Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/307

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

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��The title ' Ultima Thule ' proved significant, for it was the last work published under Longfellow's own eye. His brother well speaks of the eighteen poems as " containing the sweetness of ripened grain " ; they show that the fountain of youth was within him, and that in age the heart of the poet may " bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring." Among the poems is the one dedicated to the children of Cambridge, ' From my Arm-chair.' The chair was presented to him on his seventy- second birthday, and was made from the wood of the village blacksmith's chestnut tree. Seven hundred children contributed to its purchase, and he found it in his library when he went there on his birthday morning.

Longfellow kept no record of the amounts he was paid for his writings after 1850. For ' The Village Blacksmith,' ' Endymion,' and ' God's Acre ' he received fifteen dollars each ; for ' The Arsenal ' and ' Nuremberg ' fifty each. The Harpers paid a thousand dollars for ' Keramos.' In 1845 (the year of ' The Poets and Poetry of America ') he received 2,800 dollars. In the life of Whittier by Linton it is stated that both Longfellow and Lowell received 1,OOOZ. a year each from their publishers.

I should have liked to be able to give some idea as to the sales of Longfellow's works in England, but, owing, to the many publishers who have issued them, I have found this to be im- possible. Mr. Sonnenschein, of Routledge & Sons, who were the authorized publishers, informs me that the various editions reached many hundred thousand copies, and even at the present time the sale of their " Cambridge Edition " amounts to several thousand copies annually. Their "Riverside Edition" (1886), so carefully edited by Mr. H. E. Scudder, to which I have been greatly indebted in making these notes, has been out of print for many years, and will not be reprinted. This is the most complete that has been published, and no works unknown at that time have been since discovered. It is in eleven volumes (two prose, six verse, and three devoted to the translation of Dante), and contains many portraits.

Longfellow's birthday in 1880 was made the subject of a very interesting celebration in the public schools of Cincinnati, in which fifteen thousand scholars took part. The idea originated with Mr. John B. Peaselee, and was part of a larger plan to introduce into the schools a series of celebrations of authors' birthdays in order to create and elevate a taste for literature in the young. The idea is such a good one that it might be carried out in our own schools.

Visitors to Craigie House on the 22nd of September, 1881, saw over the door the American flag half furled and draped in mourning for President Garfield, who had died two days previously. On receiving the news Longfellow wrote to his friend Greene :

��1907, Apr. 13.

' From my Arm-chair.'

��Payment for poems.

��Sales in England.

��Longfellow's

birthday

celebrated

by children.

��Death of Garfield.

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