A Little Book of Western Verse | Page 9

of travel
and entertainment, but his nature had wonderfully changed, and, strong
as were the financial inducements, he was loath to leave his family and
circle of intimate friends, and the home he had just acquired. All of the
time which he allotted for recreation he devoted to working around his
grounds, in arranging and rearranging his large library, and in the
disposition of his curios. For years he had been an indefatigable
collector, and he took a boyish pleasure not only in his souvenirs of
long journeys and distinguished men and women, but in the queer toys
and trinkets of children which seemed to give him inspiration for much
that was effective in childhood verse. To the careless observer the
immense array of weird dolls and absurd toys in his working-room
meant little more than an idiosyncratic passion for the anomalous, but
those who were near to him knew what a connecting link they were
between him and the little children of whom he wrote, and how each
trumpet and drum, each "spinster doll," each little toy dog, each little
tin soldier, played its part in the poems he sent out into the world. No
writer ever made more persistent and consistent use of the material by
which he was surrounded, or put a higher literary value on the little
things which go to make up the sum of human existence.
Of the spiritual development of my brother much might be said in
conviction and in tenderness. He was not a man who discussed religion
freely; he was associated with no religious denomination, and he
professed no creed beyond the brotherhood of mankind and the

infinitude of God's love and mercy. In childhood he had been reared in
much of the austerity of the Puritan doctrine of the relation of this life
to the hereafter, and much of the hardness and severity of Christianity,
as still interpreted in many parts of New England, was forced upon him.
As is not unusual in such cases, he rebelled against this conception of
God and God's day, even while he confessed the intellectual advantages
he had reaped from frequent compulsory communion with the Bible,
and he many times declared that his children should not be brought up
to regard religion and the Sabbath as a bugbear. What evolution was
going on in his mind at the turning point in his life who can say? Who
shall look into the silent soul of the poet and see the hope and
confidence and joy that have come from out the chaos of strife and
doubt? Yet who can read the verses, telling over and over the beautiful
story of Bethlehem, the glory of the Christ-child and the comfort that
comes from the Teacher, and doubt that in those moments he walked in
the light of the love of God?
It is true that no man living in a Christian nation who is stirred by
poetic instinct can fail to recognize and pay homage to that story of
wonderful sweetness, the coming of the Christ-child for the redemption
of the world. It is true that in commemoration the poet may speak while
the man within is silent. But it is hardly true that he whose generous
soul responded to every principle of Christ, the Teacher, pleading for
humanity, would sing over and over that tender song of love and
sacrifice as a mere poetic inspiration. As he slept my brother's soul was
called. Who shall say that it was not summoned by that same angel
song that awakened "Little Boy Blue"? Who shall doubt that the smile
of supreme peace and rest which lingered on his face after that noble
spirit had departed spoke for the victory he had won, for the hope and
belief that had been justified, and for the happiness he had gained?
To have been with my brother in the last year of his life, to have seen
the sweetening of a character already lovable to an unusual degree, to
know now that in his unconscious preparation for the life beyond he
was drawing closer to those he loved and who loved him, this is the
tenderest memory, the most precious heritage. Not to have seen him in
that year is never to realize the full beauty of his nature, the complete

development of his nobler self, the perfect abandonment of all that
might have been ungenerous and intemperate in one even less
conscious of the weakness of mortality. He would say when chided for
public expression of kind words to those not wholly deserving, that he
had felt the sting of harshness and ungraciousness, and never again
would he use his power to inflict suffering or wound the feelings of
man or child. Who is there to wonder, then, that the love