By the mouth of Whittier's "lowland river" we find the birthplace of Lloyd Garrison, the ancestral abode of the Longfellows, the tomb of Whitefield beneath the spot where he preached, the once sojourn of Talleyrand. Here, too, still inhabited by his family, we find the large, three-storied corner house in which Parton spent his last twenty years of busy life, and the low book-lined attic study where, in his cherished easy-chair with his manuscript resting upon a lap-board, he did much of his valuable work.
Still farther northward, we come to the ancient town of Aldrich's "Bad Boy"-hood,—immortalized as the "Rivermouth" of his prose,—the place of Longfellow's "Lady Wentworth," the home of Hawthorne's Sir William Pepperell; and to the picturesque island realm of that "Princess of Thule," Celia Thaxter, and her gifted poet-brother Laighton;—but these shrines are worthy of a separate pilgrimage.
OUT OF BOSTON
IV
WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC
Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket—Webster's Home and Grave—Where Emerson won his Wife—Home of Miss Peabody—Parkman—Miss Guiney—Aldrich's Ponkapog—Farm of Ripley's Community—Relics and Reminiscences.
ONE day's excursion out of Boston is southward through the birthplace and ancestral home of the brilliant essayist Quincy to the boyhood haunts of Woodworth and the scenes which inspired his sweetest lyric. In Scituate, by the village of Greenbush, we find the well of the "Old Oaken Bucket" remaining at the site of the dwelling where the poet was born and reared. Most of the "loved scenes" of his childhood—the wide-spreading pond, the venerable orchard, the flower-decked meadow, the "deep-tangled wildwood"—may still be seen, little changed since he knew them; but the rock of the cataract has been removed and the cascade itself somewhat altered by the widening of the highway; the "cot of his father" has given place to a modern farm-house; and the "moss-covered bucket that hung in the well" has been supplanted by a convenient but unpoetical pump.
Webster's Home and Grave