I quote from a brief diary.
"Longfellow amused us to-day by talking of his youth, and especially
with a description of the first poem he ever wrote, called 'The Battle
of Lovell's Pond.' It was printed in a Portland newspaper one morning,
and the same evening he was invited to the house of the Chief Justice
to meet his son, a rising poet just returned from Harvard. The judge
rose in a stately manner during the evening and said to his son: 'Did
you see a poem in to-day's paper upon the Battle of Lovell's Pond?'
'No, sir,' said the boy, 'I did not.' 'Well, sir,' responded his
father, 'it was a very stiff production. G----, get your own poem on
the same subject, and I will read it to the company.' The poem was
read aloud, while the perpetrator of the 'stiff production' sat, as he
said, very still in a corner."
The great sensitiveness of his nature, one of the poetic qualities,
was observed very early, and the description of him as a little boy
was the description of the heart and nature of the man. "Active,
eager, impressionable; quick-tempered, but as quickly appeased; kind-
hearted and affectionate,--the sunlight of the house." One day when a
child of ten he came home with his eyes full of tears. His elder
brother was fond of a gun, and had allowed Henry to borrow his. To the
little boy's great distress, he had aimed at and shot a robin. He
never tried to use a gun again.
Longfellow was said to be very like his mother.
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