I was a little girl of an independent turn of mind and objected decidedly to being kissed. Some of the gentlemen thought this very amusing in a child of barely seven, and delighted in teasing me. To enter or leave the house was a feat of daring, for the enemy might be lurking in the shadow of the hall, ready to catch me. Once, at least, I was seized and held up in the air by a Mr. G——. “Now I’ve got you!” he exclaimed. He was soon glad to put down a very irate and struggling little girl. The foolish custom of kissing children indiscriminately has happily gone out of fashion. Another sad memory of that summer rises before me. I see on the lawn of “Cliff House” my silver mug, with a deep wound in its side. One of the gentlemen, espying it in the grass, took it for a pewter vessel and obligingly discharged his pistol at it. The Longfellow boys, Charles and Ernest, who were of nearly the same age as sister Julia and I, were our pleasant playfellows. Speculating on their father’s height, they declared that he ought to be called Mr. Shortfellow rather than Mr. Longfellow. I do not so well recall his appearance at the “Cliff House,” but a year or so later he emerges from my childish recollections as an alert, slender and rather short man, with a cheerful expression of countenance and remarkably bright blue eyes. My uncle, Samuel Ward, declared they were like blue water-lilies. His hair was then sandy, with a dash of gray, and his sensitive mouth was not concealed by either beard or mustache, for he wore only side-whiskers. In those early days he did not, to my thinking, _look_ as poetical as in later years. It was customary in Boston to speak of him as Professor Longfellow, as he then filled the Harvard chair of belles-lettres. His predecessor, George L. Ticknor, author of a history of Spanish literature, was not well pleased at giving up his office. Instead of bequeathing his Spanish library to Harvard College, he left it to the Boston Public Library, with strict injunctions that the books should not be allowed to circulate, lest they should fall into the hands of the Cambridge professors. A more amiable postulate is that he feared the books might be lost. Dr. Joseph Greene Cogswell, the first Astor librarian, administered that foundation on the same principle. With Mr. Longfellow himself Mr. Ticknor maintained pleasant and friendly relations, as we see by the poet’s letters. I remember very well a charming children’s party given in the pleasant grounds adjoining the old “Craigie House.” The mansion is Colonial in style, and with its wide verandas, has an ample front of more than eighty feet. As a child, the interior, with its spacious halls and rooms, impressed me more than the exterior. The former had an aspect of comfort and of a certain elegance which bespoke the refined and scholarly tastes of its owner. This was not so common at that time as it is now, when interior decoration is so much studied.