I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamp light, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. In 1861, twenty years before the poet himself died, Mrs. Longfellow was burned to death. She was sitting at her library table amusing her two youngest children by making seals. A bit of the burning wax fell on her light gauze dress, which was in a moment all aflame. She cried out, and Longfellow came running from the next room and threw a rug about her; but she was so burned that she soon died, though several doctors came almost immediately. Longfellow himself was also frightfully burned, but not dangerously. This, and the death of his other wife, were the two great sorrows of his life. Except for these two misfortunes, it would seem as though he were always fortunate, living, as it were, in a bed of roses—always successful, never poor, never discontented with his lot. But after the death of his second wife he was very gloomy for a long time. It may be said that the sadness of the deaths of both wives made him write some of his best poems. Three years after the death of Mrs. Longfellow, Hawthorne died. Longfellow wrote a beautiful poem called “Hawthorne,” which closes with this stanza: Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower, Unfinished must remain! CHAPTER XIII EVANGELINE, HIAWATHA, AND THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH After his first marriage we have seen that Longfellow wrote his most famous short poems. After his second marriage he wrote his most famous long poems. The first was “Evangeline.” It was published in 1847, four years after his marriage; but he had been a long time writing it. He once wrote, “I had the fever burning a long time in my brain before I let my hero take it. ‘Evangeline’ is so easy for you to read, because it was so hard for me to write.” The story of the Acadians is a familiar one. Acadia was the French name for Nova Scotia. But after the French had settled there the English claimed the land as having been discovered by John Cabot. There was much fighting between the French and English over the disputed ground, and finally the English made a settlement of their own at Halifax; but the country villages were made up mostly of the French. At last the rights of the English to the territory were acknowledged by the French government; but in the treaty that was made it was provided that the French settlers should not be obliged to pay taxes or take up arms against their fellow Frenchmen. Most of them also refused to take the customary oath of allegiance to the King of England.