The poet's grief and feeling of loss were inexpressible, yet he maintained an appearance of calm. After a long time he became able to resume his work, and in the years that remained to him, he produced, besides minor writings, the two series of _The Tales of a Wayside Inn_. But he never ceased to miss the close companionship of his wife. He found consolation in caring for his children, sharing alike their pleasures and their more serious interests. Then, too, he had several intimate friends whose affection was always a source of great joy to him. With the exception of a fourth trip to Europe, he passed the rest of his life quietly, giving to the world the fruits of his matured poetic powers, continually extending kindly encouragement to struggling writers, and dispensing charity without parade of his kindness. So fully were all the promises of his youth realized in his character and his intellectual life during this final period, that when death came in 1882, after a brief period of illness, the people of his own land and those of many other nations as well felt that a great and good man had passed from earth. One who reads the journal and the letters in which the home life of Longfellow is plainly pictured is impressed perhaps even more than by his poems with the fitness of his title, _The Children's Poet_. One cannot fail to find, in such words as those in the following extract from a letter, the gentleness of his regard for children: "My little girls are flitting about my study, as blithe as two birds. They are preparing to celebrate the birthday of one of their dolls; and on the table I find this programme, in E.'s handwriting, which I purloin and send to you, thinking it may amuse you. What a beautiful world this child's world is! So instinct with life, so illuminated with imagination! I take infinite delight in seeing it go on around me, and feel all the tenderness of the words that fell from the blessed lips: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.' After that benediction how can any one dare to deal harshly with a child!" To this loving interest children everywhere have responded. On the poet's seventy- second birthday, about seven hundred children of Cambridge gave him an armchair made of the chestnut-tree celebrated in _The Village Blacksmith_. A poem was written in answer to the gift, and a copy of this was given to every child who came to visit the poet and sit in his chair. And children did come to visit him in great numbers. On one occasion, in the summer of 1880, the journal records: "Yesterday I had a visit from two schools: some sixty girls and boys, in all. It seems to give them so much pleasure that it gives me pleasure." The last letter that the poet is known to have written was one addressed to a little girl who had sent him a poem on his seventy-fifth birthday; and only four days before his death he received a visit from four Boston boys in whose albums he placed his autograph.