Part 20 (1/2)

At Danvers he was able to enjoy the free open air. He loved to sit under the fine trees which distinguished the lawn, to play with the dogs, and wander about unmolested until he was tired. The ladies of the house exerted themselves to give him perfect freedom and the tenderest care. The daughter became his playmate, and she never quite grew up, in his estimation. She was his lively and loving companion.

Writing from Danvers, one December, he says, ”What with the child, and the dogs, and Rip Van Winkle the cat, and a tame gray squirrel who hunts our pockets for nuts, we contrive to get through the short dark days.”

Again: ”I am thankful that February has come, and that the sun is getting high on his northern journey. The past month has been trying to flesh and spirit.... I am afraid my letter has a complaining tone, and I am rather ashamed of it, and shall be more so when my head is less out of order.... There are two gray squirrels playing in my room.

Phoebe calls them Deacon Josiah and his wife Philury, after Rose Terry Cooke's story of the minister's 'week of works' in the place of a 'week of prayer.'”

He showed more physical vitality after he went to Danvers, and his notes evince a wide interest in matters private and public outside his own library life. He still went to Portland to see his niece and her husband whenever he was able, and now and then to Boston also. But Philadelphia at the time of the Centennial was not to be thought of.

”I sent my hymn,” he wrote from Amesbury in 1876, ”with many misgivings, and am glad it was so well received. I think I should like to have heard the music, but probably I should not have understood.

The G.o.ds have made me most unmusical.

”I have just got J. T. F.'s charming little book of 'Barry Cornwall and His Friends.' It is a most companionable volume, and will give rare pleasure to thousands.... I write in the midst of our Quaker quarterly meeting, and our house has been overrun for three days. We had twelve to dine to-day; they have now gone to meeting, but I am too tired for preaching.

”I don't expect to visit Philadelphia. The very thought of that Ezekiel's vision of machinery and the nightmare confusion of the world's curiosity shop appalls me. I shall not venture.”

He was full of excellent resolutions about going often to Boston, but he never could make a home there. ”I see a great many more things in the city than thee does,” he would say, ”because I go to town so seldom. The shop windows are a delight to me, and everything and everybody is novel and interesting. I don't need to go to the theatre.

I have more theatre than I can take in every time I walk out.”

No sketch of Whittier, however slight, should omit to mention his friends.h.i.+p for Bayard Taylor. Their Quaker parentage helped to bring the two poets into communion; and although Taylor was so much the younger and more vigorous man, Whittier was also to see him pa.s.s, and to mourn his loss. He took a deep interest in his literary advancement, and considered ”Lars” his finest poem. Certainly no one knew Taylor's work better, or brought a deeper sympathy into his reading of it. ”I love him too well to be a critic of his verse,” he says in one of his letters. ”But what a brave worker he was!”

The reading of good books was, very late in life, as it had been very early, his chief pleasure. His travels, his romance, his friends.h.i.+ps, were indulged in chiefly by proxy of the printed page. ”I felt very near Dr. Mulford through his writings,” he said. ”He was the strongest thinker of our time, and he thought in the right direction. 'The Republic of G.o.d' is intellectually greater than St. Augustine's 'City of G.o.d,' and infinitely nearer the Christian ideal.”

”That must be a shrewd zephyr,” Charles Lamb used to say, speaking of his Gentle Giantess, ”that can escape her.” And so we may say of Whittier and a book. ”Has thee seen the new book by the author of 'Mr.

Isaacs'?” he asked (having sent me ”Mr. Isaacs” as soon as it appeared, lest I should miss reading so novel and good a story). In the same breath he adds: ”I have been reading 'The Freedom of Faith,'

by the author of 'On the Threshold,' just published by Houghton & Co.

It is refres.h.i.+ng and tonic as the northwest wind. The writer is one of the leaders of the new departure from the ultra-Calvinism. Thank thee just here for the pleasure of reading Annie Keary's biography. What a white, beautiful soul! Her views of the mission of spiritualism seem very much like ----'s. I do not know when I have read a more restful, helpful book.

”How good Longfellow's poem is! A little sad, but full of 'sweetness and light.' Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, and myself are all getting to be old fellows, and that swan-song might serve for us all. 'We who are about to die.' G.o.d help us all! I don't care for fame, and have no solicitude about the verdicts of posterity.

”'When the gra.s.s is green above us And they who know us and who love us Are sleeping by our side, Will it avail us aught that men Tell the world with lip and pen That we have lived and died?'

”What we _are_ will then be more important than what we have done or said in prose or rhyme, or what folks that we never saw or heard of think of us.”

The following hitherto unpublished poem was written about this period upon the marriage of the daughter of his friend Mrs. Leonowens:--

TO A. L.

WITH THE CONGRATULATIONS OF HER MOTHER'S FRIEND

The years are many, the years are old, My dreams are over, my songs are sung, But, out of a heart that has not grown cold, I bid G.o.d-speed to the fair and young.

Would that my prayer were even such As the righteous pray availing much, But nothing save good can Love befall, And naught is lacking since Love is all, Thy one great blessing of life the best, Like the rod of Moses swallows the rest!

(Signed) JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Oak Knoll, 6th mo. 7, 1878.

Later he describes himself as listening to the ”Life of Mrs. Stowe.”