Munsey's Magazine, February 1907

This February 1907 issue of Munsey's Magazine features a substantial essay by Harry Thurston Peck titled "Our American Laureate," commemorating Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's centennial. Peck argues that Longfellow—not Walt Whitman—represents the true American character and ideals. He contrasts Whitman's raw, materialistic verse celebrating locomotives and physical desire with Longfellow's refined treatment of ordinary life: the village blacksmith, shipwrecks, household clocks, and children. Peck examines Longfellow's major narrative poems (Evangeline, Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish), praising their epic construction and distinctly American themes. The essay emphasizes Longfellow's personal character—his gentility, scholarship, modest means, civic engagement, and hospitable Cambridge home—as embodying the highest American values of dignity, charity, and domestic virtue.