Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
He loved to see his friend Celia Thaxter in her island home, and he loved the freedom of a large hotel.
As we approached it, a large bird flew away. Mr. Thaxter took it to be a gannet; and, while walking over the island, an owl started up from among the rocks near us, and flew away, apparently uncertain of its course. It was a brown owl, but Mr. Thaxter says that there are beautiful white owls, which spend the winter here, and feed upon rats.
L. Maria Child lived there at the time, and so did Celia Thaxter, although not yet known to fame. The sound, penetrating intelligence of Horace Mann may have also had its salutary effect.
Nothing was ever "born anew" in Celia Thaxter which she did not strive to share with others. She could keep nothing but secrets to herself. Joys, experiences of every kind, sorrows and misfortunes, except when they could darken the lives of others, were all brought open handed and open hearted, to those she loved. Her generosity knew no limits.
Nobody expected them to remain hereabouts, as they normally winter in the West Indies and in Central and South America; but every little while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and on the 21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird skimming over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. I put up my glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!"
The ghost especially haunts the space between the hotel and the cove in front. There has, in times past, been great search for the treasure. Mr. Thaxter tells me that the women on the island are very timid as to venturing on the sea, more so than the women of the mainland, and that they are easily frightened about their husbands.
When I saw Celia Thaxter she was just beginning to make her effect with those poems and sketches which the sea sings and flashes through as it sings and flashes around the Isles of Shoals, her summer home, where her girlhood had been passed in a freedom as wild as the curlew's.
So, my feller citizens, let me toot my horn. But Squire Thaxter put his hand onto my hed and said, in a mournful tone of vois, "Mr. Ward, your mind is failin. Your intellect totters! You are only about sixty years of age, yet you will soon be a drivelin dotard, and hav no control over yourself."
The world is such a mixture that I never quite know how to take it." At times she was a merciless critic. An admiring Quaker in Philadelphia wrote some verses in honor of Whittier, which were presented to Mrs. Thaxter for her approval.
Hawthorne found a pair of friends ready-made there, and prepared to receive him, Levi Thaxter, afterwards widely known as the apostle of Browning in America, and his wife, Celia, a poetess in the bud, only sixteen, but very bright, original, and pleasant.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking