get up in time so was suspended. But he returned, only to forget again, and to be again suspended.

At last

"This happened many times. the college professor sent him to Concord in disgrace. He had, however, been chosen to write the class poem. I have heard that he came to the class day exercises in a market wagon, and sat there with a crowd of jolly class-mates about him, while his poem was being read.

"Mr. Lowell took the law course at Harvard, then settled in Boston to practice. He did not care for law and after a year gave it up. He then came back to dear old Elmwood to live and to write. "Before he was twenty-two he pub

may be the little Mabel who asked, 'Father, who made it snow?'"

"Yes, mamma; we learned that poem at school and our teacher said that there were two others about his little girls."

Mamma went on, "I visited here once, and in his study, that chamber on the upper right hand side, I saw two pairs of baby shoes hanging over a picture. Mr. Lowell could easily look through the west window there to where his dear little ones slept in Mount Auburn."

"Mamma, aren't you going to take us there? We want to see Mr. Longfellow's grave, and where the little Lowell babies are sleeping."

And so mamma and the children wan

lished some poems.

Several of these

were written to a beautiful young girl whom he loved. Her name was Marie White and she also wrote beautiful poetry. They were married two years after the first poems were published, and he brought his bride to the old home where he was born. Their lives were very happy, but they had great sorrow, too, when their two dear little babies died."

"O yes, mamma; we know about that." "He wrote such a pretty poem about one lying in Mt. Auburn. Yes, there is Yes, there is the window where he stood watching the snow-flakes, and talked to his little daughter. That lady you see in the doorway

dered out of the elm-shaded street to Mt. Auburn, the children asking and mamma answering many questions about Mr. Lowell.

"Yes," mamma replied to Helen's question, Mr. and Mrs. Lowell went abroad for a year. The summer they spent in Switzerland, France, and England. But in the autumn they went to sunny Italy, hoping that Mrs. Lowell's health might improve, for she was not strong. They came home at the end of the year. Often during the winter which followed, Mr. Longfellow spent the long winter evenings with the Lowells. He once spoke of Mrs. Lowell as a beautiful flower. Mrs.

Lowell said the friendship of these two poets was perfect. They helped each other, criticised each other, and loved each other devotedly.

"Lowell once wrote a clever poem entitled 'A Fable for Critics,' in which he speaks of all the American poets. He made fun of some, and criticised all, but spoke with great tenderness and fondness of Longfellow. On Longfellow's birthday, February. 27, 1867, Lowell wrote a poem to him. Every verse shows how fond the younger poet was of the older

one.

"Now, mamma dear, please tell us more of Mrs. Lowell," said the little girls, as they walked up the wide, gravelly drive in Mt. Auburn.

"I was going to tell you that she too came to Mt. Auburn to sleep beside the babies one peaceful October day a year after their return from Europe. It was about her death and the birth of his own little child that Longfellow wrote "The Two Angels.'

OCTOBER.

"The sobered robin hunger-silent now,

Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The squirrel, on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists, with downward eye and

ear,

Then drops his nut, and, cheeping with a bound Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.

"The red oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, And with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, After the first betrayal of the frost,

Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; The chestnuts, lavish of their long hid gold, To the faint summer, beggared now and old, Peur back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye.

"The ash her purple drops forgivingly

And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the woods' edge creeps the skirting blaze

Of bushes low, as when on cloudy days Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush."

"An Indian Summer Reverie."

Not June, but October, Marguerite and Helen are again in Cambridge. They

have persuaded mamma to bring them there to school. To-day they pass the square and the college where Lowell taught so many years, on up the broad road until they stand under the Washington elm.

They know that Lowell once stood under these sacred boughs and read one of the grandest odes ever written. They have heard too how one of his dear friends, a great sculptor, came all the way from Rome, just to hear him read it. As they stood there reading the tablet, Marguerite and Helen felt, as they never had before, the grandeur of the poem. They had often read it at school, on Washington's birthday.

These words came to Marguerite as she walked slowly toward the square.

"When a deed is done for Freedom, through the

broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century burst full-blossomed on the thorny stem of time.

"Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light."

-The Present Crisis.

Many of Lowell's poems came to Helen and Marguerite that autumn. They read over and over again "An Indian Summer Reverie," and felt the poet's thrill as they gathered the maple leaves and looked over at the college buildings all marked in crimson and gold. They felt what a debt they owed him when studying their literature during the winter.

How they wished they could have heard his lectures given before his Harvard classes, after he took Mr. Longfellow's chair in 1857, he having studied two years in Germany to perfect himself for the work.

They had heard their mother speak of

the charm of his voice and wished they might also have had the privilege of hearing it.

They had heard another* say, "His whole personality had an instant charm for me; I could not keep my eyes from those beautiful eyes of his which had a certain starry serenity, and looked out so purely from under his white forehead, shadowed by auburn hair untouched with age; or from the smile that shaped the auburn beard, and gave the face in its form and color the Christ-look which Page's portrait has flattered in it. His voice had as great fascination for me as his face. The vibrant tenderness and the crisp clearness of the tones, the perfect modulation, the clear enunciation, the exquisite accent, the elect diction, I did not know enough then to know that these were the gifts, these were the graces, of one from whose tongue our rough English became music such as I should never hear from any other.

"In his speech there was nothing of our slip-shod American slovenliness, but a truly Italian conscience and an artistic sense of beauty in the instrument."

Marguerite and Helen had learned to appreciate this description by reading many, many times Lowell's finest descriptive passages. They followed him in fancy in all his foreign travels. Once when he rambled in Italy with William W. Story, the sculptor, and the girls enjoyed the trips with Leopold almost as much as they once had the Moosehead Hunt, which they had laughed over with some boy friends. Again when on the Mediterranean and in Spain. When the next autumn comes they hope to recognize the places grown familiar through "Italy" and "A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic" for they too are going abroad with mamma.

Just now they are busy with their his tory of the civil war. They have learned to go to Lowell for inspiration in every period of American history. What could they have found as a fitter introduction than "A Glance Behind the Curtain." Columbus assumed a new dignity when they had become familiar with Lowell's masterful poem.

Again how they laughed over "The Courtin" in the Biglow Papers and how *Wm. Dean Howells' "My First Visit to New England," in Harper's Magazine, June, 1894.

Never

Now the Civil war comes up. before had they appreciated Lincoln. Never before could they understand how it was possible for the North to feel as they did. But they can feel no ill of the man who wrote "Sir Launfal," "Under the Old Elm, "Beaver Brook," and the "Concord Ode." They study the question from his standpoint and then read with appreciation.

"Is true freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And with leathern hearts forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!

"They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three."

-Stanzas on Freedom.

Mr. Lincoln now stands forever in their minds in his true position-one of the two greatest Americans. They can now repeat with fervor:

"Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is fate;

But then to stand beside her
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,

Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid
earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.

Nothing of Europe here

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward
still,

Ere any names of serf and peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface

And thwart her genial will;

Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory, Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading naught of blame, New birth of our new soil, the first Ameri

can.

JUNE.

Another June day! Marguerite and Helen sail for Europe in a week. They are saying "goodbye" to old friends. Again, as years before, they pass down the quiet street and pause before Elmwood.

In fancy they see the poet come to the window to watch some of his garden acquaintances. They almost imagine they hear the notes of robins, and can see the sly birds stealing those delicious grapes. Their hearts respond to every joyous word.

They recall the day when mamma had told them of his childhood and his first marriage.

They have since learned that Mr. Lowell was married again, in 1857 to Miss Frances Dunlop of Portland, Maine. They

knew also in that same year Mr. Lowell became editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

Marguerite said, "Helen, what a pleasure it must have been to edit a great magazine with such contributors as Holmes, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, and all the other great writers of the period."

"How busy he was," replied Helen, "Writer, editor, teacher, lecturer, all those years until appointed minister to Spain and afterward to England. I always feel so glad he was appointed to such an honorable position by our government. No one ever more richly deserved distinction, and yet he honored America even more if possible than she did him.

"No foreign minister ever received more homage than he, and perhaps no American has ever been so loved by the English. Don't you recall the funny poem, 'The June Day is Ending?"" Marguerite and Helen, from an old childish habit, catch each other's hands and walk home in the twilight. For a while they are silent, each unconsciously repeating a poem about the silvery Charles as the moon rises over it.

"Flow on, dear river, not alone you flow

To outward sight and through your marshes

wind;

Fed from the mystic springs of long ago,

Your twin flows through my silent world of mind:

Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray!

Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow dim.

They are pondering over the lives of the two men who have made the river famous for all time.

At last Marguerite says: "Helen, how much they have helped others! How beautiful their lives were! What true friends! What noble patriots! How much we feel their influence to-day! How much they have been to us through all these happy years in Cambridge."

"And love lives on and hath a power to bless, When they who loved are hidden in the

grave."