_Snow-Bound_ was published in 1866. What the author thought of it we now know: ‘If it were not mine I should call it pretty good.’ The public decided for itself and bought copies enough to fatten Whittier’s lean purse with ten thousand dollars. The enviously-inclined should remember that the poet was nearly sixty when this happened to him. A twelvemonth later _The Tent on the Beach_ was published and began selling at the rate of a thousand copies a day. Whittier wrote to Fields: ‘This will never do; the swindle is awful; Barnum is a saint to us.’ Readers who find difficulty in comprehending the enthusiasm that _Snow-Bound_ evoked must reflect that there are strange creatures in the world who actually like winter. For them Whittier had a particular message. He has reproduced the atmosphere of the New England landscape under storm-cloud and falling snow with utmost precision. No important detail is wanting, and no detail is emphasized to the injury of the general effect. The exactness and simplicity of the touch are wholly admirable. The result is as exquisite as the means to it are unostentatious. _Snow-Bound_ is a favorite because of its homely, sweet realism, because of the poetic glow thrown on old-fashioned scenes, because of the variety of moods (which, lying between the extremes of playfulness and deepest feeling, shade naturally from one to the next); and because of the reverential spirit, the high confidence and trust. The poem is autobiographical, but it needs no ‘key’ to give it interest. The characters are types. In _The Tent on the Beach_ it is related how a poet,[37] a publisher (who in this instance, contrary to the traditions of his race, is a friend of the poet), and a traveller beguile an evening at the seaside with the reading of manuscript verses from the publisher’s portfolio. The tales, eleven in number, with a closing lyric on ‘The Worship of Nature,’ are too uniformly sombre. The one called ‘The Maids of Attitash’ is blithe enough, but the gray tints need even more relief. Whittier’s power in descriptions of sea and sky is displayed at its best in this volume. One does not soon forget this stanza from the prelude:-- Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black, Stooped low upon the darkening main, Piercing the waves along its track With the slant javelins of rain. And when west-wind and sunshine warm Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth-flowers! Even better is the description of the breakers seen by twilight:-- ... trampling up the sloping sand, In lines outreaching far and wide, The white-maned billows swept to land, Dim seen across the gathering shade, A vast and ghostly cavalcade. The change from the mist and confusion of the brief tempest to the clear after effect was never better rendered:--