r Longfellow remained as constant to his
tradespeople as to any other friends. He rather liked to bring his
proofs back to the printer himself, and we often found ourselves
together at the University Press, where _The Atlantic Monthly_ used to
be printed. But outside of his own house Longfellow seemed to want a
fit atmosphere, and I love best to think of him in his study, where he
wrought at his lovely art with a serenity expressed in his smooth,
regular, and scrupulously perfect handwriting. It was quite vertical,
and rounded, with a slope neither to the right nor left, and at the
time I knew him first, he was fond of using a soft pencil on printing
paper, though commonly he wrote with a quill. Each letter was distinct
in shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an
inch. I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, but
whether they were the first drafts or not I cannot say; very likely
not. Towards the last he no longer sent the poems to the magazines in
his own hand, but they were always signed in autograph.

"I once asked him if he were not a great deal interrupted, and he
said, with a faint sigh, Not more than was good for him, he fancied;
if it were not for the interruptions, he might overwork. He was not a
friend to stated exercise, I believe, nor fond of walking, as Lowell
was; he had not, indeed, the childish associations of the younger poet
with the Cambridge neighborhoods; and I never saw him walking for
pleasure except on the east veranda of his house, though I was told he
loved walking in his youth. In this and in some other things
Longfellow was more European than American, more Latin than Saxon. He
once said quaintly that one got a great deal of exercise in putting on
and off one's overcoat and overshoes....

"He was patient, as I said of all things, and gentle beyond all mere
gentlemanliness. But it would have been a great mistake to mistake his
mildness for softness. It was most manly and firm, and of course, it
was braced with the New England conscience he was born to. If he did
not find it well to assert himself, he was prompt in behalf of his
friends, and one of the fine things told of him was his resenting some
things said of Sumner at a dinner in Boston during the old pro-slavery
times; he said to the gentlemen present that Sumner was his friend,
and he must leave their company if they continued to assail him.

"But he spoke almost as rarely of his friends as of