20 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



they grew. The caress of the rain brings from 

 each leaf and petal but the aromatic essence of 

 such lives, welling within and flowing forth 

 again through the unnumbered years. 



Out of homely love of the hearth, out of wild 

 Indian legends that flowed down the Merrimac 

 and English folk lore that flowered over seas 

 and blew westward with a sniff of the brine in it, 

 Whittier made his poems. But not out of these 

 was born their greatness. That was distilled 

 from his own fiber where it grew out of the rug- 

 ged, honest, fearless life of generations whose 

 home shrine had been that glowing hearth, whose 

 love and tenderness welled within and overflowed 

 like the scent of the old-time garden. To such a 

 house and such a hearth sweetness climbs and 

 nestles. To stand on the old door stone was to be 

 greeted with dreams of meadows and lush fields, 

 for wild mint has left the brookside and come 

 shyly to the very door sill to toss its aroma to all 

 comers. A spirit of the meadows that the bare- 

 foot boy loved thus dwells ever by his door and 

 none may enter without its benediction. There 

 is something Quakerlike in the wild mint, that 



