4 NORTH SHORE BREEZE and Reminder 
“Farther down the road, where the cousins were all 
grown-up men and women, Aunt Betsey’s cordial, old- 
fashioned hospitality sometimes detained us a day or 
two;****to our branch of the family ‘The Farms’ 
meant ‘Uncle David’ and ‘Aunt Betsey.’ ” 
The Uncle David was her father’s favorite brother 
who lived in the house now standing in Beverly Farms 
and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. James B. Dow. It stands 
almost opposite the entrance to “Selwood,” the summer 
home of ex-Senator and Mrs. Albert J. Beveridge. ‘This 
well-preserved old house was built in 1807 and was pur- 
chased from Aunt Betsey by the Dows. The house was 
partially destroyed by fire the past winter, but not to 
such an extent as to despoil its original lines. Mrs. 
Dow’s mother was a cousin to Lucy Larcom. <A fine old 
picture of Aunt Betsey is in the possession of Mrs. 
Dow, who remembers, as a child, the beautiful Miss Lar- 
com who came to visit Aunt Betsey in the old house 
when it was still in her possession. 
In speaking of her home-town, Beverly, as it seemed 
to her, Miss Larcom says: “It was old, and it seemed 
old, much older than it does now. There was only one 
main street, said to have been the first settler’s cowpath 
to Wenham, which might account for its zigzag pictur- 
esqueness. All the rest were courts or lanes. The town 
used to wear a deligthful air of drowsiness, as if she had 
stretched herself out for an afternoon nap, with her head 
towards her old mother, Salem, and her whole length 
reclining towards the sea, till she felt at her feet, through 
her green robes the dip of the deep water at the Farms. 
All her elder children recognized in her quiet steady- 
going ways a maternal unity and strength of character, 
as of a town that. understood her own plans, and had 
settled down to peaceful, permanent habits. 
“The sea was its nearest neighbor, and penetrated to 
every fireside, claiming close. intimacy with every home 
and heart. The farmers up and down the shore were as 
much fishermen as farmers; they were as familiar with 
the Grand Banks of Newfoundland as they were with 
their own potato-fields.” 
The story of Lucy Larcom’s life in Lowell where 
she became a mill-girl in her effort to help her widowed 
mother; her active life in the literary circles and in the 
May 5, 1916. 
magazine, the Lowell Offering, published by the mill- 
girls ; her meeting with Whittier, who became her lifelong 
friend; the years of school-teaching on the prairies of 
Illinois; the higher education received in a western semi- 
nary; the years spent in teaching in Beverly and at Nor- 
ton seminary; the editorship of Our Young Folks and 
her later literary successes, make up the sum total of her 
life, which, she says, is not a remarkable one, for ‘“‘she 
never attempted remarkable things.” 
Many of her summers in later life she spent in 
Maine and New Hampshire among the lakes and moun- 
tains. From 1866, when in her early 4o’s, she came to 
Beverly Farms for six or seven summers. She is re- 
membered by Mrs. Dow as possessing a beautiful figure 
and making a charming hostess in her sunny little home 
which was just across from the summer home of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes at “Beverly Farms-by-the-Depot.” ‘This 
was the only real home of her own that she ever had and 
her days were spent in the old familiar haunts of her 
beloved Essex scenes, where she loved the woods and 
flowers and sea. She was fond of painting flowers as 
a pleasant pastime. 
Among noted visitors who came to the little house 
were Mary Livermore, Celia Thaxter and Whittier. She 
was at Beverly Farms when Charles Dickens died in 1870. 
It was here she wrote that charming little poem “A Strip 
of Blue”’— 
“I do not own an inch of land, 
But all I see is mine; 
The orchards and the mowing-filds, 
The lawns and gardens fine. 
The winds my tax-collectors are, 
They bring me tithes divine, 
Wild scents and subtle essences, 
A tribute rare and free; 
And, more magnificent than all, 
My window keeps for me 
A glimpse of blue immensity, 
A little strip of sea.’ 
She died on April 17, 1893,—23 years ago last 
month—and is buried in her native Beverly which she 
had loved for so many years. 
Golfer Should be at His Best When 34 
T WHAT age is a golfer at his best? This question 
has been discussed on numerous occasions, and the 
consensus of opinion shows that the experts agree on 
that period of 10 years when a man is between 27 and 37. 
It has been asserted that it takes at least five years 
for one to know very much about golf, but it is unlikely 
that many can possess in that length of time the mature 
experience which is necessary in the make-up of a truly 
great player. By the time a man has reached the age of 
27, provided he has started in as a youth or very young 
man, he should have imbibed a sufficient knowledge of 
the game to turn his physical powers to account. But 
players vary both in the matter of temperament and _ phy- 
sique. Some develop early, while others give over years 
to the gradual accumulation of skill and knowledge. Ti 
this general opinion is correct, a player should be at his 
very best at the age of 34. 
However, it is worth remarking that because a man 
is extraordinarily proficient when he has passed 40, even 
a greater age, and still can beat his younger rivals, it does 
not follow that he was not better at 30, or would not 
have been better when much younger had he been in the 
game at that age. It is likely that the age up to which a 
man is at his absolute best is higher among the profes- 
sionals than among amateurs, but only because the incen- 
tive of earning a living keeps them up to the mark. 
Some years ago an eminent British authority observed 
that no amateur was at his best after the age of 30. It 
seemed a very extreme and severe remark, but, after all, - 
it is not very wide of the mark. Middle-aged and elderly 
players need find no discouragement in these observa- 
tions, for they refer only to golfers of the highest type. 
Free-Trade is a chimney turned upside down, but the 
chimney is not needed when Free-Trade closes the mill. 
—American Economist. 
_ Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the 
ability to investigate systematically and truly all that 
comes under thy observation in life—Marcus Aurelius. 
Protection is the soul of American business, and 
American business prosperity is the offspring of Pro- 
tection—American Economist. 
