GROUP AT STURTEVANT'S, CENTRE HARBOR
Gertrude Cartland at Whittier's left, Mrs. Wade and Joseph Cartland at his right. Mrs. Caldwell, wife of Whittier's nephew, at his left shoulder.
The next day after the husking, Lucy Larcom and some others of the party prepared a burlesque literary exercise for the evening at the inn. She wrote a frolicsome poem, and others devised telegrams, etc., all of which were to surprise Whittier, who was to know nothing of the affair until it came off. When the evening came, the venerable poet took his usual place next the tongs, and the rest of the party formed a semicircle around the great fireplace. On such occasions Whittier always insisted on taking charge of the fire, as he did in his own home. He even took upon himself the duty of filling the wood-box. No one in his presence dared to touch the tongs. By and by telegrams began to be brought in by the landlord from ridiculous people in ridiculous situations. Some purported to come from an old poet who had the misfortune to be caught by his coat-tails in one of the Knox bear-traps on Chocorua. It was suggested that he might be the author of the poem read at the husking. Lucy Larcom, who, by the way, was another of the writers popularly supposed to be very serious minded, but who really was known among her friends as full of fun, read a poem addressed to the man in the bear-trap, entitled:—
TO THE UNKNOWN AND ABSENT AUTHOR OF
"HOW THEY CLIMBED CHOCORUA"
O man in the trap, O thou poet-man!
What on airth are you doin'?—
We haste to the husking as fast as we can,
—But where 's Mr. Bruin?
We listen, we wait for his sweet howl in vain,
Like the far storm resounding.
Brothers Knox ne'er will see Mr. Bruin again,
Through the dim moonlight bounding.
For, thou man in the trap, O thou poet-y-man,
Scared to flight by thy singing,
Away through the mountainous forest he ran,
Like a hurricane winging.
Aye, the bear fled away, and his traps left behind,
For the use of the poet;
If an echo unearthly is borne on the wind—
'T is the man's—you may know it
By its tones of dismay, melancholy and loss,
O'er his coat-tails' sad ruin;
There 's a moan in the pine, and a howl o'er the moss—
But it 's he—'t is n't Bruin!
And the fire you see on the cliff in the air[8]
Is his eye-balls a-glarin'!
And the form that you call old Chocorua there
Is the poet up-rarin'!