[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE PORCH AT OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.]
In the summer, as you ascend the carriage-road that winds through the grounds, your eye is captured by the rare beauty of the scene. Yonder is a tall living wall of verdure, with an archway cut through it. To the left the grounds sweep gently down to a deep ravine, where a little rivulet, named Beaver Brook, creeps leisurely out and winds seaward through green and marish meadows. It is in this portion of the grounds that the fine oak-trees grow which give to the place its name. Here, too, is a large grove of pines, with numerous seats within it. There are trees and trees at Oak Knoll,--smooth and shapely hickories, glistering chestnuts with cool foliage, maples, birches, and the purple beech. Add to the picture the rural accessories of bee-haunted clover-fields, apple and pear orchards, and beds of tempting strawberries. The house is of wood, salmon-colored, with tall porches on each side, up-propped by stately Doric columns. In front, with wide sweep of closely cropped grass intervening, is the magnificent Norway spruce that Oliver Wendell Holmes, a year or two before Mr. Whittier's death, on one of those periodical visits to his brother poet that so delighted their two souls, named "The Poets' Pagoda." A luxuriant vine clusters about the eaves of the house. On the long porch a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the green silence with gushes of melody, and near at hand, in his study in the wing of the building, sits one with a singing pen and listens to their song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by his window he listens, then looks into his heart and writes,--this sweet-souled magician,--and craftily imprisons between the covers of his books, echoes of bird and tree music, bits of blue sky, glimpses of green landscape, winding rivers, and idyls of the snow,--all suffused and interfused with a glowing atmosphere of human and divine love, such as the poet found in this home of his choosing at Oak Knoll. It will not perhaps be intruding upon the privacies of home to say that the members of the cultured household at Oak Knoll ever, found in their happy circle, their highest pleasure in ministering to all needs, social or otherwise, of their loved cousin the poet. Three sisters dispense the hospitalities of the house, and a young daughter of Mrs. Woodman's adds the charm of girlhood to the family life.