"
The solitude of Celia Thaxter's childhood, which was not solitude,
surrounded as she was with the love of a father and a mother, all
tenderness, and brothers dear to her as her own life, developed in the
child strange faculties. She was five years old when the family left
Portsmouth,--old enough, given her inborn power of enjoyment of
nature, to delight in the free air and the wonderful sights around
her. She gives in her book a pretty picture of the child watching the
birds that flew against the lighthouse lantern, when they lived at
White Island. The birds would strike it with such force as to kill
themselves. "Many a May morning," she says, "have I wandered about the
rock at the foot of the tower, mourning over a little apron brimful of
sparrows, swallows, thrushes, robins, fire-winged blackbirds, many-
colored warblers and flycatchers, beautifully clothed yellow-birds,
nuthatches, catbirds, even the purple finch and scarlet tanager and
golden oriole, and many more beside,--enough to break the heart of a
small child to think of! Once a great eagle flew against the lantern
and shivered the glass."
Her father seems to have been a man of awful energy of will. Some
disappointment in his hope of a public career, it has been said,
decided him to take the step of withdrawing himself forever from the
world of the mainland, and this attitude he appears to have sustained
unflinchingly to the end. Her mother, with a heart stayed as
unflinchingly upon love and obedience, seems to have followed him
without a murmur, leaving every dear association of the past as though
it had not been.
Pages:
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205