"the Bridge" Born Of Sorrow

In writiug of an evening with Longfellow and "How He Game to Write His Best Known Poems" Hezekiah Butterworth in Ladies' Home Journal says: "My poem entitled 'The Bridge,' " eaid Longfellow in effect, "was -written in sorrow, which made me feel for tha loneliness of others. I was a widower at the time, and I psed sometimes to go over the bridge to Boston evenings to meet friends and to return near raidnight by the same way. The way waa silent, save here and there a belated footstep. The sea rose or feil among the wooden piers, and there was a great furnace on the Brighton hills whose red light was reflected by thewaves. It was on snch a late solitary walk that tho spirit of the poem came upon me. The bridge has been greatly altered, but the place of it is the same. "