And yet they were in correspondence in the previous year, as is shown by the fact that I find in an old album of Whittier's a photograph labeled by him "Dr. Weld," and this photograph, I am assured by Mrs. Tracy, a grandniece of Weld, was taken when he was ninety years of age. I think it probable that the sending of this photograph by the aged physician put Whittier in mind to write his Rocks Village poem, with the tribute of remembrance and affection contained in its prelude. As to the ancient sulky which--
"Down the village lanes Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains,"
it was a chaise with white canvas top, and the doctor always dressed in gray, and drove a sober white horse. I have seen a letter of Whittier's written to Dr. Weld, then at Hallowell, in March, 1828, in which he says: "I am happy to think that I am not forgotten by those for whom I have always entertained the most sincere regard. I recollect perfectly well that (on one occasion in particular) after hearing thy animated praises of Milton and Thomson I attempted to bring a few words to rhyme and measure; but whether it was poetry run mad, or, as Burns says, 'something that was rightly neither,' I cannot now ascertain; I am certain, however, that it was in a great measure owing to thy admiration of those poets that I ventured on that path which their memory has hallowed, in pursuit of--I myself hardly know what--time alone must determine.... I am a tall, dark-complexioned, and, I am sorry to say, rather ordinary-looking fellow, bashful, yet proud as any poet should be, and believing with the honest Scotchman that 'I hae muckle reason to be thankful that I am as I am.'"[3] It is of interest further to state that Whittier's life-long friend and co-laborer in the anti-slavery field, Theodore D. Weld, was a nephew of "the wise old doctor." Also that another nephew, who was adopted as a son by the childless physician, was named "Greenleaf" for the young poet in whom he took so much interest. The grave of the Countess in the cemetery near Rocks Village is now better cared for than when the poem was written. This is not the cemetery referred to in the poem "The Old Burying-Ground," which is near the East Haverhill church.