Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/357

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EXPLANATORY NOTES.
351

Stafford," we knew well the country whither he was bound. The verses were written at midnight in his lonely home, from which the silent sleeper and sorrowing parents had gone to lay him on the hillside "in the country."

Page 86.— Which shall it Be?—This is the original title under which the poem appeared in the New York Ledger. Copied without name or credit given, it appeared elsewhere with a new title, "Not One to Spare," an explanatory and unauthorized foot-note added. In this form it drifted into the fine collection of poems made by Mr. Henry T. Coates under the title Fireside Encyclopedia of Poetry, and appears duly credited in the later editions of that beautiful volume.

Page 111.—Frost-Smitten.—The Republican, Goshen, N. Y.: "Died at his residence in this village, Sept. 2ist, 1863, Judge Horace W. Eliot, aged 82."

Page 256.—John Eliot.—This poem was written for the gathering of the descendants of John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, at Guilford, Sept. 16th 1875, the first that had ever taken place. Notices had been sent out all over the Union, and about two hundred "Eliots" assembled at the Guilford Point House, bringing heirlooms, old books and pictures, medals, and needlework of "ye olden time."

Page 261.—Hymn.—Written to be sung by the Eliot de scendants in commemoration of the landing at Boston, Nov. 14th, 1631, of the good ship "Lyon," bearing, among sixty others, John Eliot. It is adapted to the tunes in use in colonial times, such as "Windsor," known in Scotland as "Dundee," the "Ten Commandment" tune, and "Old Hundredth."

Page 321. Re-United.—Three weeks before the death of Mrs. Robert Bonner a daughter died in her girlhood. At the large gathering of friends at the funeral in Dr. Hall's church one might fancy the fair silent figure in its last repose was carven marble, with the small hands so meekly folded on the stirless breast, like some mediaeval saint. When so soon the shadow stooped again to lift the