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MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--Being more accustomed to speak with the pen than with the tongue, it is somewhat difficult for me to find appropriate words now to thank you for the honor you have done me, and the very kind expressions you have used. Coming here as a stranger, this welcome makes me feel that I am not a stranger; for how can a man be a stranger in a country where he finds all doors and all hearts open to him? Besides, I myself am a Cumberland man,--I was born in the County of Cumberland, in the State of Maine, three thousand miles from here,--and you all know that the familiar name of a town or country has a homelike sound to our ears.... You can think then how very grateful it is to me--how very pleasant--to find my name has a place in your memories and your affections. For this kindness I most heartily thank you, and I reciprocate all the good wishes which you have expressed for perpetual peace and amity between our two nations.
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Amid a score or so of Heads of Houses and other Academic dignitaries conspicuous by their scarlet robes, the one on whom all eyes were turned was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The face was one which would have caught the spectator's glance, even if not called to it by the cheers which greeted his appearance in the red robes of an LL. D. Long, white, silken hair and a beard of patriarchal whiteness enclosed a fresh-colored countenance, with fine-cut features and deep-sunken eyes, overshadowed by massive eyebrows. In a few well-rounded Latin sentences, Mr. Clark, the Public Orator, recited the claims of the distinguished visitor to the privilege of an honorary degree. The names of Hiawatha and Evangeline sounded strangely amid the sonorous periods.
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Excelsior, before which the poet promptly retreated. Passing to the continent, the party visited Switzerland, crossed by the St. Gothard Pass to Italy, and reached Cadenabbia, on the Lake of Como. They returned to Paris in the autumn; then went to Italy again, staying at Florence and Rome, where they saw the Abbé Liszt and obtained that charming sketch of him by Healy, in which the great musician is seen opening the inner door and bearing a candle in his hand. In the spring they visited Naples, Venice, and Innsbruck, returning then to England, where Longfellow received the degree of D. C. L. at Oxford; and they then visited Devonshire, Edinburgh, and the Scottish lakes. He again received numberless invitations in London, and wrote to Lowell,
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It is only by dint of great resolution that I escaped a dozen public and semi-public dinners. At the very last moment before sailing, he received a note from Mr. E. J. Reed, the chief constructor to the British Navy, who pronounced his poem
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The Building of the Ship to be the finest poem on shipbuilding that ever was or ever would be written. He reached home September 1, 1869. In his letters during this period, one sees the serene head of a family, the absolutely unspoiled recipient of praise, but not now the eager and enthusiastic young pilgrim of romance. Yet he writes to his friend Ferguson that if he
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about York Cathedral, his friends would think him sixteen instead of sixty; and again tells his publisher Fields that he enjoys Lugano--never before visited--to the utmost, but that