“The Village Blacksmith” is another poem with a history. It will be remembered that we have already said that Longfellow’s great-grandfather was a blacksmith. The “village smithy” “under a spreading chestnut tree”—the one about which Longfellow wrote the poem, though his grandfather was never there—stood on Brattle Street, in Cambridge. After a time it had to be removed. Some of the branches were cut off the chestnut tree, that a dwelling-house might be put up, and it then looked so ugly that the town authorities ordered it to be cut down. This made Longfellow feel very sad. The year before he made a sketch of the shop and the tree, just as they stood, and this rough sketch has been published. On the morning the tree was cut down, every one crowded out to see the choppers at work, and gaze at the tree as it tumbled over. On his seventy-second birthday the children of Cambridge presented Longfellow with an arm-chair made out of the wood of the old chestnut tree. It was a handsome chair, jet black and finely carved with horse chestnuts and leaves. Inscribed around it was a verse from the poem: And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. The chair was upholstered in green leather, and there was a brass plate under the cushion, on which was inscribed: “_To the author of ‘The Village Blacksmith,’ this chair, made from the wood of the spreading chestnut tree, is presented as an expression of grateful regard and veneration by the children of Cambridge, who, with their friends, join in the best wishes and congratulations on this anniversary, Feb. 27, 1879._” Longfellow was very much pleased by this and wrote a poem to the children, entitled “From My Arm-chair.” You may read it in any volume of his poems. One more poem of which we must speak is “The Skeleton in Armor.” Said Longfellow once, “This ballad was suggested to me while riding on the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the round tower at Newport, generally known, hitherto, as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early ancestors.” When the poem was written some of Longfellow’s friends, probably the members of that “Five of Clubs,” thought it was beneath his dignity; but others were so enthusiastic about it that when one of them read it aloud to him very appreciatively he sprang to his feet and embraced him, and paid no more attention to the criticisms. He was thinking about the subject, after his visit to the skeleton that had been dug up, for more than a year before the poem flashed into his mind. CHAPTER XII THE POET’S SECOND MARRIAGE