The Norsemen, in the days of
their stormy and reluctant conversion, used always to speak of Christ as
the White Christ, and Bjornson said in his letter, "Give my love to the
White Mr. Longfellow."
A good many, years before Longfellow's death he began to be sleepless,
and he suffered greatly. He said to me once that he felt as if he were
going about with his heart in a kind of mist. The whole night through he
would not be aware of having slept. "But," he would add, with his
heavenly patience, "I always get a good deal of rest from lying down so
long." I cannot say whether these conditions persisted, or how much his
insomnia had to do with his breaking health; three or four years before
the end came, we left Cambridge for a house farther in the country, and I
saw him less frequently than before. He did not allow our meetings to
cease; he asked me to dinner from time to time, as if to keep them up,
but it could not be with the old frequency. Once he made a point of
coming to see us in our cottage on the hill west of Cambridge, but it was
with an effort not visible in the days when he could end one of his brief
walks at our house on Concord Avenue; he never came but he left our house
more luminous for his having been there. Once he came to supper there to
meet Garfield (an old family friend of mine in Ohio), and though he was
suffering from a heavy cold, he would not scant us in his stay.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49