""A few can touch the magic string."
"Then I"ll write those four lines in this volume." And he did.
"A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them,-- Alas for those who never sing, But die with all their music in them!"
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
As each little volume went under the poet"s pen Edward said, as his heart swelled in grat.i.tude:
"Doctor Holmes, you are a man of the rarest sort to be so good to a boy."
The pen stopped, the poet looked out on the Charles a moment, and then, turning to the boy with a little moisture in his eye, he said:
"No, my boy, I am not; but it does an old man"s heart good to hear you say it. It means much to those on the down-hill side to be well thought of by the young who are coming up."
As he wiped his gold pen, with its swan-quill holder, and laid it down, he said:
"That"s the pen with which I wrote "Elsie Venner" and the "Autocrat"
papers. I try to take care of it."
"You say you are going from me over to see Longfellow?" he continued, as he reached out once more for the pen. "Well, then, would you mind if I gave you a letter for him? I have something to send him."
Sly but kindly old gentleman! The "something" he had to send Longfellow was Edward himself, although the boy did not see through the subterfuge at that time.
"And now, if you are going, I"ll walk along with you if you don"t mind, for I"m going down to Park Street to thank my publishers for these little books, and that lies along your way to the Cambridge car."
As the two walked along Beacon Street, Doctor Holmes pointed out the residences where lived people of interest, and when they reached the Public Garden he said:
"You must come over in the spring some time, and see the tulips and croci and hyacinths here. They are so beautiful.
"Now, here is your car," he said as he hailed a coming horse-car.
"Before you go back you must come and see me and tell me all the people you have seen, will you? I should like to hear about them. I may not have more books coming in, but I might have a very good-looking photograph of a very old-looking little man," he said as his eyes twinkled. "Give my love to Longfellow when you see him, and don"t forget to give him my letter, you know. It is about a very important matter."
And when the boy had ridden a mile or so with his fare in his hand he held it out to the conductor, who grinned and said:
"That"s all right. Doctor Holmes paid me your fare, and I"m going to keep that nickel if I lose my job for it."
CHAPTER V
GOING TO THE THEATRE WITH LONGFELLOW
When Edward Bok stood before the home of Longfellow, he realized that he was to see the man around whose head the boy"s youthful reading had cast a sort of halo. And when he saw the head itself he had a feeling that he could see the halo. No kindlier pair of eyes ever looked at a boy, as, with a smile, "the white Mr. Longfellow," as Mr. Howells had called him, held out his hand.
"I am very glad to see you, my boy," were his first words, and with them he won the boy. Edward smiled back at the poet, and immediately the two were friends.
"I have been taking a walk this beautiful morning," he said next, "and am a little late getting at my mail. Suppose you come in and sit at my desk with me, and we will see what the postman has brought. He brings me so many good things, you know."
"Now, here is a little girl," he said, as he sat down at the desk with the boy beside him, "who wants my autograph and a "sentiment." What sentiment, I wonder, shall I send her?"
"Why not send her "Let us, then, be up and doing"?" suggested the boy.
"That"s what I should like if I were she."
"Should you, indeed?" said Longfellow. "That is a good suggestion.
Now, suppose you recite it off to me, so that I shall not have to look it up in my books, and I will write as you recite. But slowly; you, know I am an old man, and write slowly."
Edward thought it strange that Longfellow himself should not know his own great words without looking them up. But he recited the four lines, so familiar to every schoolboy, and when the poet had finished writing them, he said:
"Good! I see you have a memory. Now, suppose I copy these lines once more for the little girl, and give you this copy? Then you can say, you know, that you dictated my own poetry to me."
Of course Edward was delighted, and Longfellow gave him the sheet on which he had written:
Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart, for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
Then, as the fine head bent down to copy the lines once more, Edward ventured to say to him;
"I should think it would keep you busy if you did this for every one who asked you."
"Well," said the poet, "you see, I am not so busy a man as I was some years ago, and I shouldn"t like to disappoint a little girl, should you?"
As he took up his letters again, he discovered five more requests for his autograph. At each one he reached into a drawer in his desk, took a card, and wrote his name on it.
"There are a good many of these every day," said Longfellow, "but I always like to do this little favor. It is so little to do, to write your name on a card; and if I didn"t do it some boy or girl might be looking, day by day, for the postman and be disappointed. I only wish I could write my name better for them. You see how I break my letters?
That"s because I never took pains with my writing when I was a boy. I don"t think I should get a high mark for penmanship if I were at school, do you?"
"I see you get letters from Europe," said the boy, as Longfellow opened an envelope with a foreign stamp on it.
"Yes, from all over the world," said the poet. Then, looking at the boy quickly, he said: "Do you collect postage-stamps?"
Edward said he did.
"Well, I have some right here, then;" and going to a drawer in a desk he took out a bundle of letters, and cut out the postage-stamps and gave them to the boy.
"There"s one from the Netherlands. There"s where I was born," Edward ventured to say.
"In the Netherlands? Then you are a real Dutchman. Well! Well!" he said, laying down his pen. "Can you read Dutch?"
The boy said he could.
"Then," said the poet, "you are just the boy I am looking for." And going to a bookcase behind him he brought out a book, and handing it to the boy, he said, his eyes laughing: "Can you read that?"
"Yes, indeed," said Edward. "These are your poems in Dutch."
"That"s right," he said. "Now, this is delightful. I am so glad you came. I received this book last week, and although I have been in the Netherlands, I cannot speak or read Dutch. I wonder whether you would read a poem to me and let me hear how it sounds."
So Edward took "The Old Clock on the Stairs," and read it to him.