finishing it as I wished, saying that if I touched it again I should destroy the likeness.  I am half inclined to think that his insistence was mainly intended to abbreviate the martyrdom of Longfellow, whom I conducted every day to the Oaks, to insure pre-Raphaelite fidelity, making him sit on a huge boulder under the tree and even forgetting to carry a cushion for him, so that he sat on the bare stone until at last the discomfort was evident to me, when I folded my coat to cushion his stone seat.  So kindly was his nature that he had submitted to the inconvenience with the docility and delicacy of a child, without a sign of impatience.

This absolute unselfishness and extreme consideration for others was characteristic of the man.  I saw much of him in the years following, and found in him the most exquisitely refined and gentle nature I have ever known,—­one to which a brutal or inconsiderate act was positive pain, and any aggression on the least creature, cause of intense indignation.  My recollection of his condescension to my demands on his time and physical comfort remain in my memory as the highest expression of his social beneficence.  Longfellow was not expansive, nor do I remember his ever becoming enthusiastic over anything or anybody.  One who knew nothing of his domestic life might have fancied that he was cold, and certainly he did not possess that social magnetism which made Lowell the loadstone of so many hearts, and made the exercise of that attraction necessary to his own enjoyment of existence.  Longfellow adored his wife and children; but beyond that circle, it seemed to me, he had no imperious longing to know or be known.  He had likes and dislikes; but so far as I understood him, no strong antipathies or ardent friendships.  He had warm friendships for Lowell, the Nortons, and Agassiz, for example, but I think he had but a mild regard for Emerson, and I remember his saying one day that Emerson used his friends like lemons,—­squeezing them till they were dry, and then throwing them away.  This showed that he misunderstood Emerson, but perhaps intelligibly, for Longfellow had few of those qualities which interested Emerson, and there could not have been much in common to both.  Emerson liked men who gave him problems to solve,—­something to learn,—­while Longfellow was transparent, limpid as a clear spring reflecting the sky and showing all that was in its depths; and to Emerson he offered no problem.  I never saw him angry but once, and that was at his next-door neighbor shooting at a robin in a cherry-tree that stood near the boundary between the two gardens.  The small shot carried over and rattled about us where we sat on the verandah of the old Washington house, but showed the avicidal intent, and Longfellow went off at once to protest against the barbarity, not at all indignant at the personal danger, if he thought of any.