Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on the Heart’s Memory)

“The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,

     And in it are enshrined

The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought

     The giver's loving thought.”— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “From My Arm-Chair,” Ultima Thule (1880)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this poem to commemorate a gift of an armchair from the children of Cambridge, given to him on his 72^nd birthday, on this date in 1879. The chair was made from the wood of the chestnut tree of “The Village Blacksmith,” the subject of one of his most famous poems.