Whitman did not negative the churches. He included them. He never ceased his refusal of all special claims made for any one faith. "I am as much Buddhist as Christian, as much Mohammedan as Buddhist, as much nothing as something. I have a good deal of use for all the religions. But if I am to be dragooned into some small desert place, which in the churches is called a creed, and left there to die, I must act upon my always reserved right of personal decision. The time will come when even Christians will acknowledge that Ingersoll, reforming the average Christianity of our day, was a direct witness of God." Nevertheless, "while I expect to see the whole nature of Christian theory changed, much old trumpery and barbarity dismissed, I do not feel called upon to use an axe myself."

on.

In social reform, though never pledged to specific philosophies, his sympathies were towards the largest justice. "My heart is for all, and yet it may also be said to be specially for those who are victims of privilege, discrimination, greed, robbery. We do not see to the end. The fight is Has it not always been on? The smoke of the battle confuses the issue. Yet I know who will win-that the people will win-and I know why their victory is inevitable and I know why their victory is nobody's defeat." This was his reply to a very hot agitator who protested that Whitman was not sufficiently emphatic in his labor philosophy: "I know that what you ask for is right and will be given, and I know that if it is not true for the whole world it is just as true for you. I know that denunciation will not hurt and may help and I know that what you call my want of fire will not hurt and may help. My way is mine-I can force myself into no expression of violent indignation. If I say I cannot feel your heat in this matter, do not set it down for want of sympathy but for thoroughness of faith. I believe perhaps more than you do that these things must develop. Sometimes great heat comes from lack of faith: not always, however, as I know it does not in your case."

Yet he could also more directly indicate the points at which he supposed the movement would first take efficient root: "I am for free trade-free trade absolute; I am for South and North, not North against South; I am for Europe and America, for Africa and Asia, not for any one as against any other; I am for free land, for a plot of ground for every man who wants it and power nowhere to disturb him. Being for these things, I am for all politics and philosophies which will assist in developing them-even for agencies often thought contradictory of each other, for I perceive

I

that the best life often comes through that narrow pass. am not for laws. The law is an axe. I am for conscience, solidarity, good-heart, agreement all around and universal recognition of even-handed rights."

The profit of such discourse may easily be comprehended. For long years we spent evenings going over such ground, comparing notes, testing every day's history and every year's summing-up by laws of social being obvious and agreed upon by us. No territory was escaped or denied. In his bedroom, he in his big chair by the window, I upon some other chair or the lounge or the bed, the light rarely turned up, precious excursions of speech and precious intervals of silence alternating, there grew in me a profounder acknowledgment of his greatness. When his weakness increased and he was kept in his bed, our habit of daily discourse, some of it for practical interests, continued. His old energy of perception was maintained and his curiosity was unabated. No day brought darkness in these relations. No event shadowed his spirit. Serene and cheerful, he died with his face to the East. His youth was never lost. such an atmosphere I offer these leaves.

From

II. A GLIMPSE OF LONGFELLOW, BY REV. M. J. SAVAGE.

Mr. Longfellow's house is the one American poet's home which is familiar to everybody. It is the place which is sure to be visited by everyone who goes to Cambridge. This is the natural result of the fact that he is, beyond all question, the most popular of our poets. He gives voice to the average sentiment, and touches the average heart. He has never written a line which, on account of its obscurity of style, needs a commentator. It may be a question as to whether one would prefer to be the profound or lofty poet of the few, or he who should give utterance to the hopes and fears and joys of the many. At any rate, it is this latter distinction which belongs to Longfellow. He is the most widely read poet among the people of the English-speaking world.

The Craigie house stands facing the open ground, now reserved as a park, which stretches between it and the Charles River. This river, which the poet so loved, may perhaps be taken as a fitting symbol or illustration of his own life and work. It is not a great stream; its banks are not majestic like those of the Hudson or the more majestic Columbia, which beyond question is the grandest river in America. It winds peacefully through quiet fields and

beneath overhanging trees, by the side of villages and through the city to the sea. It beautifies as well as vivifies all its borders, and reflects the quiet or busy life through which it passes. It may be taken as a parable of the poet himself. It is not very deep; it has no cataracts or striking rapids; it is always sweet and beautiful in its flow. Longfellow was master of the art of poetic form and whether he wrote easily or not, he makes always easy reading.

The poetry of Longfellow, as is doubtless the case with all poets, was the natural expression of the man. Sweet and genial and lovable, he was the friend of all mankind. He was perhaps the most generally and easily accessible of all our greater poets. His door was always open to whomsoever would enter, and his time always at the disposal of any comer. He never refused himself to the autograph hunter, saying that if he could give any one pleasure by so simple a thing as writing his name, he was glad to do it. It is said of him that he always answered, with his own hand, every letter which he received. This raises a question, which perhaps is worth a passing word of comment.

Every man to-day, who has reached a position of any prominence, finds himself in danger of being overwhelmed by applicants and applications of every kind. It is coming, then, to be a question as to whether the tradition of Longfellow in this regard can be perpetuated. Has a man a right to deluge a busy clergyman, a busy poet, or a busy novelist, with letters, and demand that they be answered at the expense of any amount of strength or time? Has any one who chooses the right to call upon a busy man and take an hour or two hours of precious time for his own purposes or as the result of a passing whim? It is said of Napoleon, and probably the same has been said of a great many others, that he was accustomed to keep his letters for three or four weeks, saying that by that time they did not need to be answered. At least half the letters which a busy man receives are of no practical value, either to the receiver or the writer; and it is a very serious question as to whether the time of the receiver, at any rate, could not be better spent than in answering them. Sometimes a question is innocently asked which can be adequately answered only by a review article or a book. Very frequently literary aspirants want their manuscripts looked over, criticised (which means praised), and a publisher procured for them; and frequently they are very indignant if any one declines to accede to the modest proposal. Not infrequently they attribute a refusal to jealousy of their rising genius. At

any rate, they never seem to question the supposed fact that they have a perfect right to the uncompensated consumption of another man's time, however valuable it may be to him. They are familiar with the proverb that "time is money," but while they would shrink from begging for twenty-five cents or a dollar, they seem to think they have a perfect right to "hold up" the unfortunate victim, and demand his time or his life. Longfellow always gave with full hands in response to this public and general extortion. But one cannot help wondering as to whether there is real discourtesy in a man's laying claim to his own time and his own strength, any more than there is in his insisting on his title to his own pocket-book.

In spite of all my philosophy on the subject, however, I am one of the people who went to see Longfellow, to encroach upon his valuable time. He received me with the same warm welcome and smiling courtesy with which he received all the world. There is no need of my describing the house, or the famous clock on the stairs visible as one entered the hall, or the quiet, homelike study in which we sat and talked. We did talk upon a great many things,books, his own and others; about mutual friends, and the thousand-and-one things which would naturally enter into such a conversation. But now comes a good illustration of the tricks that memory will play upon one. We did discuss serious things; but not having made any notes of our conversation at the time, all those discussions have faded, and are too indistinct for any clear record now. remember chiefly that we sat and told stories together.

He offered me a cigar, and I took it that I might keep him company; for Mr. Longfellow, as the Dutchman said of his friend Hans, "vas a good smoker." And one of the stories which he told, apropos of smoking, I have since had occasion very many times to repeat. Feeling, as Mr. Spurgeon expressed it, that I can "smoke a cigar to the glory of God," I like particularly to tell this story to any friends of mine who assume that smoking is one of my vices. Mr. Longfellow told of a certain cardinal calling upon a certain pope, and the pope offering him a cigar, whereupon he replied, "Thank God, I am free from that vice!" To which the pope rejoined, "Vice? If it had been a vice, you would have had it long ago!"

I have many good portraits of Longfellow, but the one I value most is that which hangs in the chamber of memory, -the poet in his morning jacket, with his face framed in white whiskers and hair, and that face the outward

symbol of a soul whose chief characteristics, beyond intelligence and mental power, were gentleness and sweetness, tenderness and love.

One other glimpse of Longfellow I wish briefly to portray. He came over one winter day and called at my house, while I was living at No. 37 West Newton Street. He was dressed in his long fur-lined overcoat, and looked the embodiment, not of the grotesqueness, but of the geniality and good nature of Santa Claus as he came in out of the storm. My son Max was then a little boy, two or three years old. Mr. Longfellow showed the humanness of his nature and his love for children by coaxing the little fellow to him, and turning his timidity into the freest kind of familiarity. In spite of our endeavors to the contrary-for I have never believed my children so wonderful that everybody ought to love them-Mr. Longfellow insisted upon having out his frolic with the child. They played together as we talked, and the boy made free with hair, whiskers, and pocket at his will. So fine a time was he having that when Mr. Longfellow rose to go, you would have supposed he was about to part with his dearest friend. The foot of a long flight of stairs had been reached and he was about to go out upon the street, when Max rushed to the door and called out, “Mr. Longfellow! Mr. Longfellow! Come back, I want to kiss you again!" Whereupon he turned, came up the long flight of stairs, sat down on the top step, took the little fellow in his arms, and had the frolic and the fun all over again.

I saw the poet afterwards a good many times, but I love to think of the great man sitting on the stairs and stooping to the love and tenderness of a little child. It revealed the childlikeness of his own nature, and hinted the secret of the perennial freshness and youthfulness of his own heart.