Mr. Wingate was of the family of “The Countess” of Whittier’s beautiful poem. “I attended the Haverhill reunion,” he writes shortly after that event, “but I have suffered for it since; the fatigue and excitement were too much for me.” For this occasion he wrote the poem, “Reunion,” ending: “Hail and farewell! We go our way Where shadows end, we trust, in light; The star that ushers in the night Is herald also of the day!” Two years later, in the latter part of July, 1887, the poet wrote from Centre Harbor: “I got away from the hotel before the fire. We are stopping here at the Sturtevant Farm near Holderness. It has been hot and damp for the last week. The fields are green as June, but too wet for comfort.” * * * * * Thus, in spite of being “half sick,” as he was sometimes--and sometimes wholly so, he had many happy days among the friends who gathered about him in the quiet summer resorts which he frequented as long as he had strength for the journeys. Occasionally, he went to Appledore, one of the most beautiful of the Isles of Shoals. Here the retreat of Mrs. Thaxter’s cottage kept him from the crowd. But more often he went to the hills; and this was especially true in his later years. * * * * * “I have been ill a good deal of the past month,” wrote the poet in the December of 1881, “and in addition I suffer from lameness in my knee. I begin to suspect I am growing old in earnest.... I have not been in Boston for nearly a year and have hardly courage to attempt it. Did any of you hear Archdeacon Farrar? He and Phillips Brooks came to see me and I was much pleased with him.” In another letter Whittier says: “I have been reading with a great deal of satisfaction Phillips Brooks’s ‘Sermons,’ not always agreeing with him, but liking his spirit and earnest convictions. He is a rare man.” * * * * * More than a year later Whittier wrote: “I ought long ago to have written thee, but the sickness and death of my brother and my own illness have made my winter here a hard and sad one and compelled me to neglect my correspondence.... Lucy Larcom is in the city at Concord Square. I saw her last week. Do you ever come into the city? If so will you not call on me? I have not been about the city at all, but many of my old friends have called on me. What there is to see or hear I do not know. In some respects I might as well be in Amesbury as here. But I hope I am getting somewhat over my fatigue and illness, and am very thankful for it, and for the many blessings of my allotment.” * * * * * A letter in the March of 1883 regretting missing a friend who had called at the hotel to see him, adds: “Why didn’t thee call here? Anybody comes here who wishes to. If thee are in town again try this place.”