father's shelves were, with one exception, about Quaker doctrines and
Quaker heroes. The exception was a novel, and that was hidden away from
the children, for fiction was forbidden fruit. No library or scholarly
companionship was within reach; and if his gift had been less than
genius, it could never have triumphed over the many disadvantages with
which it had to contend. Instead of a poet he would have been a farmer
like his forefathers. But literature was a spontaneous impulse with him,
as natural as the song of a bird; and he was not wholly dependent on
training and opportunity, as he would have been had he possessed mere
talent.

Frugal from necessity, the life of the Whittiers was not sordid nor
cheerless to him, moreover; and he looks back to it as tenderly as if it
had been full of luxuries. It was sweetened by strong affections, simple
tastes, and an unflinching sense of duty; and in all the members of the
household the love of nature was so genuine that meadow, wood, and
river yielded them all the pleasure they needed, and they scarcely
missed the refinements of art.

Surely there could not be a pleasanter or more homelike picture than
that which the poet has given us of the family on the night of the great
storm when the old house was snowbound:

"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
And ever when a louder blast