“What beautiful and serene November days we have had! The weather now grows colder with keen premonitions of winter. W---- has gone to Washington. He started on seventh day morning. I saw the poor fellow off. There was a prophecy of home-sickness in his face as he left. We shall miss him. Banks is governor by twenty-four thousand plurality. The morning after election Elizabeth crowned his picture with thy wreath. Mother sends much love. So does Lizzy [his sister Lizzy]. We shall be glad to hear from thee.” XII One day in the garden room Whittier spoke laughingly of some early stories of his that he had recently found when rummaging in the garret. He assured his listener--the writer--that they were not so bad! No persuasion, however, could induce him to show them, or even tell her more about them. But not a few of his poems have a dramatic touch which suggests that had he not been reformer and poet, he would have been famous in romance. It may have been this faculty of romance which has given to “My Playmate,” “In School Days,” and several other of his poems touches which might well be construed into a meaning more tender than friendship alone. Another such is “A Valentine,” written to this same friend of Elizabeth and of the poet himself, and never published. On the envelope was written in the handwriting of the recipient, “Valentine from J. G. W.--1849.” It reads: “To M---- Long have I sought and vainly have I yearned To meet some spirit that could answer mine; Then chide me not that I so soon have learned To talk with thine. Oh, thou wilt cherish what some hearts would spurn; So gentle and so full of soul thou art, And shrine my feelings in that holy urn, Thine own true heart!” His niece, Lizzie Whittier, afterward Mrs. Pickard, told of the poet’s strong home affections. She said that from his early childhood in his games he was always playing at house-keeping; and all his life the ideal of home and the love of it never left his heart. “A rose-cloud, dimly seen above, Melting in heaven’s blue depths away,-- Oh, sweet, fond dream of human love! For thee I may not pray,” he sings in “The Wish of Today.” * * * * * An Amesbury neighbor, a cousin of “The Countess” of his poem, told the writer of a remark of his. “All the ladies with whom I am associated are in homes different from mine,” he had said, it may be speaking especially of the friends of his early days. But she had added that all his life, wherever he had been placed he had been socially among the first. This same neighbor also repeated the poet’s remark to another friend who, too, was related to the heroine of one of his poems. “In one thing thee have done better than I have,” he had said to him--“thee have married a good wife.”