As the two walked along Beacon Street, Doctor Holmes pointed out the residences where lived people of interest, and when they reached the Public Garden he said: 

“You must come over in the spring some time, and see the tulips and croci and hyacinths here.  They are so beautiful.

“Now, here is your car,” he said as he hailed a coming horse-car.  “Before you go back you must come and see me and tell me all the people you have seen, will you?  I should like to hear about them.  I may not have more books coming in, but I might have a very good-looking photograph of a very old-looking little man,” he said as his eyes twinkled.  “Give my love to Longfellow when you see him, and don’t forget to give him my letter, you know.  It is about a very important matter.”

And when the boy had ridden a mile or so with his fare in his hand he held it out to the conductor, who grinned and said: 

“That’s all right.  Doctor Holmes paid me your fare, and I’m going to keep that nickel if I lose my job for it.”

CHAPTER V

GOING TO THE THEATRE WITH LONGFELLOW

When Edward Bok stood before the home of Longfellow, he realized that he was to see the man around whose head the boy’s youthful reading had cast a sort of halo.  And when he saw the head itself he had a feeling that he could see the halo.  No kindlier pair of eyes ever looked at a boy, as, with a smile, “the white Mr. Longfellow,” as Mr. Howells had called him, held out his hand.

“I am very glad to see you, my boy,” were his first words, and with them he won the boy.  Edward smiled back at the poet, and immediately the two were friends.

“I have been taking a walk this beautiful morning,” he said next, “and am a little late getting at my mail.  Suppose you come in and sit at my desk with me, and we will see what the postman has brought.  He brings me so many good things, you know.”

“Now, here is a little girl,” he said, as he sat down at the desk with the boy beside him, “who wants my autograph and a ‘sentiment.’  What sentiment, I wonder, shall I send her?”

“Why not send her ’Let us, then, be up and doing’?” suggested the boy.  “That’s what I should like if I were she.”

“Should you, indeed?” said Longfellow.  “That is a good suggestion.  Now, suppose you recite it off to me, so that I shall not have to look it up in my books, and I will write as you recite.  But slowly; you, know I am an old man, and write slowly.”

Edward thought it strange that Longfellow himself should not know his own great words without looking them up.  But he recited the four lines, so familiar to every schoolboy, and when the poet had finished writing them, he said: 

“Good!  I see you have a memory.  Now, suppose I copy these lines once more for the little girl, and give you this copy?  Then you can say, you know, that you dictated my own poetry to me.”