Like Freneau (see pp. 71-81), but to a more marked degree, Whittier was most popular at first for his journalistic, controversial poems, though his most permanent work has nothing to do with either noble or ignoble strife. He followed the example of Burns, who inspired his first literary passion, in writing simple lyrics and narratives of his own countryside. These included many of the legends of Boston, like "Cassandra Southwick," of Hartford; like "Abraham Davenport," or of his beloved district north of Boston; like "The Wreck of Rivermouth," "The Garrison of Cape Ann," and "Skipper Ireson's Ride." As a rule he was not inclined to tell stories without some clear moral implication, and all too often he expounded this implication, sermon-wise, at the end. Thus he tells with dignity and fine effect the story of the Indian specters of Cape Ann, who were finally driven away by the prayers of the devout garrison after repeated volleys from their musketry had failed. In eighty lines the tale is told; an added stanza calls attention to the fact that there is a moral in the ancient fiction; and two more in a sort of sub-postscript indulge in a final burst of poetical exegesis. "Skipper Ireson," the best of Whittier's ballads, is no less moralistic, but is done with more art, for the ethical point is developed within the account instead of being tacked on after it. In poems such as "Hampton Beach," "The Lakeside," "The Last Walk in Autumn," and "At Eventide" Whittier pictures the nature surroundings of his long lifetime; and in a generous succession, from "Memories" of 1841 to "In School-Days," of nearly thirty years later, he takes his readers along the borderlands of autobiography. Preëminent among his recollections of persons and places is "Snow-Bound." The snowstorm, which Emerson celebrated as a thing in itself, Whittier adopted as the background for a winter idyl. The "Flemish pictures of old days" which he drew of his Haverhill homestead were annotated in great detail by the poet, but their virtue lies not so much in the fact that they are true to a given set of conditions, as that they are essentially true to the rural life of Whittier's New England--just as the pictures in "The Cotter's Saturday Night" are true to the Scotland of Burns, and the pictures of "The Deserted Village" to the landlord-ridden Ireland of Goldsmith. And to the attentive reader the contrasts between the peasant life of Great Britain and the nearest thing to it that can be found in America are abiding witnesses to the practical virtues of a democracy. In this simple idyl, written with "intimate knowledge and delight," Whittier combined truth and beauty as in no other of his poems.