He said nothing
to his amazed family of the alarming episode of the playing-woman, nor
of his deep consciousness of the home-made clothes, but he no doubt
reflected much upon this Boston visit in the leisure of the silent
fields and hills.
It is impossible to convey to those who never saw Mr. Whittier the
charm of his gift of story telling; the exactness and simplicity of
his reminiscences were flavored by his poetical insight and dramatic
representation. It was a wonderful thing to hear him rehearse in the
twilight the scenes of his youth, and the figures that came and went
in that small world; the pathos and humor of his speech can never be
exceeded; and there can never be again so complete a linking of the
ancient provincial lore and the new life and thought of New England as
there was in him. While he was with us, his poems seemed hardly to
give sufficient witness of that rich store of thought and knowledge;
he was always making his horizon wider, at the same time that he came
into closer sympathy with things near at hand. For him the ancient
customs of a country neighborhood, the simple characters, the loves
and hates and losses of a rural household, stood for a type of human
life in every age, and were never trivial or narrow. As he grew older,
these became less and less personal. He sometimes appeared to think of
death rather than the person who had died, and of love and grief
rather than of those who felt their influence.
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