no puny achievement, and when I revisited Concord, thirty years later,
the great white fence was still there, with a few gaps in it, but
still effective. But the builder, and the grapes--where were they?
Where are Cheops, and the hanging gardens of Babylon?

Among many visitors came Richard Henry Stoddard, already a poet, but
anxious to supplement the income from his verses by a regular stipend
from the big pocket of Uncle Sam. His first coming was in summer, and
he and my father went up on the hill and sat in the summer-house
there, looking out upon the wide prospect of green meadows and distant
woods, but probably seeing nothing of them, their attention being
withdrawn to scenes yet fairer in the land of imagination and memory.
Stoddard was then, as always, a handsome man, strong and stanch,
black-haired and black-bearded, with strong eyes that could look both
fierce and tender. He was masculine, sensitive, frank, and humorous;
his chuckle had infinite merriment in it; but, as his mood shifted,
there might be tears in his eyes the next moment. He was at that time
little more than five-and-twenty years old, and he looked hardly that;
he was a New England country youth of genius. Nature had kindled a
fire in him which has never gone out. Like my father, he was
affiliated with the sea, and had its freshness and daring, though
combined with great modesty, and he felt honored by the affection with
which he inspired the author of The Scarlet Letter. It was not until
his second visit, in the winter, that the subject of a custom-house
appointment for him came up; for my father, being known as a close
friend of the President, whose biography he had written for the
campaign, became the object of pilgrimages other than literary ones.
He received sound advice, and introductions, which aided him in
getting the appointment, and he held it for nearly twenty years--more
to the benefit of the custom-house than of poetry, no doubt, though he