His constitution
seemed to promise him a vigorous manhood, however, and an old age of
undiminished fire, and when he left his mercantile pursuits, and retired
to the beautiful and poetic home of "Sachem's Wood," his friends looked
upon it as the commencement of a ripe and long enduring career
of literature. In harmony with such a life were all his
surroundings--scenery, society, domestic refinement, and
companionship--and never looked promise fairer for the realization of a
dream of glory. That he had laid out something of such a field in the
future, I chance to know, for, though my acquaintance with him was
slight, he confided to me in a casual conversation, the plan of a series
of dramas, different from all he had attempted, upon which he designed
to work with the first mood and leisure he could command. And with his
scholarship; knowledge of life, taste, and genius, what might not have
been expected from its fulfilment? But his hand is cold, and his lips
still, and his light, just rising to its meridian, is lost now to the
world. Love and honor to the memory of such a man.
* * * * *
=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-. _= (Manual, pp. 503, 505.)
From "Hyperion."
=_206._= THE INTERRUPTED LEGEND.
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