ds? Then you are a real Dutchman. Well! Well!" he said,
laying down his pen. "Can you read Dutch?"

The boy said he could.

"Then," said the poet, "you are just the boy I am looking for." And
going to a bookcase behind him he brought out a book, and handing it to
the boy, he said, his eyes laughing: "Can you read that?"

It was an edition of Longfellow's poems in Dutch.

"Yes, indeed," said Edward. "These are your poems in Dutch."

"That's right," he said. "Now, this is delightful. I am so glad you
came. I received this book last week, and although I have been in the
Netherlands, I cannot speak or read Dutch. I wonder whether you would
read a poem to me and let me hear how it sounds."

So Edward took "The Old Clock on the Stairs," and read it to him.

The poet's face beamed with delight. "That's beautiful," he said, and
then quickly added: "I mean the language, not the poem."

"Now," he went on, "I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll strike a bargain.
We Yankees are great for bargains, you know. If you will read me 'The
Village Blacksmith' you can sit in that chair there made out of the wood
of the old spreading chestnut-tree, and I'll take you out and show you
where the old shop stood. Is that a bargain?"

Edward assured him it was. He sat in the chair of wood and leather, and
read to the poet several of his own poems in a language in which, when
he wrote them, he never dreamed they would ever be printed. He was very
quiet. Finally he said: "It seems so odd, so very odd, to hear something
you know so well sound so strange."

"It's a great compliment, though, isn't it, sir?" asked the boy.

"Ye-es," said the poet slowly. "Yes, yes," he added quickly. "It is, my
boy, a very great compliment."

"Ah," he said, rousing himself, as a maid appeared, "that means
luncheon, or rather," he added, "it means dinner, for we have dinner in
the old New England fashion, in the middle of the day. I am all alone
to-day, and you must keep me company; will you? Then afterward we'll go
and take a walk, and I'll show you Cambridge. It is such a beautiful old
town, even more beautiful, I sometimes think, when the leaves are off
the trees.

"Come," he said, "I'll take you up-stairs, and you can wash your hands
in the room where George Washington slept. And comb your hair, too, if
you want to," he added; "only it isn't the same comb that he used."

To the boyish mind it was an historic breaking of bread, that midday
meal with Longf