Then in the orchard you can see not only “the daisy,” but many of them, and, if you wish, Mrs. Dixon will let you dig a bunch of the daisies to take back to America; and if you do, I hope that yours will prosper as have mine, and that Wordsworth’s flowers, like Wordsworth’s verse, will gladden your heart when the blue sky of your life threatens to be o’ercast with gray.

Here Southey came, and “Thalaber” was read aloud in this little garden.  Here, too, came Clarkson, the man with a fine feminine carelessness, as Dorothy said.  Charles Lloyd sat here and discoursed with William Calvert.  Sir George Beaumont forgot his title and rapped often at the quaint, hinged door.  An artist was Beaumont, but his best picture they say is not equal to the lines that Wordsworth wrote about it.  Sir George was not only a gentleman according to law, but one in heart, for he was a friend, kind, gentle and generous.  With such a friend Wordsworth was rich indeed.  But perhaps the friends we have are only our other selves, and we get what we deserve.

We must not forget the kindly face of Humphry Davy, whose gracious playfulness was ever a charm to the Wordsworths.  The safety-lamp was then only an unspoken word, and perhaps few foresaw the sweetness and light that these two men would yet give to earth.

Walter Scott and his wife came to Dove Cottage in Eighteen Hundred Five.  He did not bring his title, for it, like Humphry Davy’s, was as yet unpacked down in London town.  They slept in the little cubby-hole of a room in the upper southwest corner.  One can imagine Dorothy taking Sir Walter’s shaving-water up to him in the morning; and the savory smell of breakfast as Mistress Mary poured the tea, while England’s future laureate served the toast and eggs:  Mr. Scott eating everything in sight and talking a torrent the while about art and philosophy as he passed his cup back, to the consternation of the hostess, whose frugal ways were not used to such ravages of appetite.  Of course she did not know that a combined novelist and rhymster ate twice as much as a simple poet.

Afterwards Mrs. Scott tucked up her dress, putting on one of Dorothy’s aprons, and helped do the dishes.

Then Coleridge came over and they all climbed to the summit of Helm Crag.  Shy little De Quincey had read some of Wordsworth’s poems, and knew from their flavor that the man who penned them was a noble soul.  He came to Grasmere to call on him:  he walked past Dove Cottage twice, but his heart failed him and he went away unannounced.  Later, he returned and found the occupants as simple folks as himself.

Happiness was there and good society; few books, but fine culture; plain living and high thinking.

Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount for thirty-three years, yet the sweetest flowers of his life blossomed at Dove Cottage.  For difficulty, toil, struggle, obscurity, poverty, mixed with aspiration and ambition—–­all these were here.  Success came later, but this is naught; for the achievement is more than the public acknowledgment of the deed.