This testimony to Longfellow was scarcely the result of what he had written either for or of children. It was rather a natural tribute to a poet who had made himself a household word in American homes. Children are brought up on poetry to a considerable extent; they are, moreover, under training for the most part by young women, and the pure sentiment which forms the unfailing element of Longfellow’s writings finds in such teachers the readiest response. When one comes to consider the subjects of Longfellow’s poetry, one finds that the number addressed to children, or finding their motive in childhood, is not large. Those of direct address are, To a Child, From my Arm-Chair, Weariness, Children; yet which of these demands or would receive a response from children? Only one, From my Arm-Chair, and that chiefly by the circumstance which called it out, and on which the poet relies for holding the direct attention of children. He gets far away from most children before he has reached the end of his poem To a Child, and in the other two poems we hear only the voice of a man in whom the presence of children awakens thoughts which lie too deep for their tears, though not for his. Turning aside from those which appeal in form to children, one finds several which, like those last named, are evoked by the sentiment which childhood suggests. Such are The Reaper and the Flowers, Resignation, The Children’s Hour, and A Shadow, all in the minor key except The Children’s Hour; and this poem, perfect as it is in a father’s apprehension, yields only a subtle and half-understood fragrance to a child. One poem partly rests on a man’s thought of his own childhood, My Lost Youth; The Hanging of the Crane contains for its best lines a vignette of infancy; a narrative poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus, has for its chief figure a child; and Hiawatha is bright with a sketch of Indian boyhood. The translations show two or three which include this subject.