He added: “I got a mayflower over three weeks ago from Pennsylvania. I don’t suppose the Folly-Mill flowers will bloom for a month or more.” The mayflowers in “the woods of Folly-Mill,” a few miles from the poet’s home, were very abundant and beautiful. * * * * * In the old Amesbury burying-ground by the road leading to Merrimac--then called “West Amesbury”--slept his mother and sisters and others of his family. Here he himself was to be laid one day--as now he rests. He loved the Amesbury house in which his dear ones had lived. Here, with also much of his earlier work, he had written “Snow-bound,” “The Tent on the Beach,” and many of his later poems. The place was filled with treasured memories and inspiration to further work. There was in it, as the writer has heard him say, a dearness and a sacredness belonging to no other spot. [Illustration: IN THE WHITTIER GARDEN] Even in quitting it for a time, as he did at the marriage of his niece, Lizzie--Mrs. Pickard--he did not shut himself out from it. But for this house which was still to be home for him when from time to time he should return there, he chose tenants who, as far as possible, made it so to him--Judge Cate and his wife. He liked to discuss politics, local and national, with Judge Cate. And all who visited him in Amesbury during these years could but be grateful to Mrs. Cate for her attention to the poet’s comfort and pleasure, a thoughtfulness exercised with tact and delicacy. In her consideration of him she might have been a daughter to the lonely saint. Yet, one day the eyes of a guest of his grew dim as sitting at table with him, there came the keen remembrance of his loneliness. Not one of his own kith and kin was there to minister to him so loyal to them. Whittier used to say that those born under the shadow of Powow Hill always came back to die. It is well known that this was what he wished to do--to die in the same house from which his mother and his sister had passed to the life beyond. This wish was not fulfilled. Yet it was not half a score of miles away, at the beautiful home of a relative and one of his own faith, that he passed from death to life. And it was here, in his own dear house, that his friends assembled to pay him the last honors. And it was from this house that he was borne to “... that low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings.” Whittier is a wonderful illustration of that faith which in believing possesses. “Safe in thy immortality What change can reach the wealth I hold?” he sang of Elizabeth. What thoughts of trust and faith and help he has given to the world! And no man can give, save from what he himself possesses. * * * * *