Chapter IV: Introduction (3)

In the following year (1831) the routine of his life at Brunswick was interrupted by his marriage with Mary Storer Potter, one of the most beautiful and generally liked young women of Portland. Her education and tastes were such that they enabled her to share heartily her husband's interests, and this sympathetic association in the work to which he was devoted seemed to fill the measure of the young professor's happiness.

During the years spent in teaching at Bowdoin the career of Henry Longfellow as a professional writer had run parallel with that of teaching. In response to an invitation he had contributed various prose articles to the _North American Review_ had written some poetry, and by 1835 had completed his _Outre-Mer_, a collection of prose sketches of his travels.

Not long before the publication of this work the author had received a most desirable offer of the Smith professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard University, with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year. In accepting the position the young man decided upon a trip abroad for the purpose of further study. Accordingly, with his wife he set sail for Hamburg in June, 1835. They stayed for a short time in London, where they met Carlyle, traveled then to Stockholm and Copenhagen, where the summer was passed in learning the Swedish and Danish languages, and in October reached Amsterdam. Here Mrs. Longfellow fell ill, and while she was recovering her husband undertook the study of Dutch. In Rotterdam Mrs. Longfellow again became ill, and died in that city on October 29. The loss fell so heavily upon Longfellow that he could not speak nor write of it. However, he disciplined himself to work and spent several months at Heidelberg, gaining a fuller knowledge of the German language and literature. In this city he met for the first time the poet Bryant. After traveling in Switzerland he returned to America late in 1836.

At the close of the same year he established himself at Cambridge, and there began a career of large usefulness and success at Harvard University. At the same time he wrote extensively both prose and verse, and by the time of his third visit to Europe, in 1842, had produced the prose romance _Hyperion_ as well as the volumes of verse entitled _Voices of the Night_ and _Ballads and Other Poems_ and the drama _The Spanish Student_.

At this period of his life, Longfellow's journals and letters show much unrest and even at times a loss of interest in his work. His trip abroad for his health did not restore the satisfaction and contentment that he had once known. The needs of both heart and mind must be supplied in order that he might be at peace. Consequently we are not surprised by his marriage, in July, 1843, to Frances Appleton, the heroine of the romance _Hyperion_, and a most admirable and attractive young woman, fitted in every way to be the companion of the poet. The couple went to live in the Craigie House [Footnote: This house is celebrated not only as the poet's home but as having been at one time the headquarters of Washington.] at Cambridge, and entered upon a life of almost ideal domestic harmony.

Year after year passed, with little to mar the calm of the Longfellow home. The professor's days were filled with lectures to the college classes, with composition of original verse or translation from foreign literature and with letter writing, answers to unnumbered requests for autographs and calls from distinguished persons or from obscure but aspiring writers. Only a man of rare patience and kindness would have given such a great portion of his time as Longfellow gave during these and all the subsequent years of his life to answering the many inexcusable and often ridiculous requests for explanation of the motives and meaning of his writings, for help in obtaining public recognition, for criticism of poems that the writers submitted and for a variety of other favors.

Often there were visits to the opera or attendance at concerts, always in company with Mrs. Longfellow. Sometimes the day was darkened by the illness of one of the children. Then again, with the little ones of the household, the Harvard professor, casting aside his dignity, with all serious cares, would enter with all, his heart into some childish game. Such a good time did he have that he found it worth while to make in his journal such entries as: "Worked hard with the children, making snow-houses in the front yard, to their infinite delight;" "After dinner had all the children romping in the haymow;" "Coasted with my boys (Charles and Ernest) for two hours on the bright hill-side behind the Catholic Church;" "After tea, read to the boys the Indian story of _The Red Swan._" Frequently he accompanied on pleasure excursions his three daughters, the young girls described for us in the familiar lines:

"Grave Alice and laughing Allegra
And Edith with golden hair."

From time to time the journal records an idea for a poem or the beginning of the work of composition, sometimes expressing the doubts and fears that attend this beginning. Thus under date of November 16, 1845, is the statement:

"Before church, wrote 'The Arrow and the Song,' which came into my mind as I stood with my back to the fire, and glanced on to the paper with arrowy speed. Literally an improvisation."

Later, on November 28, is recorded: "Set about 'Gabrielle,'[Footnote: The poem Evangeline, to which the poet at first intended to give the title Gabrielle.] my idyl in hexameters, in earnest. I do not mean to let a day go by without adding something to it, if it be but a single line. F. and Sumner are both doubtful of the measure. To me it seems the only one for such a poem." And again, on December 7, "I know not what name to give to--not my new baby, but my new poem. Shall it be 'Gabrielle,' or 'Celestine,' or 'Evangeline'?" In the journal for 1854 is noted on June 22, "I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indian, which seems to me the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think the right and only one for such a theme;" and on June 28, "Work at 'Manabozho'; or, as I think I shall call it, 'Hiawatha,'--that being another name for the same personage."

As these literary projects came to fill more and more the poet's thought, he began to feel increasingly hampered by the work of his college classes. So urgent did the desire become to rid himself of duties that grew constantly more irksome, that at length, in 1854, he resigned his professorship. The mingled relief and regret thus afforded are expressed in his journal under date of September 12: "Yesterday I got from President Walker a note, with copy of the vote of the Corporation, accepting my resignation, and expressing regrets at my retirement. I am now free! But there is a good deal of sadness in the feeling of separating one's self from one's former life."

For several years thereafter Longfellow's life flowed along peacefully. These were most profitable years, for he was always an industrious worker and would not allow moodiness or disinclination to work to deprive him of opportunities for worthy labor. His three greatest works, _Evangeline_, _Hiawatha_ and _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, appeared at intervals of a few years. But this period of comparative ease and quiet was brought to an abrupt close by the tragic death of Mrs. Longfellow in 1861. Her dress had taken fire from a lighted match that had fallen to the floor, and as a result she died the next day.

The poet's grief and feeling of loss were inexpressible, yet he maintained an appearance of calm. After a long time he became able to resume his work, and in the years that remained to him, he produced, besides minor writings, the two series of _The Tales of a Wayside Inn_. But he never ceased to miss the close companionship of his wife. He found consolation in caring for his children, sharing alike their pleasures and their more serious interests. Then, too, he had several intimate friends whose affection was always a source of great joy to him. With the exception of a fourth trip to Europe, he passed the rest of his life quietly, giving to the world the fruits of his matured poetic powers, continually extending kindly encouragement to struggling writers, and dispensing charity without parade of his kindness. So fully were all the promises of his youth realized in his character and his intellectual life during this final period, that when death came in 1882, after a brief period of illness, the people of his own land and those of many other nations as well felt that a great and good man had passed from earth.

One who reads the journal and the letters in which the home life of Longfellow is plainly pictured is impressed perhaps even more than by his poems with the fitness of his title, _The Children's Poet_. One cannot fail to find, in such words as those in the following extract from a letter, the gentleness of his regard for children: "My little girls are flitting about my study, as blithe as two birds. They are preparing to celebrate the birthday of one of their dolls; and on the table I find this programme, in E.'s handwriting, which I purloin and send to you, thinking it may amuse you. What a beautiful world this child's world is! So instinct with life, so illuminated with imagination! I take infinite delight in seeing it go on around me, and feel all the tenderness of the words that fell from the blessed lips: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.' After that benediction how can any one dare to deal harshly with a child!" To this loving interest children everywhere have responded. On the poet's seventy- second birthday, about seven hundred children of Cambridge gave him an armchair made of the chestnut-tree celebrated in _The Village Blacksmith_. A poem was written in answer to the gift, and a copy of this was given to every child who came to visit the poet and sit in his chair. And children did come to visit him in great numbers. On one occasion, in the summer of 1880, the journal records: "Yesterday I had a visit from two schools: some sixty girls and boys, in all. It seems to give them so much pleasure that it gives me pleasure." The last letter that the poet is known to have written was one addressed to a little girl who had sent him a poem on his seventy-fifth birthday; and only four days before his death he received a visit from four Boston boys in whose albums he placed his autograph.

The strongest claim to the high regard in which Longfellow's poems are held is based on the very qualities that endear him to his child- readers. All his life, even in the midst of affliction and sorrow, he was governed by true, deep kindness for all living things, and by a spirit of helpfulness that is the most beautiful thing expressed in his poetry. Then, too, he was willing always to write simply, that all might be benefited by his pure, high thinking. So consistently and with such power did he put into practice the religion of good will and service to others that his life seems to have been a realization of the desire expressed in Wordsworth's lines:

"And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."

Some of Longfellow's poems that children like most are named in the following paragraphs:

Perhaps the most interesting for the youngest readers are _Paul Revere's Ride_ and _The Wreck of the Hesperus; The Children's Hour_, in which the poet tells of the daily play-time with his little girls; and _The Village Blacksmith_, together with the verses _From My Arm-Chair_, written when the children gave the chair made from the chestnut tree that had once shaded the Village Blacksmith.

Story-telling poems that children of from ten to twelve years of age can enjoy are: _The Happiest Land_, _The Luck of Edenhall_, _The Elected Knight_, _Excelsior_, _The Phantom Ship_, _The Discoverer of the North Cape_, _The Bell of Atri_, _The Three Kings_, _The Emperor's Bird's Nest_ and _The Maiden and the Weathercock_. _The Windmill_ and the translation _Beware_ are especially lively, little poems; and _The Arrow and the Song_ and _Children_ are quite as cheerful though quieter. More serious is _The Day Is Done_, well liked for the restful melody; _The Old Clock on the Stairs_, with its curious refrain; and the famous _Psalm of Life_, the lesson of which has helped many a young boy and girl.

Among the story-poems for children older than twelve years are Longfellow's greatest works, _Evangeline_, _Hiawatha_ and _The Courtship of Miles Standish_; and the minor poems, _Elizabeth_, _The Beleaguered City_ and _The Building of the Ship_. Nature poems that appeal to readers of this age are the _Hymn to the Night_, _The Rainy Day_, _The Evening Star_, _A Day of Sunshine_, _The Brook and the Wave_, _Rain in Summer_, and _Wanderer's Night Songs_.

Children who are fond of imagining will enjoy _The Belfry of Bruges_ and _Travels by the Fireside_, and those who like song-poems may select _The Bridge_ or _Stay, Stay at Home, My Heart_.

Nearly all of the poems that have been named are found in collections of Longfellow's works under the titles of the volumes in which they were originally published. _A Psalm of Life_, for example, is one of the group entitled _Voices of the Night_; and _Paul Revere's Ride_ is one of the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_.

FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS

_By_ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;

Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;

Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;

He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!

They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!

And with them the Being Beauteous,*
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.

With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.

And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.

Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.

O, though oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!

*[Footnote: This refers to Longfellow's first wife, Mary Storer Potter, whom he married in 1831. On his second visit to Europe, Mrs. Longfellow died at Rotterdam in 1835.]

TO H. W. L., ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867.

_By_ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

I need not praise the sweetness of his song,
Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong
The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along,
Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name
Is blown about the world, but to his friends
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim,
To murmur a _God bless you!_ and there ends.

* * * * *

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay
And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss,
If our poor life be lengthened by a lay,
He shall not go, although his presence may,
And the next age in praise shall double this.

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet
As gracious natures find his song to be;
May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet
Falling in music, as for him were meet
Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!

While this little tribute may not be as simple to read as some of the things in this book, yet it is beautiful to those who can read it.

One of the fine things about good poetry is that it will not only bear study and examination, but will yield new beauty and new pleasure as it is better understood. For instance, take the first stanza above. Lowell says Longfellow's poetry is sweet and easily understood and that one line follows another smoothly. To make us see how smoothly, he makes a beautiful comparison, draws for us an exquisite picture. As smooth, he says, as is our own river Charles when at night, fearing to disturb by so much as a single ripple the reflection of the crescent moon, a mirrored skiff, it glides along noiselessly but whispering gently to the reeds that line its shores.

Again, Lowell says that the very winds love Longfellow, and waft his name about the world, giving him fame and honor; but his friends know him to be a man with a loving heart, and so they steal up to him and murmur through the noisy shoutings of the crowd a simple _God bless you!_ which they know Longfellow will appreciate on his birthday more than all his fame.

To understand the first line in the third stanza, we must know of the three Fates who in the old Greek myth controlled the life of every man. One spun the thread of life, a second determined its course, and the third stood by with shears ready to cut the thread where death was due. Lowell says if being a skillful poet will make a man immortal, if our life can be lengthened by a song, then Longfellow shall not leave us even though his body goes, and in another generation his fame shall be doubly great.

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH

_By_ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp and black and long;
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,--
He earns whate'er he can;
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night.
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like sexton ringing the village bell
When the evening sun is low.

And children, coming home from school,
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the naming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling--rejoicing--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!

What a clear little poem this is! From beginning to end there is scarcely a thing that needs to be explained. We can see the two pictures almost as though they had been painted for us in colors. If anything is obscure, it is the comparison of the sparks to the chaff from a threshing-floor. And if that isn't clear to us it is because times have changed, and we no longer see grain threshed out on a floor. His "limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds, smooth as our Charles!"

Longfellow uses skill in the song. He shows us the old blacksmith at his forge and draws us with the other children to see his work. We learn to love the strong old man, independent, proud and happy. We sympathize with him as he weeps and admire him so much that we delight at the lesson Longfellow so skillfully places at the end.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS

_By_ HENRY WADSWOHTH LONGFELLOW

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor, Had sailed the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind A gale from the Northeast; The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain,
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale,
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring.
O say, what may it be?"
"'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"--
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns.
O say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light.
O say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

A DOG OF FLANDERS [Footnote: This story has been abridged somewhat]

_By_ LOUISE DE LA RAMEE

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world. They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood.

Nello was a little Ardennois; Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same age by length of years, yet one was still young and the other already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days; both were orphaned and destitute and owed their lives to the same hand.

Their home was a little hut on the edge of a little Flemish village, a league from Antwerp.

It was the hut of an old man--a poor man--of old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been a soldier and who remembered the wars that had trampled the country as oxen tread down the furrows, and who had brought from his service nothing except a wound which had made him a cripple.

When Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty his daughter had died in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her two- year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself, but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello--which was but a pet diminutive for Nicholas--throve with him, and the old man and the little child lived in the poor little hut contentedly.

They were terribly poor--many a day they had nothing at all to eat. They never by any chance had enough. To have had enough to eat would have been to have reached paradise at once. But the old man was gentle and good to the boy and the boy was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender-hearted creature; and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage and asked no more of earth or heaven, save, indeed, that Patrasche should be always with them, since without Patrasche where would they have been?

Jehan Daas was old and crippled and Nello was but a child--and Patrasche was their dog.

A dog of Flanders--yellow of hide, large of limb, with wolflike ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened in the muscular development wrought in his breed by the many generations of hard service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire to son in Flanders many a century--slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts of the shafts and harness, creatures that lived training their sinews in the gall of the cart, and died breaking their hearts on the flints of the street.

Before he was fully grown he had known the bitter gall of the cart and collar. Before he had entered his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware dealer, who was accustomed to wander over the land north and south, from the blue sea to the green mountains. They sold him for a small price because he was so young.

This man was a drunkard and a brute. The life of Patrasche was a life of abuse.

His purchaser was a sullen, ill-living, brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full with pots and pans, and flagons and buckets, and other wares of crockery and brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he might while he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish ease, smoking his black pipe and stopping at every wine shop or café on the road.

One day, after two years of this long and deadly agony, Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens.

It was full midsummer and exceedingly warm. His cart was heavy, piled high with goods in metal and earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled around his quivering loins.

The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at every wayside house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop for a moment for a draft from the canal. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a scorching highway, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and, which was far worse for him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve; being blind with dust, sore with blows, and stupefied with the merciless weight which dragged upon his loins, Patrasche, for once, staggered and foamed a little at the mouth and fell.

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death and motionless. His master gave him the only medicine in his pharmacy--kicks and oaths and blows with the oak cudgel--which had been often the only food and drink, the only wage and reward, ever offered to him.

But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances, down in the white powder of the summer dust. His master, with a parting kick, passed on and left him.

After a time, among the holiday makers, there came a little old man who was bent, and lame, and feeble. He was in no guise for feasting. He was poor and miserably clad, and he dragged his silent way slowly through the dust among the pleasure seekers.

He looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch and surveyed the dog with kindly eyes of pity.

There was with him a little, rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child of a few years old, who pattered in amid the bushes, that were for him breast high, and stood gazing with a pretty seriousness upon the poor, great, quiet beast.

Thus it was that these two first met--the little Nello and the big Patrasche. They carried Patrasche home; and when he recovered he was harnessed to the cart that carried the milk cans of the neighbors to Antwerp. Thus the dog earned the living of the old man and the boy who saved him.

There was only one thing which caused Patrasche any uneasiness in his life, and it was this: Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at every turn of old piles of stones, dark, and ancient, and majestic, standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising by the water's edge, with bells ringing above them in the air, and ever and again out of their arched doors a swell of music pealing.

There they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amid the squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness, and the commerce of the modern world, and all day long the clouds drift, and the birds circle, and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their feet there sleeps--Rubens.

And the greatness of the mighty master still rests upon Antwerp. Wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that all mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly through the winding ways, and by the edge of the stagnant waters, and through the noisome courts, his spirit abides with us, and the heroic beauty of his visions is about us, and the stones that once felt his footsteps, and bore his shadow, seem to rise and speak of him with living voices. For the city which is the tomb of Rubens still lives to us through him, and him alone.

Now, the trouble of Patrasche was this:

Into these great, sad piles of stones, that reared their melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs, the child Nello would many and many a time enter and disappear through their dark, arched portals, while Patrasche, left upon the pavement, would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be the charm which allured from him his inseparable and beloved companion.

Once or twice he did essay to see for himself, clattering up the steps with his milk cart behind him, but thereon he had been always sent back again summarily by a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains of office, and, fearful of bringing his little master into trouble, he desisted and crouched patiently before the church until such time as the boy reappeared.

What was it? wondered Patrasche.

He thought it could not be good or natural for the lad to be so grave, and in his dumb fashion he tried all he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the busy market places.

But to the church Nello would go. Most often of all he would go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on the stones by the iron fragments of the Quentin Matsys's gate, would stretch himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in vain, until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again, and, winding his arms about the dog's neck, would kiss him on his broad, tawny-colored forehead and murmur always the same words:

"If I could only see them, Patrasche! If I could only see them!"

What were they? pondered Patrasche, looking up with large, wistful, sympathetic eyes.

One day, when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar, he got in for a moment after his friend, and saw. "They" were two great covered pictures on either side of the choir.

Nello was kneeling, wrapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar picture of the "Assumption," and when he noticed Patrasche and rose and drew the dog gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked up at the veiled places as he passed them and murmured to his companion:

"It is so terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because one is poor and cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see them when he painted them, I am sure. And they keep them shrouded there--- shrouded in the dark---the beautiful things! And they never feel the light, and no eyes look upon them unless rich people come and pay. If I could only see them I would be content to die."

But he could not see them, and Patrasche could not help him, for to gain the silver piece that the church exacts for looking on the glories of the "Elevation of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross" was a thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it would have been to scale the heights of the cathedral spire.

The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an absorbing passion for art.

Going on his way through the old city in the early daybreak before the sun or the people had seen them, Nello, who looked only a little peasant boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell from door to door, was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the god. Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden shoes, and the winter winds blowing among his curls and lifting his poor, thin garments, was in rapture of meditation wherein all that he saw was the beautiful face of the Mary of "Assumption," with the waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders and the light of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the compensation or the curse which is called genius.

No one knew it--he as little as any. No one knew it.

"I should go to my grave quite content if I thought, Nello, that when thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plat of ground and labor for thyself and be called Baas by thy neighbors," said the old man Jehan many an hour from his bed.

Nello dreamed of other things in the future than of tilling the little rood of earth, and living under the wattle roof, and being called Baas by neighbors, a little poorer or a little less poor than himself. The cathedral spire, where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening skies or in the dim, gray, misty morning, said other things to him than this. But these he told only to Patrasche, whispering, childlike, his fancies in the dog's ear when they went together at their work through the fogs of the daybreak or lay together at their rest amongst the rustling rushes by the water's side.

There was only one other besides Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at all of his daring fancies. This other was little Alois, who lived at the old red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, was the best-to-do husbandman in all the village.

Little Alois was a pretty baby, with soft, round, rosy features, made lovely by those sweet, dark eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so many a Flemish face.

Little Alois often was with Nello and Patrasche. They played in the fields, they ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies and bilberries, they went up to the old gray church together, and they often sat together by the broad wood fire in the millhouse.

One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good man, but stern, came on a pretty group in the long meadow behind the mill.

It was his little daughter sitting amidst the hay, with the great, tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and many wreaths of poppies and blue cornflowers round them both. On a clean, smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello drew their likeness with a stick of charcoal.

The miller stood and looked at the portrait with tears in his eyes, it was so strangely like, and he loved his own child closely and well. Then he roughly chid the little girl for idling there whilst her mother needed her within, and sent her indoors crying and afraid. Then, turning, he snatched the wood from Nello's hands.

"Dost much of such folly?" he asked. But there a tremble in his voice.

Nello colored and hung his head. "I draw everything I see," he murmured.

Baas Cogez went into his millhouse sore troubled in his mind. "This lad must not be so much with Alois," he said to his wife that night. "Trouble may come of it hereafter. He is fifteen now and she is twelve, and the lad is comely." And from that day poor Nello was allowed in the millhouse no more.

Nello had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little outhouse to the hut, which no one entered but himself--a dreary place but with an abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here, on the great sea of stretched paper, he had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies which possessed his brain.

No one ever had taught him anything; colors he had no means to buy; he had gone without bread many a time to procure even the poor vehicles that he had there; and it was only in black and white that he could fashion the things he saw. This great figure which he had drawn here in chalk was only an old man sitting on a fallen tree--only that. He had seen old Michel, the woodman, sitting so at evening many a time.

He never had had a soul to tell him of outline or perspective, of anatomy or of shadow, and yet he had given all the weary, worn-out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the rugged, careworn pathos of his original, and given them so that the old, lonely figure was a poem, sitting there, meditative and alone, on the dead tree, with the darkness of descending night behind him.

It was rude, of course, in a way, and had many faults no doubt; and yet it was real, true to nature, true to art, mournful, and, in a manner, beautiful.

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watching its gradual creation after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a hope--vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished--of sending this great drawing to compete for a prize of 200 francs a year, which it was announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent, scholar or peasant, under eighteen, who attempted to win it with unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in the town of Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according to his merits.

All the spring and summer and autumn Nello had been at work upon this treasure, which, if triumphant, would build him his first steps toward independence and the mysteries of the arts, which he blindly, ignorantly and yet passionately adored.

The drawings were to go in on the 1st of December and the decision to be given on the 24th, so that he who should win might rejoice with all his people at the Christmas season.

In the twilight of a bitter winter day, and with a beating heart, now quick with hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed the great picture on his little green milk cart and left it, as enjoined, at the doors of a public building.

He took heart as he went by the cathedral. The lordly form of Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and darkness and to loom in its magnificence before him, whilst the lips, with their kindly smile, seemed to him to murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by faint fears that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."

The winter was sharp already. That night, after they reached the hut, snow fell, and it fell for many days after that, so that the paths and the divisions of the fields were all obliterated, and all the smaller streams were frozen over and the cold was intense upon the plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for milk, while the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the silent town.

In the winter time all drew nearer to each other, all to all except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none now would have anything to do, because the miller had frowned upon the child. Nello and Patrasche were left to fare as they might with the old, paralyzed, bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire often was cold, and whose board often was without bread, for there was a buyer from Antwerp who had taken to drive his mule in of a day for the milk of the various dairies, and there were only three or four of the people who had refused the terms of purchase and remained faithful to the little green cart. So that the burden which Patrasche drew had become light, and the centime pieces in Nello's pouch had become, alas! light likewise.

The weather was wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep; the ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this season the little village always was gay and cheerful. At the poorest dwelling there were possets and cakes, sugared saints and gilded Jesus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on the horses, everywhere within doors some well-filled soup pot sang and smoked over the stove, and everywhere over the snow without laughing maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout skirts going to and from mass. Only in the little hut it was dark and cold.

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone; for one night in the week before the Christmas day death entered there and took away from life forever old Jehan Daas. who had never known of life aught save poverty and pain. He had long been half dead, incapable of any movement except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a gentle word. And yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in it; they mourned him passionately. He had passed away from them in his sleep, and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement, unbearable solitude and desolation seemed to close around them. He had long been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old man who could not raise a hand in their defense, but he had loved them well; his smile always had welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal shell that held his body to the nameless grave by the little church. They were his only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon the earth-- the young boy and the old dog.

Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that poor, melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation. There was a month's rental overdue for the little place, and when Nello had paid the last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant no mercy. He claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche to be out of it by to-morrow.

All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.

When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning of Christmas eve. With a shudder Nello clasped close to him his only friend, while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's forehead.

"Let us go, Patrasche; dear, dear Patrasche!" he murmured. "We will not wait to be kicked out. Let us go."

They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. The winner of the drawing prize was to be proclaimed at noon, and to the public building where he had left his treasure Nello made his way. On the step and in the entrance hall there was a crowd of youths--some of his age, some older, all with parents or relatives or friends. His heart was sick with fear as he went amongst them, holding Patrasche close to him.

The great bells of the city clashed out the hour of noon with brazen clamor. The doors of the inner hall were opened; the eager, panting throng rushed in. It was known that the selected picture would be raised above the rest upon a wooden dais.

A mist obscured Nello's sight, his head swam, his limbs almost failed him. When his vision cleared he saw the drawing raised on high; it was not his own. A slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that victory had been adjudged to Stephan Kiesslinger, born in the burg of Antwerp, son of a wharfinger in that town.

When Nello recovered consciousness he was lying on the stones without, and Patrasche was trying with every art he knew to call him back to life. In the distance a throng of youths of Antwerp were shouting around their successful comrade and escorting him with acclamation to his home upon the quay.

He rallied himself as best he could, for he was weak from fasting, and retraced his steps to the village. Patrasche paced by his side with his head drooping and his strong limbs feeble under him from hunger and sorrow.

The snow was falling fast; a keen hurricane blew from the north; it was bitter as death on the plains. It took them long to traverse the familiar paths, and the bells were sounding four of the clock as they approached the hamlet. Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent in the snow, scratched, whined, and drew out with his teeth a small case of brown leather. He held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where they were there stood a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully under the cross. The boy mechanically turned the bag to the light. On it was the name of Baas Cogez and within it were notes for 6,000 francs.

The sight aroused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his shirt and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward.

Nello made straight for the millhouse and went to the house-door and struck on the panels. The miller's wife opened it, weeping, with little Alois clinging close to her skirts.

"Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she asked kindly through her tears. "Get thee gone ere the Baas sees thee. We are in sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a power of money that he has let fall riding homeward, and in this snow he never will find it. And God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It is heaven's own judgment for the things we have done to thee."

Nello put the note case within her hand and signed to Patrasche within the house.

"Patrasche found the money to-night," he said quickly. "Tell Baas Cogez so. I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in his old age. Keep him from pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good to him."

Ere woman or dog knew what he did he had stooped and kissed Patrasche, then had closed the door hurriedly on him and had disappeared in the gloom of the fast falling night.

It was six o'clock at night when, from an opposite entrance, the miller at last came, jaded and broken, into his wife's presence. "It is lost forever," he said, with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his voice. "We have looked with lanterns everywhere. It is gone--the little maiden's portion and all."

His wife put the money into his hand and told him how it had come back to her. The strong man sank, trembling, into a seat and covered his face with his hands, ashamed, almost afraid.

"I have been cruel to the lad," he murmured at length. "I deserve not to have good at his hands."

Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father, and nestled against him her curly, fair head.

"Nello may come here again, father?" she whispered. "He may come to- morrow, as he used to do?"

The miller pressed her in his arms. His hard, sunburned face was pale and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child. "He shall bide here on Christmas day and any other day he will. In my greed I sinned, and the Lord chastened me. God helping me, I will make amends to the boy--I will make amends."

When the supper smoked on the board and the voices were loudest and gladdest, and the Christ child brought choicest gifts to Alois, Patrasche, watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was unlatched by a careless newcomer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired limbs would bear him, sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He had only one thought--to follow Nello.

Snow had fallen freshly all evening long. It was now nearly ten o'clock. The trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took Patrasche long and arduous labor to discover any scent which could guide him in pursuit. When at last he found it, it was lost again quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost, and again recovered a hundred times and more. It was all quite dark in the town. Now and then some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices and house shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns, chanting drinking songs. The streets were all white with ice, and high walls and roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot of the wind down the passages as it tossed the creaking signs.

So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other that the dog had a hard task to retain any hold of the track he followed. But he kept on his way though the cold pierced him to the bone and the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's tooth. But he kept on his way--a poor, gaunt, shivering, drooping thing--in the frozen darkness, that no one pitied as he went--and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the heart of the burg and up to the steps of the great cathedral.

"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche. He could not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.