From Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Concord, January 2, 1864. Dear Longfellow, - It seems idle to tell you that I have read the Wayside Inn with great comfort and delight. I take vast satisfaction in your poetry, and take very little in most other men's, except it be the grand old strains that have been sounding on through all my life. Nothing can be better than these tales of yours, one and all. I was especially charmed with the description of an old Scandinavian ship-of-war, with her officers and crew; in which, by some inscrutable magic, you contrive to suggest a parallel picture of a modern frigate. It gratifies my mind to find my own name shining in your verse, even as if I had been gazing up at the moon and detected my own features in its profile. . . ."

From Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Concord, February 24, 1864. What a fat and sleepy air is this, that I have never thanked you for the New Year's Poems, -chiefly, the Birds,' which is serene, happy and immortal as Chaucer, and speaks to all conditions!"

but it is so beautiful that we never tire of it, and it is so important to remember when, as here, we are specially considering the Wayside Inn, that we will read it once

more.

"One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.

"As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.

"A region of repose it seems,

A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!
For there no noisy railway speeds,

Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds;
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below,
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode
Deep silence reigned, save when a gust
Went rushing down the country road,
And skeletons of leaves, and dust,
A moment quickened by its breath,
Shuddered and danced their dance of death,
And through the ancient oaks o'erhead
Mysterious voices moaned and fled.

"But from the parlor of the inn A pleasant murmur smote the ear,

The music of a violin.

The fire-light, shedding over all
The splendor of its ruddy glow,
Filled the whole parlor large and low;
It gleamed on wainscot and on wall,
It touched with more than wonted grace
Fair Princess Mary's pictured face;
It bronzed the rafters overhead,
On the old spinet's ivory keys

It played inaudible melodies,

It crowned the sombre clock with flame,
The hands, the hours, the maker's name,
And painted with a livelier red
The Landlord's coat-of-arms again;
And, flashing on the window-pane,
Emblazoned with its light and shade
The jovial rhymes, that still remain,
Writ near a century ago,

By the great Major Molineaux,
Whom Hawthorne has immortal made.

"Before the blazing fire of wood
Erect the rapt musician stood;
And ever and anon he bent
His head upon his instrument,
And seemed to listen, till he caught

He soothed the throbbings of its heart,
And lulled it into peace again.

"Around the fireside at their ease
There sat a group of friends, entranced
With the delicious melodies;
Who from the far-off noisy town
Had to the wayside inn come down,
To rest beneath its old oak-trees.
The fire-light on their faces glanced,
Their shadows on the wainscot danced,
And, though of different lands and speech,
Each had his tale to tell, and each
Was anxious to be pleased and please.
And while the sweet musician plays,
Let me in outline sketch them all,
Perchance uncouthly as the blaze
With its uncertain touch portrays
Their shadowy semblance on the wall.

"But first the Landlord will I trace;
Grave in his aspect and attire;
A man of ancient pedigree,
A Justice of the Peace was he,
Known in all Sudbury as "The Squire."
Proud was he of his name and race,
Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh,
And in the parlor, full in view,
His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed,
Upon the wall in colors blazed;
He beareth gules upon his shield,
A chevron argent in the field,
With three wolf's heads, and for the crest
A Wyvern part-per-pale addressed
Upon a helmet barred; below

The scroll reads, "By the name of Howe."
And over this, no longer bright,
Though glimmering with a latent light,
Was hung the sword his grandsire bore
In the rebellious days of yore,
Down there at Concord in the fight."

Then follows the introduction of the characters the Student, the young Sicilian, the Spanish Jew, the Cambridge Theologian, the Poet, the Musician; and then the Landlord begins with "Paul Revere."

"All the characters were real," writes the poet's brother and biographer, "but they were not really at the Sudbury Inn. The poet was T. W. Parsons, the translator of Dante; the Sicilian, Luigi Monti; the Theologian, Professor Treadwell, of Harvard; the Student, Henry Ware Wales. Parsons, Monti, and Treadwell were in the habit of spending the summer months at the Sudbury Inn. On this very slender. thread of fact the fiction is woven. The tales are drawn from various sources. To Mr. Longfellow belongs the charm of the telling; often with much amplification and adornment. In perhaps only one instance, 'The Birds of Killingworth,' is the story of his own invention."

The most sympathetic guide to the Wayside Inn whom we remember, after the poet himself, is Mr. Samuel Adams Drake,

our best guide to so many of the old landmarks of Boston, to so many a recess in the heart of the White Mountains, to so many nooks and corners of the New England coast. It was fifteen years ago that Mr. Drake pilgrimaged to the old tavern, - we do not know how often he has pilgrimaged thither besides, — and he writes about it in his Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex.

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It stands in a sequestered nook among the hills which upheave the neighboring region like ocean billows. For nearly two hundred years, during the greater part of which it has been occupied as a tavern, this ancient hostelry has stood here with its door hospitably open to wayfarers.

"In the olden time the road possessed the importance of a much-travelled highway. At present the house is like a waif on the seashore, left high and dry by some mighty tide, or a landmark which shows where the current of travel once flowed. Its distance from the capital made it a convenient halting-place for travellers going into or returning from Boston. Its reputation for good cheer was second to none in all the Bay Colony.

"As ancient is this hostelry

As any in the land may be,

Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality.'

"The name of the house was the Red Horse, and at the other end of the route, belonging to the same family, in rivalry of good cheer, was the White Horse in Old Boston Town. The horse has always been a favorite symbol with publicans. However tedious the way may have been, however shambling or void of spirit your hackney of the road, the steed on the hostel sign always pranced proudly, was of high mettle, and of as gallant carriage as was ever blazoned on Saxon's shield.

"The Red Horse in Sudbury was built about 1686. From the year 1714 to near, if not quite, the completion of a century and a half, it was kept as an inn by generation after generation of the Howes, the last being Lyman Howe, who served the guests of the house from 1831 until about 1860. The tavern stood about half-way on the

great road to Worcester, measuring twentythree good English miles from Boston Town-House.

"Well, those were good old times, after all. A traveller, after a hard day's jaunt, pulls up at the Red Horse. The landlord is at the door, hat in hand, with a cheery welcome, and a shout to the blacks to care for the stranger's beast. Is it winter, a mimic conflagration roars on the hearth. A bowl of punch is brewed, smoking hot. The guest, nothing loath, swallows the mix

or cider was at the guest's elbow, and a cup of chocolate finished his repast. He begins to be drowsy, and is lighted to an upper chamber by some pretty maid-of-allwork, who, finding her pouting lips in danger, is perhaps compelled to stand on the defensive with the warming-pan she has but now so dexterously passed between the frigid sheets. At parting, Boniface holds his guest's stirrup, warns him of the ford or morass, and bids him good speed. "Our modern landlord is a person whose

ture, heaves a deep sigh, and declares himself better for a thousand pounds. Soon there comes a summons to table, where good wholesome roast-beef, done to that perfection of which the turnspit only was capable, roasted potatoes with their russet jackets brown and crisp, and a loaf as white as the landlady's Sunday cap send up an appetizing odor. Our guest falls to. Hunger is a good trencherman, and he would have scorned your modern tidbits, -jelles, truffles, and patés à fois gras. For drink, the well was deep, the water pure and sparkling, but home-brewed ale

existence we take upon trust. He is never seen by the casual guest, and if he were, is far too great a man for common mortals to expect speech of him. He sits in a parlor, with messengers, perhaps the telegraph, at his beck and call. His feet rest on velvet, his body reclines on air-cushions. You must at least be an English milord, a Russian prince, or an American senator, to receive the notice of such a magnate. It is a grave question whether he knows what his guests are eating, or if, in case of fire, their safety is secured. His bankbook occupies his undivided attention.