duty of acquiring learning; of getting the use of many languages and
thus of many forms of thought, in order to master the vehicles of
expression. To this end he labored without ceasing, laughing at
himself for calling that labor which gave him in the acquisition great
pleasure. "If you call it labor!" he wrote in one of his letters home
after speaking of his incessant studies.

His journals and letters, except the few early ones to his father,
seldom speak either of the heat of composition or of the toils of
study. He kept any mention of these, like all his deeper experiences,
to himself, but writes chiefly of more external matters; of his
relaxations and pleasures,--such as are surely indispensable to an
author and student after extreme tension of the brain and hours of
emotion.

Longfellow was twenty-two years old when he took up his residence as
professor at Bowdoin College, where he translated and prepared the
French grammar and the French and Spanish text-books which he desired
for his classes. He was also made college librarian--a duty which
required only one hour a day in those early times, but, added to his
other duties, gave him all the occupation he needed. "The intervals of
college duty I fill up with my own studies," he wrote to his friend,
George W. Greene, with whom he had already formed a friendship which
was to continue unbroken during their lives.

At the age of twenty-four Longfellow married a lovely young lady, the
daughter of Judge Potter, of Portland. She was entirely sympathetic
with his tastes, having herself received a very unusual education for
those days in Greek and Latin among her other studies. In the
"Footsteps of Angels" she is commemorated as