The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-12-06
WHERE WHITTIER LIVES.
A Delightful Pen Portrait of the Poet and
His Pleasant Home.

his Eleasant Home.
Mr.. Whttiers dwelling in Amesburv
is exceedingly simple and exquisitely
neat, the exterior of a pale cream color,
with many trees and shrubs about it,
while within, one room opens into an
other till you reach the study that should
be haunted by the echoes of all sweet
sounds, for here have been written the
most of those verses full of the fitful
music
'Of winds that out of dreamand blew"
Here, in the proper season, the flames
of a cheerful fire dance upon the brass
andirOns of the open hearth, in the
center of a wall lined with books; water
colors by Harry Fem and Lucy Larcom
and Celia ThaXter, together with inter-
esting prints, hang on the other walls,
rivaled, it may be, by the window that
looks down a sunny little orchard, and
by the glass-topped door through which
you see the green dome of Powow Hill.
What worthless have been entertained in
this enticing place! Garrison and
Phillips and Higginson and WATSON and
Emerson and Fields and Bavard TAYLOR
and Alice and Phoebe Carey and Gail
Hamilton and Anna Dickinson are only
few OF the names that. one first re-
members, to say nothing of countless
sweet souls, unknown to any other roll
of fame than heavens, who have found
the atmosphere there kindred to their
own.
The people of Amesbury and of the
16InJninO villa a1od
culiar ownership of their poet; there is
scarcely a legend of all the region
round which he has not woven into his
song, and the neighborhood feel not
only as if Whittier were their poet, but
in some way the guardian spirit, the
genius of the place. Perhaps in his
stern and sweet life he has been so, even
as much as in his song.
"There is no charge to Mr.. Whittier
once said a shopman, of whom he had
made small purchase, and there is no
doubt that the example would have been
contagious if the independent spirit of
the poet would ever have allowed it.
These Indian summer days of the
poets life are spent not all in the places
that knew him of old. The greater part
of the winter is passed in Boston, a
share of the summer ALWAYS goes to the
White Hills, of which he is passionately
fond, and the remainder of the time
finds him in the house of his cousins at
Oak Knoll, in Danvers, still in his ma
tive County of Essex. This is mansion,
with its porches and porticos and sur
rounding lawns and groves, which seems
meet for poets home. 1t stands
in spacious and secluded grounds,
Swallowed by mighty oaks and
with that woodland character which
birds and squirrels and rabbits darling
in the checkered sunshine must always
give. 1t IS the home of culture and re-
1incment, too, and as full of beauty
within as without. Here MANY of the
latter poems have been sent forth. and
here tledglings have the understandable
impertinence to intrude with their cal
low manuscripts, and here those pests
of prominence, the autograph seekers
send their requests by the thousands
But in the early fall the poet steals qu-
city back to Amesbury, and there awaits
election day, period in which he relig-
iously believes that no man has right
TO avoid h is duty, and of which he still
thinks as when he saw
"Along the street
The shadows meet
Or Destiny, whose hands conceal
The mOlds of fate
That shape the State
And make or mar the common veal"
What life he has to look back upon as
he sits with his fame about him-what
storms and what delights. what strug-
Gle and what victory. With all the deep
and wonderful humility of spirit that he
bears before God and man, yet it is
doubtful if he could find any one day in
it that he would change, 50 far as his
own acts are concerned. 1t is certain
that no one else could find it.
In appearance, Mr.. Whittier is as up
right in bearing as ever. His eye is as
black and burns with as keen fire as
when it flashed over the Concord mob,
and sees beauty everywhere as freshly
as when he cried with the Voices Of
Freedom and sang the Songs OF
Labor" and his smile is the same smile
that has won the worship of men, and
of women, too, for sixty years and over.
: wv, it is with sort of tenderness that
people speak and think of him whose
walk will, perhaps, go but little further
with their own; not that they deem
! sl,oil vitality and power and spirit can
ever cease, but that they are warned of
| its apotheosis, as it were, into loftier
regions, where his earthly songs shall
| be turned to the music of the morning
stars as they sing Harriet
! Lb,'J.