preserved dates from this period. It is a note of acknowledgment to James T. Fields for a copy of Longfellow's "Hiawatha" sent him for review. With its engaging touch of nineteen-year old dignity it is of sufficient interest to be printed here: NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 1855. MY DEAR SIR, I have just given "The Song of Hiawatha" a second reading, and have looked again at the pencilled fly-leaf, where you so kindly and delicately turned a book that would have been bought into a gift of friendship. You will add to the favor by accepting my thanks. I send you a copy of the "Evening Mirror," containing a meagre notice of the book, which I penned after a hasty perusal. Though it may show want of critical acumen, it also shows that Mr. Longfellow and his books are very dear to your Friend and Servant, THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. How sincere was his affection for Longfellow and his poetry may also be seen in this passage from a fervid youthful letter written about the same time to Mr. Winter: "You speak warmly in praise of your poet friend. I join you with my heart, in every word. I think this world must be lovelier in God's eye for holding such men as Longfellow. . . . I will tell you why I like him so much, and how I came to write verse. "One evening, more than five years ago, I was sitting on the doorstep of 'the old house where I was born' with as heavy a heart as a child ever had. A very dear friend had been borne over that threshold a while before, and, as I watched the shadows of the trees opposite grow deeper, I longed for her. I missed a hand that used to touch my hair so gently!. "I was not, in those days, fond of reading poetry, though I feasted on prose. By chance a volume of poems was in my hand. It was the 'Voices of the Night.' I opened it at ‘The Footsteps of Angels.' Never before did I feel such a gush of emotion. The poem spoke to me like a human voice; and from that time I loved Longfellow, and I wrote poetry such as it is." Just at the end of 1855 an ill wind for certain of his contemporaries blew our young poet a notable piece of luck. The "Evening Mirror" was but a minor interest of its owners; the mainstay of their fortunes was the "Home Journal," then at the height of its prestige, with Willis as editor, and a young Englishman, James Parton, as subeditor. Between the twain displeasures arose. There had appeared one day in the office Willis's sister Sarah, better known as "Fanny Fern," the author of "Fern Leaves" and other popular works in the sentimental kind; she had lately divorced her second husband and was solicitous of serializing in the "Home Journal” a novel, just finished, with "the heart-throb" in it. Willis read it, but, editorial judgment prevailing over fraternal affection, declined to give it a place in his pages. Parton, on the other hand, read it, and roundly accused his chief of an error in judgment. So far did he carry his championship that, despite the lady's somewhat disconcerting matrimonial record and her eleven years' seniority, he contracted an engagement of marriage with her, which was speedily fulfilled. The result was that he lost his post on the "Home Journal," whether by free or forced resignation does not appear, and, after an interregnum of a few months, the young poet-reviewer of the "Evening Mirror" was taken on in his stead. Willis at this time was beginning to feel the approach of the malady that eventually caused his death, and spent much time away from the office, at Idlewild, his countryplace on the Hudson, leaving Aldrich to shape the more immediate destinies of the paper. We get in the reminiscences of those years some charming pictures of the goldenhaired boy of twenty sitting in state in the august editorial chair, with a dignity no doubt enhanced by the fact that he also occupied the post of "literary adviser" to the kaleidoscopic publishing firm of Derby & Jackson. One of his favorite reminiscences was of an occasion during one of Willis's absences when, seated at his desk, he was composing with due deliberation an editorial which seemed to him at the time likely to arrest the ruinous course of national events. His cogitations were rudely disturbed by a loud stranger, who, after purchasing from an underling some back numbers of the paper, turned to the absorbed editor with, "Say, bub, get me a piece of string, will you?" It was here that he had his first taste of hard work, as may be seen by this paragraph from an early letter: "I had no idea of what work is till I became 'sub.' I have found that reading proof and writing articles on uninteresting subjects, 'at sight,' is no joke. The cry for 'more copy' rings through my ears in dreams, and hosts of little phantom printer's devils walk over my body all night and prick me with sharp-pointed types. Last evening I fell asleep in my armchair and dreamed that they were about to put me 'to press,' as I used to crush flies between the leaves of my speller, in schoolboy days." His position with the "Home Journal," however, carried many compensating advantages. It seems in particular to have enlarged his circle, and placed him on terms of comradeship with Bayard Taylor, Stoddard, and the rest. This warm little note to Taylor is the first in the long series recording what was perhaps the closest of his early friendships: Derby & Jackson's, MY DEAR TAYLOR, -Stoddard has given me a chance to send you a note in his letter, but has allowed me so little time to prepare one, that I must limit myself to wishing you good health, propitious gales, cornucopias of happiness, and everything else that a fine Poet deserves! I most sincerely envy you your tête-à-tête with Barry Cornwall. I should like to handle some of those unpublished MSS. If you meet Tennyson and Arnold, please send Stoddard or me a long description of them. I should be happy to get a line from you—yes, a poetical one. May God bless you, Taylor. Your friend, T. B. ALDRICH. Sub-editorial labors seemed for a time likely to impede his progress in poetry. In September, 1856, he wrote to Fields: "Do you remember Parsons' traveller, who, stopping at an inn, had "Little to eat and very much to pay,' or something of the sort? I occupy a similar position. The 'Home Journal's' motto is: "Pretty good pay BUT very much to do!' I have turned from a 'literary Bohemian' (as Mrs. Stoddard calls me) to that mythical and underrated individual called 'a sub.' I am 'glad of this' for a good many reasons, one of which is I can do more for the books which you so considerately send me than hitherto. "But alas for Poetry! "Pegasus refuses to trot in editorial harness, pointblank... "From some 50 poems which I have written since the (cow) 'Bells' was published, I have selected 25 which I think will pass critical muster — 15 of which are better, to my taste, than the 'Pastoral Hymn.' Here the proposition comes in: I propose, in a month or so, to copy |