your seat in the Senate and arranged your artillery to bombard
Nebraska! We listen with deepest interest, but shall not hear the
report of your guns till to-morrow, you are so far off. If, after
all, the enemy prevails, it will be one dishonest victory more in
the history of the world. But the enemy will not prevail. A seeming
victory will be a real defeat."

Then, after the speech was read:--

"All this morning of my birthday, my dear Senator, I have devoted
to your speech on Nebraska, which came by the morning's mail. It is
very noble, very cogent, very eloquent, very complete. How any one
can get over it or under it or through it or round it, it is
impossible to imagine."

Then, after the cowardly and fiendish attack upon Sumner in the Senate
Chamber:--

"I have no words to write you about this savage atrocity; only
enough to express our sorrow and sympathy for yourself. We have
been in great distress. Owen came to tell us of this great feat of
arms of the 'Southern chivalry.' He was absolutely sobbing. I was
much relieved on seeing your despatch to your mother, and to hear
that George was going to you directly. A brave and noble speech you
made, never to die out of the memories of men."

Then, a day or two later:--

"I have just been reading again your speech. It is the greatest
voice on the greatest subject that has been uttered since we became
a nation. No matter for insults--we feel them with you; no matter
for wounds--we also bleed in them."

But in the days of which we are writing, all these stormy troublous
times were yet far in the future, and the world looked bright and
pleasant to these afterward saddened friends. The acquaintance with Miss
Appleton had been renewed after her return to Boston, and the poet was
by this time deeply devoted to her, and hopeful of one day winning her
for his own. He became something of a dandy in those days, and showed a
fondness for color in coats, waistcoats, and neckties; and the ladies
looked at him a little doubtfully, thinking perhaps, as they had done of
Paul Fleming, that "his gloves were a shade too light for a strictly
virtuous man." Six years passed after the first meeting with Miss
Appleton in Europe before Mr. Longfellow finally claimed her for his
bride. He had been a patient as well as an ardent lover, and was
rewarded in 1843 by the hand of her