Recollections of a Long Life An Autobiography

kens-The Land

e "Patrick Henry," of the Grinnell & Minturn Line. Captain Joseph C. Delano was a gentleman of high intelligence and culture who, after he had abandoned salt water, became an active member of the American Asso

of one of the finest collections of autographs in England. He showed me the signature of John Bunyan; the original manuscript of one o

power the g

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t may be the patriarch himself," and sure enough it was. For, when I inquired about Mr. Wordsworth, the landlord said to me, "A few minutes ago he went by here in his little carriage." The next morning I called upon him. The walk to his cottage was delightful, with the dew still lingering in the shady nooks by the roadside, and the morning songs of thanksgiving bursting forth from every grove. At the summit of a deeply shaded hill I found "Rydal Mount" cottage. I was shown, at once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English poet. His nose was very large, his forehead a lofty dome of thought, and his long white locks hung over his stooping shoulders; his eyes presented a singular, half closed appearance. We ente

iends, though

as seven

ay in delightful intercourse with the old man, but my fellow-travellers were going, and I could make no longer inroads upon their time. When we returned to the door of his cottage, he gave me a parting blessing; he picked a small yellow flower and handed it

Hall, the mansion of the Grahams, on "Cannobie lea," over which the young Lochinvar bore away his stolen bride. We passed also Branksome Tower, the scene of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and reached Selkirk in the early evening. The next day I spent at Abbotsford. The Great Magician had been dead only ten years, and his family still occupied the house with some of his old employees who figure i

Alloway Kirk, the scene of the inimitable Tam o' Shanter, and behind them all the "Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon." I went first to the monument, within which on a centre table are the two volumes of the Bible given by Burns to Highland Mary when they "lived one day of parting love" beneath the hawthorn of Coilsfield. One of the volumes contains, in Burns' handwriting, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thy vows," and a l

louder the

swifter the

horse, and came up to a roughly dressed man, ridin' slowly along, with his blue bonnet pulled down over his forehead, and his eyes turned toward the groond." "Didn't you speak to him?" I said. "Nay, nay," replied the man, in a tone of deep reverence, "he was Rab

dinburgh to see the lairds." I asked her if he was not always humorous. "Nae, nae," she replied, "he used to come in and sit doun wi' his hands in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o' whuskey, or heard a gude story, and then he was aff! He was very poorly in his latter days." Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in poverty to the lips, forms one of the most tragic chapters in literary history; and I know scarcely anything in our language more pathetic than the letter which he wrote describing his wretched bondage to the dominion of strong drink. An old lady of Kilmarnock told my friend, th

Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the wall-that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair that he wore in a sort of stack over his lofty forehead! He had a slight lisp in his pleasant voice, and ran on in rapid talk for an hour, with a shy reluctance to talk about his own works, but

SHIRE T

RK, Oct. 2

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mer who struck at so many social wrongs spare that hideous fountain-head of misery in London, the dram-shop? And how could he descend to scurrilously satirize all societies formed for the promotion of temperance? A still greater marvel is that so kind-hearted a man as Mr. Dickens, who sought honestly the amelioration of the condition of his fellow-men, could utterly ignore the transforming power of Christianity. He did not cast c