Countless students of the time, not only Mary Edwards, pp. 148-9, of The House on Harrigan’s Hill, were asked to memorize poems by poets of the Victorian Age (1850-1910), especially the New Englanders called the Fireside Poets like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Lowell. According to Holmes (1809-1894) the poem that Mary memorized, “The Last Leaf,” was written for his own amusement sometime 1831-33. You can see that he was onl