ote the poem, as is shown in the
lines:--

"I know not, Time and Space so intervene,
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen."

[Illustration: RIVER VALLEY, NEAR GRAVE OF COUNTESS

"For, from us, ere the day was done
The wooded hills shut out the sun.
But on the river's further side
We saw the hill-tops glorified."
THE RIVER PATH]

[Illustration: DR. ELIAS WELD, AT THE AGE OF NINETY]

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