“My dear friend, Charles Wingate, has passed on peacefully and hopefully. His departure leaves me nearly alone in that old generation.”
Mr. Wingate was of the family of “The Countess” of Whittier’s beautiful poem.
“I attended the Haverhill reunion,” he writes shortly after that event, “but I have suffered for it since; the fatigue and excitement were too much for me.”
For this occasion he wrote the poem, “Reunion,” ending:
“Hail and farewell! We go our way
Where shadows end, we trust, in light;
The star that ushers in the night
Is herald also of the day!”
Two years later, in the latter part of July, 1887, the poet wrote from Centre Harbor:
“I got away from the hotel before the fire. We are stopping here at the Sturtevant Farm near Holderness. It has been hot and damp for the last week. The fields are green as June, but too wet for comfort.”