Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/158

Rh There I have now been a week, and shall remain yet a week longer; they will have me stay, and I am quite willing to stay, because I am well off to my heart's content in this excellent and agreeable home. The house, and a small quantity of land which surrounds it, belong to the father of the poet, old Dr. Lowell, a handsome old man, universally beloved and respected, and the oldest minister in Massachussets. He planted all the trees round the house, among which are many beautiful northern pines. The whole family assembles every day for morning and evening prayer around the venerable old man; and he it is who blesses every meal. His prayers, which are always extempore, are full of the true and inward life, and I felt them as a pleasant, refreshing dew upon my head, and seldom arose from my knees with dry eyes. With him live his youngest son, the poet, and his wife; such a handsome and happy young couple as one can hardly imagine. He is full of life and youthful ardour, she as gentle, as delicate and as fair as a lily, and one of the most loveable women that I have seen in this country, because her beauty is full of soul and grace, as is everything which she does or says. This young couple belong to the class of those of whom one can be quite sure; one could not for an hour, nay not for half an hour, be doubtful about them. She, like him, has a poetical tendency, and has also written anonymously some poems, remarkable for their deep and tender feeling, especially maternal, but her mind has more philosophical depth than his. Singularly enough I did not discern in him that deeply earnest spirit which charmed me in many of his poems. He seems to me occasionally to be brilliant, witty, gay, especially in the evening, when he has what he calls his “evening fever,” and his talk is then like an incessant play of fire-works. I find him very agreeable and amiable: he seems to have many friends, mostly young men. Among his poems the witty and