ed upon Taylor, who then lived in
Murray Street, a few steps from Broadway. Charles Fenno Hoffman, who
occupied rooms in the same building, was then beginning to show signs
of the mental breakdown which was to cloud the last thirty-four years
of his life. But Hoffman was prosperous and occupied luxurious
quarters on the ground floor, while Taylor, despite the popularity of
his book, led a life of hard work and struggle. He was ill paid for
his services on the _Tribune_, as Greeley did not believe in high
salaries, and he lived up four flights of stairs in a sort of
two-roomed attic. There Stoddard went almost every Saturday after his
labors at the iron foundry, and there the friendship strengthened week
by week; there Taylor taught Stoddard to smoke; there they discussed
books and writers, and there wrote poetry together. There Taylor wrote
_Kubleh_ and _Ariel in the Cloven Pine_, and, too, the song that won
for him a prize when Barnum invited the entire country to a
competition in writing a song for Jenny Lind. Taylor was visited by a
great many friends, and with them the youthful Stoddard became
acquainted. Sometimes to the house in Murray Street came Rufus W.
Griswold, author of _Poets and Poetry of America_, _Prose Writers of
America_, and kindred works. He had been one of Taylor's early
advisers. The diplomatist and playwright, George H. Boker, often made
one of the party at this time, when his tragedy, _Calaynos_, was being
acted with great success at Sadlers's Wells Theatre in England.
Another visitor was Richard Kimball, the lawyer-author, then
enthusiastically putting the finishing touches to _St. Leger_.

These days of changing fortunes were the most romantic of Taylor's
career. Many other places in the city are associated with him, one a
house near Washington Square, where he lived for some years and wrote
among other things the _Poems of the Orient_. His last city home was
at 142 East Eighteenth Street. There he wrote _Deukalion_, and from
there he started out, after being dined and feted, on his mission as
United States Minister to Germany. In England he met Carlyle. In Paris
he had a "queer midnight supper" with Victor Hugo. In Germany, though
he was then quite an ill man, he threw himself into official business
with an energy that his constitution, worn by years of persistent hard
work, would not warrant. Before the end of the year, the friends in
America who had wished him farewell in April, congratulati