Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/134

 118 HARVEY D. LITTLE. [1830-40. scourge, which at that time swept over this fair land, desolating many a happy home, and quenching the fires of many an aspiring spirit. He died in the thirty-first year of his age, leaving behind him his wife and one child, having buried two of the three cherubs with which he had been blessed, but a few days previous to his own demise.* But a couple of weeks before, I had felt the warm pressure of his friendly hand, and left him, " Fresh-lipp'd, and iron-nerved, and high of heart," indulging in the brightest anticipations of future usefulness and happiness. He was maturing several literary schemes ; and when we parted, spoke with enthusiasm of the time, which he began to think at hand, when he should have leisure to do something for the literature of his country, and the honor of his name. But alas ! to • • • • " the bereaving tomb, Where end Ambition's day-dreams all," he was hurried, within a fortnight of that time, with only the warning of a few hours. Death found him prepared for the harvest ; and a good and noble soul was gathered into the Great Garner, when he fell. Mr. Little was a type of a class of young men who, though not altogether peculiar to the West, have yet marked tliis section of the Union more distinctly than any other. Harvard, Yale, West Point, and similar institutions in the Eastern States, have severally been the Alma Mater of men who have therein risen to distmction at the bar, in the army, in the pulpit, and in the halls of legislation. In the Western States, however, those places have been, and now are, to an extent which makes it worthy of remark, filled by men who, like Mr. Little, graduated in a printing-ofiice instead of a college, and made their first mark with printer's ink instead of blood, blue-fluid, or the meas- ured tones of a voice trained to command, to supplicate, to plead in court, or fulminate in senatorial halls. According to established literary canons, Mr. Little's poetical genius was not of the higher order. The tones of his harp were like the breathing of the "sweet south- west," and came upon the heart mildly and soothingly. The melody of his verse was perfect ; its imagery rich — its language choice — its figures striking and appropriate. But to it belonged the softness and shadow of twilight, rather than the depth and strength of the full-robed night ; the stillness and dewy beauty of eai'ly dawn, rather than the brightness and power of meridian day. His poetry was never impassioned or stormy — never ambitious or dazzling ; but always gentle, and pensive, and breath- ing of love, and duty, and religion — the full outpouring of a Christian spirit. Had he been spared, to try his wing at a continuous flight, I not only believe that it would have sustained him, but that he would have produced something, which would not have been an honor to his name alone, but to his country. death, was called Tlie Eclectic and Medical Botanist. He was a member of the Columbus Typographical Society. On the thirteenth of November, 1833, that Society held a meeting in memory of Mr. Little, at which Kev. Warren Jenkins delivered an address.
 * Mr. Little died on the evening of August twenty-second, 1833. The periodical he editod, at the time of his