Like all of Whittier's descriptions, this is an exact picture of what he had in mind; for this stone, after a great snowstorm, would assume just this appearance. As to the phrase, "the well-curb had a Chinese roof," I once asked him how this well could have had a roof, as the "long sweep high aloof" would have interfered with it. He stood by the side of the well, and explained that there was no roof, but that there was a shelf on one side of the curb on which to rest the bucket. The snow piled up on this like a Chinese roof. The isolation of the homestead referred to in the phrase, "no social smoke curled over woods of snow-hung oak," has not been broken in either of the centuries this house has stood. No other house was ever to be seen from it in any direction. And yet neighbors are within a half-mile, only the hills and forests hide their habitations from view. When the wind is right, the bells of Haverhill may be faintly heard, and the roar of ocean after a storm sometimes penetrates as a hoarse murmur in this valley.
In the old days, before these hills were robbed of the oaken growths that crowned their summits, their apparent height was much increased, and the isolation rendered even more complete than now. Sunset came much earlier than it did outside this valley. The eastern hill, beyond the meadow, is more distant and not so high, and so the sunrises are comparatively early. Visitors interested in geology will find this hill an unusually good specimen of an eschar, a long ridge of glacial gravel set down in a meadow through which Fernside Brook curves on its way to its outlet in Country Brook. Job's Hill at the south rises so steeply from the right bank of Fernside Brook, at the foot of the terraced slope in front of the house, that it is difficult for many rods to get a foothold. The path by which the hill was scaled and the stepping-stones by which the brook was crossed are accurately sketched in the poem "Telling the Bees,"--a poem, by the way, which originally had "Fernside" for its title:--
"Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook."
Visitors should read the stanzas immediately following this, and note the exactness of the poet's description of the homestead he had in mind. The poem was written more than twenty years after he left Haverhill, and it was many years after that when Mr. Alfred Ordway, in taking photographs of the place, noticed that it had already been pictured in verse; when he spoke of it to Mr. Whittier, the poet was both surprised and pleased at this, which, he said, was the first recognition of his birthplace. The public is indebted to Mr. Ordway for many other discoveries of the same kind, illustrating Whittier's minute fidelity to nature in his descriptions of scenery.
