A Book about Longfellow

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MAINE TO SPAIN. COLLEGE DAYS AT BOWDOINCHOICE OF PROFESSIONTRAVELS IN FRANCE, SPAIN, AND ITALYOUTRE-MER. ENGFELLOW was but fifteen years of age when he entered, as a sophomore, Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, in his native state. He and his elder brother, Stephen, had studied at home for a year after passing the entrance examination, so that neither experienced the doubtful joy of being a freshman. Bowdoin, founded in 1801, had not the prestige of her older sister Harvard College, had not been the recipient of so many donations, and in consequence was but poorly equipped. The quarters of the Longfellow boys in the house of the Reverend Mr. Titcomb were by no means luxurious. Bare walls and floors were the order of the day; but an imaginative lad needs no external aids in the furnishing of his ideal world. Henry loved to walk in the Brunswick woods, within easy reach of the village; but though fond of dreaming and of playing the flute, fond of reading and writing poetry, he never neglected his class recitations, was industrious and faithful to duty then, as he continued to be throughout his long life. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the future romancer, was also a sophomore at Bowdoin, but he was more intimate with Stephen Longfellow, though he and Henry became very close friends in manhood. Another classmate thus describes the budding poet: He was genial, sociable, and agreeable, and always a gentleman in his deportment. He was uniformly cheerful. He had a happy temperament, free from envy and every corroding passion and vice. His figure was slight and erect, his complexion light and delicate as a maiden's, with a slight bloom upon the cheek; his nose was rather prominent, his eyes clear and blue, and his well-formed head covered with a profusion of b...