Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/274

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vn MARCH 23, 1007.

rojo," which agrees with Mellado's state- ment that the device of the Tusin was " sobre un manto encarnado, una cruz liana de verde." The cross of the Order of Our Lady of Montesa is depicted in H. Schulze's large work on ' Military Orders,' and is of the same shape as the red cross in the arms of Switzerland.

Another modern author, A. M. Perrot in his ' Ordres de Chevalerie ' (Paris, 1820), repeats the statement that the cross of the Order of the Tusin was green, and gives an illustration of it ; but I have been un- able to verify his description of the colour and shape of the device from any contem- porary source.

With regard to the name of the order, in modern Bohemian a towel is called rutshnik I spell the word phonetically to avoid the use of Slavonic characters which is similar to the German Handtuch, i.e., a " hand-cloth " ; but I am open to correction.

The Order of the Tusin if that is the correct name is, as will be seen, not a mythical one, as W. Maigne avers, but, on the other hand, very little is known about it. " We do not know when and by whom it was founded," writes Biedenfeld ; "we do not know its rules ; the origin and meaning of its name are also unknown ; but the exist- ence of the order in past times can be proved by documentary evidence." Unfortunately he gives no reference to the documents in question. L. L. K.

LONGFELLOW.

(See ante, p. 201.)

fellow was still under the shadow of a great grief ; and to understand it aright it is requisite to remember this. In September, 1831, he was married to Mary Storer Potter. Her character and person are described as being alike lovely : she had dark hair, with eyes of deep blue which lighted a counten- ance " singularly attractive with the ex- pression of a gentle and affectionate disposi- tion." Husband and wife were devoted to each other ; never was a home more happy than theirs. But the sweet companionship was to last only four brief years. From Rotterdam, on the 28th of November, 1835, Longfellow wrote to his father that his wife " had again fallen ill, and that his anxiety was very great." On the following day she died, " closing her life by a still more peaceful death ; and though called away when life was brightest, yet going without a murmur and in perfect willingness to the
 * HYPERION ' was written while Long-

bosom of her God." In the lonely hours which followed, the bereaved husband would repeat the hymns which had soothed her last hours and dwell upon her promise,. " I will be with you and watch over you." Less than a month after her death another sorrow came to him by the death of his brother-in-law and dearest friend, George W. Pierce, of whom he wrote, after twenty years had passed, " I have never ceased to feel that in his death something was taken from my life which could never be restored." His poem ' The Footsteps of Angels ' is consecrated to the memories of his wife and his friend, and the remembrance that they " had lived and died " consoled him in his loneliness.

It is strange now to remember how near we were to losing Longfellow as a poet. Shortly before his return home from his first visit to Europe he wrote to his father : " My poetic career is finished. Since I left America I have hardly put two lines together " ; and writing to his friend George W. Greene from Bowdoin College on the 27th of June, 1830, he said :

"lam proud to have your favorable opinion of those little poetic attempts of mine which date so- many years back. I had long ceased to attach any kind of value to them, and, indeed, to think of

them If I ever publish a volume, it will be

many years first."

It was not until the autumn of 1839 that his first volume of original poems appeared, ' The Voices of the Night.' Its publication was a sudden thought, coming to him in the exhilaration of his busy life. In the volume he included some of his poems written before he was nineteen. Its success was signal, and in three weeks the publisher had only fifty copies left out of nine hundred ; and by July, 1846, between eleven and twelve thousand copies had been sold.

On the 19th of December, 1841, ' Ballads and other Poems ' appeared. To most of these a history was attached. The skeleton in armour really exists, and was seen by the poet, who " supposed it to be the remains of one of the old Northern sea-rovers who came to America in the tenth century." ' The Village Blacksmith ' was in praise of the first Stephen Longfellow, who by the early death of his father was left to care for himself, and became a blacksmith ; but he sent his son to Harvard. The ballad of the schooner Hesperus occurred to Longfellow as he sat with his pipe by the fire at midnight on the 30th of December, 1839. He went to bed, but could not sleep, and got up at three to finish the poem; he was pleased