In 1808 the daughter of General Wadsworth, with her husband, Stephen Longfellow, and their two little children, removed from the house in the eastern part of Portland, where their second son, Henry, had been born a little over a year before, to live in the Wadsworth home. There the young mother, surrounded by the scenes endeared to her as those in which her own youth had been spent, devoted herself to the care and training of her children, while the father continued to pursue an honorable career as a lawyer and able representative, in public affairs, of the Federalist party. As the years passed, the little family grew considerably until it came to consist of four girls and five boys. Yet the mother found time for close companionship with all of her children and active interest in the affairs of each. And the father, though much occupied with duties outside of the home, watched carefully the progress made by his boys and girls and tried to put in their way the advantages that would help them to become rightminded and useful men and women. [Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 1807-1882] Indeed, so wholesome and well-ordered was the Longfellow home that it must have been a pleasant place to look in upon when all the family had assembled at evening in the living room. While the mother read perhaps from a book of verse, for she was especially fond of poetry, and the father gave himself up to some work on history, theology or law, the children would study quietly for probably an hour or more. Then, their lessons prepared, they would draw up in a little group to listen to a story, possibly from the _Arabian Nights_, or would gather about the piano in the parlor where Henry would sing to them the popular songs of that day. Sometimes the music would become so irresistibly gay that the children would begin to dance to its accompaniment and to awaken the echoes of the staid old dwelling-house with sounds of unrestrained delight that would have fallen with startling effect upon the ears of their Puritan ancestors.