There
was a terrace part way down this lawn, and when a white-painted
balustrade was set some fifteen years ago upon its brink, it seemed
always to have been there. Long verandas stretched on either side of the
mansion; and behind was an old-fashioned garden with beds primly edged
with box after a design of the poet's own. Longfellow had a ghost story
of this quaint plaisance, which he used to tell with an artful reserve of
the catastrophe. He was coming home one winter night, and as he crossed
the garden he was startled by a white figure swaying before him. But he
knew that the only way was to advance upon it. He pushed boldly forward,
and was suddenly caught under the throat-by the clothes-line with a long
night-gown on it.
Perhaps it was at the end of a long night of the Dante Club that I heard
him tell this story. The evenings were sometimes mornings before the
reluctant break-up came, but they were never half long enough for me.
I have given no idea of the high reasoning of vital things which I must
often have heard at that table, and that I have forgotten it is no proof
that I did not hear it. The memory will not be ruled as to what it shall
bind and what it shall loose, and I should entreat mine in vain for
record of those meetings other than what I have given. Perhaps it would
be well, in the interest of some popular conceptions of what the social
intercourse of great wits must be, for me to invent some ennobling and
elevating passages of conversation at Longfellow's; perhaps I ought to do
it for the sake of my own repute as a serious and adequate witness.
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