Show LONGFELLOW AS A LAD Boyhood Friendship With Chum Continued Con-tinued Through Life The boyhood friendship between Longfellow and Edward DeerIng Pre blo has received scant attention from tho formers biographers yet the two grow up together writes Peter Fro neau in the Delineator Hand in hand they said Good morning mistress mis-tress to the prim maam who kept the dames school In Portland Later at the academy on Congress street they wielded goosequllls under the watchful eyes of Jacob Abbot a pedagogue peda-gogue famed In his day The same flyIng fly-Ing wagon or stage coach that bore Longfellow off to Bowdoln college in Brunswick took young Preble Damon Longfellow and Pythias Preble It was a happy pair of boys that sat beneath be-neath the Longfellow elms reading Washington Irvings Sketch Book and other delightful tales At an early ago they both began to scribble verses When Longfellow was thirteen thir-teen years old ho published a poem in the Portland Gazette entitled tho Bat tie of Lovells Pond about which an amusing and halfpathetic story is told On the day of its appearance the lad read and reread it with Increas ing satisfaction In the evening feel ing almost vainglorious ho went to visit at the house of Judge Mellon whoso son Frederick was a fellow classmate There conversation drifted drift-ed to poetry and the Judge indignant ly I seized the mornings Gazette and unconscious of the wounds Inflicted called The Battle of Lovells Pond a remarkably stiff and unoriginal composition compo-sition There were tears on Long fellows pillow that night and in the morning he no ooubt confided his sorrow to his friend I |