to the eye falling through the air. One so seldom finds such sobriety and purity of composition. I want more and more forever of just such gems of art. I hope you are an inexhaustible fountain or mine of such jewels. I quite lost my sense of the proprieties of place when I read this Legend and exclaimed aloud in the Saloon of the Station, "Oh, how perfect, how beautiful!" I suppose the few women sitting round thought I was gently insane. I do not wonder at Mr. Hawthorne's demanding the rest after he had read a portion. I do not wonder that some one had a sense of poetical justice keen enough to print it in this fair generous style. If I abounded in means, I would bind it in purple velvet edged with diamonds and gild the leaves with solid gold. I meant to be moderate in my acknowledgments, but it is hard to repress my natural ardor when you provoke me so. Mr. Hawthorne endeavored to discipline my style of expression into his own statuesque and immaculate beauty; but the scarlet, blue, and gold of the painter will, after all, flame and glow on great occasions over the white marble purity. I took this tiny sheet so as not to multiply words, but really, dear Mr. Aldrich, I thank Heaven for gifting you with this most ethereal delicacy of genius, for all our sakes. Very truly yours,

SOPHIA HAWTHORNE.

Despite the pleasantness of the life at 55 Hancock Street, the Aldriches were from the first looking about for a still more homelike shelter. Finally, in December, 1866,

Aldrich purchased the quaint little house at 84 Pinckney Street, two thirds of the way down the hill towards the bay, where the lazy Charles rests after its circuitous course through the Cambridge marshes, and gave it to Mrs. Aldrich for his remembrance on the second Christmas of their life together. They decorated and furnished it at their leisure during the winter, and settled there in the spring of 1867.

Of the characteristic charm of this their first home there are many records. The compact little house, known to their friends as "Mrs. Aldrich's work-box," soon became celebrated as the happy home of a happy poet. Not the least interesting feature of it to the many callers was "Little Miss," the seven-year-old daughter of the cook, who in a long brown dress and white apron performed the office of handmaiden at door and table. A vivid picture of "Little Miss" and the household that she primly served is contained in a letter written by a visitor in the house at the Aldriches' first Thanksgiving there. In its pleasant gossipy flow it is like a living voice from the mists of forty years ago. The climax of the story comes in these paragraphs:

". . . I went over for Julia to come and dine, but she had to go as usual to her grandmother's. However, they came and looked at the table, and then over the house, which looked like an abode for fairies in its fresh flowers and fall leaves, silver, and soft coal fires.

"We saw holy Dr. Bartol pass, and opening the window

brought him in, all dripping as he was, to see how lovely a Thanksgiving dining-room was prepared. He kissed us all at parting, and as soon as he and the girls had left Mr. Fields drove up, and in a moment said, 'I am going for Dickens; he must see this!' So off he went, and in a few moments returned with the lion of the season, dressed for a dinner given to him at Mr. Longfellow's. We went all over the house, and Mr. Dickens said, 'I want to see Lizzie; I know all about her.' So L-came down, and gave the mite a decanter of wine and some preserved fruit, which she brought up to the library, and in her old way lisped out to him, 'would he plethe to take some wine and fruit?' Her manner made him shout. He has since declared himself delighted with all the people in the house, and everything about it."

It was in the dining-room of this same little house that Longfellow first conceived "The Hanging of the Crane." The story has been told by Aldrich himself and is printed in the notes to the Cambridge edition of Longfellow's Poems:

"One morning in the spring of 1867 Mr. Longfellow came to the little home in Pinckney Street, where we had set up housekeeping in the light of our honeymoon. As we lingered a moment at the dining-room door, Mr. Longfellow turning to me said, 'Ah, Mr. Aldrich, your small round table will not always be closed. By and by you will find new young faces clustering about it; as years go on, leaf after leaf will be added until the time comes when the

young guests will take flight, one by one, to build nests of their own elsewhere. Gradually the long table will shrink to a circle again, leaving two old people sitting there alone together. This is the story of life, the sweet and pathetic poem of the fireside. Make an idyl of it. I give the idea to you.' Several months afterward I received a note from Mr. Longfellow in which he expressed a desire to use this motif in case I had done nothing in the matter. The theme was one peculiarly adapted to his sympathetic handling, and out of it grew 'The Hanging of the Crane.'"

Aldrich's own happiness in his home, and his characteristic impulses of friendly hospitality, are expressed in the following letter to Mr. Stedman, written just after the Thanksgiving festivity described above: —

MY DEAR STEDMAN,

You were very good to send me the handsome book. I think there is rare musical music in the verses you mentioned, and several of the little poems in nutshells, the sonnets, have pleased me greatly. It must be pleasant for you to know for "truly, truly," as children say, that you are indebted to your mother for those mysterious impulses which have made you a Poet. . . .

When you come to Boston, if you put up at the Parker House while the Aldrich House is in existence, it will be because you are no friend of the proprietor of the latter hotel. I want you to see what an odd little cocked-hat home I have, what a pleasant life I lead in it, and what an astonishing housekeeper presides over my ménage. I would