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