must answer for him now. I raised my head and gave the clear whit-kwit of a running partridge. Instantly the leader answered; the flock sprang to the log again and turned their heads in my direction to listen. Another call, and now the 5 flock dropped to the ground and lay close, while the leader drew himself up straight on the log and became part of a dead stub beside him. Something was wrong in my call; the birds were suspicious, knowing not what danger had 10 kept their fellows silent so long. A moment's intent listening; then the leader stepped slowly down from his log and came towards me cautiouslyhalting, hiding, listening, gliding, swinging far out to one side and back again in stealthy advance, 15 till he drew himself up abruptly at sight of my face peering out of the underbrush. For a long two minutes he never stirred so much as an eyelid. Then he glided swiftly back, with a faint, puzzled, questioning kwit-kwit? to where his flock 20 were waiting. A low signal that I could barely hear, a swift movement - then the flock thundered away in scattered flight into the friendly woods. straitly strictly. -pinions: wings. - laggard: one who lags behind. FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882), a favorite American poet, was born in Portland, Maine. He taught modern languages at his alma mater, Bowdoin College, for six years, and at Harvard University for eighteen years. For the purpose of 5 study he traveled extensively in Europe. His home in Cambridge, the Craigie House, historic as the headquarters of Washington during the siege of Boston, became, Mr. Higginson declares, the literary center of that group of men, including Agassiz, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, and others, who 10 gave distinction to the Boston and Cambridge of earlier days. In 1854 Longfellow resigned his professorship and gave his time entirely to literature. For six years after the tragic death of his wife the poet worked on his translation of Dante. 66 In 1868 he visited Europe for the last time. He spent a day 15 with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, and was given degrees by Oxford and Cambridge universities. At Cambridge, so he wrote, the students shouted, "Three cheers for the red man of the West!" On his return the children of Cambridge brought back his youth" by presenting him, on his seventy-second birthday, with 20 a chair made from the wood of the Village Blacksmith's tree. Four schoolboys of Boston were with one exception the last to enjoy the hospitality of the "Children's Poet." The secret of his popularity as a poet is probably that of all similar popularity, namely, the fact that his poetry expresses 25 a universal sentiment in the simplest and most melodious man- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. ner. When the hours of Day are numbered, And the voices of the Night 5 10 Wake the better soul, that slumbered, Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful firelight Dance upon the parlor wall; Then the forms of the departed Come to visit me once more; He, the young and strong, who cherished Noble longings for the strife, By the roadside fell and perished, They, the holy ones and weakly, Who the cross of suffering bore, Folded their pale hands so meekly, Spake with us on earth no more! And with them the Being Beauteous, 10 15 With a slow and noiseless footstep And she sits and gazes at me Uttered not, yet comprehended, Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! phantoms: imaginary spirits. means his wife. — depressed: sad. Being Beauteous: the poet JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN NOTE. John Caldwell Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman. He was Congressman, United States Senator, Secretary of War, and Vice President of the United States. His old home, Fort Hill, South Carolina, is now the seat of Clemson College, the land having been presented to the state by Mr. Calhoun's son-inlaw, Clemson. The following selection, published over the pseudonym "Temple," appeared in a Philadelphia paper in 1850. Mr. Calhoun's ambition was of the noblest, most inspiriting kind. It always sought great public ends through noble means. . . . His mind was 5 formed to lead in great affairs; to go to the top. It was at the top always that he found his natural element. His erect form at that day, his fine eye, his constant energy and buoyant spirit, blended |