The narrative poem called "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim," published in 1872,

has no striking poetical merit, but is valuable and readable for the

pleasant light in which it sets forth the doings of the quaint people of

Germantown and the Wissahickon, near Philadelphia, nearly two hundred

years ago. It introduces us to the homes and hearts of the little

settlements of German Quakers under Francis Daniel Pastorius, the

Mystics under the leadership of Magister Johann Kelpius, and the

Mennonites under their various leaders. "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim" is a

poem for Quakers, for Philadelphians who love their great park and its

Wissahickon drives, and for antiquarian historical students. We may

regret, if we choose, that the poet has not succeeded in embalming the

memory of the Germantown Quakers in such felicitous verse as other poets

have sung the virtues and ways of the Puritans, but we cannot deny that

he has garnished with the flowers of poetry a dry historical subject,

and so earned the gratitude of a goodly number of students and scholars.

In "The King's Missive, and Other Poems," published in 1881, the most

notable piece is "The Lost Occasion," a poem on Daniel Webster, finer

even than the much-admired "Ichabod," published many years previously.

"The Lost Occasion" is pitched in a high, solemn, and majestic strain.

It is a superb eulogy, full of magnanimity and generous forgiveness.

Listen to a few stanzas:--

"Thou

Whom the rich heavens did endow

With eyes of power and Jove's own brow,

With all the massive strength that fills

Thy home-horizon's granite hills,

* * * * *

Whose words, in simplest home-spun clad,

The Saxon strength of Caedmon had,

* * * * *

Sweet with persuasion, eloquent

In passion, cool in argument,

Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes

As fell the Norse god's hammer blows,

* * * * *

Too soon for us, too soon for thee,

Beside thy lonely Northern sea,

Where long and low the marsh-lands spread,

Laid wearily down thy august head."

The poem of "The King's Missive" calls for such extended discussion that

a brief chapter shall be devoted to it.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KING'S MISSIVE.

"_Under the great hill sloping bare

To cove and meadow and Common lot,

In his council chamber and oaken chair,

Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott._"

So run the opening lines of the historical poem contributed by Whittier

to the first volume of the Memorial History of Boston (1880). While the

governor is thus sitting, in comes Clerk Rawson with the unwelcome news

that banished Quaker Shattuck, of Salem, has returned from abroad. The

choleric governor swears that he will now hew in pieces the pestilent,

ranting Quakers. Presently Shattuck is ushered in: "Off with the knave's

hat," says the governor. As they strike off his hat he smilingly holds

out the Missive, or mandamus, of Charles II. The governor immediately

asks him to cover, and humbly removes his own hat. The king's letter

commands him to cease persecuting the Quakers. After consultation with

the deputy governor, Bellingham, he obeys, and the then imprisoned

Quakers file out of jail with words of praise on their lips.

The poem fascinates us, for the incident is dramatic, and focusses in a

single picturesque situation all the features of that little historical

episode of two hundred years ago, _i. e._, the persecution of the

Quakers by the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A brief setting

forth of the facts connected with this persecution will not only be full

of intrinsic interest, but is indispensable to a right understanding of

the Quaker poet's inherited character, as well as to a comprehension of

his prose and poetry. One whose ancestors have been persecuted for

generations will inherit a loathing of oppression, as Whittier has done.

And this hatred of tyranny will be intensified in the case of one who is

thoroughly read in the literature of that persecution, and is in quick

and intimate sympathy with the victims, as Whittier is.

But first a word more about the "King's Missive." Joseph Besse, in his

"Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers" (a sort of

"Fox's Book of Martyrs," in two huge antique volumes), says [II., p.

226] that the principal instrument in procuring the royal mandamus

(styled by Whittier the King's Missive) was Edward Burroughs,[28] who

went to the king and told him that "There was a Vein of innocent Blood

open'd in his Dominions, which if it were not stopt might over-run all.

To which the king replied, 'But I will stop that Vein.'" Accordingly, in

the autumn of 1661, Samuel Shattuck was selected to bear a letter to

America. The London Friends hired Ralph Goldsmith, also a Friend, to

convey Shattuck to his destination. They paid him L300 for the service.

The ship entered Boston Harbor on a Sunday in the latter part of

November, 1661.

[Footnote 28: "There is a story," says Dr. George E. Ellis, "that

Burroughs got access to the king out of doors, while his Majesty was

playing tennis. As Burroughs kept on his hat while accosting the king,

the latter gracefully removed his plumed cap and bowed. The Quaker, put

to the blush, said, 'Thee need'st not remove thy hat.' 'Oh,' replied the

king, 'it is of no consequence, only that when the king and another

gentleman are talking together it is usual for one of them to take off

his hat.'"]

"The Townsmen," says Besse, "seeing a Ship with _English_ Colours, soon

came on board, and asked for the Captain? _Ralph Goldsmith_ told them,

_He was the Commander_. They asked, _Whether he had any Letters_? He

answered, _Yes_. But withal told them, _He would not deliver them that

Day_. So they returned on shore again, and reported, that _There were

many_ Quakers _come, and that_ Samuel Shattock (who they knew had been

banished on pain of Death) _was among them_. But they knew nothing of

his Errand or Authority. Thus all was kept close, and none of the Ship's

Company suffered to go on shore that Day. Next morning _Ralph

Goldsmith_, the Commander, with _Samuel Shattock_, the King's Deputy,

went on shore, and sending the Boat back to the Ship, they two went

directly through the Town to the Governour's House, and knockt at the

Door: He sending a Man to know their Business, they sent him Word, that

_Their Message was from the King of_ England, _and that they would

deliver it to none but himself_. Then they were admitted to go in, and

the Governour came to them, and commanded _Samuel Shattock's_ Hat to be

taken off, and having received the Deputation and the _Mandamus_, he

laid off his own Hat; and ordering Shattock's Hat to be given him again,

perused the Papers, and then went out to the Deputy-Governour's, bidding

the King's Deputy and the Master of the Ship to follow him: Being come

to the Deputy-Governour, and having consulted him, he returned to the

aforesaid two Persons and said, _We shall obey his Majesty's Command_.

After this, the Master of the Ship gave Liberty to his Passengers to

come on shore, which they did, and had a religious Meeting with their

Friends of the Town, where they returned Praises to God for his Mercy

manifested in this wonderful Deliverance."

The persecution, it is true, only ceased for about a year (the next

recorded whipping-order bearing date of December 22, 1662). But the

Quakers were greatly encouraged by the interposition in their favor.

In an address before the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dr. George E.

Ellis, of Boston, read a paper criticising Mr. Whittier's "King's

Missive." This address was published in the Proceedings of the Society

for March, 1881. In the "Memorial History of Boston" [I., p. 180] he

asserts that the Quakers were all "of low rank, of mean breeding, and

illiterate." He says that they courted persecution, and that they were a

pestilent brood of ranters, disturbers of the public peace, and dreaded

by the leaders of the infant Commonwealth as they would have dreaded the

cholera. He quotes Roger Williams, who wrote of the Quakers that they

were "insufferably proud and contentious," and advised a "due and

moderate restraint of their incivilities." Dr. Ellis, it is true, takes

the theoretical ground of "the equal folly and culpability of both

parties in the tragedy," but seems entirely to nullify this statement by

his apparently unbiassed, but really partisan treatment of the subject.

When you have finished his paper you perceive that the impression left

on your mind is that the really bitter and unrelenting Puritan

persecutors were long-suffering, angelic natures, while their victims,

the Quakers, were mere gallows' dogs. His theoretical position is summed

up in the following words:--

"The crowning folly or iniquity in the course of the Puritans was in

following up their penal inflictions, through banishments,

imprisonments, fines, scourgings, and mutilations, to the execution

on the gallows of four martyr victims. But what shall we say of the

persistency, the exasperating contemptuousness and defiance, the

goading, maddening obstinacy, and reproaching invectives of those

who drove the magistrates, against their will, to vindicate their

own insulted authority, and to stain our annals with innocent

blood?"--Memorial History of Boston, I., 1882.

Dr. Ellis is right in holding that some of the Quakers were gadflies of

obstinacy, and full of self-righteous pride; but he fails to tell us of

the patience, Christian sweetness, and meekness of character of the

majority of them; and it is only when we turn to the pages of Fox and

Besse that we see the inadequate character of such a picture as that

drawn by Dr. Ellis. In the plain, _naive_ annals of Besse, the

hard-heartedness and haughty pride of the Puritan magistrates (traits

still amply represented in their descendants) are thrown into the most

striking relief. They glower over their victims like tigers; they are

choked with their passions; they spurn excuses and palliatives; they

demand blood.

In the _Boston Daily Advertiser_ for March 29, 1881, Mr. Whittier

published a long reply to Dr. Ellis, in which he fortified the positions

taken by him in his ballad, showing that he did not mean to hold up

Charles II. as a consistent friend of toleration, and that there must

have been a general jail delivery in consequence of the receipt of the

mandamus. He says:--

"The charge that the Quakers who suffered were 'vagabonds' and

'ignorant, low fanatics,' is unfounded in fact. Mary Dyer, who was

executed, was a woman of marked respectability. She had been the

friend and associate of Sir Henry Vane and the ministers Wheelwright

and Cotton. The papers left behind by the three men who were hanged

show that they were above the common class of their day in mental

power and genuine piety. John Rous, who, in execution of his

sentence, had his right ear cut off by the constable in the Boston

jail, was of gentlemanly lineage, the son of Colonel Rous of the

British army, and himself the betrothed of a high-born and

cultivated young English lady. Nicholas Upsall was one of Boston's

most worthy and substantial citizens, yet was driven in his age and

infirmities, from his home and property, into the wilderness."

Mr. Whittier further remarks:--

"Dr. Ellis has been a very generous, as well as ingenious defender

of the Puritan clergy and government, and his labors in this respect

have the merit of gratuitous disinterestedness. Had the very worthy

and learned gentleman been a resident in the Massachusetts colony in

1660, one of his most guarded doctrinal sermons would have brought

down upon him the wrath of clergy and magistracy. His Socinianism

would have seemed more wicked than the 'inward light' of the

Quakers; and, had he been as 'doggedly obstinate' as Servetus at

Geneva (as I do him the justice to think he would have been), he

might have hung on the same gallows with the Quakers, or the same

shears which clipped the ears of Holder, Rous, and Copeland might

have shorn off his own."

Let us look a little more closely at the evidence on both sides.

In the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia"

we have a specimen of Quaker rant. After stating that he is opposed to

the capital punishment of Quakers, but advises shaving of the head, or

blood-letting, the proud and scornful old doctor concludes as follows:--

"_Reader_, I can foretell what usage I shall find among the

_Quakers_ for this chapter of our _church-history_; for a worthy man

that writes of them has observed, _for pride and hypocrisie, and

hellish reviling against the painful ministers of Christ, I know no

people can match them_. Yea, prepare, friend _Mather_, to be

assaulted with such language as _Fisher_ the Quaker, in his

pamphlets, does bestow upon such men as _Dr. Owen; thou fiery

fighter and green-headed trumpeter; thou hedgehog and grinning dog;

thou bastard that tumbled out of the mouth of the Babilonish bawd;

thou mole; thou tinker; thou lizzard; thou bell of no metal, but the

tone of a kettle; thou wheelbarrow; thou whirlpool; thou whirlegig.

O thou firebrand; thou adder and scorpion; thou louse; thou

cow-dung; thou moon-calf; thou ragged tatterdemallion; thou Judas;

thou livest in philosophy and logick which are of the devil_. And

then let _Penn_ the Quaker add, Thou gormandizing Priest, one of the

abominable tribe; _thou bane of reason, and beast of the earth; thou

best to be spared of mankind; thou mountebank priest_. These are the

very words, (I wrong them not!) which they vomit out against the

best men in the _English_ nation, that have been so hardy as to

touch their _light within_: but let the _quills_ of these

_porcupines_ fly as fast as they will, I shall not feel them! Yea,

every _stone_ that these _Kildebrands_ throw at me, I will wear as a

_pearl_."

As an offset to this quaint and amusing tirade, and to the charges of

Dr. Ellis, one may read the following words of Whittier, and, by

striking a general average between all the speakers, get a tolerable

approximation to the exact truth. Mr. Whittier says:--

"Nor can it be said that the persecution grew out of the

'intrusion,' 'indecency,' and 'effrontery' of the persecuted.

"It owed its origin to the settled purpose of the ministers and

leading men of the colony to permit no difference of opinion on

religious matters. They had banished the Baptists, and whipped at

least one of them. They had hunted down Gorton and his adherents;

they had imprisoned Dr. Child, an Episcopalian, for petitioning the

General Court for toleration. They had driven some of their best

citizens out of their jurisdiction, with Ann Hutchinson, and the

gifted minister, Wheelwright. Any dissent on the part of their own

fellow-citizens was punished as severely as the heresy of strangers.

"The charge of 'indecency' comes with ill-grace from the authorities

of the Massachusetts Colony. The first Quakers who arrived in

Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, were arrested on board the ship

before landing, their books taken from them and burned by the

constable, and they themselves brought before Deputy Governor

Bellingham, in the absence of Endicott. This astute magistrate

ordered them to be _stripped naked and their bodies to be carefully

examined, to see if there was not the Devil's mark on them as

witches_. They were then sent to the jail, their cell window was

boarded up, and they were left without food or light, until the

master of the vessel that brought them was ordered to take them to

Barbadoes. When Endicott returned, he thought they had been treated

too leniently, and declared that he would have had them whipped.

"After this, almost every town in the province was favored with the

spectacle of aged and young women stripped to the middle, tied to a

cart-tail and dragged through the streets and scourged without mercy

by the constable's whip. It is not strange that these atrocious

proceedings, in two or three instances, unsettled the minds of the

victims. Lydia Wardwell of Hampton, who, with her husband, had been

reduced to almost total destitution by persecution, was summoned by

the church of which she had been a member to appear before it to

answer to the charge of non-attendance. She obeyed the call by

appearing in the unclothed condition of the sufferers whom she had

seen under the constable's whip. For this she was taken to Ipswich

and stripped to the waist, tied to a rough post, which tore her

bosom as she writhed under the lash, and severely scourged to the

satisfaction of a crowd of lookers-on at the tavern. One, and only

one, other instance is adduced in the person of Deborah Wilson of

Salem. She had seen her friends and neighbors scourged naked through

the street, among them her brother, who was banished on pain of

death. She, like all Puritans, had been educated in the belief of

the plenary inspiration of Scripture, and had brooded over the

strange 'signs' and testimonies of the Hebrew prophets. It seemed to

her that the time had arrived for some similar demonstration, and

that it was her duty to walk abroad in the disrobed condition to

which her friends had been subjected, as a sign and warning to the

persecutors. Whatever of 'indecency' there was in these cases was

directly chargeable upon the atrocious persecution. At the door of

the magistrates and ministers of Massachusetts must be laid the

insanity of the conduct of these unfortunate women.

"But Boston, at least, had no voluntary Godivas. The only disrobed

women in its streets were made so by Puritan sheriffs and

constables, who dragged them amidst jeering crowds at the cart-tail,

stripped for the lash, which in one instance laid open with a

ghastly gash the bosom of a young mother!"[29]

[Footnote 29: Mr. Whittier stated to a member of the Massachusetts

Historical Society that it was his intention "at some time to prepare a

full and exhaustive history of the relations of Puritan and Quaker in

the seventeenth century." It may be added that the newspaper articles

quoted above, with the several replications of their authors, may all be

found in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for

1880-81 (see the index of that volume).]

We may conclude this discussion by giving a few instances of Quaker

persecutions, in addition to those mentioned by Mr. Whittier. In England

the members of the sect suffered a whole Jeremiad of woes: they were

dragged through the streets by the hair of the head, incarcerated in

loathsome dungeons, beaten over the head with muskets, pilloried,

whipped at the cart's-tail, branded, their tongues bored with red-hot

irons, and their property confiscated to the State. One First Day,

George Fox went into the "steeple-house" of Tickhill. "I found," he says

in his Journal, "the priest and most of the chief of the parish together

in the chancel. I went up to them and began to speak; but they

immediately fell upon me; the clerk got up with his Bible, as I was

speaking, and struck me in the face with it, so that my face gushed out

with blood, and I bled exceedingly in the steeple-house. The people

cried, 'Let us have him out of the church.' When they had got me out,

they beat me exceedingly, threw me down, and threw me over a hedge. They

afterwards dragged me through a house into the street, stoning and

beating me as they dragged me along; so that I was all over besmeared

with blood and dirt. They got my hat from me, which I never had again."

Fox was at various times thrust into dungeons filled ankle-deep with

ordure, and was shot at, beaten with stones and clubs, etc.

One evening he passed through Cambridge: "When I came into the town, the

scholars, hearing of me, were up and exceeding rude. I kept on my

horse's back, and rode through them in the Lord's power; but they

unhorsed Amor Stoddart before he could get to the inn. When we were in

the inn, they were so rude in the courts and in the streets, that the

miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. The people of the

house asked us what we would have for supper. 'Supper!' said I, 'were it

not that the Lord's power is over them, these rude scholars look as if

they would pluck us in pieces and make a supper of us.' They knew I was

so against the trade of preaching, which they were there as apprentices

to learn, that they raged as bad as ever Diana's craftsmen did against

Paul."

In the declaration made by the Quakers to Charles II. it appears that in

New England, up to that time, "thirty Quakers had been whipped;

twenty-two had been banished on pain of death if they returned;

twenty-five had been banished upon the penalty of being whipped, or

having their ears cut, or being branded in the hand if they returned;

three had their right ears shorn off by the hangman; one had been

branded in the hand with the letter H; many had been imprisoned; many

fined; and three had been put to death, and one (William Leddra) was

soon after executed."

Besse, in his "Sufferings of the Quakers," states that one William

Brand, a man in years, was so brutally whipped by an infuriated jailer,

in Salem, that "His Back and Arms were bruised and black, and the Blood

hanging as it were in Bags under his Arms, and so into one was his Flesh

beaten that the Sign of a particular Blow could not be seen." And the

surgeon said that "His Flesh would rot from off his Bones e'er the

bruized Parts would be brought to digest." To all this must be added the

humiliating fact that four persons were hanged on Boston Common for the

crime of being Quakers. Their names were Marmaduke Stephenson, William

Robinson, William Leddra, and Mary Dyer.

CHAPTER V.

POEMS BY GROUPS.

Besides "The King's Missive," Whittier has written numerous other Quaker

poems, the finest of which are "Cassandra Southwick," "The Old South,"

and the spirited, ringing ballad of "The Exiles." In the first two of

these the poet shows a delicate intuition into the feelings that might

have prompted the Quaker women who witnessed for the truth in Boston two

hundred years ago.

* * * * *

There is nothing in American literature, unless it be the anti-slavery

papers of Thoreau, which equals the sevenfold-heated moral indignation

of Whittier's poems on slavery,--a wild melody in them like that of

Highland pibrochs; now plaintively and piteously pleading, and now

burning with passion, irony, satire, scorn; here glowing with tropical

imagery, as in "Toussaint L'Ouverture," and "The Slaves of Martinique,"

and there rising into lofty moral atmospheres of faith when all seemed

dark and hopeless. Every one knows the power of a "cry" (a song like

"John Brown's Body," or a pithy sentence or phrase) in any great popular

movement. There can be no doubt that Whittier's poems did as much as

Garrison's editorials to key up the minds of people to the point

required for action against slavery. Some of these anti-slavery pieces

still possess great intrinsic beauty and excellence, as, for example,

"Toussaint L'Ouverture," "The Farewell," "The Slave Ships," and "The

Slaves of Martinique." In these four productions there is little or none

of the dreary didacticism of most of the anti-slavery poems, but a

simple statement of pathetic, beautiful fact, which is left to make its

own impression. Another powerful group of these slavery poems is

constituted by the scornful, mock-congratulatory productions, such as

"The Hunters of Men," "Clerical Oppressors," "The Yankee Girl," "A

Sabbath Scene," "Lines suggested by Reading a State Paper wherein the

Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower One," and "The Pastoral

Letter."[30] The sentences in these stanzas cut like knives and sting

like shot. The poltroon clergy, especially, looks pitiful, most pitiful,

in the light of Whittier's noble scorn and contempt.

[Footnote 30: "The Pastoral Letter" was an idiotic manifesto of the

clergy of Massachusetts aimed at the Grimke sisters.]

"Randolph of Roanoke" is a noble tribute to a political enemy by one who

admired in him the man. The long poem, "The Panorama," must be

considered a failure, poetically speaking. Its showman's pictures and

preachings do not get hold of our sympathies very strongly.

The Tyrtaean fire in Whittier was so thoroughly kindled by the

anti-slavery conflict that it has never wholly gone out. All through his

life his hand has instinctively sought the old war-lyre whenever a voice

was to be raised in honor of Freedom. The formal close of the

anti-slavery period with him may be said to be marked by "Laus Deo," a

triumphant, almost ecstatic shout of joy uttered on hearing the bells

ring when the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery was passed.

Naturally, the war poems of a Quaker--and even of our martial

Whittier--could not be equal to his peace poems. Still there are many

strong passages in the lyrics written by Whittier during the civil war

of 1861-65. At first he counsels that we allow disunion rather than

kindle the lurid fires of fratricidal war:--

"Let us press

The golden cluster on our brave old flag

In closer union, and, if numbering less,

Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain."

_A Word for the Hour._

So he wrote in January, 1861. But afterward he becomes a pained but

sadly approving spectator of the inevitable conflict:--

"Then Freedom sternly said: 'I shun

No strife nor pang beneath the sun,

When human rights are staked and won.

* * * * *

The moor of Marston felt my tread,

Through Jersey snows the march I led,

My voice Magenta's charges sped.'"

_The Watchers._

As a Friend, he and his brethren could not personally engage in war. But

they could minister to the sick and dying, and care for the slave.

"THE SLAVE IS OURS!"

he says,--

"And we may tread the sick-bed floors

Where strong men pine,

And, down the groaning corridors,

Pour freely from our liberal stores

The oil and wine."

_Anniversary Poem._

"Barbara Frietchie" is, of course, the best of these war lyrics. The

"Song of the Negro Boatmen" was set to music and sung from Maine to

California during the war days:--

"De yam will grow, de cotton blow,

We'll hab de rice an' corn;

O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear

De driver blow his horn!"

After "Voices of Freedom," in the complete edition of Whittier's poems,

come a cluster of Biblical, or Old Testament poems,--"Palestine,"

"Ezekiel," "The Wife of Manoah to her Husband," "The Cities of the

Plain," "The Crucifixion," and "The Star of Bethlehem." The best of

these, perhaps, are "Cities of the Plain," and "Crucifixion,"--the

former intense and thrilling in style, and suggesting the "Sennacherib"

and "Waterloo" of Byron; the latter a high, solemn chant, and well

calculated to touch the religious heart. Whittier has drawn great

refreshment and inspiration from the thrice-winnowed wheat and the

living-water wells of Old Testament literature.

Allusion has already been made to the hymns of our poet. Hymn-book

makers have had in his poems a very quarry to work. The hymn tinkers,

too, have not spared Whittier even while he was alive, and many of his

sacred lyrics have been "adapted" after the manner of hymn-book makers.

Dr. Martineau's "Hymns of Praise" (1874) contains seven of Whittier's

religious songs; the "Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book" (1868) also has

seven; the Plymouth Collection (1855) has eleven, and Longfellow and

Johnson's "Hymns of the Spirit" (1864) has twenty-two.

The Essex minstrel has written quite a number of children's poems, such

as "The Robin," "Red Riding Hood," and "King Solomon and the Ants." He

has also compiled two books of selections for children, as has already

been mentioned.

Like many authors, Whittier has been attracted, in the autumn of his

life, to the rich fields of Oriental literature. His Oriental poems show

careful and sympathetic study of eastern books. "The Two Rabbis" and

"Shah Akbar" are especially fine. The little touch in the former of "the

small weeds that the bees bow with their weight" is a very pretty one.

In "The King's Missive" we have a few "Oriental Maxims," being

paraphrases of translations from the Sanscrit. "The Dead Feast of the

Kol-Folk," and "The Khan's Devil," are also included in the same volume.

Mr. Whittier has also made successful studies in Norse literature, for

which his beautiful ballads, the "Dole of Jarl Thorkell," "Kallundborg

Church," and "King Volmer and Elsie" are vouchers.

CHAPTER VI.

PROSE WRITINGS.

It is to be feared that the greater portion of the prose writings of

Whittier will be _caviare_ to many readers of this day. He himself

almost admits as much in the prefatory note to the second volume of the

complete edition of his essays. That many of the papers are entertaining

reading, and that they are written often in a light and genial and

vivacious style, is true; and, as he himself hints, they will at least

be welcomed and indulgently judged by his personal friends and admirers.

His prose work was done in a time seething with moral ideas; the air was

full of reforms; the voice of duty sounded loud in men's consciences,

and the ancestral buckler called--

"Self-clanging, from the walls

In the high temple of the soul!"

_Lowell._

That particular era is now passed. The great secular heart is now in its

diastole, or relaxation. Hence it is that the philanthropic themes

discussed by Mr. Whittier thirty years ago (and most of his essays are

of a philanthropic character) possess but a languid interest for the

present reading public. The artistic essays, however, are charming, and

possess permanent interest. Let us except from these the long

productions, "Margaret Smith's Journal" and "My Summer with Dr.

Singletary." Some have thought these to be the best papers in the

collection. But to many they must appear frigid and old-fashioned in the

extreme. They seem aimless and sprawling, mere _esquisses_, tentative

work in a field in which the author was doubtful of his powers. They

would ordinarily be classed under the head of Sunday-school literature.

It has been suggested that the idea of "Margaret Smith's Journal" might

have been derived from the "Diary of Lady Willoughby," which appeared

about the same time. "The Journal" is a reproduction of the antique in

style and atmosphere, and is said to be very successful as far as that

goes. But certainly the iteration of the archaism, "did do," "did

write," etc., gets to be very wearisome. The "Journal" purports to be

written by a niece of Edward Rawson, Secretary of Massachusetts from

1650-1686. The scene is laid in Newbury, where Rawson settled about

1636. We have pleasant pictures of the colonial life of the day, of the

Quakers and Indians and Puritans, and, on the whole, the sketch is well

worth reading by historical students.

"Old Portraits and Modern Sketches" consists chiefly of newspaper

articles on modern reformers. They were originally contributed to the

_National Era_. The portraits drawn are those of John Bunyan, Thomas

Ellwood, James Nayler, Andrew Marvell, John Roberts, Samuel Hopkins,

Richard Baxter,--and, among Americans, William Leggett and Nathaniel

Peabody Rogers,--both anti-slavery reformers and journalists; and,

lastly, Robert Dinsmore, the rustic Scotch-American poet of Haverhill.

The last three papers mentioned are the best.

The second volume of Mr. Whittier's prose writings bears the title

"Literary Recreations and Miscellanies," and consists of various

reviews, thumb-nail essays, and indigenous folk-and-nature studies, made

in the region of the Merrimack. These last are of most interest, and

indicate the field which Mr. Whittier would have cultivated with most

success. In the reviews of the volume the newspapery tone and journalist

diction are rather unpleasantly conspicuous. As a critic, our poet is

not very successful, because he is too earnest a partisan, too merciless

and undistinguishing in his invective or too generous in his praise. For

example, what he says about Carlyle, in reviewing that author's infamous

"Discourse on the Negro Question," is true as far as it goes. But of the

elementary literary canon, that the prime function of the critic is to

put himself in the place of the one he is criticising,--of this law Mr.

Whittier has not, practically, the faintest notion. He considers

everything from the point of view of the Quaker or of the reformer.

Numerous specimens of Mr. Whittier's prose have already been given in

various parts of this volume, but for the sake of illustration we may

add two more. For an example of his serious style take the following

from "Scottish Reformers": "He who undertakes to tread the pathway of

reform--who, smitten with the love of truth and justice, or, indignant

in view of wrong and insolent oppression, is rashly inclined to throw

himself at once into that great conflict which the Persian seer not

untruly represented as a war between light and darkness--would do well

to count the cost in the outset. If he can live for Truth alone, and,

cut off from the general sympathy, regard her service as its own

'exceeding great reward'; if he can bear to be counted a fanatic and

crazy visionary; if, in all good nature, he is ready to receive from the

very objects of his solicitude abuse and obloquy in return for

disinterested and self-sacrificing efforts for their welfare; if, with

his purest motives misunderstood and his best actions perverted and

distorted into crimes, he can still hold on his way and patiently abide

the hour when 'the whirligig of Time shall bring about its revenges';

if, on the whole, he is prepared to be looked upon as a sort of moral

outlaw or social heretic under good society's interdict of food and

fire; and if he is well assured that he can, through all this, preserve

his cheerfulness and faith in man,--let him gird up his loins and go

forward in God's name. He is fitted for his vocation; he has watched all

night by his armor.... Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the

answer of a good conscience. He who pays his whole-hearted homage to

truth and duty,--who swears his life-long fealty on their altars, and

rises up a Nazarite consecrated to their service,--is not without his

solace and enjoyment when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most

lonely and miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the multitude know

not of; 'a serene heaven which they cannot discern rests over him,

glorious in its purity and stillness.'"

For a specimen of our author's vein of pleasantry take the following bit

of satire on "The Training": "What's now in the wind? Sounds of distant

music float in at my window on this still October air. Hurrying

drum-beat, shrill fife-tones, wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of

accompaniment, hurrahs from the urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here

come the citizen-soldiers, each martial foot beating up the mud of

yesterday's storm with the slow, regular, up-and-down movement of an

old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping time with the feet below, some

threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly beneath me. Slant sunshine

glitters on polished gun-barrels and tinselled uniform. Gravely and

soberly they pass on, as if duly impressed with a sense of the deep

responsibility of their position as self-constituted defenders of the

world's last hope,--the United States of America, and possibly Texas.

They look out with honest, citizen faces under their leathern vizors

(their ferocity being mostly the work of the tailor and tinker), and, I

doubt not, are at this moment as innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder

worthy tiller of the Tewksbury Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon

dispensing apples and turnips without so much as giving a glance at the

procession. Probably there is not one of them who would hesitate to

divide his last tobacco-quid with his worst enemy. Social, kind-hearted,

psalm-singing, sermon-hearing, Sabbath-keeping Christians; and yet, if

we look at the fact of the matter, these very men have been out the

whole afternoon of this beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as

busily at work as Satan himself could wish in learning how to butcher

their fellow-creatures, and acquire the true scientific method of

impaling a forlorn Mexican on a bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile

in the brain of some unfortunate Briton, urged within its range by the

double incentive of sixpence per day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine

tails on his back!"

PART III.

TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL.

CHAPTER I.

TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL.

The passing away from earth of John Greenleaf Whittier occurred on

September 7, 1892, at four-thirty A. M., at Hampton Falls, N. H., in the

very heart of the region he has immortalized by his ballads. The hour

was just as the reddening east was mingling its light with that of the

full harvest moon. Around his bedside were numerous relatives and

friends. He fell asleep in an unconscious state, after an illness of a

week. Let us now go back and, taking up the thread of the narrative

where it was dropped on page 152, run over the incidents that have

intervened in the decade since 1882 in the life of this pleasant

singer--this plain Quaker farmer, who drew such soul-thrilling strains

from his home-made rustic flute as to concentrate upon himself the

attention of the whole world.

In 1883 (January 7) died, in Boston, Whittier's brother, Matthew

Franklin Whittier, whose daughter Elizabeth, before her marriage to

Samuel T. Pickard, was house-keeper for a number of years for her uncle,

the poet, at Amesbury. "Frank," as his associates called him, obtained,

it is said, his position in the Boston Custom House through the

influence of his brother. Says a friend (Mr. Charles O. Stickney):--

"Frank was not a poet, and being of a practical turn of mind, had

the good sense not to attempt the impossible; but he was a man of

intellect, an omnivorous reader, was well posted, and, though

inclined to seclusion and taciturnity, was nevertheless genial and

companionable; his conversation spiced with his quiet, quaint humor,

which bubbled up in some happy _mot_, neat fun, or well-turned bit

of satire which raised a laugh, but left no sting behind." His

quaint, humorous dialect articles, over the signature "Ethan Spike,"

are said to have given Nasby and Artemus Ward their cue. They were

chiefly contributed to the Portland _Transcript_, the Boston _Carpet

Bag_, and New York _Vanity Fair_. They all purported to emanate

from "Hornby," a "smart town" in Maine--"a veritable down-east

wonderland, whose wide-awake citizens were up to the times and ready

to settle any great question of the day at 'a special town

meetin'.'" Mr. Spike was as intense in his anti-slavery views as his

brother Greenleaf. Specimens of his work may be found in the

Portland _Transcript_, January 10, 1846, the _Carpet Bag_, October

14, 1850, and November, 1851.

In 1884 Whittier's seventy-seventh birthday was observed at Oak Knoll,

when the genial old bachelor received with courtesy and hospitality all

who called. Gifts of flowers poured in to serve as foil to the two huge

birthday cakes from relatives.

An editorial writer in one of Boston's chief dailies thus describes a

visit to Mr. Whittier, made in 1884:--

"Mr. Whittier met us at the door of the pleasant house at Oak Knoll.

He came out on the piazza, and shook us each by the hand, and said,

'I am glad to see thee.' He concerned himself about our rubbers and

waterproofs in the hall-way, and said that we were kind to come. I

had taken a great fit of shyness on seeing him, and was surprised

to hear my friend speaking to him in the same quiet tone that she

had used when alone with me. I listened, and reveled in silence as

the old poet and the young artist spoke together. He led us into the

parlor, and they talked of a landscape on the wall, of pictures, and

of a portrait.

"Presently he said: 'It is a little cold here. Shall we go into my

room?' He led the way to the bright library where most of his days

are now spent. Mr. Whittier happened to glance from the window as we

stood for a moment speaking with him: he saw our cab waiting for us

on the drive. The rain had begun again. Then a wonderful thing

befell.

"He forbade us to go away within the quarter hour; he forbade us to

go for three hours. He went out and sent the cabman away, then he

took us into the library. We sat down in front of the cheery open

fire, and Mr. Whittier talked with us. He spoke of the claims of

young people on life, it was different from any talk I had heard; in

the face of my poets, I used to think that all good people believed

that life is our creditor and hard taskmaster."

On October 24, 1884, a portrait of Whittier was presented by Charles F.

Coffin, of Lynn, Mass., a devoted friend and admirer of his, to the

Friends' School of Providence, R.I. It was painted by Edgar Parker, of

Boston, and represents Whittier sitting in an arm-chair in an attitude

of peaceful thought.

It is hung in Alumni Hall, between busts of Elizabeth Fry and John

Bright, and is considered to be a worthy memorial of the poet. Letters

on this occasion were read from James Russell Lowell, Dr. Holmes, E. P.

Whipple, John Bright, George William Curtis, Boyle O'Reilly, Matthew

Arnold, and others. From Mr. Whipple's letter the following is an

extract:--

"I have had the privilege of knowing him intimately for many years,

and of doing all I could through the press to point out his

exceptional and original merits as a writer. My admiration of his

genius and character has increased with every new volume he has

published and every new manifestation of that essential gentleness

which lies at the root of his nature, even when some of his poems

suggest the warrior rather than the Quaker. One thing is certain:

that the reader feels that the writer possesses that peculiar

attribute of humanity which we instinctively call by the high name

of soul; and, whether he storms into the souls of others or glides

into them, his hot invectives equally with his soft persuasions mark

him as a man; a man, too, of might; a man whose force is blended

with his insight, and who can win or woo his way into hostile or

recipient minds by innate strength or delicacy of nature."

In 1885 the poet's birthday was again quietly celebrated at Oak Knoll,

and in the afternoon Mr. Whittier's portrait was unveiled before a large

audience in the Town Hall of Haverhill.

In September, 1885, occurred a most interesting festival--the reunion of

the graduates of the old Haverhill Academy, for whom the poet cherished

to the end of his life an earnest and outspoken affection. It was here

that Whittier got all the scholastic education he ever had outside of

the district school; the reunion was thoroughly enjoyed therefore by

him, although it was in his honor. For his health was pretty good, and

he was in fine spirits. An interesting letter was received from the

aged Miss Arethusa Hall, a preceptress in the Academy when Whittier

attended it. Among others, Dr. Holmes wrote: "The class of 1829

[Harvard] has a bright record; but how much brighter it would have been

if we could have read upon the triennial and quinquennial catalogues:

Johannes Greenleaf Whittier, A. B., A. M., LL. D., etc! But what, after

all, can all the degrees of all the colleges do for him whose soul has

been kindled by that 'ae spark of Nature's fire,' which Burns caught

from her torch on the banks of Ayr, and Whittier among the mists that

rise from the Merrimack?"

Mr. Whittier presented photographs of himself with his autograph to his

school-mates, promised to think over the sitting for an oil portrait,

and entered with zest into any bit of mirthfulness that sparkled out

during the evening, although, as will be seen from the following

description of a representative of the Boston _Advertiser_, he could

scarcely understand the situation:--

"In the company was one man who seemed neither to accept nor to

comprehend the situation. That man was John G. Whittier. His face

and demeanor that day would have afforded study for a psychologist.

That it was fifty-seven years since he entered Haverhill Academy he

remembered with a certain sweet melancholy. That everybody was vying

with everybody else in making love to him he could not help

observing. But what it was all about, and why people should persist

in talking of him when he wanted other, more congenial topics to be

uppermost--these questions evidently puzzled him. A countenance on

which was a look of shyness, of surprise, of perplexity; withal, a

countenance irradiated by reciprocal affection and pleasure in

seeing others pleased--if any one of the present artists could have

caught and delineated those features, the painter would have been

destined to share the immortality of the poet. On such a subject the

temptation to indulge in reminiscence is strong. But space will

permit me to mention only two or three characteristic incidents. A

gifted vocalist had just sung a composition prepared for that day;

and Mr. Whittier, turning to her, said, 'Friend, I wish that I could

write a song for thee to sing.' An elocutionist of note read aloud

one of the author's poems. He listened eagerly, as if it was wholly

new to him; and a little mist gathered in those deep, dreamy eyes at

the lines beginning,

'I mourn no more my vanished years,'

but there was an answering gleam at the words,

'The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun.'

"Two circumstances made that one of the few red-letter days in the

memory of the present writer. I had known in Kansas a lady who

belonged to that band of Haverhill Academy pupils whose boast and

joy it was to have studied and played with the Quaker poet. On

mentioning this lady's name, I found myself instantly accepted as

her proxy. For some minutes Mr. Whittier seemed to have no other

interest than to learn all possible particulars of her and send to

her all possible expressions of regard.

"The other circumstance was the result of my connection with the

_Advertiser_. Taking me into one corner of the room, he asked me to

sit beside him on the sofa. Then, drawing from his pocket the

manuscript of the poem which he had written for that occasion and on

portions of which the ink was not yet dry, the author, in a manner

irresistibly winning, seemed to take his humble brother of the

pen-craft into confidence, explaining the motive for various lines

and passing on to speak of those boyhood days which the poem and the

occasion recalled."

December 17 again came round in 1886, and found Whittier receiving

friends, presents, and congratulatory telegrams at Oak Knoll. Wendell

Phillips, for example, sent him a handsome cane, and some one else sent

a great frosted cake and a basket that strained its sides to hold the

gift of fruit it contained.

In December, 1887, it occurred to a young lady journalist on the staff

of the Boston _Advertiser_ (Miss Minna C. Smith) that it would be a good

idea to have a "Whittier number" of that journal. The thought was a

fertile one and was put into execution in great haste, but with eminent

success. Poems were contributed by Walt Whitman, Dr. Holmes, James

Jeffrey Roche, Hezekiah Butterworth, Herbert D. Ward, Minot J. Savage,

Margaret Sidney (Mrs. D. Lothrop), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others,

and there was a great array of letters from other writers and eminent

persons. Edward Everett Hale told the story of Whittier's Kansas

"Emigrants' Song," how it was sung _en route_ and in the West by brave

pioneers of New England. James Parton, of Newburyport, Whittier's

Amesbury neighbor, wrote that Whittier was carrying his burthen of

eighty years "with considerable ease and constant cheerfulness." He

continued:--

"I am sometimes asked, 'Is the poet Whittier really a Quaker or only

one by inheritance?' He is really a Quaker. He wears, it is true, a

silk hat of the kind familiarly called the stove-pipe, which gleams

in the brilliant sun of winter, and seems to indicate at once the

man of Boston and the man of the world. But it is not the

broad-brimmed hat that makes the Quaker. The poet does actually keep

a Quaker coat for Sundays and other dress occasions, which coat was

made by a firm of Orthodox Friends in Philadelphia, the metropolitan

city of the gentle sect. He also uses the _thee_ and _thou_ in

conversation, although without attaching the least importance to

these trifles. But he is also a Friend from heartfelt conviction. A

few miles from his home is one of the smallest meeting-houses in New

England, standing alone in a land of farms and fields. It is painted

white, and looks a little like a small school-house. This edifice

will seat perhaps forty persons, but the usual congregation numbers

about fourteen, who on winter Sundays dwindle often to seven and

sometimes to three. This is the meeting-house which the poet

Whittier attends whenever he is at home, unless prevented by the

weather.

"What an extraordinary thing is this! The poet who has most deeply

felt and most beautifully expressed the sentiment and soul of New

England is a member of the sect to which New England was so

intolerant and so cruel! When the essential New England has ceased

to exist, it will live again, and live long, in Whittier's poems;

and he a Quaker! Was there ever before a revenge so complete and so

sublime?"

Mr. Charles M. Thompson sent for this octogenarian birthday a fine

poetical stanza:--

"A thousand stars swim on through time,

Unknown and unregarded in the skies.

But one, kings followed; one, thy rhyme,

Led on a land of kings in liberty's emprise!"

Mr. James H. Carleton knew Whittier in connection with a circle of

intellectual and social people that centred around the family of Judge

Pitman in the years just preceding the rise of the abolition movement.

"The Pitmans were neighbors of mine," said Mr. Carleton, "and I (I

hardly know why) was admitted to the meetings of the people who gathered

there. They were the leaders in everything that was progressive. They

have since become widely scattered.

"I remember Mr. Whittier as a leader of these leaders. These people

formed to a large extent his social world at that time. It was the one

place at which Mr. Whittier threw off his natural reserve and took his

proper place. He was a good conversationalist on occasion, and when he

spoke he was worth listening to. I remember him as intensely interested

in whatever subject occupied the attention of the circle. He was never

the first to begin a discussion, but rather bided his time for an

especial opportunity."

Mr. George C. How wrote of Mr. Whittier's friendliness, his cordiality,

and his unassuming manner: "In the few delightful days I spent in his

company in the White Mountain region, I saw no signs of formality or

reserve. He told me, under the trees, many stories of his life and of

his earliest successes. He impresses you strongly as a true and generous

friend to everything and every man he believes good and honest. He does

not like to be lionized, and refused to be introduced to a man whose

only claim to his friendship was that he had read all his works. When,

however, Mr. Whittier learned that this same man was an ardent admirer

of the poet Hayne, a chord of sympathy was struck that made them firm

friends during this stranger's stay."

At Oak Knoll the winter day was clear and sunshiny, if cold, and warm

hearts within laughed the season to scorn. The ladies of Boston, at the

suggestion of Mrs. D. Lothrop, sent up a most unique and exquisite gift;

eighty beautiful roses edged a large basket fringed with fern-sprays,

that held an open book of white roses, across whose face lay a pen of

violets, and on the wide satin book-mark was inscribed the closing

stanza of "My Triumph." The Essex Club of Boston presented a large

album; fruit and flowers flanked a mighty birthday cake in the

dining-room. Mr. Charles F. Coffin, of Lynn, sent a large overflowing

basket of fruit, arranged under his personal supervision, "every fruit

in its season," of exquisite colors and shapes, to express his affection

for his life-long friend, the poet.

The new town of Whittier, in California, sent an advance copy of the

first issue of the town's newspaper; the Governor of the Commonwealth,

as the winter afternoon quickly declined, cut and distributed to the

guests slices of the birthday cake, while all through the day Whittier

passed to and fro from room to room, conversing with young and old, and

hospitable to all.

Whittier himself is reported as saying on his eightieth birthday: "When

a man is eighty years old, it is time to give up active mental work. Oh!

I am able to go about these grounds pretty well. I have never attempted

to imitate Gladstone and chop down trees, but I like to split wood."

This was James Russell Lowell's verse for Mr. Whittier on his eightieth

birthday:--

"How fair a pearl chain, eighty strong,

Lustrous and hallowed every one

With saintly thoughts and sacred song,

As 'twere the rosary of a nun!"

The excitement and nervous exhaustion attendant upon these birthday

occasions, it always took Mr. Whittier three or four weeks fully to

recover from. Hence in 1889 (and partly on account of the recent death

of a beloved cousin), the poet announced, through the press, that he

should have to ask his friends to spare him any public reception.

However, December 17 was observed as "Whittier Day" very generally

throughout the country, as it had been in 1887, in accordance with the

custom that has grown up of celebrating the birthdays of eminent men in

the schools, and introducing into their courses of supplementary reading

selected portions of the writings of each. Among the gifts received at

Oak Knoll was a painting of a golden vase by Mr. Herman Marcus, of New

York City, to whom the poet had appeared in a dream, bearing in his

hand an elegant portfolio of red morocco, containing a picture of a vase

of Grecian design, richly ornamented, and inscribed with the legend,

"May in the smallest part thy sorrows lie concealed and all the rest be

filled with joy overflowing." The portfolio and the picture on its page

are a close realization of what the donor saw in his dream.

Speaking of visitors, Col. Higginson tells two incidents in point. He

says two nice little boys called one day on Whittier, saying that they

had recently called on Longfellow, and, as he had died soon after, they

thought it best to call at once on Mr. Whittier. One of the poet's

housekeepers once asked him in severe tones whether all "these people"

came on business or whether they were relatives. When told that neither

was the case, she said she did not see what they came for then. "Neither

did I," said Whittier, with laughing eye.

In December, 1890, Mr. Whittier, who had gone down to Amesbury to vote,

had been taken ill there, and hardly expected to be able to get back to

Oak Knoll by the seventeenth. He did arrive, however, on a sunny day.

Many of his friends spared him visits, merely leaving their cards or

sending remembrances. His mail was very large, as usual on this day.

In the summer of 1891 Mr. Whittier's health was so feeble that he was

obliged to abandon his daily walks, except about the grounds at Oak

Knoll. Driving was too fatiguing for him, and his hearing had grown so

bad that he could converse only with difficulty.

In Whittier's poem, "The Red River Voyageur," there is a beautiful

allusion to the "bells of the Roman mission," now the Archepiscopate of

St. Boniface. Archbishop Tache was reminded by Lieut.-Gov. Schultz that

December 17, 1891, was the eighty-fourth birthday of the poet, the

suggestion being made that the anniversary should be greeted by a

joy-peal from the tower of the Cathedral of St. Boniface, in Winnipeg,

Manitoba. His Grace cordially concurred, and the graceful tribute was

rendered at midnight with the last stroke of the clock ushering the

natal day. Mr. Whittier, having been informed of the incident by United

States Consul Taylor, wrote to the Archbishop: "I have reached an age

when literary success and manifestations of popular favor have ceased

to satisfy one upon whom the solemnity of life's sunset is resting; but

such a delicate and beautiful tribute has deeply moved me. I shall never

forget it. I shall hear the bells of St. Boniface sounding across the

continent, and awakening a feeling of gratitude for thy generous act."

Our poet's eighty-fourth birthday (1891), and alas! his last on earth,

was delightfully observed at the home of the Cartlands, his cousins, in

Newburyport, with whom he was spending the winter. Mr. Joseph Cartland

is himself a Quaker, and his white hair and genial cheery temperament

are quite of the old regime. He and his wife were teachers in the

Friends' School at Providence, R. I. Their fine old mansion on High

Street is the identical one built and lived in by Judge Livermore,

father of the shrewish saint and devotee of "Snow-Bound." It may be

stated, too, that it was to succeed one of the Cartlands in the

editorial chair of the _Pennsylvania Freeman_ that Whittier went to

Philadelphia in 1838. In this house is kept the old maple-wood desk,

made by Joseph Whittier, grandfather of the poet, who, by the way,

"wrote on it his first poem." The desk is about one hundred and eighty

years old now. On the back are carved the initials "J. W., 1786," in

large letters. The wood has been smoothed down a little and a coat of

shellac applied. On the back of the drawers are memoranda in chalk and

pencil made by Greenleaf's father. On December 17, 1891, the old piece

of furniture was covered with hundreds of congratulatory letters which

would have made the old farmer Quaker, its builder, rub his eyes in

astonishment, could he have seen them.

"As he walks slowly down the broad stairs of the Cartlands at

Newburyport," says one who saw him on his birthday, "there is much to

suggest his years, it is true, yet no signs of unusual feebleness. He is

erect for a man of eighty-four; his early litheness has not degenerated

into the hopeless leanness of an ill-nourished and uncared-for old age;

his step does not drag after his body as if unwilling to carry the

burden longer; his head is not lowered, awaiting the smite of Time."

Another thus describes Whittier in 1891: "In personal appearance he is

remarkable. Tall, and as straight as one of the young pines in his

favorite grove, it seems impossible that he is at the end of fourscore

years. The crown of his head is bald, and his hair is glossy silver; but

his great black eyes are as clear, bright and piercing as if he were in

the prime of life. He walks with the deliberation and dignity of age,

but without a suggestion of physical feebleness, and while he remains

standing his head is as finely poised as a soldier's. The straightness

of his figure is the more noticeable on account of his Quaker dress, the

coat of which fits him as neatly and closely as if it were the

conventional 'swallow-tail.' When seated and listening, his head drops

slightly forward and aside--a pose which seems peculiar to poetic

natures the world over. He is a most appreciative reader of other men's

books and poems, and talks admirably of all good writings except his

own, of which he can scarcely be persuaded to speak, even to his dearest

intimates."

Mr. S. T. Pickard, and Mr. and Mrs. Cartland received the guests in the

wide hall of the old-fashioned hospitable Quaker home; and the poet

himself wandered here and there about the room, so said the Boston

_Advertiser_, "greeting every guest informally and pleasantly, from the

old and tried comrades of anti-slavery's earliest days to the little

girl in cream-white dress and wide hat, his little friend Margaret

Lothrop, who had to stand on tip-toe to greet the bowed head with her

childish kiss; and whose small hand he held closely as he kept her by

his side."

A pleasant note was received from Phillips Brooks:--

"DEAR MR. WHITTIER:

"I have no right save that which love and gratitude and reverence

may give, to say how devoutly I thank God that you have lived, that

you are living, and that you will always live. May his peace be

with you more and more.

"Affectionately your friend,

"PHILLIPS BROOKS."

The first guests to arrive were a deputation of fifty from Haverhill,

members of the Whittier Club of that town. Whittier made them a little

speech, saying it was evident that sometimes a prophet was honored in

his own country.

The house was filled with cut flowers--in the window-seats, on the

tables, in the poet's bedroom, up-stairs--all gifts from friends. The

Whittier Club of Haverhill brought eighty-four roses. There was a basket

of English violets from Mr. and Mrs. D. Lothrop. Mr. C. F. Coffin, of

Lynn, sent, as usual, his generous basket of fruit. From Mr. E. C.

Stedman came a painting "High Tide, Hampton Meadows," by Carroll D.

Brown. And some kindly old soul sent a half-dozen pairs of socks--the

spirit that prompted the gift as deeply appreciated as that of others.

Other gifts were: an oil painting of a scene at York Harbor, painted by

J. L. Smith, of Boston, the frame carved by A. G. Smith; a ruler of

various inlaid woods from California, the gift of pupils of the workshop

at West Point, Calaveras County, who wrote a letter, saying that they

would devote the birthday to reading and speaking selections from his

works; a paper-cutter made from the wood of Fort Loudon, of Winchester,

Penn., and sent by the ladies of that place; a hand-painted tray from

artist Florence Cammett of Amesbury; a late photograph of Dr. Holmes,

"with his hat in his hand, and his most man-of-the-world air;" a

souvenir spoon of Independence Hall from W. H. and S. B. Swazey, of

Newburyport; a picture of the old Mission at Santa Barbara, done on

native olive-wood, from Professor John Murray, of California; a handsome

footstool from Elizabeth Cavazza, of Portland, Me.; photogravures of

scenes about the Whittier homestead in Haverhill; a transparency

("Snow-Bound") from Austin P. Nichols; eighty-four roses from the girls

of Lasell Seminary near Boston, and a wreath of evergreens from Mrs.

Annie Fields.

Among the messages was one from a little Indian maiden whom Whittier had

befriended: "Your young Mohawk friend asks for you to-day the Great

Spirit's blessing"--signed, E. Pauline Johnson; a letter came from Abby

Hutchinson, of the Hutchinson singers.

Among those present were, Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, Sarah Orne Jewett,

"Margaret Sidney," Mrs. James T. Fields, Mrs. William Claflin, Harriet

McEwen Kimball, T. E. Burnham, Mayor of Haverhill, and others.

Among the company, conspicuous by those natural gifts that make one a

centre for intellectual and genial comradeship, was Mr. D. Lothrop--the

eminent publisher--(since passed away, mourned by all) who probably has

done more than any other man of present times to create a new literature

for children and young people, all achieved when it cost to do it, and

that consumed years of patient, persistent struggling, till his splendid

success was won.

Mr. Whittier writes to his widow, "Thy husband and Mr. Coffin" (the

old-time friend referred to), "were the life of my birthday reception,

and now both are gone before me." (Mr. Coffin died the week after the

birthday.)

Again, to quote one of the many extracts of Mr. Whittier's letters

concerning Mr. Lothrop: "Let me sit in the circle of thy mourning, for I

too have lost in him a friend."

There was much to draw the two men together; both sprang from New

England ancestry, sturdy as the granite hills of their native State;

each possessed the same indomitable will, where a question of right was

involved, and the same breadth of charity for all, of whatsoever creed

or divergence of opinion.

Mr. Whittier partook of but little food in the dining-room, nibbling a

bit here and there, and refusing firmly all offers of tea or coffee. His

eyes, every one noticed, flamed with old-time lustre, whenever he was

interested.

Letters of congratulation were received from Robert C. Winthrop, Celia

Thaxter, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Andrew P. Peabody,

Rose Terry Cooke (who has since died), George W. Cable, T. W. Higginson,

Charles Eliot Norton, and others.

Donald G. Mitchell wrote that above Whittier's literary art he admired

the broad and cheery humanities of the man.

For the eighty-fourth birthday the Boston _Advertiser_ printed a superb

illustrated Whittier number, as did also the Boston _Journal_. For the

latter Dr. Holmes contributed the following letter:

MY DEAR WHITTIER:--I congratulate you on having climbed another

glacier and crossed another crevasse in your ascent of the white

summit which already begins to see the morning twilight of the

coming century. A life so well filled as yours has been cannot be

too long for your fellow-men and women. In their affections you are

secure, whether you are with them here or near them in some higher

life than theirs. I hope your years have not become a burden, so

that you are tired of living. At our age we must live chiefly in

the past. Happy is he who has a past like yours to look back upon.

It is one of the felicitous incidents--I will not say accidents--of

my life that the lapse of time has brought us very near together,

so that I frequently find myself honored by seeing my name

mentioned in near connection with your own. We are lonely, very

lonely, in these last years. The image which I have used before

this in writing to you recurs once more to my thought. We were on

deck together as we began the voyage of life two generations ago. A

whole generation passed, and the succeeding one found us in the

cabin, with a goodly company of coevals. Then the craft which held

us began going to pieces, until a few of us were left on the raft

pieced together of its fragments. And now the raft has at last

parted, and you and I are left clinging to the solitary spar, which

is all that still remains afloat of the sunken vessel.

I have just been looking over the headstones in Mr. Griswold's

cemetery, entitled "The Poets and Poetry of America." In that

venerable receptacle, just completing its half-century of

existence--for the date of the edition before me is 1842--I find

the names of John Greenleaf Whittier and Oliver Wendell Holmes next

each other, in their due order, as they should be. All around are

the names of the dead--too often of forgotten dead. Three which I

see there are still among those of the living. Mr. John Osborne

Sargent, who makes Horace his own by faithful study and ours by

scholarly translation; Isaac McLellan, who was writing in 1830, and

whose last work is dated 1886; and Christopher P. Cranch, whose

poetical gift has too rarely found expression.

Of these many dead you are the most venerated, revered and beloved

survivor; of these few living the most honored representative. Long

may it be before you leave a world where your influence has been so

beneficent, where your example has been such inspiration, where

you are so truly loved, and where your presence is a perpetual

benediction.

Always affectionately yours,

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Following is one of two stanzas sent to the Poet of Freedom by his

friend "Margaret Sidney," and which, says the _Advertiser_, with one

other tribute, was the only one of the innumerable letters and poems

sent him that he read in its entirety that day, owing to his failing

eyesight:

"To be near the heart of Christ

Was his creed;

White as truth the life

That all men may read;

Strengthful of soul,

Yet lowly in meekness;

Dreading no hate of men,

Scorning all weakness,

He sounded the warning note,

When it cost to be brave and true;

Sang freedom for the slave,

Then almost death to do.

'Unbind every shackle,

Loosen each chain,

Bid every slave go free!'"

Mr. F. B. Sanborn wrote some interesting autobiographical reminiscences

for the _Advertiser_. He stated: "I can scarcely remember when I did

not read Whittier and Holmes. Their verses were eagerly caught up and

reprinted by all the newspapers, and I knew them by heart before I ever

saw a volume of them. Whittier, indeed, was almost my neighbor, living

only eight miles away across the Merrimack, and sometimes coming for

silent worship or to hear Mrs. Edward Gove speak in the Quaker

meeting-house at Seabrook, only three miles from the farm of my

ancestors. But I did not know this then; I never went there to see him.

He is a distant cousin of mine, both of us tracing descent, through his

daughters, from that stout and ungovernable old Puritan minister,

Stephen Bachiler, who planted the old town of Hampton, in whose wide

limits I was born, and which extended almost to Amesbury."

Another scholarly writer in the same paper wrote instructively of

Whittier in the Massachusetts Legislature. The Legislature of 1835 he

describes as a notable one in the quality of its members and in the work

accomplished. An extra session was held in the autumn. The Speaker of

the House was Judge Julius Rockwell of Pittsfield, with whom Whittier

had already formed a personal acquaintance through Judge Rockwell's

contributions to the _New England Review_. Among the Suffolk County

representatives were such names as Frothingham, Brooks, Otis, Sturgis,

Peabody, and Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, also Col. J. B. Fay, the first

mayor of Chelsea. It is not remembered that Whittier made any set

speech, but he nevertheless did so much and such arduous work as to make

himself ill before the session was half over. Dr. Bowditch, he often

recalled with amusement, told him that, if he followed implicitly the

rules he laid down for him, he might live to see his fiftieth birthday;

otherwise, not.

Perhaps no one man has been more frequently interviewed concerning the

policy of party politics than John G. Whittier. With gifted qualities of

heart and mind, was added wisdom, prudence and sagacity, in all that

related to governmental affairs. The late Henry Wilson once said of him,

"I can rely more safely upon the advice of Whittier than upon any other

man in America."

In the early movements of the Republican party he was acknowledged to

be the power behind the throne. Sumner, wise and learned, could trust to

the advice of Whittier. His correspondence with such men as Giddings,

Chase, Sumner, Wilson, John P. Hale, Upham and other celebrities, upon

national topics, is known to a few of his friends. They contain

sentiments which prove him as wise in statesmanship as he is eloquent in

verse.

How well and faithfully he labored is best expressed in his words:

"I am not insensible to literary reputation; I love, perhaps too

well, the love and praise of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value

on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833, than

on the title page of any book."

On the subject of the abolishment of capital punishment, Whittier's vote

is found recorded in the affirmative, as might have been expected. He

has said that one of the pleasantest years of his life was that passed

during the session of the Legislature in 1835.

One of the chief reasons why Whittier went seven miles from his Amesbury

home last summer was to "escape pilgrims" (as he called them). One

Sunday after meeting at Amesbury he said to his life-long friend, Miss

Gove, "Abby, has thee a spare room up at thy house?" She responded in

the affirmative, and he went to her home in Hampton Falls for the latter

part of the summer. It was here he penned his last poem--the verses "To

Oliver Wendell Holmes:"

"The gift is thine the weary world to make

More cheerful for thy sake,

Soothing the ears its Miserere pains

With the old Hellenic strains."

In a letter to one of the editors of the _Critic_ (August 29, 1892), Dr.

Holmes wrote, concerning his birthday:

"I have received two poems in advance, and our dear friend Whittier,

whose heart is a cornucopia of blessings for his fellow-creatures,

has remembered me in the pages of the _Atlantic_, where we have

found ourselves side by side for so many years. Long may the sands

of his life keep running, for they come from the bed of Pactolus."

The news of his friend's death was received by Dr. Holmes in Beverly,

just as he was coming in from a drive along the shore. It was a heavy

blow, coming as it did just upon the death of Lowell, Thomas Parsons,

and George William Curtis. He remarked that his acquaintance with

Whittier dated from the year of the founding of the _Atlantic Monthly_.

He had frequently visited him at Oak Knoll. He was there last year, and

the two old fellows walked and talked among the trees and had a good

time together. When the Doctor was leaving, his friend loaded him down

with fruit. It was on one of these recent visits that Dr. Holmes with

characteristic keenness of perception, discovered the beautiful symmetry

of the grand Norway spruce in front of the mansion on the wide sweep of

lawn, and he laughingly named it "The Poet's Pagoda," and this name it

has kept ever since.

To return to "Elmfield," as the old Gove mansion is called. The

old-fashioned house, with its upper balconies, heavy chimneys, and rich

collection of historical relics, stands on a hill not far from the falls

which gave the name to the village--Hampton Falls. The sight from

Whittier's window commanded a little balcony, with a view of the distant

blue sea. One day after another passed quietly away, he rising at

seven, going across through a pine grove to the adjoining tavern for his

breakfast, getting the mail at the little post-office, reading the

papers, looking at the distant sails on the sea through a glass,

conversing with friends or walking in the neighboring orchard, with its

paths and rustic seats. The region is that where his Bachiler and Hussey

ancestors both lived, as Mr. F. B. Sanborn tells us (Boston

_Advertiser_, September 8, 1892). Daniel Webster's Bachiler ancestors

also lived on a farm, a mile and a half from the Gove mansion; namely,

where now stands the villa of Warren Brown. As Mr. Sanborn truthfully

says, Whittier has been the local poet of this whole region of Essex and

adjoining counties. "No poet of New England," he continues, "has lived

so close to the actual habits of the people, in the present and the past

centuries, as did Whittier; and his poems of locality will become as

much a feature of New England literature as are those of Burns and Scott

in their native country. This fidelity to homely fact and profound

sentiment have made Whittier more than any other the patrial and

religious poet of New Hampshire and Eastern Massachusetts. He has done

in verse what Hawthorne did in prose. It was only the accident or

accomplishment of verse which separated these two poets, and made one of

them our most graceful and romantic prose-writer, while the other became

our most spiritual and literal poet."

The truth of these statements comes home to me with force since I made a

week's itinerary through this Whittier ballad land a year ago, and saw

how every mile of coast land was celebrated in storied verse by

Whittier.

On Wednesday, August 31, Mr. Whittier was taken ill. The malady was

acute diarrhea, which by the Saturday following developed a new and

alarming symptom, a remarkable irregularity of the heart's action,

accompanied by partial paralysis of the left side, arms, and vocal

organs. He remained conscious until Tuesday at three P. M., when the

symptoms became markedly worse. He was surrounded by ministering

relatives and friends, who gave him every loving attention, but all were

powerless to stay the hand of death.

When urged to take the nourishment prescribed by his physicians, he

said: "I want water from Abby's (Miss Gove) nice well," and as it was

given, remarked with a bright smile, "That's good--nothing better." Soon

after, as his forehead was being bathed, he said, "That is all that can

be done." To his attending physicians, Drs. Douglass and Howe, and

nurse, he said: "I am worn out--thee have done what thee could--I thank

thee." And as the end drew near the dying poet recognized his niece from

Portland, and remarked in faltering words, "Love--to--the--world." These

were his last words. He died at four-thirty on the morning of the

seventh. At seven o'clock on Friday evening the silent form of the poet

was brought to Amesbury, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. S. T. Pickard, and

Mr. and Mrs. Cartland.

On Saturday morning business was entirely suspended in Amesbury. The

selectmen issued the following proclamation:--

"To the Citizens of Amesbury:--Our town has been saddened by the

death of its great poet and one of its noblest and best-loved

citizens. We feel that our country at large, and the civilized

world, mourns with us the death of the poet and liberty-loving

philanthropist, John G. Whittier.

"Sharing the sadness which must come to the wise and good

everywhere, we, the people of Amesbury, mourn the loss of a friend

and neighbor endeared to us by his lovable qualities and the purity

of his daily life in our midst.

"We revered him for his greatness, and loved him for himself.

Always identified with every good work in Amesbury, sustaining the

right and defending the oppressed, his life for more than half a

century has been to us a daily sermon.

"If it be true that

'The heart speaketh most when the life move,'

we can only add that such a life, with its fullness of years and

its crown of blessings, is a rich legacy to the community."

[Illustration: THE GOVE HOUSE, HAMPTON FALLS, N. H., IN WHICH WHITTIER

DIED.]

At ten o'clock the public was admitted to the house, passing in a

continuous line (as at the funeral of dear old Walt Whitman, his brother

poet of Democracy, a few months before in Camden) through the humble

little parlor of the Amesbury home. It was originally intended to hold

the services in the Friends' meeting-house near by; but the dense fog

clearing up and the bright sun coming out--as one beautifully said, "the

mystery of death typified by the shifting and elusive shadows of the

fog, and the glory and hopefulness of the resurrection by the bright

rays of the sun"--it was decided to let the body rest in the house, and

hold memorial services in the quiet garden in the rear of the house.

The funeral arrangements were in charge of William Lloyd Garrison, Jr.,

S. T. Pickard and Judge G. W. Cate, the tenant of the house. The

atmosphere was one of peace and restfulness, and the simplicity of the

life of the Friends was seen in all the arrangements. In the quaint

parlor of the homestead lay all that was mortal of the poet, on whose

face was an expression of supreme peace; his form was encircled by a

delicate fringe of trailing fern. A most beautiful wreath from Dr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes--eighty-four white roses, fringed with carnations

and maidenhair ferns, one for each year of the poet's life,--was laid

around the name-plate on the coffin. It was a touching tribute by the

last one of that remarkable galaxy of poets that marked such a

distinguished era in our American literature. Two crossed palms, with

the Japan lilies Whittier loved so well, encircled by a broad white

satin ribbon, were from Mrs. Daniel Lothrop. The fronds of the long

palms encircled the face of the dead poet as it looked out from the

large engraving between the windows of the parlor. Upon the end of the

ribbon was delicately painted six lines from Whittier's "Andrew

Rykman's Prayer:"

"Some sweet morning yet in God's

Dim aeonian periods,

Joyful I shall wake to see

Those I love who rest in Thee,

And to them in Thee allied

Shall my soul be satisfied."

Upon the accompanying card was this: "In memory of my husband's dear

friend. This verse of 'Andrew Rykman's Prayer' was consolation in the

hour of death to both him who wrote it, and to him who loved it.--Mrs.

Daniel Lothrop."

Another exquisite floral offering came with these lines:

"I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air;

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care."

On the back of the card were the words "Oak Knoll."

The alcove behind the casket was filled with floral tributes. Here was a

large St. Andrew's cross of exquisite white roses upon a bed of ivy,

from a very near and dear friend of Mr. Whittier's at Lexington, whose

name is withheld. There was a ladder of hydrangeas, gladioli, carnations

and snow-balls from Mrs. Albert Clarke of Amesbury, an ivy wreath from

Sarah Orne Jewett, a sheaf of wheat from Mrs. Lizzie Cheney and the

Misses Coffin of Lynn, a broken shaft of white carnations from Mr. and

Mrs. J. Henry Hall of Amesbury. A massive wreath of Whittier's own

much-loved pine tassels was hung above the portrait of his sister

Elizabeth, the tribute of Mrs. Joseph A. Purington; the heavy green was

relieved by a spray of bright, contrasting goldenrod. Mrs. Samuel

Rowell, Jr., sent a basket of white roses and maidenhair. There was a

beautiful spray of the passion flower from L. Kelcher, Hotel Winthrop,

Boston, and an hour-glass of white carnations from Mr. J. R. Fogg. Many

touching little clusters of flowers came from the children; and his

neighbors sent a beautiful wreath of fringed gentian--Whittier's

favorite flower. This came from the far Pacific Slope: "Lay one flower

for me upon the bier of the beloved friend who rests. No purer soul

ever passed from earth to Heaven, or bore with it greater love and

blessing than does his.--Ina D. Coolbrith, Oakland, Cal."

In the garden, and overlooked by the windows of the study where Mr.

Whittier wrote and thought for so many years, was gathered to pay the

last tributes of love and reverence to the dead poet, a large and

notable assemblage: Gen. O. O. Howard, E. C. Stedman, Mrs. Alice Freeman

Palmer, Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward, Gail Hamilton, Lucy Larcom,

Edna Dean Proctor, Horace E. Scudder, T. W. Higginson, ex-Governor

Claflin, Parker Pillsbury, Francis H. Underwood, Edward L. Pierce,

Robert S. Rantoul, Mrs. C. A. Dall, "Margaret Sidney," Harriet Prescott

Spofford, Mrs. Endicott, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Jr., Frank J. Garrison,

etc.

And the sight was one never to be forgotten. Under the soft September

sky, blue and cloudless, in the shade of pear and apple trees which

Whittier himself had planted and tended and loved, were his relatives,

friends, neighbors and men and women whose names are known wherever the

English language is spoken.

It scarcely seemed like a funeral, so unaffectedly natural and sincere

was every spoken word and every act. And the entire absence of formality

and stiffness deprived the occasion of that artificial gloom which is so

often characteristic of funerals.

Perhaps, too, the subtle influence of the balmy air and the beauties of

the place helped to lift the pall that must have hung over many a heart.

It was as if the friends of some dearly beloved man, who was going on a

journey, had gathered to bid him God-speed--not as if they had come to

bid him farewell.

A hollow square was formed around a low platform, and near by was a

table with a Bible upon it. Gentians, one of Whittier's favorite

flowers, and goldenrod formed the only floral ornaments. Back of the

seats stood a dense crowd that must have numbered thousands, almost

filling the garden. Children climbed the trees and looked with open-eyed

wonder on the scene. On an apple bough, his naked legs dangling in the

air almost over the head of Edmund Clarence Stedman, was an urchin who

might have inspired the "Barefoot Boy;" faces peered from many a tree,

from the vine-clad arbor and from the window of a neighboring barn, down

upon the crowd.

The poet's relatives, and members of the Society of Friends from various

places, occupied the seats forming the hollow square, an easy-chair

being reserved for Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he was unable to be

present.

The Friends gave the exercises their peculiar complexion; first one and

then another rising to eulogize their friend as the "Spirit moved them."

Verses of Whittier were recited by "that lovely Quaker lady," Mrs.

Gertrude Cartland, and by Mrs. James H. Chace. Mr. E. C. Stedman was the

last speaker.

He spoke of the personal loss he felt in the poet's death. "To know him

was a consecration, to have his sympathy a benediction. His passing away

was not so much a death as a translation. He is gone, and has not left

his mantle! How could he? Why should he? No one can overestimate his

artless art, his power, vigor and effect in his polemic efforts. No one

put so much heart or so much religion into his writings. He was one of

the great trio of New England poets, of whom there is only one now

left. They are the vanishers of whom he spoke. He was a believer in the

inward life, as a poet should be. He will be his own successor, and

belongs to our time as well as to that earlier time to which he is

linked by his work. We may say of him that the chariot swung low and he

was translated, dividing the waters of truth, beauty, and religion, with

his mantle. The last time I spoke at a memorial service was at Bayard

Taylor's funeral. Taylor was Whittier's friend, and like Whittier he had

a firm belief in immortality."

It is to Mr. Stedman that Whittier dedicated in a few choice lines his

latest volume of verse, "At Sundown," which the poet, as if prescient of

his coming death, had had privately printed and circulated among a few

friends a year before his fatal illness.

The most picturesque and striking figure at Whittier's funeral was that

of the venerable John W. Hutchinson, whose long gray hair fell over a

broad white Rembrandt collar. He and his sister, Abby Hutchinson Patton,

were life-long friends of Whittier, and their voices in the song they

sang--"Close his eyes, his work is done"--were, "like the echoes of

sweet bells from the far-away time of their youth, when they and

Whittier were one in endeavor."

And then the long procession was formed. In the family lot, in the

Friends' section of the Union Cemetery, where are buried his father,

mother, sisters and brother, John Greenleaf Whittier was laid to rest.

The Boston _Journal_, in writing of Whittier's obsequies, gathered up

this tender reminiscence:--

"We recall the incident of some ten years since, when Mr. Daniel

Lothrop, the late publisher, while visiting in California, used

Whittier's poem, 'Andrew Rykman's Prayer' to comfort the bereaved.

Mr. Lothrop had, as it were, been brought up on Mr. Whittier's

poems, there being in many ways a great similarity of tastes and

characteristics between them. Of late years there was a strong

friendship. The clergyman of a prominent Oakland church had died

suddenly in the pulpit some few weeks before, and at the large

memorial meeting Mr. Lothrop was asked without warning by the

chairman to recite this poem, as he had heard him repeat a few

lines from it during a consecration meeting. Mr. Lothrop ascended

the platform and gave the poem entire. There was a profound hush

throughout the vast assembly, like that following the instant when

the beloved pastor had suddenly fallen before their eyes. Many were

in tears, all agreeing that Whittier's strong, uplifting words

comforted them more than anything else that had been said. Rev. Dr.

Gordon, in the address at Mr. Lothrop's funeral in the Old South

Church, appropriately recited this poem for the late publisher, who

on his death-bed used this poem, as he had in health and strength."

James G. Blaine telegraphed that he had "long regarded Whittier with

affectionate veneration," and over the wire came from Frederick Douglas

the words, "Emancipated millions will hold his memory sacred." Speaking

of Mr. Blaine, a writer, "S. F. M.," in the Boston _Journal_, December

18, 1891, tells of Mr. Blaine's presenting his, "S. F. M.'s," brother

with a morocco-bound copy of the beautiful Mussey edition, and of Mr.

Blaine's reading and re-reading aloud, one Sunday at their house in

Charlestown, Mass., the poem "Among the Hills," which had then just

been issued.

Memorial services on the afternoon of the funeral were held in Danvers,

Haverhill, Salem, Mass., and Vassalboro, Maine. The old Whittier grange

at the cross roads in Haverhill was draped in mourning. The present

owner of the birthplace is Mr. George E. Elliott, a retired wealthy

gentleman of Haverhill; and it is hoped that at no distant day he may be

induced to sell it to the town of Haverhill, who would sacredly keep

this cherished spot marking the nativity of her distinguished son, so

that all lovers of John G. Whittier's poetry may have an opportunity to

see his early home.

The day after the funeral between seventeen and eighteen hundred people

visited the grave. And, as in the case of Walt Whitman's grave, each one

wanted a leaf or flower as a memento, so that it was necessary in both

cases to have the place of sepulture guarded by special watchmen, in

order that anything green be left.

The funeral of the poet was conducted as he himself wished. For in his

will he wrote, "It is my wish that my funeral may be conducted in the

plain and quiet way of the Society of Friends, with which I am connected

not only by birthright, but also by a settled conviction of the truth of

its principles and the importance of its testimonies." Mr. Whittier, by

the way, in his will requests all who have letters of his to refrain

from publishing them unless with the consent of his literary executor,

Mr. S. T. Pickard.

So beautifully ended a most beautiful life--beautiful because just and

heroic in the defense of justice. As says of him James Herbert Morse:--

"Such was the man--no more than simple man,

Plain Quaker, with the Norman-Saxon glow;

But seeing beauty so, and justice so,

We love to think him the American."

And as Lowell says:--

"Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake,

The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold

Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's sake

That lay in bonds thou blew'st a blast as bold

As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake,

Far heard through Pyrenean valleys cold!"

The lines strong and resonant, of Stedman's "Ad Vatem," addressed to

Whittier while living, might well have been uttered over his bier:--

"Whittier, the land that loves thee, she whose child

Thou art, and whose uplifted hands thou long

Hast staid with song availing like a prayer--

She feels a sudden pang who gave thee birth,

And gave to thee the lineaments supreme

Of her own freedom, that she could not make

Thy tissues all immortal, or, if to change,

To bloom through years coeval with her own;

So that no touch of age nor frost of time

Should wither thee, nor furrow thy dear face,

Nor fleck thy hair with silver. Ay, she feels

A double pang that thee, with each new year

Glad youth may not revisit, like the spring

That routs her northern winter and anew

Melts off the hoar snow from her puissant hills."

Many pleasant anecdotes of the Quaker poet appeared shortly after his

death. Col. T. W. Higginson, writing of the Amesbury home, said of

Whittier's mother:--

"On one point only this blameless soul seemed to have a shadow of

solicitude, this being the new wonder of Spiritualism just dawning

on the world. I never went to the house that there did not come from

the gentle lady very soon a placid inquiry from behind her knitting

needles, 'Has thee any further information to give in regard to the

spiritual communications, as they call them?' But if I attempted to

treat seriously a matter which then, as now, puzzled most inquirers

by its perplexing details, there would come some keen thrust from

Elizabeth Whittier which would throw all serious solution further

off than ever.

"She was indeed a brilliant person, unsurpassed in my memory for the

light cavalry charges of wit; as unlike her mother and brother as if

she had been born into a different race. Instead of his regular

features, she had a wild, bird-like look, with prominent nose and

large liquid dark eyes, whose expression vibrated every instant

between melting softness and impetuous wit. There was nothing about

her that was not sweet and kindly, but you were constantly taxed to

keep up with her sallies and hold your own; while her graver brother

listened with delighted admiration and rubbed his hands over bits of

merry sarcasm which were utterly alien to his own vein. His manifold

visitors were touched off in living colors; two plump and rosy

Western girls among them, who had lately descended upon the

household beaming with eagerness to see the poet.

"They had announced themselves as the Cary sisters, who had lately

sent him their joint poems--verses, it will be remembered, crowded

with deaths and melodious dirges that seemed ludicrously

inconsistent with the blooming faces at the door. Mrs. Whittier met

them rather guardedly and explained that her son was out. 'But we

will come in and wait for him,' they smilingly replied. 'But he is

in Boston, and may not be home for a week,' said the prudent mother.

'No matter,' they said, in the true spirit of Western hospitality;

'we can stay till he returns.' There was no resource but to admit

them; and happily the poet came back next day, and there ensued a

life-long friendship, in which the mother fully shared."

And another reminiscence appeared in the press, touching the poet's

residence in Boston.

When Mrs. Celia Thaxter was boarding at the little English-like inn on

the sunny slope of Beacon Hill called Hotel Winthrop, Mr. Whittier went

there one day to see her. Mrs. Thaxter liked the quiet place, with its

ivied window and its glimpse of the strong, short, green-draped tower of

St. John the Evangelist's, and she praised it to her old friend. That

was some time in 1881, and in November of that year he joined his Oak

Knoll cousins, Mrs. Woodman and her daughter and the Misses Johnson, at

the Winthrop. The ladies of the family came in September, but Mr.

Whittier did not join them until November. He said that he did not want

to lose his vote in Amesbury.

It was a winter full of pleasure to the poet. He was then not too feeble

to go out evenings, and he spent many pleasant hours with friends like

the Claflins and others. But the hours in the parlor of the hotel make

the place historic, and give it a special interest and meaning for his

future biographer. Mr. Whittier had room fourteen (the number of a

sonnet's lines, twice seven, with luck for a poet), and the fire-escape

made a little balcony for him on a corner toward St. John's. The

landlord had a door cut through the thick old wall to the rooms

adjoining, and these were the rooms of Mrs. Woodman and the rest. It is

old Boston decidedly in that quarter. The brick of the houses is mellow

old red, and there is nothing newfangled anywhere about. Mr. Whittier

said he preferred coming here rather than to one of the big hotels,

because there he was "overwhelmed with the service," and here it seemed

"more like Amesbury," where people "are neighborly and drop in without

knocking." He had "always been used to waiting upon himself," and he

"liked being in a place where they would let him."

It was his custom, mornings, to come down into the little reception-room

on the street floor, and "sitting right in that chair where you're

sitting," as the writer was told, he "used to read his letters and throw

all the papers in a pile on the floor and go off and leave them." That

little room was a great place of congregation for "the family," as the

boarders who were there with Mr. Whittier liked to call themselves.

The poet would sit on the sofa with a favored one on each side of him

and the rest in a group about, "often on footstools or on the floor, as

like as not," while he "told stories of war times." Gen. Stevens was

there during one of the poet's long stays; he had been a classmate of

Gen. Lee and of Jefferson Davis at West Point, and he and the abolition

poet discussed these men and their times from the broader view of later

days.

"Once a friend, a lady who had some property in Virginia, wrote Mr.

Whittier of having named a street in a new town for him, and of having

set aside a portion of ground in his name. He replied with thanks,

saying that he had that week received news of no less than three towns

or streets being named for him with a gift of town lots, adding, 'If

this sort of thing goes on much longer, I shall be land poor.'

"During the winters he was at the Winthrop, Mr. Whittier's favorite way

of getting about was in a herdic. They were 'not pretty,' but they 'knew

the way to places.' Politicians used to go there to see him and try to

get him to banquets. But his life-long avoidance of politics in the

minor sense made him easily resist their wiles. 'I have seen Mr. ---- (a

well-known name) come here and just about go down on his knees to get

Mr. Whittier to speak or even to come to a banquet,' says the landlord

(who is, by the way, an old-time character worthy of a novelist's pen),

'but Mr. Whittier would just sit here--right in that chair you're

in--and kind of smile to himself as if to say, "Oh! your talk don't

amount to anything." Well, once Mr. ---- came here and staid and staid

a-talking and persuading, and gave Mr. Whittier an earache if ever a man

had one. But he didn't make anything by it, although he finally had to

take a bed and stay all night.'"

Mr. Charles Brainard visited Whittier soon after the publication of

"Snow-Bound." Finding his house painted and improved, he remarked to

him, "It is evident that poetry has ceased to be a drug in the market."

"The next morning Mr. Whittier's answer came. It was in the winter, and,

as the poet went up to the fire to warm his boots preparatory to putting

them on, he said, 'Thee will have to excuse me, for I must go down to

the office of the Collector.' Then, with a humorous gleam in his eye, he

added, 'Since "Snow-Bound" was published, I have risen to the dignity of

an income tax.'"

To an Englishman who visited him not long before his death, Mr. Whittier

expressed his surprise that his guest should know so much of his poetry

by heart. "I wonder," he said, "thou shouldst burden thy memory with

all that rhyme. It is not well to have too much of it: better get rid of

it as soon as possible. Why, I can't remember any of it. I once went to

hear a wonderful orator, and he wound up his speech with a poetical

quotation, and I clapped with all my might. Some one touched me on the

shoulder, and said. 'Do you know who wrote that?' I said, 'No, I don't;

but it's good.' It seems I had written it myself. The fault is I have

written far too much."

Here is a story illustrating Whittier's kind-heartedness: A young lady,

a neighbor, was asked to take tea at his house. "He had no servant at

the moment, and, with the assistance of his guest, prepared the simple

meal with his own hand. She contributed to the press for her support,

and prepared a minute account of the affair, of which Mr. Whittier

chanced to be advised, and sent off a remonstrance post haste. But when

the young author pleaded the real need of the money which the little

story was to bring her, and the harmlessness to its subject of its

effective details, the former reason (for the latter would never have

overcome his abhorrence of what he must have felt a vivisection)

actually prevailed, and he permitted the publication with a benignant

forbearance."

The Hon. Nathan Crosby, LL. D., writes in the Essex Institute

Collections for 1880.

"James F. Otis, nephew of the Hon. H. G. Otis, while reading law in

my office, found in some newspaper a piece of poetry which he said

he was told had been written by a shoemaker boy in Haverhill, and he

wished to go and find him. Upon his return he told me he found the

young man by the name of Whittier at work in his shoe shop, and,

making himself known to him, they spent the day together in

wandering over the hills on the shore of the Merrimack, and in

conversation upon literary matters. The next year he became an

editor. Mr. Whittier is not only a poet, but is himself a poem."

Mr. Whittier, when interviewed some time ago as to his favorite works,

replied: "Oh! really, I have none. Much that I have written I wish was

as deep in the Red Sea as Pharaoh's chariot wheels. Much of the bread

cast on the waters I wish had never returned. It is not fair to revive

writings composed in the shadow of conditions that make every

acceptable work impossible. In my early life I was not favored with good

opportunities. Limited chances for education and a lack of books always

stood in my way. When I began to write I had seen nothing, and virtually

knew nothing of the world. Of course, things written then could not be

worth much. In my father's house there were not a dozen books, and they

were of a severe type. The only one that approached poetry was a rhymed

history of King David, written by a contemporary of George Fox, the

Quaker. There was one poor novel in the family. It belonged to an aunt.

This I secured one day, but when I had read it about half through I was

discovered and it was taken away from me."

This was about the time when Judge Pickering, of Salem, and a party of

ladies called at the farm-house to see him. "He was then an awkward boy

of seventeen--as he used to tell the story--and was just then under the

barn, looking for eggs. Hearing his name called, he came up with his hat

full and found himself suddenly in the presence of people more elegant

in appearance than any he had ever met. In telling the story, he added

naively, 'They came to see the Quaker poet--and they saw him!' This must

have been about the year 1824."

Mr. T. W. Ball (in the Boston _Journal_, Dec. 18, 1891, weekly edition),

the journalist, wrote of his sole interview in 1848 with Whittier, in a

little editorial den at the junction of Spring Lane and Water Street

with Devonshire Street (the building recently torn down), where Henry

Wilson was then editing the Free-Soil paper (owned by him as well). "I

was busy," says Mr. Ball, "getting up some local items one morning, when

a gentleman of staid appearance, with a beaming countenance, a

broad-brimmed fur hat--the old-fashioned fur hat, so different from the

silk tile--and a brownish coat of formal cut, entered the room, and,

after the usual courtesies of salutation, fell into a close chat with

the 'Natick cobbler,' by which popular title the future Vice-President

was then known. It was the summer season, and Wilson was resplendent in

a brown linen coat and a flaming red-checked velvet waistcoat, which was

much affected in those days. As the conversation between the two waxed

interesting, I noticed that the visitor unbuttoned his vest for comfort,

and possessed himself of an exchange paper which he converted into a

fan. The interview closed, and the visitor, buttoning up his vest and

donning his hat, turned to depart, when for the first time he appeared

to take notice of my presence. With a rapid glance at Wilson, he said,

'Henry, who is thy young friend?'

"'Oh, that's William, my local reporter,' was the reply. 'Here, William,

this is Mr. Whittier, the Quaker poet, that you have heard about; shake

hands with him.' I timidly extended my hand, and the great man not only

grasped it with a cordial grasp, but, patting me on the head with his

other hand, said, 'My young friend, thee has chosen a noble calling.'"

Mr. Whittier, in speaking of Longfellow's works a few years ago, said,

"'Evangeline' is a favorite with me. I think it is one of the most

beautiful of poems. Longfellow had an easy life and superior advantages

of association and education, and so did Emerson. It was widely

different with me, and I am very thankful for the kind esteem that

people have given my writings. Before 'Evangeline' was written I had

hunted up the history of the banishment of the Acadians, and had

intended to write upon it myself, but I put it off, and Hawthorne got

hold of the story and gave it to Longfellow. I am very glad he did, for

he was just the one to write it. If I had attempted it I should have

spoiled the artistic effect of the poem by my indignation at the

treatment of the exiles by the Colonial Government, who had a very hard

lot after coming to this country. Families were separated and scattered

about, only a few of them being permitted to remain in any given

locality. The children were bound out to the families in the localities

in which they resided, and I wrote a poem upon finding in the records of

Haverhill the indenture that bound an Acadian girl as a servant in one

of the families in that neighborhood. Gathering the story of her death,

I wrote 'Marguerite.'"

In addition to what has been stated in this volume and elsewhere by me

on the Barbara Frietchie ballad, are to be finally appended a few words,

suggested by the one who sent the raw material of the ballad to

Whittier, namely, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, who, soon after the

poet's death, at her pretty home in Georgetown, D. C., recalled the

circumstances as they occurred back in 1863. It seems that the story was

told her by a neighbor of hers who was also a relative of Barbara--Mr.

C. S. Ramsburg. Mrs. Southworth's son, who was present, remarked, "What

a grand subject for a poem by Whittier, mother!"

She thereupon sat down, and with tears in her eyes, wrote the incident

out and sent it to Amesbury. Mr. Whittier replied as follows:--

"AMESBURY, 9mo. 8, 1863.

"MY DEAR MRS. SOUTHWORTH:--I heartily thank thee for thy very kind

letter and its inclosed "message." It ought to have fallen into

better hands, but I have just written out a little ballad of

"Barbara Frietchie," which will appear in the next _Atlantic_. If

it is good for anything thee deserves all the credit of it.

"With best wishes for thy health and happiness, I am most truly thy

friend,

"JOHN G. WHITTIER."

It is said that Mr. Whittier expressed regret for having made a bonfire

of nearly all the letters he had received from his correspondents for

over half a century. It is to be hoped that his literary executor will

be liberal-minded in allowing the publication of the most interesting of

Whittier's own letters, for he put a good bit of his sister Elizabeth's

wit and vivacity into his letters; and scarcely a day passed that one or

more of these was not written, overflowing with kindly words and good

humor, though these, it is true, could give no hint of that lambent

gleam of the marvelous eyes, nor of that sudden compression of the upper

lip with which he repressed a smile when he had flashed out a bit of

humor.

Whittier was not only quick in repartee, but quick and lithe in all his

movements, and quick in his mental processes. His friend, Judge G. W.

Cate, says he latterly read books very rapidly by inspection, turning

the leaves and seizing the contents by intuition. The poet's

imagination, continues Judge Cate, was wonderful. Years ago he may have

read an accurate description of some remote place--Malta, Jerusalem, or

some smaller town in the far East. He would then converse at any time as

readily about such a place as if he had been there. It was this vivid

remembrance of places, Whittier himself said, which made him not care so

much to visit them in person. He was never a traveler, not having been

farther from home than Philadelphia (half a century ago), and Washington

somewhat later. He said that he should like to be in California or

Florida for a winter, but the getting there appalled him, and so he sat

contentedly in his Northern study, with its bright open fire, finding in

its crumbling embers a compensatory dream of the _Morgenland_ with its

palms, mirages and luxuriant blossomry. He followed with deep interest

the toils and adventures of his friend Greely in the arctic regions, and

rejoiced with all his neighbors when word came of his rescue. And at

another time he said he "would rather shake hands with Stanley than with

any other man in the world just then."

The sincerest mourners at Whittier's funeral were women. One of the

peculiarities of his life was the devotion and loving care given to him

by noble women--sisters, mother, nieces, cousins and such poet friends

as Lucy Larcom, Mrs. Spofford, Rose Terry Cooke, Sarah Orne Jewett,

Celia Thaxter, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Mrs. Annie Fields. He was

always an ardent defender of woman suffrage, and such advocates of that

noble cause as Adelaide A. Claflin publicly expressed their sorrow on

the death of their coadjutor and friend.

He was not only liberal in politics, but also in religion, and while

remaining from choice in the creedless church of his fathers, yet he had

sympathies that allied him with the broad humanitarian movements of the

times in religion. There was no shred of bigotry in his nature. Who ever

heard of a persecuting Quaker? It is they who have always patiently

suffered persecution. Whittier, indeed, belonged with the advance guard

of the Friends, in spirit at least, and he said in a letter written

shortly before his death, "For years I have been desirous of a movement

for uniting all Christians, with no other creed or pledge than a simple

recognition of Christ as our leader."

* * * * *

The Whittier Club of Haverhill, an organization the poet had thoroughly

enjoyed, not only because it represented the feeling of his native town

toward him, but also from the constant attentions paid him by it, held a

memorial service in Haverhill, October 7. It was a rare day of tribute

and thanksgiving, and all who participated in it felt grateful for the

honor allowed them. It was just a month from the day when the loved poet

and former citizen passed from earth. Mr. George E. Elliott, the owner

of Whittier's birthplace, very generously allowed the club to hold its

meeting in the old homestead, and he furthered in every way their

well-conceived plan by which the several rooms presented an appearance

as near as possible to that of the poet's boyhood. The partition in the

old kitchen, that had been put up of late years, was taken down,

disclosing the array of ancient cupboards and queer little window; there

was the kettle hanging on the crane in the wide fireplace, along whose

hearth one almost expected to see "the apples sputtering in a row," as

of yore. There were the iron fire-dogs and the antiquated chairs, the

wainscoting untouched by the hand of Time, save to grow mellower of

tint, and there was "the sagging beam," the uneven floor and the quaint

staircase, all just as Whittier, the boy, saw and touched and lived

amongst, all those impressible years of his life.

It was a notable company gathered in that old homestead that beautiful

October day--bidden there by the Whittier Club--not large in numbers, as

the invitations were of necessity limited to the capacity of the old

homestead. But they were mostly the poet's dear friends who came to do

honor to his name. There was Lucy Larcom, William Lloyd Garrison, Jr.,

Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney and "Margaret Sidney" (Mrs. D. Lothrop); there was

Charles Carleton Coffin and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Garrison and Miss

Sparhawk, whose father, Dr. Thomas Sparhawk of Amesbury, was one of the

poet's life-long friends. There was the dear Quaker presence of Mrs.

Purington, Mr. Whittier's cousin, and the members of his family at Oak

Knoll, Mrs. Woodman, her daughter, Miss Phebe, and the Misses Johnson;

there was Mr. S. T. Pickard of Portland, Maine, who married the poet's

niece Lizzie, and who is Mr. Whittier's literary executor. And there

were other relatives and friends and Haverhill citizens thronging the

house, and listening outside the little many-paned windows to catch the

echoes of the words being uttered within.

The day was all that one could desire who looked for sympathy in Nature

toward this her favorite child who has so interpreted her woods and

fields, her autumn skies and the trembling line of river and coast. The

old kitchen was filled with chairs, and on them, and crowded in the

doorways and peeping in the windows, were the interested and reverent

listeners. Mr. Charles Howe, the president of the club, presided with

great grace and dignity; with rare tact culling from the large amount of

what waited to be read and said, just such choice extracts and bits of

reminiscence as would best serve the purpose of the hour. Selections

from "Snow-Bound" were read by a member of the club in that room where

"Snow-Bound" was lived, if one may so express it. And to the listeners

there came a vision of wintry fields and whirling storm; of the little

knot of friends drawn close to the friendly comforting fire on the

hearth; in the midst the thoughtful sensitive boy who was to awaken the

love and veneration of future generations all over his country.

There were reminiscences of a visit to his birthplace paid by the poet

some ten years since with Mr. S. T. Pickard, who told to the assembled

company many amusing stories related by Mr. Whittier on that occasion.

There was the quaint staircase down which the poet, when a baby, wrapped

in a blanket, was rolled by his sister only two years older, who

probably thought it the greatest kindness in the world to thus project

her infant brother into space. There was the queer old cupboard where

Mr. Whittier when a boy was dragged by his jacket collar by a tramp who

had forcibly entered the house; and there he was compelled to stand

while the unwelcome visitor searched high and low for any chance jug or

bottle that would yield another supply to his already over-weighted

condition. Seizing a jug from a dark corner, he ejected the cork without

a glance at the contents, and took a long deep draught of whale oil used

for filling lamps. The embryo poet took advantage of the confused

spluttering that ensued, to make good his escape. Mr. Will Carleton

recited with dramatic vigor "Barbara Frietchie," till the walls and

rafters rang. Lucy Larcom read from the poet's writings, and Mr. William

Lloyd Garrison, Jr. recited an original poem. A young English lady, who

was visiting friends of Mr. Whittier's, read by request Tennyson's

"Crossing the Bar," the Poet Laureate's death having just occurred.

There were reminiscences by Dr. Fiske of Newburyport, who told several

characteristic stories connected with Joshua Coffin, the "Yankee

Schoolmaster," and life-long friend of the poet; and Charles Carleton

Coffin, the historian, gave the account of his capture of the big key of

the last slave prison in Richmond, and of his giving it to Mr. Whittier

who returned it to him a year or so ago. At the close of his remarks,

Mr. Carleton hung the key on the nail above the fireplace where, in

Whittier's boyhood, the big bull's-eye watch used to hang. Fitting place

was it for the silent symbol of agony and shame to the slave brother;

and all who witnessed it hanging there, felt the heart beat to a newer

and a keener sense of the debt we owe to him whose songs (as one who

gave a reminiscence that day told us) influenced Abraham Lincoln to

project the Emancipation Proclamation upon the American people. The

beautiful poem of Mr. Whittier's, "My Psalm," was rendered with deep

feeling by Mrs. Julia Houston West for whom, several years ago, the

verses had been set to music. And to bring to a fitting close these

memorial exercises, the assembled company of relatives and friends rose

and sang one stanza of of "Auld Lang Syne."

[Illustration:

Dr Holmes.

Beloved physician of an age of ail

When grave prescriptions fail

Thy songs have cheer and healing for us all

As David's had for Saul.

John G Whittier

Hampton Falls, NH

Aug 26 1892

_The above fac-simile of the last verse written by Mr. Whittier, is

kindly loaned us by the "Boston Journal." The following letter was sent

with the verse_:

HAMPTON FALLS, _August_.

DEAR MR. WINGATE:

I have only time and strength to write a single verse expressive of

my love and admiration of my dear old friend, Dr. Holmes.

JOHN G. WHITTIER.]

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note: Although the Contents lists an Appendix, there was

no actual appendix or page 375 in the scanned copy. Other copies of

this book were found to have the same problem.

End of Project Gutenberg's John Greenleaf Whittier, by W. Sloane Kennedy