Though rather late for me, I shall plant others in
their places; for I remember the advice of the old Laird of
Dumbiedikes to his son Jock: 'When ye hae naething better to do, ye
can be aye sticking in a tree; it'll aye be growin' when ye are
sleeping.' There is an ash-tree growing here that my mother planted
with her own hands at threescore and ten. What agnostic folly to think
that tree has outlived her who planted it!"
The lines of Whittier's life stretched "between heaven and home"
during the long period of eighty-four years. A host of friends,
friends of the spirit, were, as we have seen, forever clustering
around him; and what a glorious company it was! Follen, Shipley,
Chalkley, Lucy Hooper, Joseph Sturge, Channing, Lydia Maria Child, his
sister Elizabeth--a shining cloud too numerous to mention; the
inciters of his poems and the companions of his fireside. In the
silence of his country home their memories clustered about him and
filled his heart with joy.
"He loved the good and wise, but found
His human heart to all akin
Who met him on the common ground
Of suffering and of sin."
His "Home Ballads" grew out of this very power of clinging to the same
places and the old loves, and what an incomparable group they make!
"Telling the Bees," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "My Playmate," "In School
Days," are sufficient in themselves to set the seal to his great fame.
As a traveler, too, he is unrivaled, giving us, without leaving his
own garden, the fine fruit of foreign lands.
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