The news of his friend's death was received by Dr. Holmes in Beverly, just as he was coming in from a drive along the shore. It was a heavy blow, coming as it did just upon the death of Lowell, Thomas Parsons, and George William Curtis. He remarked that his acquaintance with Whittier dated from the year of the founding of the _Atlantic Monthly_. He had frequently visited him at Oak Knoll. He was there last year, and the two old fellows walked and talked among the trees and had a good time together. When the Doctor was leaving, his friend loaded him down with fruit. It was on one of these recent visits that Dr. Holmes with characteristic keenness of perception, discovered the beautiful symmetry of the grand Norway spruce in front of the mansion on the wide sweep of lawn, and he laughingly named it "The Poet's Pagoda," and this name it has kept ever since.
To return to "Elmfield," as the old Gove mansion is called. The old-fashioned house, with its upper balconies, heavy chimneys, and rich collection of historical relics, stands on a hill not far from the falls which gave the name to the village--Hampton Falls. The sight from Whittier's window commanded a little balcony, with a view of the distant blue sea. One day after another passed quietly away, he rising at seven, going across through a pine grove to the adjoining tavern for his breakfast, getting the mail at the little post-office, reading the papers, looking at the distant sails on the sea through a glass, conversing with friends or walking in the neighboring orchard, with its paths and rustic seats. The region is that where his Bachiler and Hussey ancestors both lived, as Mr. F. B. Sanborn tells us (Boston _Advertiser_, September 8, 1892). Daniel Webster's Bachiler ancestors also lived on a farm, a mile and a half from the Gove mansion; namely, where now stands the villa of Warren Brown. As Mr. Sanborn truthfully says, Whittier has been the local poet of this whole region of Essex and adjoining counties. "No poet of New England," he continues, "has lived so close to the actual habits of the people, in the present and the past centuries, as did Whittier; and his poems of locality will become as much a feature of New England literature as are those of Burns and Scott in their native country. This fidelity to homely fact and profound sentiment have made Whittier more than any other the patrial and religious poet of New Hampshire and Eastern Massachusetts. He has done in verse what Hawthorne did in prose. It was only the accident or accomplishment of verse which separated these two poets, and made one of them our most graceful and romantic prose-writer, while the other became our most spiritual and literal poet."