He brings
me so many good things, you know."
"Now, here is a little girl," he said, as he sat down at the desk with
the boy beside him, "who wants my autograph and a 'sentiment.' What
sentiment, I wonder, shall I send her?"
"Why not send her 'Let us, then, be up and doing'?" suggested the boy.
"That's what I should like if I were she."
"Should you, indeed?" said Longfellow. "That is a good suggestion.
Now, suppose you recite it off to me, so that I shall not have to look
it up in my books, and I will write as you recite. But slowly; you,
know I am an old man, and write slowly."
Edward thought it strange that Longfellow himself should not know his
own great words without looking them up. But he recited the four
lines, so familiar to every schoolboy, and when the poet had finished
writing them, he said:
"Good! I see you have a memory. Now, suppose I copy these lines once
more for the little girl, and give you this copy? Then you can say,
you know, that you dictated my own poetry to me."
Of course Edward was delighted, and Longfellow gave him the sheet on
which he had written:
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart, for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
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