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��New Hampshire Authors.
��favorite with all who love short and tender poems. Some of his other pieces are fully as good, but not so celebrated.
He has published "Cloth of Gold," "Story of a Bad Boy," "Marjorie Daw and Other People," "Prudence Palfrey," "Out of His Head," "The Queen of Sheba," "Flower and Thorne"; — later poems, "A River- mouth Romance," "Miss Mehetabel's Sou," "A Midnight Fantasy," "Tom Bailey's Adventures," "Baby Bell," "The Story of a Cat," translated from the French of Emile de la Be- dalliere ; some of which have had a very large sale. Later he has produced " The Stillwater Trage- dy."
Mr. Aldrich was born in Portsmouth in 1836 ; was employed in a New York counting-house ; worked on the "Home Journal," owned by N. P. Willis ; went to Boston to edit '-Every Saturday," with which he was con- nected until its discontinuance. At present he is residing in Cambridge, Mass.
It is worthy of remark how much this state owes to the classic city of Portsmouth ; for, indeed, well may she be called such. There lived her Weutworth, Sullivan, and Pickering ; there Haven, Buckminster, and Pea- body preached their doctrines ; there Mason, Webster, and Woodbury be- gan life ; there lived and died the poet Sewall ; and from there have gone forth into a neighboring state men who have contributed to the fame and glor}' of this noble old common- wealth. In those days her sail- whitened harbor attested to her great commercial importance, which now amounts comparatively to nothing.
��CELIA THAXTER.
To many the dearest name among those who have helped to make New Hampshire literature is CeliaThaxter, who is a native of Portsmouth. Her life itself is like a romance. Soured against the world, which he thought had ill-treated him, her father, a po- litical adventurer, a gentleman of some literary pretensions, who had formerly edited the New Hampshire Gazette^ removed, while the future poet was yet a child, to an uninhab- ited island nine miles from the main laud, whither he had been appointed keeper of the White Island light. For him, who had broken with the world, such a location, with its dreary sur- roundings, was justly suited ; but with our author the case must have been different. There, with no society but her parents, and such books as they had brought with them, she grew to woman's estate, passing a dreamy existence. The shells of the seashore were her only playmates ; old ocean's melancholy roar the only sound to greet her ears. But by-aud- by a unique idea struck Tom Laigh- ton. Would n't the isles make a good summer resort? He tried it, and the enterprise proved successful not only to him pecuniarily, but in introducing the island singer to public notice. Soon after this she became the wife of Mr. Thaxter, who (I believe) was boarding at the house.
Mrs. Thaxter's works consist of two volumes of poetry and a prose description of her " sea-blown" home. For originality of genius and beauty of rhythm she has no superior among the granite poets ; while she is re- garded by competent judges among the leading women poets of Amer-
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