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Show 1' LAST DAYS OF GREAT POET8. Bliss Perry Writes of the FassInQ of v Thomas Bailey Aldrlch. On the day whon ho last entered tho. Atlantic ofTico, In January, Mr. Aldrlch seemed, for tho llrst tlmo, to havo grown old. One of his frlonds ripoko of It as he went out. Up till that morning, tho weight of 70 years had scarcely seemed to touch, tho erect, Jaunty figure. Tho lines that tlmo had wrltton around his clear bluo eyes, ami firm mouth convoyed no hint of senility. His hair wns scarcely scarce-ly gray. Ills voice, slightly husky In Its graver, sweeter tones, retained re-tained a delicious youthful crisp-ness crisp-ness us It curled and broko. wave-like, Into flashing raillery. Ho bad just completed his poem for the Iongfel-low Iongfel-low contenary, his flrst verso after some years of silence, nnd when It was prulBcd to his face for who could help praising It? ho blushed with pleasure like a boy. Yet ho had passed three-score and ten, and the ahadow, Invisible as yet and quite unheralded, un-heralded, was drawing very rear. Dllss Perry. In Atlantic. |