enrich and ennoble the minds of his readers. The influence of the great German poets in par ticular is easily discernible in his youthful rhymes, more especially that of Uhland, whom he emulated and finally surpassed. But he lived to have a manner all his own, for which he was indebted to no one, a manner and a style which, in inferior hands, quickly degener ated into mannerism, giving us " the contortions of the prophet without his inspiration." His genius, like that of his friend and contempo rary, Tennyson, is lyrical rather than dramatic or epic, and this lyrical genius has entered into the 170 HENRY WADSWOETH LONGFELLOW. emotions, the aspirations, the thoughts, the life, of English-speaking people all over the world. If we compare Longfellow with the most illus trious of his contemporaries and personal friends, he will lose nothing by the comparison. It was his good fortune to number among his friends such men as Everett, Sumner, Felton, Walker, Holmes, Bryant, Whittier, Emerson, Lowell, and Winthrop. He equalled Everett in elegance, and surpassed him in geniality of manners and gen erosity of soul, that delicate and unfailing sympa thy which greatly endeared him to " all sorts and conditions of men." His tact was finer than Sum- ner s, and his face, the index of his heart, as ra diant as Felton s. He was as great a favorite as Dr. Walker with Harvard students; and he shared with Bryant and Whittier the admiration of his countrymen, while the number of his English and foreign admirers was far greater. If asked to name the trait at once the most characteristic of the poet and most worthy of our commendation and emulation, we should instance his industry, which was literally untiring. Only those who knew him best, his own immediate family and family connections, can fully appreciate this point. But I doubt not that they will con firm the statement that the poet s time and strength were taxed to their utmost tension. He IN MEMOR1AM. 171 never knew what it was to lose a day, or waste an hour in idleness. Even " the children s hour " was no exception, as he must have felt while living, and his children more amply understand now that he is no longer with them as of old. Add to this trait, his manly presence, fine countenance, speak ing eye, genial smile, friendly, sympathetic voice, and courteous address, and you have the outward semblance of " the perfect man," whose mind was a kingdom. And if, as Pericles says, that " of good and great men the w r hole earth is the sepulchre," because their memory is a precious inheritance, which should be guarded and preserved by all men, and also because their thoughts and lives become at death the common property of the world, then of Longfellow, whose happiness it was in life to be personally loved, and in death universally la mented, we may truly say, " He in our wonder and astonishment, Has built himself a lifelong monument, And there sepulchred in such pomp doth lie That kings for such a tomb might wish to die. * LOAN DEPT. irec d circ. MAR 1 1 1983 -50m-3 62