the same line of thought, I inquired why he named a German
story "Hyperion," with no apparent reason from classical associations,
he pertinently enough answered me by pronouncing the name _huper-iown_,
("going higher"), the story being a tale of progress in human character.

And now to leap over twenty-five years, at which interval I paid my
second visit to America in 1876, when again I had the privilege of being
Longfellow's guest in the same historic abode where Washington had once
his headquarters. My kind-hearted host insisted on my occupying the same
arm-chair I had before, and which since, he said, had been the throne of
Dickens and Thackeray, and every book-celebrity that had visited
Cambridge. Among invited guests unable to come was Oliver Wendell
Holmes, but I soon after made up for this loss by having a long talk
with that shrewd and amusing writer at Boston; and once more, alas! no
Lowell, whom I missed again, though I had waited for him that quarter of
a century! Longfellow, out of compliment (so he kindly said) to his
English guest, had specially provided pheasants and Stilton cheese,
among such more Transatlantic delicacies as wild venison (from Tupper
Lake, in the Adirondacks), and canvas-back ducks from Baltimore; to say
less of terrapin soup, whereof the unhatched eggs of tortoises are the
_bonne-bouche_! After dinner he gave me an apple from Beaupre,
Evangeline's farm, the pips whereof I sent to Albury for planting.
Longfellow was much interested to hear that my collateral ancestor had
married Martha, the heiress of "the Vineyard" in Rhode Island. Mr.
Fields, on this festive occasion, recited some of Mark Twain's humour,
and I had to give sundry of my American ballads, and the host himself
his exquisite "Psalm of Life;" my "Venus," in reply to his "Mars,"
having appeared, and been praised by him, some years before. And this
meagre record is all I care, or have space, to give of that feast of
reason and flow of soul.

With _Charles Kingsley_, however seldom we met, I had strong sympathy in
many ways, as a man of men, to be loved and admired; but chiefly we
could feel for each other in the matter of stammering,--a sort of
affliction not sufficiently appreciated. Kingsley conquered his
infirmity, as I did mine, and rose to frequent eloquence in his public
ministrations: privately his speech would often fail him, and was his
"thorn in the flesh" to the end.

I remember a most pleasant day spent with him