manuscript which gave me peculiar pleasure. I remember his liking for
the first piece that Mr. Maurice Thompson sent me, and how he tasted the
fresh flavor of it, and inhaled its wild new fragrance. He admired the
skill of some of the young story-tellers; he praised the subtlety of one
in working out an intricate character, and said modestly that he could
never have done that sort of thing himself. It was entirely safe to
invite his judgment when in doubt, for he never suffered it to become
aggressive, or used it to urge upon me the manuscripts that must often
have been urged upon him.

Longfellow had a house at Nahant where he went every summer for more than
a quarter of a century. He found the slight transition change enough
from Cambridge, and liked it perhaps because it did not take him beyond
the range of the friends and strangers whose company he liked. Agassiz
was there, and Appleton; Sumner came to sojourn with him; and the
tourists of all nations found him there in half an hour after they
reached Boston. His cottage was very plain and simple, but was rich in
the sight of the illimitable, sea, and it had a luxury of rocks at the
foot of its garden, draped with sea-weed, and washed with the
indefatigable tides. As he grew older and feebler he ceased to go to
Nahant; he remained the whole year round at Cambridge; he professed to
like the summer which he said warmed him through there, better than the
cold spectacle of summer which had no such effect at Nahant.

The hospitality which was constant at either house was not merely of the
worldly sort. Longfellow loved good cheer; he tasted history and poetry
in a precious wine; and he liked people who were acquainted with manners
and men, and brought the air of capitals with them. But often the man
who dined with Longfellow was the man who needed a dinner; and from what
I have seen of the sweet courtesy that governed at that board, I am sure