Among the delightful stories of distinguished visitors at old Stockbridge, related by Henry Dwight Sedgwick, is one of Longfellow:

" About 1840 the Misses Appleton, daughters of Mr. Nathan Appleton of Boston, passed the summer at Stockbridge. . . . Mr. Longfellow, who in 1843 married Miss Fanny Appleton, visited Stockbridge in his courtship. . . . I was then a student at Harvard and was repeatedly called on by him at recition as 'Stockbridge.' When this first occurred, a titter ran through the division; the second time the titter developed into a loud giggle, which led him to remonstrate mildly. . . . Suddenly his mistake flashed upon him, and he joined himself in the laugh, though with a little embarrassment. Many years after, in meeting him at Newport, I introduced myself, 'Mr. Longfellow, you don't remember me?' 'Yes, indeed I do,' he said. 'To my dying day I shall never forget calling you Stockbridge." [1]

Of Washington Irving's visit " I recall nothing but the thrill of awful interest with which I saw him seated on a sofa in the parlor talking with Miss Sedgwick"; and the " small country boy" was much impressed by Macready's daily appearing in a different-colored dress-coat, black, blue, or claret. Others were Mrs. Martineau, the Hon. Miss Augusta Murray, Frederika Bremer, William M. Evarts, the genial General S. C. Armstrong.

Hawthorne and James T. Fields were caught in a sharp and never-to-be-forgotten thunder-shower on Monument; they had been invited by Mr. Field of Stockbridge to make the ascent with Dr. Holmes, Mr. Duycinck, Henry D. Sedgwick, Cornelius Matthews, and Herman Melville.

" To the north a path
Conducted you up the narrow battlement
Steep on the western side, shaggy and wild."

It was a stifling August morning and our delightful party of parts fled to shelter before the ominous yet refreshing storm-cloud. Hawthorne and Herman Melville were blown into so narrow a crevice that shy reserve retreated and perforce they became fast friends. Hitherto the sensitive man of letters had held aloof, although Melville's appreciation of the Scarlet Letter in the Literary World-edited by mutual friends, the Duycincks-was known to Hawthorne. Three days later Hawthorne wrote to Horatio Bridge: " I met Melville the other day, and liked him so much that I have asked him to spend a few days with me." Melville speaks of " tumbling down in my pine-board chariot" from Pittsfield to see Hawthorne.

As they crossed the valley on the return, looking back at that mighty height where they had felt the tumult of shrieking wind and thunder-bolt, the elect sympathized vividly with Bryant, that

"It is a fearful thing To stand upon the beetling verge, and see Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall, Have tumbled down vast blocks."