an tell. The fact remains that he somehow, also, left his
moulding and trusted to his pen. To use his own words, he "set
resolutely to work to learn the only trade for which he seemed
fitted--that of literature." From that time to this, a half century, he
has clung to it. Never in his worst seasons did he stop to think how the
world treated him, or that he was entitled to special providences. He
accepted poverty or good-luck with an equal mind, content with the
reward of being a reader, a writer, and, above all, a poet. He managed
not to loaf, and yet to invite his soul--and his songs are evidence that
the invitation was accepted. If to labor is to pray, his industry has
been a religion, for I doubt if there has been a day in all these fifty
years when, unless disabled bodily, he has not worked at his trade.

We all know with what results. He has earned a manly living from the
first, and therewithal has steadily contributed a vital portion to the
current, and to the enduring, literature of his land and language.
There was one thing that characterized the somewhat isolated New York
group of young writers in his early prime--especially himself and his
nearest associates, such as Taylor and Boker, and, later, Aldrich and
Winter. They called themselves squires of poesy, in their romantic way,
but they had neither the arrogance nor the chances for a self-heralding,
more common in these chipper modern days. They seem to have followed
their art because they adored it, quite as much as for what it could do
for them.

Of Mr. Stoddard it may be said that there have been few important
literary names and enterprises, North or South, but he has "been of the
company." If he found friends in youth, he has abundantly repaid his
debt in helpful counsel to his juniors--among whom I am one of the
eldest and most grateful. But I cannot realize that thirty-seven years
of our close friendship have passed since I showed my first early work
to him, and he took me to a publisher. Just as I found him then, I find
him any evening now, in the same chair, in the same corner of the study,
"under the evening lamp." We still talk of the same themes; his jests
are as frequent as ever, but the black hair is silvered and the active
movements are less alert. I then had never known a mind so stored with
bookish lore, so intimate with the lives of rare poets gone by, yet to
what it then possessed he, with his wonderful memory, has been adding
ever since.