en, one of whom, Peter Bryant, born in 1767, succeeded him in his
profession. Young Dr. Bryant became enamored of Miss Sarah Snell, the
daughter of Mr. Ebenezer Snell, of Bridgewater, who removed his family
to Cummington, whither he was followed by his future son-in-law, who
married the lady of his love in 1792. Two years later, on the 3d of
November, there was born to him a man-child, who was to win, and to
leave,

"One of the few immortal names
That were not born to die."

Dr. Bryant was proud of his profession; and in the hope, no doubt, that
his son would become a shining light therein, he perpetuated at his
christening the name of a great medical authority, who had departed this
life four years before--William Cullen. Dr. Bryant was the last of his
family to practise the healing art; for Nature, wiser than he, early
determined the future course of Master William Cullen Bryant. He was not
to be a doctor, but a poet. A poet, that is, if he lived to be anything;
for the chances were against his living at all. The lad was exceedingly
frail, and had a head the immensity of which troubled his anxious
father. How to reduce it to the normal size was a puzzle which Dr.
Bryant solved in a spring of clear, cold water, which burst out of the
ground on or near his homestead, and into which the child was immersed
every morning, head and all, by two of Dr. Bryant's students--kicking
lustily, we may be sure, at this matutinal dose of hydropathy.

William Cullen Bryant came of Mayflower stock, his mother being a
descendant of John Alden; and the characteristics of his family
included some of the sterner qualities of the Puritans. Grandfather
Snell was a magistrate, and, without doubt a severe one, for the period
was not one which favored leniency to criminals. The whipping-post was
still extant in Massachusetts, and the poet remembered that it stood
about a mile from his early home at Cummington, and that he once saw a
young fellow of eighteen who had received forty lashes as a punishment
for a theft he had committed. It was, he thought, the last example of
corporal punishment inflicted by law in that neighborhood, though the
whipping-post remained in its place for several years, a possible terror
to future evildoers. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," was the Draconian
code then; and the rod, in the shape of a little bundle of birchen
twigs, bound together with a small cord, was generally suspended on a
nail against the wa