Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[177] listen to others yielded to the demand of their ringleader, ‘Let us hear Professor Longfellow; he always treats us like gentlemen,’ the youthful rebel unconsciously recognized a step forward in academical discipline. Longfellow did not cultivate us much personally, or ask us to his house, but he remembered us and acknowledged our salutations. He was, I think, the first Harvard instructor who addressed the individual student with the prefix ‘Mr.’ I recall the clearness of his questions, the simplicity of his explanations, the well-bred and skilful propriety with which he led us past certain indiscreet phrases in our French authors, as for instance in Balzac's ‘Peau de Chagrin.’ Most of all comes back to memory the sense of triumph with which we saw the proof-sheets of ‘Voices of the Night’ brought in by the printer's devil and laid at his elbow. We felt that we also had lived in literary society, little dreaming, in our youthful innocence, how large a part of such society would prove far below the standard of courtesy that prevailed in Professor Longfellow's recitation room.

Yet the work of this room was, in those days of dawning changes, but a small part of the function of a professor. Longfellow was, both by inclination and circumstances, committed to the reform initiated by his predecessor, George