Whittier’s singing voice lost none of its flexibility but rather gained as time went on. ‘The Henchman’ was a striking performance for a man of seventy. ‘It is not exactly a Quakerly piece, nor is it didactic, and it has no moral that I know of,’ observed Whittier. He must have known that it had the moral of exquisite beauty. Indeed he admitted that it was ‘not unpoetical.’ His last utterance was a little group of poems, _At Sundown_, having for the controlling thought the close of life’s day. One of them, ‘Burning Drift-Wood,’ was the poet’s farewell; and with the quotation of four of its stanzas we may bring to an end this brief survey of Whittier’s work. What matter that it is not May, That birds have flown, and trees are bare, That darker grows the shortening day, And colder blows the wintry air! The wrecks of passion and desire, The castles I no more rebuild, May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, And warm the hands that age has chilled. * * * * * I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me; I know from whence the airs have blown That whisper of the Eternal Sea. As low my fires of drift-wood burn, I hear that sea’s deep sound increase. And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace. FOOTNOTES: [35] Whittier’s Autobiographical Letter, in Carpenter’s _Whittier_. [36] The first collected edition made with Whittier’s consent. [37] Whittier, J. T. Fields, and Bayard Taylor. X _Nathaniel Hawthorne_ REFERENCES: =Julian Hawthorne=: _Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife_, second edition, 1885. =Horatio Bridge=: _Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne_, 1893. =G. E. Woodberry=: _Nathaniel Hawthorne_, ‘American Men of Letters,’ 1902. I HIS LIFE Among the passengers in the ship which brought Winthrop and Dudley to the New World was William Hathorne, the ancestor of the novelist. A man of character, versatile, naturally eloquent, and a born leader, he rose to a position of influence in the colony. One of his sons, John Hathorne, was destined to sinister renown as a judge at the trials for witchcraft held at Salem in 1691. Daniel Hathorne, a grandson of the old witch judge, took to the sea, and during the Revolutionary War served as a privateersman. He had seven children. Nathaniel, his third son, also a sea-captain, married Elizabeth Clarke Manning, and became the father of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the novelist, who was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804. Captain Hawthorne died at Surinam in 1808. The rigid seclusion in which his widow lived after her husband’s death had a marked effect on her son, quickening his sensibilities and at the same time clouding his lively nature with a shadow of premature gravity.