Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1894 — HONORED AT HOME. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HONORED AT HOME.

CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF THE POET BRYANT. Among th* Hemlock* end Pines Shadowing tho Johannot Brook, Whoso Sighs and Songs He Wrote. The centenary of the birth of William Cullen Bryant was celebrated recently at his old home at Cummington. Mass. The visitor to Cummington to-day finds a little town of 800 people perched high on the Hampshire hills, and the most distant from any

railway of any town in the State. It is to the credit of the town that she has originated the Bryant centennial observance without suggestion from the outside world, but she has called some of the famous men and women of the country to assist in the celebration. It took place in a grove just beyond the Bryant homestead. There was an address of welcome from the librarian of the Bryant library, and Parke Godwin, Mr. Bryant’s son-in-law, presided. The orator was Edwin R. Brown, of Elmwood, 111., a warm personal friend of Bryant and of his brother, John H. Bryant, as well. The brother, the only surviving member

of the family of Dr. Peter Bryant, read ‘ ‘The Rivulet, ”“A Monody” and “At 87,” the last two his own poems. Among the other speakers were John Bigelow, who was so many years associated with Mr. Bryant on the New York Evening Post; Charles Eliot Norton, professor of fine arts in Harvard University; Charles Dudley Warner, Rev. John W. Chadwick, the poet-preacher of Brooklyn; President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University of Worcester; George W. Cable and others.

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe read a poem which was written by her for Bryant’s sixtieth birthday, and, in addition, several stanzas appropriate for the occasion. There w r ere letters from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry L. Dawes and others. The evening previous to the celebration the children of the town, led by those of the Bryant School, had an observance of their own. “Very few people ever got so near his heart as children,” said Mrs. Mary Dawes Warner the other day, in speaking of William Cullen Bryant. Few people are better able to judge of the poet’s love of children than Mrs. Warner. For twelve years she was his favorite at his summer home in Cummington, and in chatting with a Recorder correspondent a few days ago Mrs. Warner gave many charming reminiscences of the poet as he appeared during the last years of his life there. Mrs. Warner said : “My first recollection of Mr. Bryant was in 1866. My foster father, Francis H. Dawes, had purchased for Mr. Bryant the old homestead, which had been out ci the family possession for some years. Mr. Bryant had come there to spend the summer. He knew that my foster parents had no children, r.nd when he found a tiny, tousled little girl roaming about the place with all the independence of childhood he was naturally somewhat surprised. “ ‘Who are you?’ he said, as it seemed to me me somewhat sternly. “ ‘l’m a soldier’s little one,’ I replied. “ ‘What are you here for?’ he asked. “ ‘Because I have nowhere else to go,’ I made answer, ‘fo; my father is dead.’ “‘This is certainly the place tor you,' he said, and he took me in his

arms, and ever afterward we were the best of friends. “During the several months of vacation which Bryant spent every year at the home we had many merry romps together. He was shy and unapproachable even with the neighboring families, as I recall him, and often reticent with those who knew him best, but I always found a smile and kind word, even though, when he was hard at work, I brought up my pies to his study to be admired. “Sometimes he tossed me into his waste basket, and. taking it to the door, tilted it until I rolled out. And then I knew I must run away. Again, he would tell me that I might stay if I would not talk —a sentence which he well knew would deprive him of my company. And, then again, placing me on one corner of "his writing table, he would read to me such queer words from books in which the letters all looked dizzy. “Then all would be still, save the scratching of his pen as it went over the paper till I slipped off the table and out into the sunshine. Or, having been very good, I was rewarded by having both hands filled with goodies from the glass jar in the cupboard under the bookshelves, and I munched them contentedly while he wrote. “Years afterward I learned that those queer words were Greek, and this was how Bryant translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. “One rainy day, after long hours of work with the study door shut, he found me waiting as he came out, and a famous romp we had through the halls till he caught me and held me fast to rest. I nestled down and began, ‘One, two,’ to which he replied, ‘Buckle my shoe,’ and humoring my whim, answered with original rhymes as I counted far beyond the Mother Goose limit. “I recall that in 1877, the year before his death, he came out into the kitchen where I was washing dishes and said, as he leaned up against a shelf, ‘Mary, here is something I think you will appreciate,’ And then he read some lines said to have been written by a young lady for her own consolation upon the death of her father. You must never give up in despair and grief, For according to God’s dispensation The trials of earth are trifling and brief Compared with eternal damnation.

“Here he chuckled, for he seldom laughed heartily. He always was kind, social and lovable to me. So closely had I entwined myself about his heart that I could do with him about as I pleased. I remember how my mother and the neighbors, especially the latter, used to look askance when I would climb onto his knees and braid his long, white beard into a silken cue, and then ask him if he hadn’t rather I would make two braids instead of one. “Everybody who knew him loved him, though at times he was quiet and apparently shut up in himself.” Mrs. Francis L. Dawes, who together with her husband and Mrs. Warner, lived for twenty-four years on the Bryant homestead, is scarcely less replete with interesting reminiscence than her daughter. Mrs. Dawes is now well along in years, but as bright and sociable and enthusiastic over the poet’s name as anybody. Mrs. Dawes told the Recorder correspondent of an interesting scene on the piazza of the Bryant house. 'lt was before the death of Charles Sumner, and he and George William Curtis and Bryant were having a conversation about the threatened downfall of the Republican party. So much intelligence, such representative men, had never before rested on Cummington soil, and the neighbors, one by one, slipped around back of the house and entered a room adjoining the piazza, and to-

day some of them have not forgotten craning their necks, straining their eyes and ears and drinking in the learned conversation of the statesman, the editor and the poet. Miss Julia Sands, a daughter of the poet, was present. Of late years she has made her home in Paris. Mrs. Sophronia O. Rogers, a sister of ex-Sena-tor Dawes, and who is now 82 years old, was also present. She is the only survivor who attended the Jittle village school with Brvant. and she

gives Many interesting reminiscences of the great poet, and speaks interestingly of the sixty notches which he cut in a beam as evidence of his standing for sixty consecutive days at the head of the spelling class. Bryant’s library stands intact today as it was used by him. The same is true of his bed chamber. They are visited yearly by hundreds of pilgrims. The plain Chester shaft of granite which marks the poet’s birthplace, stands on the Tower farm, a mile nearer the village.

The observance itself was held on the homestead, in an orchard of which Bryant sang. All about the place are scenes made memorable by his poems. Among them are the Bryant wall, the old hemlocks and pines, the Johannot Brook, the Rivulet, the Roaring Brook and a score of others. —[W. S. C., inN. Y. Recorder.

EDWIN K. BROWN, THE ORATOR OF THE DAY.

BRYANT HOMESTEAD, WHERE THE POET SPENT HIS YOUTH.

JOHN H. BRYANT.

MONUMENT MASKING THE POET’S BIRTHPLACE.

THE HONORED POET.