a soft pencil on printing paper, though commonly he wrote with a quill.  Each letter was distinct in shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an inch.  I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, but whether they were the first drafts or not I cannot say; very likely not.  Towards the last he no longer sent his poems to the magazines in his own hand; but they were always signed in autograph.

I once asked him if he were not a great deal interrupted, and he said, with a faint sigh, Not more than was good for him, he fancied; if it were not for the interruptions, he might overwork.  He was not a friend to stated exercise, I believe, nor fond of walking, as Lowell was; he had not, indeed, the childish associations of the younger poet with the Cambridge neighborhoods; and I never saw him walking for pleasure except on the east veranda of his house, though I was told he loved walking in his youth.  In this and in some other things Longfellow was more European than American, more Latin than Saxon.  He once said quaintly that one got a great deal of exercise in putting on and off one’s overcoat and overshoes.

I suppose no one who asked decently at his door was denied access to him, and there must have been times when he was overrun with volunteer visitors; but I never heard him complain of them.  He was very charitable in the immediate sort which Christ seems to have meant; but he had his preferences; humorously owned, among beggars.  He liked the German beggars least, and the Italian beggars most, as having most savair-faire; in fact, we all loved the Italians in Cambridge.  He was pleased with the accounts I could give him of the love and honor I had known for him in Italy, and one day there came a letter from an Italian admirer, addressed to “Mr. Greatest Poet Longfellow,” which he said was the very most amusing superscription he had ever seen.

It is known that the King of Italy offered Longfellow the cross of San Lazzaro, which is the Italian literary decoration.  It came through the good offices of my old acquaintance Professor Messadaglia, then a deputy in the Italian Parliament, whom, for some reason I cannot remember, I had put in correspondence with Longfellow.  The honor was wholly unexpected, and it brought Longfellow a distress which was chiefly for the gentleman who had procured him the impossible distinction.  He showed me the pretty collar and cross, not, I think, without a natural pleasure in it.  No man was ever less a bigot in things civil or religious than he, but he said, firmly, “Of course, as a republican and a Protestant, I can’t accept a decoration from a Catholic prince.”  His decision was from his conscience, and I think that all Americans who think duly about it will approve his decision.

VI.