"The landlord of Longfellow's famous Tales was the dignified Squire Lyman Howe, a justice of the peace and school committee-man, who lived a bachelor, and died at the inn in 1860--the last of his line to keep the famous hostelry. Besides Squire Howe, the only other real characters in the Tales who were ever actually at the inn were Thomas W. Parsons, the poet; Luigi Monti, the Sicilian, and Professor Daniel Treadwell, of Harvard, the theologian, all three of whom were in the habit of spending the summer months there. Of the other characters, the musician was Ole Bull, the student was Henry Ware Wales, and the Spanish Jew was Israel Edrehi. Near the room in which Longfellow stayed is the ball-room with the dais at one end for the fiddlers. But the polished floor no longer feels the pressure of dainty feet in high-heeled slippers gliding over it to the strains of contra-dance, cotillion, or minuet, although the merry voices of summer visitors and jingling bells of winter sleighing parties at times still break the quiet of the ancient inn." Judge Sewall, in his famous diary, notes that he spent the night at Howe's in Sudbury--there being also a Howe's Tavern in Marlboro. Lafayette, in 1824, spent the night there and, as Washington passed over this road when he took command of the army at Cambridge, it is more than likely that he also stopped there, as Colonel Howe's importance in this neighborhood would almost demand it. Washington passed over this road again when on his tour of New England, and then Colonel Howe was the landlord and squire, as well as colonel of a regiment. Burgoyne stopped there, a captive, on his way from Ticonderoga to Boston; and, as this was the most popular stage route to New York city, Springfield and Albany, those famous men of New England--Otis, Adams, Hancock, and many others--were frequent guests. A company of horse patrolled the road, and tripped into the old bar for their rum and home-brewed ale. It is worth recording that Agassiz, in his visits to the house, examined the ancient oaks near the inn, and pronounced one of them over a thousand years old. Edna Dean Proctor refers to them in her poem: Oaks that the Indian's bow and wigwam knew, And by whose branches still the sky is barred.