Though Whittier remained throughout his life a Quaker not only in dress and speech but in belief and character, yet with his quietness and quaint simplicity was blended no severity nor gloom. He had a great love of fun, which alone can account for his mischievous habit of teasing, and for his keeping such pets as the little bantam rooster that aroused the household each morning with its crowing, and the parrot "Charlie" that swore when excited, stopped the horses in the street with its cries of "whoa," and nipped the ankles of unwary visitors. Then, too, he was always attractive to children, and often preferred their society to that of older people. But above all else, with each succeeding year he became more just and compassionate towards others. The kindliness of his nature was untouched by the sorrow and sickness that he bore. "Love--love to all the world," he would often repeat in his last years, and the sweet influence of the benediction is felt by all who read his life and works: "Best loved and saintliest of our singing train, Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong. A lifelong record closed without a stain, A blameless memory shrined in deathless song."[390-2] FOOTNOTES: [381-1] The poetical quotations given in this article are from _Snow-Bound_. [390-2] From an ode written by Oliver Wendell Holmes upon the death of Whittier. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Plain indeed was the little home among the hills of Western Massachusetts, near the town of Cummington, where was born on November 3, 1794, the first great American poet, William Cullen Bryant. His father was a physician of scholarly tastes, and his mother, though not highly educated, was a woman of much practical wisdom. Both parents were kind and affectionate, but followed the custom of that time in treating their children with a strictness unknown to American boys and girls of to-day. Even small acts of disrespect or disobedience were promptly punished, and to aid in the work of correction the Bryant home as well as that of almost every neighbor was provided with a good-sized bundle of birch sticks hanging warningly on the kitchen wall. As the poet himself tells us in a sketch of his early life, the children looked upon the older people of the family with so much awe that they could not go to them freely nor act naturally in their presence.