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[434]

His Atlantic voyages became so frequent that he once said to a friend, ‘I always keep my steamer ticket in my pocket, like a soda-water ticket.’ Indeed, his custom almost carried out this saying. I have heard that once, being in New York, he invited friends to breakfast with him at his hotel. On arriving they found only a note informing them of his departure for Europe on that very morning.

I myself one day invited him to dinner with other friends, among whom was his sister, Mrs. Longfellow. We waited long for him, and I at last said to Mrs. Longfellow, ‘What can it be that detains your brother so late?’

‘I don't know, indeed,’ was her reply.

‘Your brother?’cried one of the guests. ‘I met him this morning on his way to the steamer. He must have sailed some hours since.’

A friend once spoke to him of matrimony, of which he said in reply, ‘Marriage? I could never undergo it unless I was held, and took chloroform.’

Yet those who knew him well supposed that he had had some romance of his own. To his praise be it said that he was a man of many friendships, and by no means destitute of public spirit.

It was from Mr. Dana that I first heard of John Sullivan Dwight, whom he characterized as a man of moderate calibre, who had ‘set up for an ’

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Samuel Longfellow (2)
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