The study where the Dante Club met, and where I mostly saw Longfellow,
was a plain, pleasant room, with broad panelling in white painted pine;
in the centre before the fireplace stood his round table, laden with
books, papers, and proofs; in the farthest corner by the window was a
high desk which he sometimes stood at to write. In this room Washington
held his councils and transacted his business with all comers; in the
chamber overhead he slept. I do not think Longfellow associated the
place much with him, and I never heard him speak of Washington in
relation to it except once, when he told me with peculiar relish what he
called the true version of a pious story concerning the aide-de-camp who
blundered in upon him while he knelt in prayer. The father of his
country rose and rebuked the young man severely, and then resumed his
devotions. "He rebuked him," said Longfellow, lifting his brows and
making rings round the pupils of his eyes, "by throwing his scabbard at
his head."

All the front windows of Craigie House look, out over the open fields
across the Charles, which is now the Longfellow Memorial Garden. The
poet used to be amused with the popular superstition that he was holding
this vacant ground with a view to a rise in the price of lots, while all
he wanted was to keep a feature of his beloved landscape unchanged. Lofty
elms drooped at the corners of the house; on the lawn billowed clumps of
the lilac, which formed a thick hedge along the fence. There was a
terrace part way down this lawn, and when a white-painted balustrade was
set some fifteen years ago upon its brink, it seemed always to have been
there. Long verandas stretched on either side of the mansion; and behind
was an old-fashioned garden with beds primly edged with box after a
design of the poet's own. Longfellow had a ghost story of this quaint
plaisance, which he used to tell with an artful reserve of the
catastrophe. He was coming home one winter night, and as he crossed the