The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-11-06
WHERE WHITTIER LIVES.
A Delightful Pen Portrait of the Poet anu
His Pleasant Home.

A Delightful Pen Portrait of the Poet anu
His Pleasant Home.
Harriet Prescott spofford, in New York Critic.
Mr.. Whittiers dwelling in Amesbury is exceed
ingly simple and exquisitely neat, the exterior
of a pale cream color, with many trees and
shrubs about it, while, within, one room opens
into another till you reach the study that should
be haunted by the echos of all sweet sounds, for
here have been written the most of those verses
full of the ftful music,
"Of winds that out of dreamland 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 interesting 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 entieing place!
Garrison, and Phillips, and Higginson, and Was
son, and Emerson, and Fields, and Bayard Tay-
lor and Alice and Phoebe Cary, and Gail Hamil-
ton, and Anna Dickinson are only q few of the
names that one first remembers, 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 adjoining
villages and towns feei a peculiar ownership of
their poet; there is scarcely a legend of all the
region round which ne inns not woven into his
so1y, anu the nelgnDornood feel not only as Ii
Ellttler were their poet, but in some way the
Guardian spirit. the genius of the place. Per-
haps 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 mad made a small
purchase, and there is no doubt that the exam
pie would have been contagious if the independ-
ent spirit of the poet would ever have al
lowed it.
These Indian summer days of the poets life
are spent not all in the places that knew him of
old. The greatest 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 fnds him
in the house of his COUSINS at Oak Knoll, in
Danvers, still in his native county of Essex.
This is "a mansion, with its porehes, and porti-
Goes, and surrounding lawns and groves, which
seems meet for q 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 chequered sunshine, must always give.
1t is the home of culture and refinement, too,
and as full of beauty within as without. Here
many of the latter poems have been sent forth.
aud here tiedglings have the u~nwarrantable i'm
pertinence to intrude with their callow manu-
scripts, and here those pests of prominence-the
autograph s~eekers-send their requests by the
thousands. But in the early fall the poet steals
quietly back to Amesbury, and there awaits
election day, a period in which he reiglously be-
lieves that no man has a right to avoid his duty,
and of which he still thinks as when he saw
"Along the street
The shadows meet
Of Destiny, whose hands conceal
The molds of fate
That shape the State,
And make or mar the common veal"
What a life he has to look back unon as he sits
with his fame about him-what storms and what