"
As the end drew near, he passed more and more time with his beloved
cousins Gertrude and Joseph Cartland in Newburyport, whose interests
and aims in life were so close to his own.
The habit of going to the White Mountains in their company for a few
weeks during the heat of summer was a fixed one. He grew to love
Asquam, with its hills and lakes, almost better than any other place
for this sojourn. It was there he loved to beckon his friends to join
him. "Do come, if possible," he would write. "The years speed on; it
will soon be too late. I long to look on your dear faces once more."
His deafness began to preclude general conversation; but he delighted
in getting off under the pine-trees in the warm afternoons, or into a
quiet room upstairs at twilight, and talking until bedtime. He
described to us, during one visit, his first stay among the hills. His
parents took him where he could see the great wooded slope of
Agamenticus. As he looked up and gazed with awe at the solemn sight, a
cloud drooped, and hung suspended as it were from one point, and
filled his soul with astonishment. He had never forgotten it. He said
nothing at the time, but this cloud hanging from the breast of the
hill filled his boyish mind with a mighty wonder, which had never
faded away.
Notwithstanding his strong feeling for Amesbury, and his presence
there always at "quarterly meeting," he found himself increasingly
comfortable in the companionship of his devoted relatives.
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