When Edward Bok stood before the home of Longfellow, he realized that he was to see the man around whose head the boy's youthful reading had cast a sort of halo.And when he saw the head itself he had a feeling that he could see the halo.No kindlier pair of eyes ever looked at a boy, as, with a smile, "the white Mr.Longfellow," as Mr.Howells had called him, held out his hand.
"I am very glad to see you, my boy," were his first words, and with them he won the boy.Edward smiled back at the poet, and immediately the two were friends.
"I have been taking a walk this beautiful morning," he said next, "and am a little late getting at my mail.Suppose you come in and sit at my desk with me, and we will see what the postman has brought.He brings me so many good things, you know.""Now, here is a little girl," he said, as he sat down at the desk with the boy beside him, "who wants my autograph and a 'sentiment.' What sentiment, I wonder, shall I send her?""Why not send her 'Let us, then, be up and doing'?" suggested the boy.
"That's what I should like if I were she.""Should you, indeed?" said Longfellow."That is a good suggestion.Now, suppose you recite it off to me, so that I shall not have to look it up in my books, and I will write as you recite.But slowly; you know I am an old man, and write slowly."Edward thought it strange that Longfellow himself should not know his own great words without looking them up.But he recited the four lines, so familiar to every schoolboy, and when the poet had finished writing them, he said:
"Good! I see you have a memory.Now, suppose I copy these lines once more for the little girl, and give you this copy? Then you can say, you know, that you dictated my own poetry to me."Of course Edward was delighted, and Longfellow gave him the sheet as it is here:
Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry W.Longfellow Then, as the fine head bent down to copy the lines once more, Edward ventured to say to him:
"I should think it would keep you busy if you did this for every one who asked you.""Well," said the poet, "you see, I am not so busy a man as I was some years ago, and I shouldn't like to disappoint a little girl; should you?"As he took up his letters again, he discovered five more requests for his autograph.At each one he reached into a drawer in his desk, took a card, and wrote his name on it.
"There are a good many of these every day," said Longfellow, "but Ialways like to do this little favor.It is so little to do, to write your name on a card; and if I didn't do it some boy or girl might be looking, day by day, for the postman and be disappointed.I only wish Icould write my name better for them.You see how I break my letters?
That's because I never took pains with my writing when I was a boy.Idon't think I should get a high mark for penmanship if I were at school, do you?""I see you get letters from Europe," said the boy, as Longfellow opened an envelope with a foreign stamp on it.
"Yes, from all over the world," said the poet.Then, looking at the boy quickly, he said: "Do you collect postage-stamps?"Edward said he did.
"Well, I have some right here, then," and going to a drawer in a desk he took out a bundle of letters, and cut out the postage-stamps and gave them to the boy.
"There's one from the Netherlands.There's where I was born," Edward ventured to say.
"In the Netherlands? Then you are a real Dutchman.Well! Well!" he said, laying down his pen."Can you read Dutch?"The boy said he could.
"Then," said the poet, "you are just the boy I am looking for." And going to a bookcase behind him he brought out a book, and handing it to the boy, he said, his eyes laughing: "Can you read that?"It was an edition of Longfellow's poems in Dutch.
"Yes, indeed," said Edward."These are your poems in Dutch.""That's right," he said."Now, this is delightful.I am so glad you came.I received this book last week, and although I have been in the Netherlands, I cannot speak or read Dutch.I wonder whether you would read a poem to me and let me hear how it sounds."So Edward took "The Old Clock on the Stairs," and read it to him.
The poet's face beamed with delight."That's beautiful," he said, and then quickly added: "I mean the language, not the poem.""Now," he went on, "I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll strike a bargain.
