No wonder the Cambridge children, when the old chestnut-tree that
overhung the smithy was cut down, had a memento shaped into a chair
from its boughs, to present to him who had made it an immortal tree in
his verse! It bore flower and fruit for them a second time in his
acknowledgment of the gift; for he told them how--

"There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street
Its blossoms, white and sweet,
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.

"And when the wind of autumn, with a shout
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath."

In its own wild, winsome way, the song of "Hiawatha's Childhood" is one
of the prettiest fancies in poetry. It is a dream of babyhood in the
"forest primeval," with Nature for nurse and teacher; and it makes us
feel as if--were the poet's idea only a possibility--it might have been
very pleasant to be a savage baby, although we consider it so much
better to be civilized.

How Longfellow loved the very little ones can be seen in such verses as
the "Hanging of the Crane," and in those earlier lines "To a Child,"
where the baby on his mother's knee gazes at the painted tiles, shakes
his "coral rattle with the silver bells," or escapes through the open
door into the old halls where once