[Boston—Tuesday, 24 September 1872]
Tuesday Longfellow came to town to see Jamie in one of his loveliest moods. The day was so warm and fine, such a day of dreams, that he proposed to him every kind of excursion. Come he said let us go to the tea stores and smell the tea: the warm atmosphere will bring out all the odors and we can get samples! And again “Come let us go to the wharves and see the vessels just in from Italy or Spain. It will be a lovely sight in this soft sky and we can hear the men speak in their native tongues.” Unhappily all these seductions were in vain for Jamie was busy & was to lecture in Grantville in the evening. L. said “at half past eight I shall think of you doing thus & thus” (sawing the air with his arms.) L. continued “you know I have very strange people come to me—a man came a day or two ago by the name of Hyers who has just published a book describing his own career. He believes that he is fed by the Lord! How do you mean, asked L. with the knowledge that we were all fed in the same way. Why said H. He leaves pies and pea-nuts on the sidewalks for me!
Longfellow could hardly contain himself—but after all he said, that is very like Greene; when Greene comes to me he always takes his money to come and go just like my own sons, and without so much as a thank you. But I like to have Greene come because he enjoys it so much and it is so strange. He amuses me.
Then Appleton too with his odd fancies, it would be hard to find a stranger man than he. He amused me immensely the other day by fancying an indian “Great fire” or “Hole in the Wall” or some such fellow coming to Boston for the first time. Passing a perruquier’s he sees the window filled with masses of false hair; taking them to be scalps and the window to be an exhibition of these tokens of prowess he rushes in, embraces the little perruquier behind the counter, treats him like a brother and almost frightens the small hair dresser out of his senses!!”
L. liked Joaquin much—of course, he said there are some things about him not altogether agreeable such as flinging a pinch of tobacco out of his mouth under the table, “but I don’t mind those things, perhaps, he added, perhaps I might have done the same as a youth of 20!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
