Art by Linda Parker
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February's Book Review Continued
 February's Book ReviewProse and Poetry, The Firelight Book
Copyright, 1946 by The L.W. Singer Company
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America, 6812.5
Edited By Barbara Henderson, Marion T. Garretson
Frederick H. Weber
Illustrated by Guy Brown Wiser
Choral Reading By, Bess L. Crofoot and Margaret T. Palen
As you have already learned, when Longfellow was only
fifteen, he was ready for college. With his older brother
Stephen he attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick.
Later he went to Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Longfellow's father was a lawyer and would have liked
Henry to become a lawyer too. But Henry had no liking
for the law. Ever since he had seen his first poem in
print he had wanted to become a good poet. His father
agreed and once again Henry was deep in the study of
books. After he completed his studies in America, he
went to Europe where he learned to speak other
languages very easily. Before he was twenty-one years
old, he could speak well in German, French, Spanish,
Swedish, Finnish, and Italian. Once he was mistaken
for an Italian because he spoke the language so well.
When Longfellow returned to America he became a
teacher of languages in Bowdoin College. Five years later
he went to teach in Harvard College. He was very happy
there. The college boys at Harvard liked Longfellow and
he liked them. He was young. He helped the boys with
their work. Sometimes he helped them with money when
they lacked funds. He was never too busy to make
someone happy.
When he went to Cambridge to begin his teaching at
Harvard, Longfellow lived in the same house in which
George Washington had stayed when he took command
of the American army in the Revolutionary War. He even
had the same room where the great general had slept
fifty years before. This house was Craigie House.
"Craigie House," Longfellow once said, "is the most
desirable spot in the world. How pleasant are the
evening lights of home as one comes in from the dark
and rain!" Here he lived and wrote for many years.
Here too his family of five children grew up. He called
them his "Quintet." The oldest son, Charles, named
for the poet's old friend, Charles Sumner, was a
lieutenant in the army of the Potomac. Ernest, the other
son, became an artist and painted an excellent picture
of his father.
The other children were the three daughters, "grave
Alice and laughing Allegra and Edith with golden hair,"
whom we shall read about in " the Children's Hour."
No one could pay a visit to Longfellow without seeing
the children, for they were constantly running in and
out of his study, slipping an arm around his neck to
whisper some secret to him, or begging him to come
out and share their fun. When the snow came he built
snow houses with them and drew them on their sleds
over the snow and ice. In the summer he put up tents
for them and feasted with them in the summerhouse.
Frequently he took them on trips; sometimes to the
Navy Yard to see a boat launched, or to Boston to the
museum.
To amuse the boys on rainy days during vacation he
drew pictures and made boats. Books were a chief
delight in the Longfellow home. Long happy evenings
were spent when the father read aloud. All the time
the poet was writing "Hiawatha," he was reading
Indian stories to his boys. As the children grew older
they began to have their boy and girl friends in for
supper with music and dancing. Longfellow thought
these parties very charming and was delighted to put
on his dress coat with a rose in his buttonhole and
enjoy the evenings with them.
Visits from little children always delighted the poet.
He would go out to meet them, lift them tenderly out of
the carriages, and carry them into the house.
One little boy who came to see Longfellow looked over
his books to see if he had Jack the Giant Killer. When
the poet had to confess that he did not have it, his
young visitor felt sorry for him. The next day again came
the little friend. This time he had two cents tightly
clasped in his fat fist to help buy the book. You can
imagine how amused and delighted Longfellow was!
As you remember, Longfellow began to write poems
when he was thirteen and he continued to write them all
during his life. He wrote many, many poems for he lived
to be seventy-five years old. Because so many children
knew and loved him as their friend he was called " The
Children's Poet." On his seventy-second birthday the
children of Cambridge presented Mr. Longfellow with a
beautiful chair made from the wood of a chestnut tree.
It was a big black chair with exquisitely carved arms. In
his "thank-you" poem to the children, Longfellow wrote,
"Am I a king to sit on this ebony throne?" When you read
the poem, "The Village Blacksmith," you will learn more
about "the spreading chestnut tree."
Longfellow died in 1882. He has never been forgotten.
The whole world loves and honors him. People are
constantly making visits to the house where he was born
in Portland, to his old boyhood home in the same city, and
to Craigie House in Cambridge where he lived and wrote
for so many years...........
The Children's Hour
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Chorus:
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.
High:
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
Low:
From my study I see in the lamplight
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
High:
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
Low:
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
High:
They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
Low:
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
High:
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
Chorus:
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
This was only a sampling of wonderful reading within
this old book! This Book is filled with poems,
illustrations, and history!
It has also been wrote in on the inside front and inside
back coverings. This was used as an 6th grade reader
according to the writings in the cover. It has a note
written to another student, and the names in a list
( I am assuming which is all the girls of the class as the
list title is Girls. It is dated inside
April 5,1948 Windrock, Tenn.
I hope you enjoyed this months book review as much
as I have enjoyed putting it our page for you.
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