As a boy James never wearied of rambling over the old house and the ten acres of ground, all that was left of the original ninety-five acres. Many of his poems contain references to the memories of these early years. "The First Snowfall," "Music," and "A Year's Life" are, in part, autobiographical. Lines on "The Power of Music" told of the days when he was his father's companion in the chaise, on the way to make a Sunday exchange of pulpits with a neighboring minister: "When, with feuds like Ghibelline and Guelf, Each parish did its music for itself, A parson's son, through tree-arched country ways, I rode exchange oft in dear old days, Ere yet the boys forgot, with reverent eye, To doff their hats as the black coat went by, Ere skirts expanding in their apogee Turned girls to bells without the second e; Still in my teens, I felt the varied woes Of volunteers, each singing as he chose, Till much experience left me no desire To learn new species of the village choir." Life at Elmwood was interrupted by college days, but he returned to the Cambridge house with his wife, Maria Lowell. The oldest children were born here. Here, too, came the first great sorrow of the parents, the death of their first born. At that time Mrs. Lowell found comfort in writing "The Alpine Sheep," a poem that has helped many parents in a like time of bereavement. The next great sorrow came during the Civil War, when the death from wounds was announced first of General Charles Russell Lowell, then of James Jackson Lowell, and finally of William Lowell Putnam, all beloved nephews. In the Biglow Papers, Second Series, the poet referred to these three soldiers. Leslie Stephen called the lines "the most pathetic that he ever wrote" in which he spoke of the three likely lads, "Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'." During the closing year of the war, one of the students who attended his lectures on Dante at Harvard College wrote of a visit to his preceptor: "I found the serene possessor of Elmwood in good spirits, ate a Graham biscuit and drank some delicious milk with him and his wife, then enjoyed a very pleasant conversation. He read some of Shakspeare's sonnets, to make me think better of them, and succeeded.... He gave me a very welcome copy of Macaulay's essays and poems, and the little visit was another oasis in school life's dearth of home sociability. Mabel, his only child, was not there at supper, but came home some time after: 'salute your progenitor!' and the answer was a daughter's kiss."