One very uncertain test of a man of genius is his "table-talk." Surrounded by a group of men who were such masters of this gift as Lowell, Holmes, and T. G. Appleton, Longfellow might well be excused from developing it to the highest extent, and he also "being rather a silent man," as he says of himself, escaped thereby the tendency to monologue, which was sometimes a subject of complaint in regard to the other three. Longfellow's reticence and self-control saved him from all such perils; but it must be admitted, on the other hand, that when his brother collects a dozen pages of his "table-talk" at the end of his memoirs, or when one reads his own list of them in "Kavanagh," the reader feels a slight inadequacy, as of things good enough to be said, but not quite worth the printing. Yet at their best, they are sometimes pungent and telling, as where he says, "When looking for anything lost, begin by looking where you think it is not;" or, "Silence is a great peace-maker;" or, "In youth all doors open outward; in old age they all open inward," or, more thoughtfully, "Amusements are like specie payments. We do not much care for them, if we know we can have them; but we like to know they may be had," or more profoundly still, "How often it happens that after we know a man personally, we cease to read his writings. Is it that we exhaust him by a look? Is it that his personality gives us all of him we desire?" There are also included among these passages some thoroughly poetic touches, as where he says, "The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout, and hands full of flowers." Or this, "How sudden and sweet are the visitations of our happiest thoughts; what delightful surprises! In the midst of life's most trivial occupations,--as when we are reading a newspaper, or lighting a bed-candle, or waiting for our horses to drive round,--the lovely face appears, and thoughts more precious than gold are whispered in our ear." The test of popularity in a poet is nowhere more visible than in the demand for autographs. Longfellow writes in his own diary that on November 25, 1856, he has more than sixty such requests lying on his table; and again on January 9, "Yesterday I wrote, sealed, and directed seventy autographs. To-day I added five or six more and mailed them." It does not appear whether the later seventy applications included the earlier sixty, but it is, in view of the weakness of human nature, very probable. This number must have gone on increasing. I remember that in 1875 I saw in his study a pile which must have numbered more than seventy, and which had come in a single day from a single high school in a Western city, to congratulate him on his birthday, and each hinting at an autograph, which I think he was about to supply.