serve as a symbol of the magazine's association with the poets. Most of them were present for the celebration, though Lowell had recently moved to Spain. Mark Twain gave an infamous after-dinner speech in which he satirized the poets as uncouth drunkards. In his story, three impostors pretend to be Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes, and forget which poet authored which poem. The speech was scandalous because it showed a lack of reverence and, in turn, Twain felt guilty for his transgression and wrote notes to the poets apologizing for it. Longfellow's 74th birthday in 1881 was honored nationwide with celebrations in schools throughout the United States. Between 1884 and 1900, readers' polls consistently placed these poets as the nation's most important writers. Generally, these poets promoted nationalist values and, as such, were deemed especially appropriate for study among children. Horace Scudder in his 1888 book Literature in School emphasized this point: Teachers through modern times have frequently emphasized the fireside poets in the classroom. According to scholar Kevin Stein, this emphasis reflects an expectation that poetry should have didactic messages and that poems can be used for moral betterment. Young readers, however, often turn away from this type of poetry because they dislike such sermonizing tones. Recognition and decline In 1901, Emerson and Longfellow were inducted as inaugural members of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, which added Lowell and Whittier in 1905 and Holmes and Bryant in 1910. Longfellow was commemorated with a bust in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London; he was the first non-British writer honored this way and remains the only American poet represented with a bust. Even before the end of the century, however, Lowell acknowledged a change in the poetic climate and feared the erasure of gentlemanly gentility in emerging poetry. He wrote to William Dean Howells: "The danger of our literature... seems to me to be lawlessness & want of scholarly refinement. This is the rock I see ahead just now, & I fear we may go to pieces on it if we don't look sharp." Holmes died in 1894, the last of the fireside poets, and one literary magazine called it "the closing of an era in American literature". Critics, meanwhile, began re-examining the role of these poets in the canon and distinguishing between popularity and aesthetics. As the twentieth century began, academics began to turn to poets such as