Letter from Lowell to Longfellow
Letter from Lowell to Longfellow, 1867.
Elmwood, 27th Febr, 1867
My Dear Longfellow,
On looking back, I find that our personal intercourse is now of near thirty years' date. It began on your part in a note acknowledging my "Class=poem" much more kindly than it deserved. Since then it has ripened into friendship & there has never been a jar between us. If there has been, it would certainly has been my fault & not yours. Friendship is called the wine of life, & there certainly is a stimulus in it that warms & inspires as we grow older. Ours should have some body, to have kept so long.
I planned you a little surprise in the "Advertiser" for your birthday breakfast. I hope my nosegay did not spoil the flavor of your coffee. It is a hard thing to make one that will wholly please, for some flowers will not bear to be handled without wilting, & the kind I have tried to make a pretty bunch of is of that variety. But let the hope the best from your kindness, if not from their color or perfume.
In case they should please you, (& because there was one misprint in the "Advertiser", & two phrases which I have now make more to my mind,) I have copied them that you might have them in my own handwriting.
In print, you see, I have omitted the telltale cyphers not that there was anything to regret in them, for we have a proverbial phrase, "like sixty," which implies not only unabated but extraordinary vigor.
Wishing you as many happy returns as a wise man would desire.
I remain always affectionately yours.
J.R.L.