THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
as he stood there, tall and slim, with his fine, placid face, all goodness and unpretending simplicity, so superior to those surrounding him, and yet so like them. My friend introduced me to him as a co-worker in the anti-slavery cause, and he received me very kindly. We had a little exchange of questions and answers not remarkable, and he offered to take us to his house. But we could not accept the invitation, as we had to hurry back to the train for Boston. I left him with a feeling as if the mere meeting with him had been a blessing—a breath of air from a world of purity and beneficence.
To no member of that famous circle I felt myself more attracted than to Longfellow, and he, too, seemed to look upon me with a friendly eye. He kindly invited me to visit him whenever I might come within hailing distance. And how delightful were those hours I spent with him from time in the cozy intimacy of his old colonial house in Cambridge, the historic Washington headquarters. We usually sat together in the little room on the right hand of the hall, the room with the round book-covered table in it. He then used to bring in a bottle of old Rhine wine and a couple of long German student pipes, which, I fear, he did not enjoy smoking very much although he pretended to enjoy it, because, no doubt, he thought I did; and then he talked of German poetry and poets, and of the anti-slavery cause for which he cherished a warm, although quiet, interest, and of Charles Sumner, whom he loved dearly as I did. Longfellow was one of the most beautiful men I have ever known, and he grew more beautiful every year of his advancing old age—with his flowing white hair and heard and his grand face of the antique Jupiter type—not indeed a “Jupiter tonans,” but a fatherly Zeus holding a benignant hand over the world and mankind. He was by no means a brilliant conversationalist—not to be compared with Oliver Wendell Holmes--
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