Excerpt from Boys' and Girls' Bookshelf, Vol. 19: Little Journeys Into Bookland (Part I) More than a hundred years ago a mother sat writing a letter while a baby boy played near by, and as she looked proudly at her little son she wrote in her letter: I think you would like my little Henry W. He is an active rogue and wishes for nothing so much as singing and dancing. That is the very first mention we can find of the poet's name, and we are glad that his mother has the honor of having the first say. Before many years there was a large family of Longfellow boys and girls. They lived in a fine house built by their grandfather General Peleg Wadsworth, more than twenty years before Henry was born. It was the first brick house in Portland, Maine. Every brick in its walls was brought from Philadelphia. This house was the home of Zilpah Wadsworth's girlhood, and here she was courted and won by Stephen Longfellow. Then, when her father moved up to his beautiful country place, it became the Longfellow home. It was a regular story-book house with all sorts of unexpected nooks and crannies. There were wide window-seats where the children could curl up and read tales from the well-filled bookshelves. From its windows they could see the beautiful Casco Bay, and down at the wharves they could watch the boats coming in from the West Indies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.