The “Joseph and Gertrude” of whom the poet so often speaks in his letters were Mr. and Mrs. Cartland, both his cousins. They had spent the winter preceding his niece’s marriage with him in Amesbury. And during the latest years of his life he passed weeks and months at their home in Newburyport. They were frequently, perhaps always in later years, with him in his summerings among the hills. At one time principals of the Friends School in Providence, they were delightful in manners and conversation, their culture from books and social life mingling with their Quaker demureness, and, flashing through this, a brightness all their own. It was interesting to watch that likeness in unlikeness between Mr. Cartland and the poet, although, oddly enough, it was the former who recalled the poet, and never the poet him. Jettie M---- for whom he wrote “The Henchman” and for whom the boat of his poem, “Voyage of the Jettie,” was named, was sometimes one of his summer companions among the hills. XXVI Being obliged on account of ill health to decline a visit to old friends, he wrote to them: “I would like to see how Haverhill looks at this delightful season [October] and enjoy with old friends there the wonderful glory of the autumnal woods. But I find that I have to let a great many pleasant things drop out of my life. I thank God for such as remain, and, especially, for the love and goodwill of my friends, among whom I am glad to reckon the inmates of the F---- homestead. With love to thee and the Col. and C----, I include myself in Tiny Tim’s benediction, ‘God bless us every one!’” * * * * * “I went to the country for three or four weeks,” he said in 1885 in a letter to the writer, “and came back feeling better for it, but for the last three weeks have fallen back and the first hint of cold weather makes me dread the coming winter and feel that I have little assurance of another season of leaves and flowers. If I live a few weeks longer I shall be seventy-eight!” * * * * * It was that same year that he wrote again to his Haverhill friend in regard to the reunion of the surviving students of the Haverhill Academy in 1827-28. “I thank thee for thy kind invitation,” he says, “but I have been so ill for the last week that I am quite unfit for going anywhere. I shall try to be at my old friend Wingate’s tomorrow, but I shall not venture to do anything more. It would give me no small pleasure to visit you, but I cannot do it. I hope there will be a very quiet meeting of the old scholars and nothing of a public nature. We don’t want to make a show of our old selves in the least. The thing is no plan of mine.” * * * * * A few years later he wrote to the same: “My dear friend, Charles Wingate, has passed on peacefully and hopefully. His departure leaves me nearly alone in that old generation.”