JOHN G. WHITTIER 
 
 The Poet of Freedom 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY 
 
 He that knows anything worth communicating and 
 does not comnttinicate it, let him be hanged by the 
 neck" TALMUD. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ortt 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 LONDON AND TORONTO 
 
 1892 
 
Copyright 1892 by the 
 FUNK & WAGNALI.S COMPANY 
 
PREFACE. "> /> 
 
 
 
 WHILE the manuscript of this volume was lying in 
 the safe of the publishers, I made a little Whittier 
 itinerary along the storied Essex coast, a voyage 
 through Whittier ballad-land, bringing before my 
 eyes the very scenes of the poems in the study of the 
 sources of which in the libraries I had made such de 
 lightful and exciting discoveries. After adventures 
 manifold and pleasant I found myself on the top of 
 Powow Hill, that rises just above our poet s old 
 home in Amesbury. From this coigne of vantage the 
 eye takes in, in one swift coup d ceil, a mighty spread 
 of landscape and sea, beginning with conical Aga- 
 menticus, violet-dim and far, in Maine, resting for a 
 moment on the Isles of Shoals, Little Boar s Head, 
 Great Boar s Head, and Salisbury Beach, traveling 
 along the tumbled sand dunes of the Ipswich coast, 
 catching over the blue sea-floor the white sparkle of 
 the houses of Cape Ann, fetching a compass over 
 Danvers and Haverhill, to finally rest on the far 
 range of the Pawtuckaway Hills. This is Essex 
 County with its winding roads, old shingled barns, 
 huge stranded rocks, sea estuaries, clean quiet little 
 sea towns and rugged honest folk, the Attica of 
 Massachusetts. What the view from Powow Hill is 
 to the traveler I hope this book will be to the indoor 
 reader of Whittier s ballads. I have done my best to 
 show that Flood Ireson was justly tarred and 
 feathered, that John Brown did stoop to kiss the slave 
 child, that Barbara Frietchie did wave that historic 
 flag in the face of the Confederate troops, that at 
 
IV. PREFACE. 
 
 Lucknow both loud and sweet " the pipes of rescue 
 blew," that Whittier s story of the wreck of the 
 " Palatine " is true to the letter, and that the romantic 
 story of Harriet Livermore is truth stranger than 
 fiction. If, however, you observe with curious interest 
 how very often the poet slips in minor matters of 
 historical accuracy in his rhymed poems, you may 
 ponder the words of Ruskin where he tells us that 
 " a lovely legend is all the more precious when it has 
 no foundation." Cincinnatus or any other man might 
 have plowed a field fifty times over and it would 
 have signified little to us ;. but if no Cincinnatus 
 existed at all, and yet the Roman people, to express 
 their conviction that tilling the soil is a noble occu 
 pation, invented a Cincinnatus out of hand and en 
 shrined him for all time in their literature, " this 
 precious coinage out of the brain and conscience of 
 a mighty people " we had better take to heart most 
 diligently. 
 
 The full story of the part Whittier played in the 
 anti-slavery movement is here set down for the first 
 time in book form. Many interesting and unexpected 
 things plowed up during my researches into such 
 subjects as the mobbings in which Whittier was a 
 sufferer, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in Phila 
 delphia, the estrangement of years which Garrison s 
 narrow intolerance produced between himself and 
 Whittier, with the subsequent reconciliation of the 
 two, and the story of the rise and fall of the Liberty 
 Party, the lineal predecessor of the party that saved 
 the Union. 
 
 BELMONT, MASS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ON THE FARM .. 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST 58 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 WHITTIER AT HOME.. _ 170 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS 200 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS 220 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 STORIES IN RHYME ._ __ 268 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. REFERENCE TABLE FOR DATES 313 
 
 II. BIBLIOGRAPHY 317 
 
 INDEX _ - 325 
 
JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE FA RM. 
 
 IN July, 1867, Bayard Taylor wrote to his friend, 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman, from Friedrichroda in 
 the Thuringian forest : " How delighted I am with 
 Whittier s success ! Fields writes that his * Tent 
 has already sold twenty thousand copies. Here is a 
 man who has waited twenty-five years to be generally 
 appreciated. I remember when his name was never 
 mentioned without a sneer, except by the small 
 Abolition clique. In England, too, they are now 
 beginning to read him for the first time." 1 
 
 These statements of Whittier s friend are true in 
 the main, but need to be somewhat qualified and 
 annotated. It will hardly do to say that Whittier was 
 not generally appreciated previous to 1866-67, when 
 we remember that an edition of his collected works 
 had been reviewed with high praise by Edwin P. 
 Whipple as early as 1848 ; that in 1857 he had helped 
 to establish the " Atlantic Monthly," and that in the 
 
 Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ii. 479. 
 
8 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 same year the little two-volume blue and gold edition 
 of his poems was published by Ticknor & Fields, 
 and had a tolerably large circulation throughout the 
 country. And it is further to be noted that his 
 Kansas Emigrants" song had been sung from 
 Massachusetts Bay to the Missouri River by the 
 pioneer settlers of the debated ground ; that the 
 maturest creations of his art had been published 
 (such ballads as " Maud Muller," " Barbara Frietchie," 
 " Skipper Ireson," " Mabel Martin," " Telling the 
 Bees," and " The Pipes at Lucknow ") ; and that at 
 least two of his war poems " Ein Feste Burg" and 
 " Song of the Negro Boatmen " had been sung in 
 the Northern armies. 
 
 Still, it is a fact that the publication in 1866-67 of 
 " Snow-Bound " and " The Tent on the Beach," with 
 its included ballads, greatly increased the poet s 
 fame. For thirty-five years he had been chiefly 
 known as the bard of a despised cause. But the war 
 had come and gone, the slaves had been freed, and 
 in any case the people of the whole country would 
 have turned with reverence to the pages of the poet 
 of freedom ; but his idyl " Snow-Bound," and his 
 beautiful ballads, lifted him into the rank of a national 
 poet, and he has since been greeted as such on both 
 sides of the sea. 
 
 There is fitness in the title " Poet of Free 
 dom " as applied to John G. Whittier ; for the 
 inastor-passion of his soul is hatred of tyranny. 
 When there is no brother-man, heart-broken and in 
 chains, to rescue, no inhumanity to arraign in words 
 of withering scorn, then he finds a little leisure 
 to write ballads and songs. I find by actual 
 

 ON THE FARM. 9 
 
 count that in more than a third of his poems freedom 
 is either the main theme or is alluded to in passing. 
 In love of liberty and the singleness of aim with which 
 he has devoted his life to its defense Whittier re 
 sembles John Brown. In both, the moral idea flames 
 out with volcanic power. Both were sinewed by out 
 door life. But John Brown was a mechanism of steel 
 and iron ; the soul of Whittier may be likened to the 
 frail plant Dictamnus set in a porcelain vase, a plant 
 which on a hot day is surrounded by an inflammable 
 gas that ignites with a sudden flash when a flame is 
 applied to it. 
 
 In the later poetical work of Whittier that pro 
 duced after the Civil War purely literary topics 
 naturally predominate, although at irregular inter 
 vals the old lyre of freedom is taken up, either to 
 chant a paean for some triumph of human rights at 
 home or abroad or to strike the minor chords over 
 the passing away of a comrade of the old anti- 
 slavery days. Indeed, for several years before the 
 war broke out, he had been engaged in purely literary 
 work (Songs of Labor and folk ballads). So it is 
 evident that the lines of his intellectual development 
 were not altogether determined by national or 
 political events, nor were precisely coincident with 
 these, but that his growth followed the common law 
 of men and nations, first the age of manly energy, 
 self-assertion, and moral strife ; then an epoch of 
 peaces in which the ideal arts, after long slumber, 
 suddenly crystallize into shapes of beauty. 
 
 Although the lives of poets are seldom rich in 
 dramatic events, they are often ennobled by rare 
 friendships and set in an interesting environment. In 
 
10 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the case of Whittier, extreme dislike of publicity has 
 not availed to conceal his personal adventures in the 
 anti-slavery crusade, nor to keep enthusiastic friends 
 from printing descriptions of his personal appearance 
 and ways. After all, his life has been a semi-public 
 one, and I feel sure our dear friend will forgive me 
 for just weaving into a connected narrative such 
 matters as may permissibly be known of his outward 
 life. 
 
 The rugged and hilly old county of Essex, Mas 
 sachusetts, may be called the cradle of American 
 poets ; for in its town of Haverhill, by the Merri- 
 mack, the poet Whittier was born (December 17, 
 1807 ), and in the neighboring town of Newbury 
 lived the immediate ancestors of Longfellow and 
 Lowell. The old farm-house, the birthplace of 
 Whittier, is only five miles from the ancestral estate 
 of the Longfellows. Three miles to the southeast 
 lies the town of Haverhill. The Whittier farm is at 
 the junction of the main road to Haverhill and a 
 cross-road to Plaistow. It is so situated, in a de 
 pression between surrounding hills, that no other 
 house is visible from it in any direction. The whole 
 locality reminds one of the " Knobs " of Kentucky, 
 being made up of gently rounded hills set close 
 together. In the Great West they call such rough 
 land as this " sassy country." On the road to Haver- 
 
 1 Some one having raised a doubt as to the exact date of his 
 birth, Mr. Whittier humorously said, " I cannot say positively from 
 my personal knowledge when I was born, but my mother told me 
 it was on the I7th of December, 1807, and she was a very truthful 
 woman." 
 
ON THE FARM. II 
 
 hill you pass, on the left, Kenoza lake, so christened 
 by Whittier, filled with purest water, and terraced 
 by thick-wooded slopes. A little farther on, the 
 road skirts the base of a high hill crowned by a 
 castellated stone dwelling, from which one catches 
 glimpses, far off, of blue Monadnock and many New 
 England towns, sparkling white on the slopes of 
 azure hills. 
 
 Past Haverhill winds the placid Merrimack, now 
 made classic by the genius of Whittier. Born amid 
 the snows and springs of the White Mountains ; tak 
 ing tribute of many crystal streams as it flows south; 
 its mountain brawling hushed by a plunge through 
 the deeps of beautiful Winnepesaukee ; sliding 
 through the grassy meadows of Concord studded 
 with elms ; fretting and chafing among the rapids of 
 Suncook and Hookset ; turning successively the 
 wheels of the huge mills of Manchester, Nashua, 
 Lowell, and Lawrence ; passing by Haverhill, New- 
 bury, Amesbury, the mouth of the winding and nar 
 row Powow, the silver Quasycung, and the bough- 
 hung Artichoke, and at its mouth separating .the 
 towns of Newburyport and Salisbury, it finally falls 
 into the sea at Ipswich Bay. 
 
 It is about seventeen miles from Haverhill, down 
 the river, to Newburyport ; and about half way down 
 lies Amesbury, at the junction of the Powow with 
 the main stream. Amesbury was the home of 
 Whittier for twenty-five years ; and he still owns his 
 house there, and keeps in it a study, with a few 
 books and pictures and an open fire, as a place of 
 retreat, and for the sake of many precious memories. 
 A horse-railroad connects Amesbury with Newbury- 
 
12 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 port, the birthplace of William Lloyd Garrison. As 
 you go down, you look across at the wide and far- 
 reaching salt meadows of Hampton, emerald green 
 in summer, and purple and brown in autumn. About 
 half way from Amesbury to the sea, your horse-car 
 trundles across Deer Island, wild, rugged, and 
 picturesque, its huge one-handed pines griping the 
 weather-stained granite with knotty fingers, their 
 branches the resting-place of hawks and crows, 
 eagles and herons. The only house on the island is 
 the home of Whittier s friend, Harriet Prescott Spof- 
 ford. 
 
 Off the mouth of the river, Plum Island lies " like 
 a whale aground." Off to the northeast are discern 
 ible the Isles of Shoals, whose fair Calypso (Celia 
 Thaxter) is said to have been introduced to the world 
 of letters by Whittier. On the rocks of Appledore 
 he has often sat, of an evening, to watch the gold- 
 lamps kindled in the lighthouses of Portsmouth and 
 White Island. Indeed, this whole sea-region Hamp 
 ton beaches, Rivermouth Rocks, Plum Island, the 
 Isles of Shoals has been sung by Whittier in his 
 classic ballads. He is familiar with almost every 
 acre of this part of Essex County. Some lines he 
 wrote in 1885, for the 25oth anniversary of the settle 
 ment of Newbury, would apply to half a dozen other 
 neighboring towns as well. He said : " Although I 
 can hardly call myself a son of the ancient town, my 
 grandmother, Sarah Greenleaf, of blessed memory, 
 was its daughter, and I may therefore claim to be its 
 grandson. All my life I have lived in sight of its 
 green hills and in hearing of its Sabbath bells. Its 
 history and legends are familiar to me. I seem to 
 
ON THE FARM. 13 
 
 have known all its old worthies, whose descendants 
 have helped to people a continent, and who have 
 carried the name and memories of their birthplace to 
 the Mexican Gulf and across the Rocky Mountains 
 to the shores of the Pacific." 
 
 When, in early boyhood, Whittier first read the 
 poetry of Burns, and learned from it where to look 
 for true poetic material, namely, in the common 
 heart and the common life, he found a store of 
 legends ready to his hand, in the homes of the 
 inhabitants of the Merrimack Valley, just as 
 Burns had found them on the banks of the Ayr. 
 Burns tells us that, when he was a boy, his imagina 
 tion was greatly stimulated by the talk of an old 
 woman who resided in the family. She had the 
 largest collection in the country of tales and songs 
 concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, 
 warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, 
 wraiths, apparitions, cantrips, giants, enchanted 
 towers, dragons, and other trumpery. So Whittier 
 grew up in an atmosphere thick with legends of the 
 marvelous, stories of headless men walking about 
 with their heads under their arms ; traditions 
 of second-sight ; of witches innumerable and their 
 wicked deeds ; of haunted mills kept running 
 o nights by ghostly millers ; of phantom ships and 
 spectral armies ; of singing witch-grass at the spring 
 " where withered hags refresh at ease their broom 
 stick nags " ; and of wizards skilled in calling birds 
 out of trees, hiving the swarming bees, and by 
 a potent spell making the dry logs and frosted 
 branches of winter green with summer bloom. I 
 shall speak, farther on, of the pretty superstition of 
 
14 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 telling the bees of the death of a member of the 
 family. The belief in fairies was by no means extinct 
 in the Whittier neighborhood. The poet has several 
 folk-lore incidents about them in his prose and 
 verse. 
 
 One cannot open any early book published in 
 Newbury without coming across queer legends and 
 superstitions. In the Reminiscences of Mrs. Sarah 
 Emery, we are told that her aunt, Ruth Little, had a 
 heifer that one day kicked over the milk-pail, where 
 upon she declared that the animal was bewitched by 
 a poor woman who lived near. So off she rushes to 
 the house, gets her sharp shears, and, cutting off some 
 hairs from the heifer s tail, burns them. In a few 
 days it was learned that the suspected woman had 
 badly burned her hand on the warming-pan. Aunt 
 Ruth stoutly maintained that the burning of the hei 
 fer s hair and that of the woman s hand were cause 
 and effect, and, in her mind at least, no doubt 
 remained as to the woman s character. 
 
 Of a certain extremely thin and gaunt spinster, 
 reported witch, it was mysteriously whispered to Mr. 
 Whittier by one of the pall-bearers at her funeral 
 that her coffin was so heavy that four stout men could 
 barely lift it. 
 
 Mr. Whittier tells of a stout, red-nosed farmer 
 whom he used to meet occasionally in boyhood, who, 
 having emigrated to Ohio, and taken a certain widow 
 to wife, became gradually convinced that the warn 
 ings he had received from her neighbors were true, 
 and that his wife was a witch. He grew so hypo- 
 chondriacal over this idea that, unable any longer to 
 endure her society, he ran away and came back to 
 
ON THE FARM. 15 
 
 New England, but was followed, captured, and taken 
 back to Ohio by the too-fond wife. 
 
 Near the home of the mother of our poet, in Som- 
 ersworth, New Hampshire, there dwelt a quiet old 
 Quaker, named Bantum, who exercised, in all sim 
 plicity and sobriety, the art of magic and conjury. 
 His help was sought by lovers of both sexes and by 
 persons in search of stolen goods. He would receive 
 them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed spec 
 tacles, open his conjuring-book a great clasped vol 
 ume in blackletter and give the required answers 
 without money and without price. 
 
 I am indebted to a friend for calling my attention 
 to an incident related of Daniel Webster s early life, 
 which is explained by the above anecdote. When 
 Prof. Francis Lieber visited Webster in 1845, Webster 
 told him that, when he was a lad in New Hampshire, 
 a friend of his father s seriously advised him (Daniel) 
 to become a sorcerer, as they needed one to recover 
 stolen cattle, children, etc. 
 
 Mr. Whittier tells some amusing stories of old Aunt 
 Morse who lived at Rocks Village near Amesbury. 
 He says that one of his earliest recollections is of this 
 reputed witch, who was accused of preventing the 
 coming of the butter in the churn, snuffing out can 
 dles at huskings and quilting parties, and even of 
 more serious injuries. One night, he says, there was 
 a husking at Rocks Village, and about the middle of 
 the evening a big black bug came buzzing into the 
 room and kept bumping against the faces of the 
 merry huskers. At last it was knocked down with a 
 stick ; and about the same time Aunt Morse, who 
 was at home, fell downstairs and got covered with 
 
l6 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 bruises. But the buskers stoutly affirmed that the 
 black bug was Aunt Morse, and that the places where 
 she was bruised were where she had been struck by 
 the stick. A certain old Captain Peaslee who lived 
 near her covered his house and barns all over with 
 horseshoes to ward off her evil influence. She at last 
 became so annoyed by this silent persecution that 
 she went to a justice of the peace and took oath that 
 she was a Christian woman and no witch. 1 But it 
 seems that her undeserved reputation followed her 
 even into the grave, as the following story by our 
 poet not included in his collected works will show: 
 
 " After the death of Aunt Morse no will was found, though 
 it was understood before her decease that such a document 
 was in the hands of Squire S., one of her neighbors. One cold 
 winter evening, some weeks after her departure, Squire S. sat 
 in his parlor, looking over his papers, when, hearing some one 
 cough in a familiar way, he looked up, and saw before him a 
 little crooked old woman, in an oil-nut colored woolen frock, 
 blue and white tow and linen apron, and striped blanket, lean 
 ing her sharp, pinched face on one hand, while the other sup 
 ported a short black tobacco pipe, at which she was puffing in 
 the most vehement and spiteful manner conceivable. 
 
 " The squire was a man of some nerve ; but his first thought 
 was to attempt an escape, from which he was deterred only by 
 the consideration that any effort to that effect would necessa 
 rily bring him nearer to his unwelcome visitor. 
 
 " Aunt Morse, he said at length, for the Lord s sake, get 
 
 1 For this story I am indebted to an article in " Harper s Maga 
 zine," February, 1883, by George M 1 . White. Mr. White has, 
 however, got " Morse " somehow changed into " Mose." I here 
 take pleasure in acknowledging my obligations to the same writer 
 for several other interesting anecdotes, published in the periodical 
 just mentioned. 
 
ON THE FARM. Ij 
 
 right back to the burying-ground ! What on earth are you here 
 for? 
 
 " The apparition took her pipe deliberately from her mouth, 
 and informed him that she came to see justice done with her 
 will ; and that nobody need think of cheating her, dead or 
 alive. Concluding her remark with a shrill emphasis, she re 
 placed her pipe, and puffed away with renewed vigor. Upon 
 the squire s promising to obey her request, she refilled her 
 pipe, which she asked him to light, and then took her depart 
 ure." 
 
 The first of the Whittiers to come to America was 
 Thomas Whittier, 1 of whom two noteworthy inci 
 dents are recorded, first, that he brought with him 
 a hive of bees ; and, second, that he declined to make 
 use of the garrison house of Haverhill as a defense 
 against the Indians, preferring to rely on kind treat 
 ment of them and on faith in the Lord. John Green- 
 leaf Whittier s paternal grandmother was of the 
 Greenleaf family, of Newbury, highly respected for 
 integrity of character and religiousness of life. It is 
 recorded of Prof. Simon Greenleaf, professor of law 
 at Harvard College, 1833-1845, that he was one of the 
 most spiritually-minded of men, and very benevolent 
 and kind-hearted. He published some dozen works. 
 His son married a sister of the poet Longfellow. One 
 of the English Greenleafs took part with the Round 
 heads in all the wars of the English Revolution ; 
 while in this country the old records tell of a Captain 
 Stephen Greenleaf, of Newbury, who, in pursuing a 
 party of Indians up the Merrimack in 1695, got shot 
 
 1 The word Whittier is a corruption of white-tawier, the verb 
 " to taw" meaning to dress the lighter skins of goats and kids, 
 and then whiten them for the glover s use. 
 2 
 
l8 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 in the wrist and side, and lost, in consequence, the 
 use of his left hand. The moose-skin coat he wore is 
 still preserved. It is believed that the Greenleafs are 
 of Huguenot descent, and that their name has been 
 translated from the French Feuillevert. 
 
 Whittier s father and mother were both of Quaker 
 stock, and were themselves, also, it is needless to say, 
 members of the Society of Friends. On his mother s 
 side the poet is descended from the Quaker Husseys 
 of Somersworth and Hampton, New Hampshire, and 
 from those who were among the founders of Nan- 
 tucket. Through his mother he is also descended from 
 the Rev. Stephen Batchelder of Hampton, New Hamp 
 shire, the eccentric parson, noted for his philoprogen- 
 itiveness and for his wonderful black eyes, bequeathed 
 by him not only to Whittier, but also to other descend 
 ants of his, Daniel Webster, Caleb Gushing, Col. 
 William Batchelder Greene, and William Pitt Fessen- 
 den. Stephen Batchelder also gave to all those just 
 mentioned their massive features and swarthy, Orien 
 tal complexions. At the time of Daniel Webster s 
 subservient Southern tour, Garrison suggested that 
 his complexion might have caused him to be arrested 
 as a runaway slave and sold to pay his jail fees. 
 
 He was nicknamed " Black Dan " ; and of his father, 
 Captain Webster, it was humorously said that burnt 
 powder could not change his complexion in battle. 
 "The Bachiler eye" is dark and deep-set under heavy 
 eye-brows, inscrutable in depth, now shooting out 
 sudden gleams of lightning, and now suffused with the 
 lambent fire of tender emotion. Webster was known 
 in the village of Fryeburg as "All-eyes " ; one speaks 
 of his eye as being as black as death and as heavy as 
 
ON THE FARM. ig 
 
 a lion s ; Carlyle, as in all his portraits, gives one 01 
 two Velasquez-strokes, and behold the thing done 
 once and forever ! Describing Webster, he speaks of 
 "the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, 
 like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be 
 blown." The poet Whittier s glance has not ordina 
 rily anything of that indignation which Carlyle noticed 
 in Webster, though beyond a doubt, when he is 
 aroused by injustice, or by oppression of man by his 
 fellow-man, his face is capable of expressing (in a 
 momentary flash) the fierce scorn and righteous 
 wrath of the prophet. 
 
 This expression is caught in a well-known por 
 trait of him taken during the anti-slavery days. Hav 
 ing once seen him, one can well understand what he 
 himself once related, how that when some rough 
 fellows threatened him, as he came out of an anti- 
 slavery meeting, he turned and faced them, and so 
 holding their eyes went out. 
 
 The family life of the Whittiers on the old farm 
 was made delightful, notwithstanding the hard work, 
 by the perpetual cheerfulness, humor, and wit, and 
 calm and trustful piety of all its members. The 
 cheeriness of atmosphere is insisted on with empha 
 sis by all acquaintances of the family. They were 
 not poor for farmers in those days, although they had 
 to stretch the strap pretty hard, and " pull the devil 
 by the tail " pretty vigorously, in order to make both 
 ends meet. The farm (bought for $600, borrowed 
 money) yielded nearly every article of food consumed, 
 as well as the flax and wool spun and woven by the 
 diligent mother into cloth for their home-made 
 
20 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 clothes. Yet the finances of the household did not per 
 mit the owning of rich robes and furs, and there were 
 no ulsters in those days, and warm flannels were little 
 worn, so that our young poet says he often suffered 
 bitterly from the cold, especially in those long drives 
 to the Friends Meeting-House eight miles away, in 
 Amesbury. The reading matter of the family con 
 sisted of a few religious books, the almanac, and a 
 local weekly newspaper. In Whittier s boyhood the 
 whipping-post and stocks were still to be seen at 
 Newburyport, and he was one day shown in Salem 
 the tree on which the witches were hanged. People 
 were mostly their own doctors then. If a tooth was 
 to be pulled, you must go either to a physician or to 
 a horse-doctor. I have been told of a horse-doctor 
 down East who, when the trembling victim, seated 
 in a chair, was ruefully eying his rude instruments of 
 torture, always used to say consolingly: " Don t ye be 
 scared now. If I break your jah, I 11 give ye my 
 oxen! " The Whittiers were very hospitable, and 
 the little farm-house was always sought by Friends 
 in their travels to and from the annual meetings and 
 conventions. It is recorded that as many as sixteen 
 were entertained at one time. Other guests less wel 
 come, but not the less uniformly provided for, were 
 the " old stragglers," as they called them, whose visits 
 were so regular that their orbits could be accurately 
 calculated. Speechless beggars; guasi-lame beggars; 
 bearded herb-doctors; peddlers with wild hairy faces 
 peeping from under enormous packs; an old Edie 
 Ochiltree, who was poet, parson, doctor, and mendi 
 cant in one; a drunkard-parson; horse-thief beggars; 
 fierce and well-bodied gaberlunzies, who ordered their 
 
ON THE FARM. 21 
 
 cider and meat with terrifying gestures and looks 
 (when the "men-folks" were absent); Italian wan 
 derers; Scotch strollers; and many a withered bel 
 dame of the gipsy fraternity, they were all sure of 
 a nice free farmer s luncheon at Quaker Whycher s; 
 for very rarely would the too kind-hearted mother turn 
 one away, and, if she did, was sure afterwards to be 
 smitten with remorse. In Mrs. Emery s recollections 
 of life in Newbury we get a glimpse of the same old 
 stragglers. She tells us, for example, of an old lame 
 peddler named Urin, who used to stump into her 
 father s house, usually at dusk, with his bag and 
 basket, and, dropping into the nearest chair, declare 
 he was " e en a most dead " he was so lame and tired. 
 Then, without stopping to take breath, he would reel 
 off, " Tree fell on me when I was a boy, killed my 
 brother and me jest like him, here s books, pins, 
 needles, black sewing-silk all colors, tapes, varses, 
 almanacks, and sarmons, here s varses on the pirate 
 that was hung on Boston Common, the lection sar- 
 mon when the guv ner took the chair, Whittington s 
 Cat, Pilgrim s Progress, " etc. 
 
 Of course in a back-farm neighborhood on the 
 Merrimack there was no hint in those early days of 
 the colonial magnificence of old Salem and Boston, 
 or even of Newburyport; no old-family balls, rich 
 foreign dresses, gay knee-buckled gallants, East India 
 punch-bowls, mahogany furniture, or stately equi 
 pages or costly libraries. And especially in a Quaker 
 family was everything of the plainest and severest. 
 Carpets were unknown As a substitute the floors 
 were from time to time scrubbed or strewn with fresh 
 white sand. They must have had stout nerves in those 
 
22 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 days to endure the gritting and grating of sand under 
 their feet. When the old Holmes manse was being 
 torn down in Cambridge, I remember noticing that 
 the foot-deep spaces between the joists underneath 
 the floor of one upstairs room were completely filled 
 with white sand that had for generations sifted 
 through the cracks. It is to be understood that the 
 great kitchen fireplace formed the magnet of the 
 farm-house, and around it on winter evenings clus 
 tered all the poetry of the young people s life. Here 
 the nuts were cracked, the cider was drunk, the axe- 
 handle whittled out, stockings knit and stories told; 
 and not a boy or a man but was familiar with the 
 mysteries of green back-log, dry back-stick, fore- 
 stick, split-wood, cat-stick, and kindling-chips; and, 
 particularly in prosaic Quaker Whittier s house, to 
 understand how successfully to build the kitchen fire 
 was considered of vastly more importance than to 
 know how to build the lofty rhyme. 
 
 Then there were frequent nutting expeditions, fish 
 ings, flower-gatherings, quilting parties, and husking 
 bees, when 
 
 " We laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, 
 Our chair a broad pumpkin, our lantern the moon," 
 
 as Whittier sings. And good Aunt Mercy, the 
 mother s sister, in her spotless Quaker cap, what 
 absolutely de-licious pumpkin pies she used to 
 make ! " None sweeter or better e er smoked from 
 an oven or circled a platter ! " 
 
 " O fruit loved of boyhood ! the old days recalling, 
 
 When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling ! 
 
ON THE FARM. 23 
 
 What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye, 
 What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie ? " 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 On First-days the old one-horse shay was got out, 
 and father and mother drove off to meeting, some 
 times taking one of the children with them. There, 
 while their Puritan neighbors were wrestling with 
 the " long nineteenthlies poured downward from the 
 sounding-board," they sat in silence, worshiping God 
 often with the heart alone. As for John Greenleaf, 
 he says he thinks he generally preferred to worship in 
 the fields in those days, being in this respect like his 
 Quaker friend Mary Howitt, who says in her recently 
 published autobiography that the only thing she 
 enjoyed in the horribly plain old meeting-house 
 of her childhood was looking at the reflection of 
 certain windows in a certain other window, and 
 imagining that the reflected ones were the windows 
 of heaven. Sabbath afternoons the mother gathered 
 her children about her, like the good man in the 
 " Cotter s Saturday Night," and read and expounded 
 a portion of Scripture. It was in order to be nearer 
 the little Friends " Meeting" that she removed to 
 Amesbury after the death of her husband and the sale 
 of the farm in 1840. A beautiful character the mother; 
 serene, dignified, benign, practical, and fond of reading 
 the best books. A neighbor, speaking of her natural 
 refinement, says that whenever she saw him she always 
 politely inquired for the health of himself and 
 mother : " How do thee do, Charles ? and how is 
 thy mother?" 1 Mrs. Whittier died in 1857 at 
 Amesbury, the tender and intimate relation between 
 
 Underwood s " Whittier," p. 48. 
 
24 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 herself and her poet-son having never been in the 
 least degree weakened. To such a mother a son 
 owes more than can be expressed. An excellent 
 picture of her is given in Mr. Francis H. Underwood s 
 careful work on Whittier, and an oil-portrait hangs 
 in the little parlor at Amesbury. 
 
 John Whittier, the father of the poet (or " Quaker 
 Whycher," as he was called by some of his neigh 
 bors), was a rough, decisive, but kind-hearted and 
 devout man. He was several times in the public 
 service of the town of Haverhill (selectman, e. g.), 
 and was intimate with its prominent men, such as 
 the Minots, the Wingates, and the Bartletts. He was 
 often called upon to act as arbitrator in matters of 
 dispute between neighbors. He is included in the 
 portrait gallery in " Snow-Bound." He married 
 Abigail Hussey when he was forty-four, and John 
 Greenleaf, their second child, was born three years 
 later. The father died in 1832, tenderly cared for to 
 the last by his children. 
 
 Mr. Whittier s only brother, Matthew Franklin 
 Whittier, was for many years a resident of Boston. 
 His humorous verses and satirical dialect articles, 
 signed " Ethan Spike, from Hornby," were mostly 
 contributed to the Portland " Transcript," but some 
 of them to Boston papers. I should not advise any 
 one to take the trouble to hunt them up. They prove 
 incontestably that but one genius is born in a family. 
 Matthew died at the age of seventy, at the Maverick 
 House in East Boston, January 7, 1883, after a long 
 and painful illness, leaving a wife and three children, 
 and grandchildren. Until a few months before his 
 death he had been a clerk in the Naval Department 
 
ON THE FARM 25 
 
 of the Boston Custom House, his service covering a 
 period of thirteen years, and his retirement was 
 made the occasion of a formal testimonial of esteem 
 from his fellow-clerks, among whom he was very 
 popular for his cheery humor. He is described as 
 having been " very different from his brother," in 
 many characteristics. He did not use the Quaker 
 mode of speech, its " thee s " and "thou s." He 
 was an omnivorous reader, and, like his brother, an 
 out-and-out anti-slavery man. He was associated 
 with B. P. Shillaber in the attempt to float that 
 unfortunate journalistic craft, the "Carpet Bag." 
 He resided for many years in Portland, where he was 
 book-keeper for certain mercantile houses, and 
 where he married Miss Jane Vaughn. " Frank, as 
 his associates called him, was, like his brother, 
 inclined to seclusion, yet had the same geniality and 
 quaint, quiet humor. Mr. Charles O. Stickney J once 
 asked him of his relation to his brother the poet. 
 " * The only relationship existing between John 
 Greenleaf Whittier and myself, said he, in solemn 
 deliberative tones, * is, we each had the same father 
 and the same mother. " 
 
 Aunt Mercy was a person of great sweetness and 
 refinement of nature and of a playful disposition. 
 She removed with the family to Amesbury, and died 
 there in 1846. She was betrothed in her youth, says 
 Mr. S. T. Pickard, 2 to a young man every way 
 
 1 Inthe Boston " Evening Transcript," January 2, 1892, where a 
 specimen of Ethan Spike s comic writing is given, with references. 
 
 2 In the Portland " Transcript." Mr. Pickard s wife is Whittier s 
 niece, and Mr. Pickard himself is the nephew of Joshua Coffin, 
 Whittier s old schoolmaster. 
 
26 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 worthy of her, but not a member of the Friends 
 society. Late one evening, as she sat musing by the 
 fire, after all the rest had gone to bed, she felt 
 mysteriously impelled to go to the window and look 
 out, and in a moonlit space under the trees she 
 saw a horse and rider coming down the hill toward 
 the house. She recognized her lover. He drew rein 
 at the yard entrance, and she went out at once to 
 meet him. While she was unbolting the door in the 
 little porch, she happened to turn her head to look 
 out of the window opposite her, and plainly saw her 
 lover on his horse ; but, when the door was opened, 
 no trace of man or horse was to be seen. Bursting 
 into tears, she called up Mrs. Whittier, and told her 
 story. Her sister said, " Thee had better go to bed, 
 Mercy ; thee has been asleep and dreaming by the 
 fire." But Mercy was sure she had not been asleep ; 
 and, in afterwards recalling the circumstances of the 
 vision, she remembered that she had heard no sound of 
 hoofs. Some time after she received a letter from a 
 distant city, stating that her lover had died on 
 the very day and hour of her ghostly visitation ! 
 This is the story of Aunt Mercy, as told in the 
 family. 
 
 Whittier s elder sister, Mary, married Mr. Jacob 
 Caldwell, at one time publisher of the Haverhill 
 " Gazette." She died in 1861. 
 
 A member of the household who was beloved by 
 all the children was Uncle Moses Whittier, " innocent 
 of books, but rich in lore of fields and brooks," a 
 sort of Rollo-book Jonas, " a tall, plain, sober man," 
 far less stout than the father of the household. His 
 portrait, like that of all the others, is drawn in 
 
ON THE FARM. 27 
 
 "Snow-Bound." His tragic death in 1824 has often 
 been mentioned by writers on Whittier. He had 
 gone out in the morning with his axe to cut wood, 
 turning into a path on the right of the Haverhill road. 
 He was missed at dinner time, and presently his dog 
 came up to the house barking frantically, and then 
 off again to the woods. The unfortunate man was 
 found under a fallen tree. In attempting to get to 
 the ground a lodged tree he had cut, he felled the 
 one on which it rested, and the two dropping at the 
 same time, and taking unexpected directions, he was 
 caught and pinned to the ground by one of them. 
 He lived but a short time after being taken home, 
 and was buried on a bitter winter s day in the little 
 family burial-lot a few rods from the house. 
 
 Of the poet s sister, Elizabeth, it seems almost pro 
 fanation to speak at all, so sacred was the bond 
 between the two. Yet a few words may help readers 
 of her poems, " Hazel Blossoms," to enjoy them 
 better. She was her brother s intellectual com 
 panion, his critic and his guardian angel both, and a 
 co-worker with him in the cause of the slave. When 
 in good health, she is said to have been gay-hearted. 
 Her Batchelder eyes were large and wondrous deep, 
 looking from under a broad, noble brow. The crayon 
 sketch of her face in the Amesbury parlor wears a 
 smile of sweetness and patience. She had a vivid 
 imagination, and was a delightful story-teller. Says 
 an acquaintance of hers, " She sometimes visited 
 at my father s house, and all of us children used to 
 climb upon the bed of an invalid sister and listen, 
 rapt, to Elizabeth, who, sitting at the foot, told us 
 stories by the hour." Says Mrs. Harriet Prescott 
 
28 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Spofford: 1 "Mr. Whittier s sister Elizabeth, sym 
 pathizing with him completely, of a rare poetic 
 nature and fastidious taste, and of delicate dark-eyed 
 beauty, was long a companion that must have made 
 the want of any other less keenly felt than by lonely 
 men in general. The bond between the sister and 
 brother was more perfect than any of which we have 
 known, except that between Charles and Mary 
 Lamb; and in this instance the conditions were of 
 perfect moral and mental health. To the precious- 
 ness of the relationship the pages of the poet bear 
 constant witness, and Amesbury Village is full of 
 traditions of their affection, and of the gentle loveli 
 ness and brilliant wit of Elizabeth, whom the people 
 admired and reverenced almost as much as they do 
 the poet himself." At the time of her death in 1864 
 a Newburyport paper said: "The tidings of the 
 death of Elizabeth Whittier went to the hearts of 
 many in this community with a pang like that of 
 personal loss. Regard for the delicacy of a nature 
 that held itself shrinkingly aloof from publicity for 
 bids more than a passing tribute to its rare loveli 
 ness." Miss Whittier had been a semi-invalid for 
 some years, and for a few months before her death 
 her sufferings were extreme. 
 
 Perhaps one should not take leave of the house 
 hold of " Snow-Bound " without a few words on the 
 " not unfeared, half-welcome guest," whose portrait is 
 so well drawn by Whittier, namely, the self-styled 
 pilgrim-stranger with a violent temper, the half- 
 
 1 In a valuable article in " Harper s Magazine " for January, 
 1884, to which I am indebted for facts used in this volume. 
 
ON THE FARM. 29 
 
 crazy religious enthusiast and evangelist, Harriet 
 Livermore : 
 
 " She blended in a like degree 
 The vixen and the devotee, 
 Revealing with each freak or feint 
 
 The temper of Petruchio s Kate, 
 The raptures of Siena s saint. 
 Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
 Had facile power to form a fist ; 
 The warm dark languish of her eyes 
 Was never safe from wrath s surprise." 
 
 In 1884 a distant kinsman of Harriet Livermore 
 (the Rev. S. T. Livermore of Bridgewater, Massachu 
 setts) published a little book about her, as a vindica 
 tion of her character from what he morbidly conceives 
 to be the distorted account given by Mr. Whittier 
 in " Snow-Bound. " He calls the " epithets heaped 
 upon her " in that poem " an assault upon a pious 
 female s character," and the portrait of her 4< a cruel 
 caricature," and hints that he would like to use the 
 " flexors and extensors of his right arm in her protec 
 tion." The item about her visiting Lady Hester 
 Stanhope in Palestine, and 
 
 " Startling on her desert throne 
 The crazy Queen of Lebanon 
 With claims fantastic as her own," 
 
 he pronounces to be " a slanderous myth, "and quotes 
 Missionary Thompson, author of " The Land and the 
 Book," as saying that the statement of the person 
 who informed Mr. Whittier that Harriet Livermore 
 was at one time head of a Bedouin tribe " is a lie." 
 
 We shall, further on, find the Rev. Mr. Livermore 
 attempting to whitewash the Ethiopian skins of the 
 
30 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 old Block Island wreckers. A good strong infusion 
 of positive wickedness, sparkling at the eyes, is his 
 abhorrence, and rightly so in real life. The poet, 
 too, abhors it. But the antithesis of right and 
 wrong, light and darkness, is needed in art. That it 
 furnishes the dramatic contrast and shading indis 
 pensable to a poet is no concern of Mr. Livermore s, 
 he thinks, and he indignantly asks why we are not 
 presented with a list of Harriet Livermore s virtues. 
 It is curious that nearly every authority brought into 
 court by him to prove his fanatical female relative a 
 saint only serves to fix more ineffaceably the colors 
 of Whittier s portrait of her. He entirely ignores, 
 also, the benignant spirit of the poet, who adds to 
 his sketch twenty-seven lines of charitable excuses 
 for her failings: 
 
 " Where er her troubled path may be, 
 
 The Lord s sweet pity with her go ! 
 The outward wayward life we see ; 
 
 The hidden springs we may not know. 
 Nor is it given us to discern 
 
 What threads the fatal sisters spun, 
 
 Through what ancestral years has run 
 The sorrow with the woman born," etc. 
 
 The following interesting letter by Mr. Whittier 
 was written in answer to inquiries on the subject: 
 
 DANVERS, MASS., 9th mo., 18, 1879. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, Harriet Livermore, when I was a young 
 boy, was for some considerable time a resident of Rocks Vil- 
 
 1 Livermore s " Harriet Livermore," p. 15. Another good 
 authority on Harriet Livermore is the booklet of Miss Rebecca I. 
 Davis, of East Haverhill. 
 
ON THE FARM. 31 
 
 lage, Haverhill ; I think a visitor of Dr. Weld s in that place, 
 and was often at our house a brilliant, dark-eyed woman 
 striking in her personal appearance and gifted in conversation. 
 The tradition of her disappointment [in love] was current in 
 our neighborhood, and the name of the gentleman was Dr. 
 Elliot, of the U. S. Army, who, I think, died in Florida, or in 
 some part of the extreme South. He was Haverhill born. 
 
 After boyhood I never saw her until she came to see me at 
 Philadelphia, on her return from the East, in 1829 [1839]. I 
 interested myself with J. R. Chandler, and others, to get an 
 audience for two lectures by her. She gave one, and declined 
 to give the other because the audience was smaller than the 
 first. She spent some days at my boarding-house, alternating 
 from an agreeable and interesting guest to a violent-tempered 
 woman of indomitable will. She told us of her stay with Lady 
 Hester Stanhope, and that Lady H. S. kept two white horses 
 with a red mark on the back of each in the shape of a saddle, 
 ready waiting for the coming of the Lord one of them to be 
 ridden by herself to Jerusalem. It seems that H. L. insisted 
 that she was to accompany the Lord on the spare horse ; and 
 therefore a quarrel arose which ended in their separation. 
 
 The lecture procured her, I believe, about $150. She said 
 she must go back to Jerusalem and meet the coming there. 
 Even then she was a noble-looking woman. 
 
 A friend of mine, years afterwards, met her in Syria, with a 
 fragment of a Bedouin tribe, of which she was the head its 
 spiritual and temporal chief. I do not think I have exaggerated 
 her character in " Snow-Bound." I certainly did not intend to. 
 
 Thy friend, 
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 It is not desirable to go minutely into the story of 
 Harriet Livermore s life here, of her early education 
 by her father, the Hon. Edward St. Loe Livermore, 
 judge and United States Senator ; of her dis 
 appointment in love ; her temper ; her teaching in 
 
32 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the Whittier neighborhood ; her authorship of relig 
 ious books ; or how she charmed the social circles 
 of Washington by her beauty and brilliancy, and, 
 later, when an evangelist, preached in the House of 
 Representatives with such eloquence that many were 
 moved to tears and sobs. Her portrait shows an ex 
 quisitely moulded face, and wide, wild eyes, though 
 it does not show the wealth of moist raven-black hair 
 which once adorned her head. At one time she had 
 a crazy notion of preaching to the Indians, and 
 actually made her way as far as Fort Leavenworth, 
 as she says, " urging her way to the West, undis 
 mayed by cholera, sand-bars, or floating timbers, 
 commissioners, or the Devil." Here is a stanza of a 
 hymn she wrote for her imaginary Indians : 
 
 " I ll tell them whiskey to forsake, 
 Crying tis Satan s bait to kill. 
 Oh, Choctaw, Cherokee, come take 
 Pure water from the forest rill ! " 
 
 She made four or five trips to Jerusalem, the first 
 in 1836. In 1841 she was living in part of a house 
 owned by a Gibraltar Jew, near Hezekiah s Pool. 
 She was given food by the Protestant missionaries. 
 Dr. Selah Merrill, American Consul in Jerusalem in 
 1883 (who got his information from those who had 
 known her there), wrote that " she was very irritable 
 and exacting, and would often insult people in their 
 houses or in the streets." She was well known to be 
 crack-brained, and was not allowed to preach in 
 Jerusalem. Dr. Van Dyke, who was living in Jeru 
 salem, says she told him one day that she had spent 
 the previous Sunday in an olive-tree on the Mount of 
 Olives. She also thought that she and Joseph Wolff 
 
ON THE FARM. 33 
 
 were the two witnesses of Revelation xi., and identi 
 fied Bonaparte with Mehemet AH. 
 
 Mr. Livermore s attempt to discredit the statement 
 of Mr. Whittier as to the Lady Hester Stanhope story 
 is not at all successful. It all reduces to this : she 
 could not have visited that lady, he thinks, because 
 she was in Palestine only a month on the occasion of 
 her first trip. But this is no argument. Lady Hester 
 lived only eight miles from Sidon, in her mountain 
 villa of Djoun, and Mr. Livermore admits that the 
 American pilgrim passed through Sidon, either on 
 her journey to Jerusalem or on her return to take 
 ship at Beirut. A day or two at Djoun would have 
 afforded more than sufficient opportunity for these 
 two half-crazy and high-stomached dames to see that 
 they could not dwell under the same roof. Dr. Van 
 Dyke says he would have given his little finger to 
 have witnessed the meeting between the two, although 
 he does not think they did actually meet. " It would 
 have been diamond cut diamond, the haughty 
 aristocratic Englishwoman and the fearless re 
 publican." The truth of the incident is attested by 
 Mr. Whittier, by a Mr. Thomas, who knew Miss 
 Livermore for years in Philadelphia, 1 and by another 
 old acquaintance, who wrote an article on her for a 
 Philadelphia paper at the time of her death in 1867. 
 
 Lady Stanhope was a niece of Pitt, the English 
 Minister, and at his death she received a government 
 pension of ;i, 200 annually. She died in Syria in 1839. 
 She inherited her wayward and imperious disposition 
 from her father. Her life, as revealed in her Mem 
 oirs and Travels, was certainly one of the most 
 
 1 See S. T. Livermore s book, p. 82. 
 3 
 
34 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 romantic and eccentric ever lived by mortal. She 
 was withal benevolent in disposition, and often saved 
 the lives of fugitives in Syria. She had a stronger 
 character and a more versatile mind than had Harriet 
 Livermore. Her special hobby was her belief in the 
 coming of a Messiah and the ride to Jerusalem on 
 her pet mares ; and we may be sure that any 
 audacious handling of that theme by the pilgrim- 
 saint would have caused instant rupture of all rela 
 tions between them. A physician who was Lady 
 Stanhope s most trusted friend, who lived with her 
 at Djoun, and compiled the volumes of her Mem 
 oirs, gives a description of the famous mares ; but 
 neither he nor Dr. Wm. M. Thompson, who, after her 
 death, went up to bury her, and saw the favored 
 animals, says anything about the red spots like 
 saddles which are mentioned by Mr. Whittier in his 
 note. Neither was their color white, as Mr. Whittier 
 states. 
 
 It appears from the Memoirs that a village doctor 
 named Meta, on Mt. Lebanon, predicted that on the 
 coming of the " Mahedi " he would ride a horse born 
 saddled, and that " a woman would come from a far 
 country to partake in the mission." (This explains 
 how Harriet Livermore, as well as Lady Hester, 
 could plausibly lay claim to horse number two.) 
 Dr. Thompson, in " The Land and the Book " (i. 
 113), thus speaks of these wondrous steeds, com 
 pared with which the mares of Diomed, or that 
 Persian horse of brass on which the Tartar king 
 did ride, were naught in the eyes of Lady Hester : 
 
 " She had a mare whose backbone sank suddenly 
 down at the shoulders and rose abruptly near the 
 
ON THE FARM. 35 
 
 hips. This deformity her vivid imagination con 
 verted into a miraculous saddle, on which she was to 
 ride to Jerusalem as queen by the side of some sort 
 of Messiah, who was to introduce a fancied millen 
 nium. Another mare had a part to play in this august 
 pageant, and both were tended with extraordinary 
 care. A lamp was kept burning in their very comforta 
 ble apartments, and they were served with sherbet and 
 other delicacies." She lavished her choicest affections 
 on them for fourteen years. 
 
 She never suffered any one to mount them. The 
 hollow-backed one was a chestnut, named Laila, and 
 the other, Lulu, was a gray. They had each a groom, 
 and were daily exercised on a green plot of ground near 
 the house-wall. No servant was even allowed to look 
 at them while they were at exercise, on pain of being 
 dismissed from her service. She once said that in 
 her pecuniary trouble she would have quitted the 
 country, had it not been for these mares and her 
 desire to remain and see the outcome of the prophecy. 
 After her death, the poor creatures were soon worked 
 to death by the rapacious villagers. 
 
 There can scarcely be a doubt that the statement 
 made to Mr. Whittier and repeated in the latest edi 
 tion of " Snow-Bound" (1888) that Harriet Liver- 
 more was at one time the spiritual and temporal head 
 of a fragment of a Bedouin tribe is a mistake. A 
 poor and obscure fanatic, living almost wholly upon 
 charity in Jerusalem, would not have been accepted 
 by Arabs as their chief. This might have happened 
 if she had had abundance of money and power, like 
 Lady Stanhope, but not otherwise. Dr. Thompson, 
 with whom she lived for a time, denies the story in 
 
36 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 toto, as we have seen. Still, there might have been a 
 slight basis of fact for it, some momentary freak of 
 hers, like that attempt to take up her life among the 
 American Indians. 
 
 We may now give a glance at the outward sur 
 roundings of Whittier when a boy on the farm. In a 
 brief autobiographic paper, he relates that from the 
 top of " Job s Hill," which rose abruptly from the 
 brook that passed the house, he could see the blue 
 outline of the Deerfield mountains in New Hamp 
 shire, and the solitary peak of Agamenticus on the 
 coast of Maine. The valley of the Merrimack could 
 be traced by a long line of morning mist, and on the 
 breeze was borne from the village of Haverhill the 
 sound of its two church bells. The view of the house 
 from the road was once obscured by oak woods. 
 Not far away, on the cross-road stood one of those old 
 garrison houses which were formerly established in 
 New England towns for protection against the Indians. 
 Sometimes private houses were fortified and made to 
 serve as garrisons. Such was the one near the Whit- 
 tier farm. I condense two separate accounts given of 
 it by Mr. Whittier, one in " Harper s Magazine " and 
 the other in his prose works. It was, says he, a 
 massive, venerable structure, built of solid oak logs, 
 with the walls double, and filled in with bricks be 
 tween. There was a double-thick plank door, made 
 bullet-proof and studded with iron nails. Over the 
 door and projecting from the second story was a 
 species of balcony, also of thick planks, with a bullet 
 proof breastwork around it, through which were cut 
 loopholes, so that the defenders could creep from the 
 
ON THE FARM. 37 
 
 interior of the house and fire down upon those who 
 might be about the door. The windows were nar 
 row, and had small diamond-shaped panes, set in 
 lead. The door opened upon a stone-paved hall, or 
 entry, leading into the huge single room of the base 
 ment, which was lighted by two small windows, the 
 ceiling black with the smoke of a century and a half, 
 a huge fireplace, calculated for eight-foot wood, occu 
 pying one entire side ; while overhead, suspended 
 from the timbers, or on shelves fastened to them, 
 were household stores, farming utensils, fishing-rods, 
 guns, bunches of herbs gathered perhaps a century 
 ago, strings of dried apples and pumpkins, links of 
 mottled sausages, spareribs and flitches of bacon, the 
 firelight of an evening dimly revealing the checked 
 woolen coverlet of the bed in one far-off corner, 
 while in another shone the pewter plates on the 
 dresser. 
 
 This old relic was destroyed some years ago, 
 more s the pity, for it showed not the least sign of 
 decay, and would have been a thing of joy unspeak 
 able to antiquaries. 
 
 The birthplace of a man of genius is always worth 
 looking at, but is not so interesting as are the lares et 
 penates of his later years. It is not worth while to 
 gaze with rapture into the empty husk of the nut: 
 the kernel is the essential thing. Nevertheless, a 
 word once again on the old Quaker grange where the 
 best friend of the slave passed his boyhood. I sup 
 pose among those whose forbears were the original 
 settlers of New England one could count upon the 
 fingers of both hands the persons who, like Whittier, 
 lived until manhood in the house built by the founder 
 
38 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of their family in the New World. The old home at 
 Haverhill is over two hundred years old. It is a 
 severely plain, not to say ugly, old two-story box, 
 the rooms, like those of so many other similar houses 
 in New England (Thoreau s birthplace, for example), 
 having heavy beams running across the ceilings, 
 which are so low as to be easily touched. The front 
 door opens into a small, square entry, with steep 
 staircase. On the right is the room where Whitlier 
 used to study, the salon of the old grange. Here he 
 used to sit by a bright wood fire, the fireplace being 
 the one luxury he has always allowed himself, ab 
 sorbed in the books and newspapers that covered a 
 little table in the centre of the ropm. A neighbor says 
 that he was a great reader : " He used to load me 
 down with papers for my father to read; he was as 
 good as a library." In the room on the opposite side 
 of the entry Whittier was born. In the rear is the 
 kitchen, with its enormous Old World fireplace, broad 
 enough to admit benches on each side, and with 
 accessories of brick oven and mantel-piece; here is the 
 inset cupboard where shone the pewter dishes; and 
 here yet are the broad-headed wrought-iron nail on 
 which hung the bull s-eye w r atch, and the circle worn 
 on the wall by the warming-pan. The original barn 
 was behind the house, in a sheltered spot near the old 
 orchard. At the roadside is the stone horse-block, 
 built into the stone fence, and containing circular 
 depressions, made by generations of children crack 
 ing hickory-nuts and butternuts there. From the 
 boards of the original garret floor of the house boxes 
 and paper-weights are now made, and varnished pen 
 holders from the twigs of the great elm. In reply to 
 
ON THE FARM. 39 
 
 a suggestion recently made by Miss Frances E. Wil- 
 lard, that the old homestead be bought from its 
 present owners and perpetually preserved in its pres 
 ent state, Mr. Whittier wrote: 1 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, I have just received thy note respect 
 ing the old Whittier homestead in Haverhill. I do not know 
 how to thank thee for thy interest in the matter. It is very 
 generous and noble on thy part. I am at present confined here 
 by illness, and have no certain knowledge of the willingness of 
 the owner to sell the property. I will be glad to have the old 
 place the home built by my American ancestor more than 
 200 years ago secured in the way proposed. I think the 
 Whittier Club of Haverhill might feel interested in the plan. 
 I will send them the extracts from the Chicago paper. If the 
 thing can be done without too much trouble, I shall be glad. 
 I will give $100 toward it. 
 
 I am most gratefully thy old friend, 
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Whittier first attended the district school when he 
 was a little chap in his seventh winter. The school- 
 houses of that time were warmed by a fireplace, the 
 wood for which was split and piled up and brought 
 in by the boys as needed. There were no writing- 
 books, but a strong coarse paper of foolscap size was 
 used, either in single sheets or the sheets stitched 
 together. Lead-pencils were unknown ; a chunky 
 plummet of lead was used instead, and it was usually 
 made at home and cut into various shapes to suit the 
 owner s taste. Whittier s first schoolmaster was 
 Joshua Coffin, who was teaching that winter in a pri 
 vate house, as the schoolhouse was undergoing re 
 pairs. This explains a mysterious passage in the 
 
 Letter published in the " Literary World," Feb. 4, 1888. 
 
40 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 poem " To my Old Schoolmaster," in which we read 
 of the sound of the cradle-rock, and squall coming 
 through the cracked and crazy wall, and " the good- 
 man s voice at strife with his shrill and tipsy wife." 
 What young reader of Whittier has not racked his 
 brain, hitherto, for explanation of occurrences so 
 queer in a school? In succeeding winters little John 
 and his brother learned their lessons in the brown 
 schoolhouse that stood a half-mile from home, but is 
 now no more. For pictures of these school-days read 
 the poems " In School Days," " My Playmate," 
 " Snow-Bound," " The Barefoot Boy," and the lines 
 mentioned above, " To my Old Schoolmaster." 
 Joshua Coffin was the poet s life-long friend. He was 
 born in Newbury in 1792, was graduated at Dart 
 mouth College in 1817. He became the historian of 
 Newbury, held various offices in that town, and was 
 one of the twelve resolute men who formed the first 
 anti-slavery society in New England (one stormy 
 night, in Boston). Some one speaks of Coffin as 
 " that huge and voluble personification of good 
 humor." His fine massive face is pictured in " Har 
 per s Magazine," July 25, 1875, together with a view 
 of his residence in Newburyport. He died in that 
 city in 1864. 
 
 In the first four of the autobiographic poems above 
 mentioned which seem to me of unsurpassable 
 beauty in their kind are found shy references to 
 school loves. Of course he had them. All poets 
 have. You remember Burns s first love ? the bonnie, 
 sweet, sonsie lass, who initiated him into " that de 
 licious passion which, in spite of acid disappointment, 
 gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy," 
 
ON THE FARM. 41 
 
 he held to be " the first of human joys, our dearest 
 blessing here below." Whittier s pines of Ramoth 
 Hill (an imaginary place), the song the veeries sang, 
 the violet-fringed mossy seat, the tangled golden 
 curls, the trembling voice, the falling blossoms, 
 what yearning emotions, what strangely thrilling 
 memories, these beautiful verses excite ! 
 
 The dawn of the poetic instinct came rather early, 
 through the accident of his becoming acquainted 
 with the poetry of Robert Burns. Here is the story 
 as he told it to Robert Collyer : 
 
 " Whittier said to me " (writes Mr. Collyer), " I 
 hear thee is lecturing this winter on Burns. I should 
 like to hear thee. Burns is to me the noblest poet of 
 our race. He was the first poet I read, and he will 
 be the last. Our people did not care for poetry when 
 I was a boy. We had in our house an American 
 reader, quite popular at that time, in which I found 
 some pieces of the old school of singers; and, besides 
 that, we had a poem called the " Davideis," written 
 by a " Friend," and held in great esteem by our body. 
 But somehow these did not seem to touch me; they 
 were not what I wanted. One day one of our preach 
 ers came to stay all night; and noticing, as we sat by 
 the fire, that I was intent on a book, he said, " I will 
 read to thee, if thee likes, some poems by Robert 
 Burns. I have a copy with me." 3 So he got the book 
 
 1 See " Every Saturday," June 3, 1871. 
 
 2 In his autobiographic notes, Mr. Whittier states that it was 
 Joshua Coffin who first introduced him to Burns. He says: 
 
 " When I was fourteen years old, my first schoolmaster, Joshua 
 Coffin, the able, eccentric historian of Newbury, brought with him 
 to our house a volume of Burns s poems, from which he read, 
 
42 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and began to read. It was the first I had heard of 
 Burns, and my wonder and delight over what I heard 
 is as fresh still as if it were yesterday. I had heard 
 nothing up to that moment, it seemed to me, that had 
 any right to be called poetry; and I listened as long 
 as the old man would read. I noticed he left the 
 book on the table, so I rose at gray dawn next morn 
 ing, and read for myself. I was hanging over the 
 book when the Friend came down, and then he told 
 me he was going farther, to visit such and such 
 meetings, would be back at such a time, and, if I 
 liked, would leave the book with me. Thee may be 
 sure I gratefully accepted his offer. I read Burns 
 every moment I had to spare. And this was one great 
 result to me of my communion with him: I found 
 that the things out of which poems came were not, as 
 I had always imagined, somewhere away off in a 
 world and life lying outside the edge of our own New 
 Hampshire sky, they were right here about my feet 
 
 greatly to my delight. I begged him to leave the book with me 
 and set myself at once to the task of mastering the glossary of the 
 Scottish dialect at its close. This was about the first poetry I had 
 ever read, with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had 
 been a close student, and it had a lasting influence upon me. I 
 began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adven 
 tures. In fact, I lived a sort of dual life, and in a world of fancy, 
 as well as in the world of plain matter of fact about me." 
 
 As Mr. Collyer s account was from memory, we must give the 
 preference to Mr. Whittier s deliberately written statement. 
 
 It should be noted that in one of his prose sketches Mr. Whittier 
 relates that he first heard words of Burns as uttered by an old 
 Scotch tramp, who, after eating his bread and cheese and drinking 
 his mug of cider, sang, with a full, rich voice and with spirit, 
 " Auld Lang Syne," " Bonnie Doon," and " Highland Mary." 
 
ON THE FARM. 43 
 
 and among the people I knew. The common things 
 of our common life I found were full of poetry. ", 
 
 Mr. Collyer continues: " He told me also what such 
 a man only can say in good faith, that he could not 
 understand what the critics mean when they say 
 there are things in Burns not fit to be read, things 
 impure and vile, the spume of a fallen spirit. * I 
 never found such things, he said. * I read all Burns, 
 every line of him; and, while there is a difference, of 
 course, to me every line is good. I know Whittier 
 could not have thought, as he told me this, that Paul 
 said once, To the pure all things are pure ; and how 
 purely true his commentary on Burns was to the 
 great old text! " 
 
 Mr. Whittier did not state his whole opinion of 
 Burns to Robert Collyer (conversation is so frag 
 mentary). We are not, of course, to understand that 
 he did not know and disapprove of Burns s peculiar 
 failing, did not know that "eating love inhabits in 
 the finest wits of all." This is clear from the follow 
 ing stanzas in his poem " Burns," written nearly 
 twenty years previous to the Collyer talk: 
 " And if at times an evil strain, 
 
 To lawless love appealing, 
 Broke in upon the sweet refrain 
 Of pure and healthful feeling, 
 " It died upon the eye and ear, 
 No inward answer gaining; 
 No heart had I to see or hear 
 
 The discord and the staining ! 
 " Let those who never erred forget 
 His worth, in vain bewailings ; 
 Sweet Soul of Song ! I own my debt 
 Uncancelled by his failings !" 
 
44 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " I began to make rhymes myself," he says. Let 
 us *ee to what purpose. In 1882 Mr. Whittier sent a 
 letter and poem to Friends in Chester, Pennsylvania, 
 who were commemorating the bicentennial of the 
 landing of Penn in America. The poem is not in 
 cluded in his collected works, latest edition, 1 and 
 has not before appeared in a book. " Looking over 
 some old papers recently," writes the poet, " I found 
 some verses written by me when a boy of sixteen, 
 nearly sixty years ago. Of course the circumstances 
 under which they were penned alone entitle them to 
 notice, but I venture to send them as the only response 
 to .thy request which I can make." 
 
 WILLIAM PENN. 
 The tyrant on his gilded throne, 
 
 The warrior in his battle-dress, 
 The holier triumph ne er have known 
 
 Of justice and of righteousness. 
 Founder of Pennsylvania ! Thou 
 
 Didst feel it, when thy words of peace 
 Smoothed the stern chieftain s swarthy brow, 
 
 And bade the dreadful war-dance cease. 
 On Schuylkill s banks no fortress frowned, 
 
 The peaceful cot alone was there ; 
 No beacon fires the hilltops crowned, 
 
 No death-shot swept the Delaware. 
 In manners meek, in precepts mild, 
 
 Thou and thy friends serenely taught 
 The savage huntsman, fierce and wild, 
 
 To raise to Heaven his erring thought. 
 
 1 Reference is had to the elegant " library " edition, published 
 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. In this edition the poems are newly 
 grouped, and many of them are accompanied by new introductory 
 notes by Whittier. 
 
ON THE FARM. 45 
 
 How all unlike the bloody band 
 
 That unrelenting Cortez led 
 To princely Montezuma s land, 
 
 And ruin round his pathway shed. 
 
 With hearts that knew not how to spare, 
 
 Disdaining milder means to try, 
 The crimson sword alone was there : 
 
 The Indian s choice to yield or die. 
 
 But thou, meek Pennsylvanian sire, 
 
 Unarmed, alone, from terror free, 
 Taught by the heathen council fire 
 
 The lessons of Christianity, 
 
 Founder of Pennsylvania s State, 
 
 Not on the blood-wet rolls of fame, 
 But with the wise, the good, the great, 
 
 The world shall place thy sainted name. 
 1824. 
 
 This is not stuff to be ashamed of. Pretty strong 
 verse for a novice ! And (with the exception of 
 verses, often of a humorous character, written on his 
 slate at school, and sometimes passed around by his 
 fellow-pupils somewhat against his will) they are the 
 first known poetry of his. There is a relish in them 
 of better things. His two years study of Burns is 
 beginning to bear fruit. But now comes the second 
 important event in his literary life, his discovery by 
 young William Lloyd Garrison, then editing a paper 
 in Newburyport. Garrison is described as being at 
 that time a neatly dressed youth, popular with young 
 ladies ; having rich dark-brown hair, forehead high 
 and very white, cheeks ruddy, lips full and sensitive, 
 wide hazel eyes, active movements, and a bright and 
 happy disposition. 
 
46 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Father Whittier had subscribed for Garrison s 
 " Free Press," and was much pleased with its human 
 itarian tone. Greenleaf s elder sister, Mary, had, 
 unknown to him, sent to the " Free Press " by .the 
 postman, in 1826, a poem of her brother s, probably 
 that called "The Deity." 
 
 One day, as he was mending stone fence by the 
 road, the postman threw him the family copy of the 
 "Free Press"; and he was dumfounded to find a 
 piece of his own in the poet s corner. He wrote 
 and sent others; but let William Lloyd Garrison him 
 self tell the story : 
 
 " Going upstairs to my office, one day, I observed 
 a letter lying near the door, to my address ; which, 
 on opening, I found to contain an original piece of 
 poetry for my paper, the Free Press. The ink was 
 very pale, the handwriting very small ; and having at 
 that time a horror of newspaper original poetry, 
 which has rather increased than diminished with 
 the lapse of time, my first impulse was to tear it in 
 pieces without reading it, the chances of rejection 
 after its perusal being as ninety-nine to one ; . . . 
 but, summoning resolution to read it, I was equally 
 surprised and gratified to find it above mediocrity, 
 and so gave it a place in my journal. ... As I 
 was anxious to find out the writer, my post-rider one 
 day divulged the secret, stating that he had dropped 
 the letter in the manner described, and that it was 
 written by a Quaker lad named Whittier, who was 
 daily at work on the shoemaker s bench with hammer 
 and lapstone at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehi 
 cle, I lost no time in driving [with a friend] to see the 
 youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with 
 
ON THE FARM. 47 
 
 shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and 
 blushing like a maiden. Giving him some words of 
 encouragement, I addressed myself more particularly 
 to his parents, and urged them with great earnest 
 ness to grant him every possible facility for the devel 
 opment of his remarkable genius." 1 
 
 Elsewhere Mr. Garrison writes : " I found him a 
 bashful boy covered with blushes, from whom scarcely 
 a word could be extracted." 
 
 It seems that young Whittier had been at work in 
 the field, and, on being called, he had come up to the 
 back door, and got on his coat and shoes, and 
 exchanged a few words with his callers, when the 
 father appeared on the scene. 
 
 " Is this friend Whittier ? 
 
 " Yes. 
 
 " * We want to see you about your son. 
 
 " Why,what has the boy been doing ? "(anxiously). 
 
 On learning that the crime was nothing more than 
 verse-making, his alarm was quieted. He informed 
 Mr. Garrison that the boy had been writing verse 
 almost as soon as he could write at all, and, when 
 pen and ink failed him, he would resort to chalk and 
 charcoal, but all with so much secrecy that it was 
 only by removing some rubbish in the garret that his 
 concealed manuscripts had been brought to light. 
 When Garrison urged the father to give him an edu 
 cation, and allow him to follow his guiding star, the 
 father answered with deep emotion, " Sir, poetry will 
 not give him bread" and begged him not to put such 
 notions into his son s head. 
 
 1 Life of William Lloyd Garrison, by his children, i. 67. 
 
48 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Garrison s mouth was closed by what he himself 
 felt to be the truth of the old man s words, and he 
 took his leave. 
 
 But the seeds of ambition had been sown, a quench 
 less ardor set aflame in the young man s breast. It 
 seemed utterly out of the question for the father to 
 afford a single term s schooling away from home. 
 But Greenleaf set his wits to work. It happened 
 that the young man who helped on the farm in 
 summer was accustomed to make ladies shoes and 
 slippers during the winter, and he agreed to instruct 
 Whittier in the mysteries of the "gentle craft of 
 leather," and thus enable him to get money for a 
 term of schooling at Haverhill Academy. 
 
 Behold, then, our deep-eyed, sunny-tempered lad 
 of genius seated on his bench amid shoemakers wax, 
 bristles, pincers, paste-horns, rosin, and waxed ends ! 
 
 " Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 
 
 How falls the polished hammer ! 
 Rap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 
 A quick and merry clamor. 
 
 " Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 
 
 The glossy vamp around it, 
 And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 
 Whose gentle fingers bound it ! " 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 He had probably known something of the art pre 
 viously, judging from Mr. Garrison s account above 
 quoted. For it was a common thing for some 
 member of every farm to mend the horses harness 
 and make the home shoes. Garrison himself had, 
 when a boy, been apprenticed for a short time to the 
 shoe business in Lynn, and actually learned how to 
 
ON THE FARM. 49 
 
 make a shoe. To these two illustrious shoemakers 
 add the names of Noah Worcester, Henry Wilson, 
 Roger Sherman (one of the signers of the Declara 
 tion of Independence), Jacob Boehmen, and many 
 others, whose lives are sketched in William E. Winks s 
 work on Illustrious Shoemakers. 1 Coleridge, too, 
 had a great idea in his youth of turning shoemaker ! 
 The introduction of machinery for making shoes has 
 now almost annihilated the old-style shoemaker with 
 leather apron and hands redolent of wax ; his place 
 is taken by the cutter and clicker and riveter and 
 machine-girl of the great factory, more s the pity ! 
 Mr. Moses E. Emerson, who was one of Whittier s 
 teachers in the district school and lived for a year in 
 the Whittier family, gave, at the age of eighty-two, 
 some interesting reminiscences of his school-teaching 
 days. The occasion was the reunion in 1885 of the 
 class of 1827-30 of the Haverhill Academy. " Whittier 
 loved his fun and joke as well as the rest of us," said 
 he. " If my memory serves me rightly, Mr. Whittier, 
 with others on the farm, made shoes in one of those 
 little shops you see now at country farm-houses. I 
 remember that he used to sit on a low bench that 
 had a little draw 2 at the side. When I have entered 
 
 1 This book can claim the proud preeminence of containing the 
 most atrocious caricature portrait of Whittier extant in the world, 
 the work, evidently, of a 24-carat donkey. It looks as if its sub 
 ject were afflicted with an aggravated case of mumps, and had 
 been stung about the eyes by yellow-jackets. No shoemaker 
 reading the book but would turn sadly away from any incip 
 ient intention he might have formed of purchasing Whittier s 
 poems. 
 
 2 A New England local expression for " drawer." 
 
 4 
 
50 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the shop for a chat with those I was sure to find 
 there, I remember that often Mr. Whittier would 
 pull out the little draw and hand me some loose 
 sheets of paper, with the poems he had [written] on 
 them during the day. He usually offered no com 
 ment, but continued steadily at his work." 
 
 Whittier entered Haverhill Academy in April, 
 1827, and remained six months, returning home 
 every Friday evening. It was the first year of the 
 school s existence, and the building had never been 
 occupied. He wrote the dedicatory ode, and acquired 
 respect thereby. He roomed and boarded with the 
 family of Mr. A. W. Thayer, editor and publisher of 
 the Haverhill " Gazette." Numerous poems some 
 of them in the Scotch dialect were contributed by 
 him to this paper. Here is one composed a year or 
 two later, in imitation of Burns : a 
 
 THE DRUNKARD TO HIS BOTTLE. 
 
 " Hoot ! daur ye shaw ye re face again, 
 Ye auld black thief o purse and brain ? 
 For foul disgrace, for dool an pain 
 
 An shame I ban ye : 
 Wae s me, that e er my lips have ta en 
 
 Your kiss uncanny ! 
 
 " Nae mair, auld knave, without a shillin 
 To keep a starvin wight frae stealin 
 Ye ll sen me hameward, blin and reelin , 
 
 Frae nightly swagger, 
 By wall and post my pathway feelm 1 , 
 
 Wi mony a stagger. 
 
 1 Boston Advertiser, 1885 (about September n). 
 9 From the library edition of the poems, 1888. 
 
ON THE FARM. 51 
 
 " Nae mair o fights that bruise an mangle, 
 Nae mair o nets my feet to tangle, 
 Nae mair o senseless brawl an wrangle, 
 
 Wi frien an wife, too, 
 Nae mair o deavin din an jangle 
 
 My feckless life through. 
 
 " Ye thievin , cheatin , auld Cheap Jack, 
 Peddlin your poison brose, I crack 
 Your banes against rny ingle-back 
 
 Wi meikle pleasure. 
 De il mend ye i his workshop black, 
 
 E en at his leisure ! 
 * * * * * 
 
 Cock a ye re heids, my bairns fu gleg, 
 My winsome Robin, Jean, an Meg, 
 For food an claes ye shall na beg 
 
 A doited daddie. 
 
 Dance, auld wife, on your girl-day leg, 
 Ye Ve foun your laddie ! " 
 
 The master of the school, Oliver Carlton, could 
 with difficulty be made to believe that the first com 
 position handed in by Whittier had been written by 
 him without assistance. But the matter was soon 
 put beyond question by the production of many more 
 of equal or greater merit. The lad indulged in not a 
 single luxury this first winter; for at the end of the 
 half-year he still had the Mexican quarter of a dollar 
 which remained as surplus after he had calculated 
 and apportioned his expenses. 1 
 
 The most important thing that happened to him 
 during this and the following year (for the next year 
 he taught school in West Amesbury and got enough 
 
 1 Underwood, p. 69. 
 
52 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 money for another six months at the Academy) was 
 his being offered the use of two good private libra 
 ries. Genius without knowledge will go but a little 
 way. Whittier, like Abraham Lincoln and Henry 
 Wilson, wrested his intellectual education from 
 between the covers of books read often by stealth, 
 outside of college walls. And it is well. University 
 men are good, and field men and mountain men are 
 good. Great men, like great trees, grow far apart, 
 and draw their nutriment from a wide area of soil 
 and circumambient air. If they are to have a dis 
 tinctive savor, or race, they must be of different 
 species and grown on different soils. That the scho 
 lastic culture of Longfellow and Bryant and Lowell 
 was not Whittier s, or Whitman s, or Lincoln s, is the 
 world s gain. The daughter of Mr. Thayer of Hav- 
 erhill speaks of the great delight Whittier took in 
 reading books from her father s library, being often 
 so absorbed in thought that the noise of three chil 
 dren playing around him did not serve to drive him 
 from his pursuit. He was always an eager reader, 
 and would walk miles, he says, to borrow a book he 
 had heard of. The other library placed at his dis 
 posal in Haverhill was that of Dr. Elias Weld, the 
 "wise old doctor" of " Snow-Bound, " and the one to 
 whom " The Countess " is dedicated. " He was the 
 one cultivated man of the neighborhood," Mr. Whit 
 tier has said. 
 
 A fellow-student at the Academy, the Hon. Jackson 
 B. Street, has interesting remembrances of Whit 
 tier: 
 
 " As I remember, he came in for recitations only, 
 and did his studying elsewhere. I can picture him 
 
ON THE FARM. 53 
 
 now standing beside the master s desk, reciting in 
 a subdued tone. To my boyish fancy, the knowl 
 edge that he was gifted enough to write the ode read 
 at the dedication of the Academy, and also poems for 
 the village paper, raised him to a high place in my 
 estimation. His presence in the room had a great 
 attraction for all of us. As for myself, I remember 
 that I used to sit and gaze at him, a habit that often 
 brought down Master Carlton s displeasure upon my 
 innocent head. I could n t help it, however. I only 
 know it was impossible for me to do any studying 
 when Mr. Whittier was in the room." 
 
 Rev. Charles Wingate, as a lad of thirteen, was 
 with Whittier at the Academy. Says he: 
 
 " I remember him as a big boy whom we were all 
 proud to know, and by whom we all esteemed it the 
 greatest of honors to be noticed. Many and many a 
 time I remember seeing his slate going about from 
 hand to hand with some little poem that he had struck 
 off in school. I used always to deem it an exquisite 
 pleasure, as well as a deep honor, if the slate were 
 passed to me. I do not remember if Mr. Whittier 
 ever approved of this proceeding on the part of his 
 schoolmates. He was always modest in showing his 
 productions, and when his slate was passed on from 
 hand to hand, as I have told you, it was generally the 
 result of some breach of confidence on the part of 
 some one of his particular friends who sat near him. 
 These verses were often of a humorous nature, and 
 often had as subjects things to be found in the school 
 room. Many, however, were of a more serious and 
 thoughtful character." 1 
 
 Boston Advertiser, Dec. 17, 1887. 
 
54 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 The pupils at the Academy were of both sexes, and 
 from ten to twenty-five years old. The first precep 
 tress in charge of the young ladies was Miss Arethusa 
 Hall, who is, I believe, still living in Northampton, 
 Massachusetts. She has all her life been a teacher in 
 private schools and academies of Massachusetts and 
 Brooklyn, Long Island. As an educator she holds 
 high rank. She has published one or two educa 
 tional works, as well as the " Thoughts of Blaise 
 Pascal," and a life of the Rev. Sylvester Judd, in 
 whose family she lived when a girl. For a class 
 reunion of the Haverhill Academy, in 1885, she wrote 
 the following interesting letter, being then over 
 eighty years of age: 
 
 NORTHAMPTON, MASS., Sept. 3, 1885. 
 THE REV. MR. WINGATE: 
 
 DEAR SIR, I have your circular inviting me to meet Mr. 
 Whittier at a reunion of his schoolmates of Haverhill Academy. 
 It would give me great pleasure not only to meet one of the 
 most distinguished of our American poets, whom I for the 
 moment assume the honor of calling one of my pupils, but 
 also to see again his young lady schoolmates, who were 
 directly under my care and instruction. I remember Mr. 
 Whittier well, as he was then, having enjoyed few opportuni 
 ties for academic culture, and whom Mr. Duncan introduced to 
 my attention as " a young man who, at the shoemaker s bench, 
 often hammered out fine verses." I recollect the assiduity 
 with which he was reported to study, and I have vividly pic 
 tured in my memory his appearance at a public examination, 
 in an embarrassed attitude, undergoing the well-sustained 
 ordeal. From that time I followed his literary career with 
 interest, imbued as it was with the noblest principles of human 
 ity no less than with the deepest poetic feeling. Only a few 
 days ago I reread with intense delight, summer though it was, 
 
ON THE FARM. 55 
 
 his " Snow-Bound," picturing in many points my own early 
 experiences. I regret very much that I do not see the prob 
 ability of my being present at the proposed reunion. Failing 
 in this, you will please present my highest appreciation and 
 regard to Mr. Whittier, and my kind wishes to any of my old 
 pupils who may be at the gathering. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 ARETHUSA HALL. 
 
 Friends who knew Whittier at the period of which 
 we are now treating describe him as being earnest, 
 conscientious, witty, quick to help in righting a 
 wrong; never flattering or to be flattered; a love of 
 fun and teasing lurking under his grave exterior ; 
 cold and embarrassed in general society, but in a 
 small, congenial circle a fine converser. In person 
 he was tall and slender, with a shy beautiful face, as 
 innocent and modest in appearance (judging from 
 his portrait) as the boy Milton or Longfellow. The 
 portrait painted by Bass Otis ten years later (en 
 graved for the library edition of the poems) shows 
 well his amiability and geniality of disposition. 
 Friends of the Academy days describe Whittier as a 
 silent, thinking boy, neatly dressed, rather lionized at 
 school, especially by the girls ; one whom you would 
 turn to look at a second time on the street. At the 
 Wednesday afternoon meetings of the scholars for 
 social and literary entertainment he was usually 
 present, and entered into the spirit of the hour with 
 zest, freed for the time being from the bashful reserve 
 which usually characterized him in public. 
 
 In the village he was a member of the group of 
 progressive intellectual people who met at Judge Pit 
 man s and Judge Minot s. It is said that he was the 
 
56 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 central figure at these gatherings, the one whose 
 coming was always waited for; and here he threw off 
 his natural reserve and took part in the conversation, 
 always intensely interested, a good listener, and 
 biding his time to utter his own thought. When his 
 distant kinsman, Daniel Webster, was a young man 
 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he exercised a curi 
 ously similar influence upon social circles. All who 
 knew Webster at that time speak of his tenderness, 
 gayety, exceedingly rich humor, and fine social pow 
 ers. A lady who knew him says : "He soon formed 
 a circle around him of which he was the life and 
 soul." Yet, in basic traits, how dissimilar the two ! 
 Webster conservative, prosaic, unimaginative ; Whit- 
 tier the exact opposite. In each, however, fervid 
 intensity of emotion is balanced by a shrewd practi 
 cal humor, a sense of the ludicrous which saves 
 them from extravaganza. 
 
 There are discernible in Whittier (as in Webster) 
 many of the distinctive New England traits, some 
 thing of the shrewd caution and conservatism that 
 plow so deep a line of separation between the East 
 erner and the sanguine-audacious and nonchalant 
 Westerner. But, when all is said, Whittier stands 
 unique, a curious cross between Quaker, Yankee, and 
 Saracen, and yet fibred with the purest Americanism. 
 
 The foregoing reminiscences of Whittier s school 
 days help us to understand a little matter that other 
 wise would seem very mysterious; namely, how Wil 
 lis Gaylord Clarke could have written of Whittier, in 
 1830, to the London " Literary Gazette," as "a young 
 poet-editor of great promise." : To us, the couple of 
 
 1 James Grant Wilson, in " Bryant and his Friends," p. 46. 
 
ON THE FARM. 57 
 
 dozen of immature poems the boy had published up 
 to that date seem to furnish too slight a basis for 
 such praise. But poets were scarce in those days, 
 and were more highly valued than at present, as the 
 picture of Haverhill society just given makes evi 
 dent. Furthermore, William Lloyd Garrison tells 
 us that Whittier s early verses, printed in Garrison s 
 Newburyport " Free Press," were " readily copied by 
 other papers," and thus helped to spread his fame. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 
 
 " Now, when I know how far this world s happiness can 
 reach ; now, when all the stars of good fortune shine over me, 
 fair and propitious ; now, is it, by my God, a noble spirit which 
 stirs in me ; now do I give a mighty proof that no offering is 
 too great for man s highest blessing the freedom of his coun 
 try ! The great movement calls for great hearts ; and within 
 me do I feel the power to be a rock amidst this raging of 
 the waves of nations. I must away and throw my breast 
 with fearless force against this storm of seas." KORNER, Let 
 ter to his Father. 
 
 FOR five years 1828 to 1833 Whittier watched 
 the career of his friend William Lloyd Garrison 
 before he decided to cast in his lot with the despised 
 Abolitionists, in the meantime employing his pen in 
 purely literary work. Undoubtedly there was a strug 
 gle in his mind as to just where his duty lay. He 
 had, as he once said to the writer, political ambitions 
 and literary aspirations in those days, and he would 
 seem to have doubted whether he was adapted to the 
 rough work of reform. Let it be remembered, too, 
 that his mind matured slowly, that his educational 
 advantages had been slender, and that to enter upon 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 59 
 
 public work with success it was necessary to have a 
 disciplined and well-furnished mind. 
 
 Not that hatred of oppression was not always 
 strong in his breast : he had from boyhood up fed his 
 mind with accounts of the oppressions endured by 
 his fellow-Quakers, and had inherited from perse 
 cuted ancestors instincts of freedom. Even a hun 
 dred years after active persecution of the Quakers 
 had ceased in New England the old Puritan bitter 
 ness and bigotry still existed, and Thomas Chalkley, 
 whose works were cherished and frequently read to 
 her children by Mrs. Whittier, says in his Travels, 
 " I, being a stranger and traveler, could not but 
 observe the barbarous and unchristianlike welcome 
 I had into Boston. Oh, what a pity it was, said 
 one, that all of your society were not hanged with 
 the other four ! It is to be supposed, also, that 
 that classic of the Friends, Besse s " Sufferings of the 
 Quakers," was read by Whittier when a boy. The 
 influence of those old tomes must have tinctured his 
 very blood, and been built into every fibre of his 
 being. They alone were enough to determine the 
 whole course of his life as a friend of the oppressed. 
 
 As editor of three different journals, during the 
 years 1828-1833, Whittier must have studied with con 
 siderable thoroughness the political situation, and got 
 well informed on the subject of slavery. Then in 1833 
 he publishes, at his own expense, his anti-slavery pam 
 phlet "Justice and Expediency," and takes his stand, 
 for life or for death, with the friends of the slave. 
 As soon as he had fairly faced the matter, his__oetic 
 insight let him see the shallow sophistry of the 
 defenders of slavery. He believed tn the dignity of 
 
60 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 human nature and in the Golden Rule of Christ. 
 Therefore it was that 
 
 " He went 
 
 And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 
 Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 
 
 So he could be the nearer to God s heart, 
 And f eel its solemn pulses sending blood 
 Through all the widespread veins of endless good." 
 
 His first journalistic work was done as editor of 
 the "American Manufacturer" of Boston, a posi 
 tion for which he was indebted to his friend William 
 Lloyd Garrison, who was at that time editing in 
 Boston the " National Philanthropist," the first paper 
 in the world established expressly to advocate total 
 abstinence from intoxicating liquors. The founder 
 of this paper was the Rev. William Collier, a Baptist 
 city missionary, who kept a kind of boarding-house 
 at 30 Federal Street, near Milk. Whittier and Gar 
 rison both boarded with " Parson Collier," who was 
 also the proprietor of Whittier s " Manufacturer, "- 
 a protectionist paper, and friendly to Henry Clay. It 
 was to Parson Collier s also that Benjamin Lundy 
 came in 1828, and first interested Garrison in the 
 cause of the slave. Whittier had gone to Boston to 
 study and read, 1828-29, and he accepted this edi 
 torial work, at $9 a week, because it enabled him to 
 carry on his studies. He confesses that he always 
 had to study up his subjects before writing his edi 
 torials for this journal. 
 
 The next year, 1830, he is at home, editing the 
 Haverhill " Gazette." From July, 1830, to January, 
 1832, he is editor of George D. Prentice s " New Eng- 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 6l 
 
 land Weekly Review," published in Hartford, Con 
 necticut. When at the Haverhill Academy, he had 
 sent some of his "compositions" to Prentice, who 
 liked them and published them with commendatory 
 notice. Young Whittier was at work in the field 
 when the letter of the Hartford publishers was 
 brought to him, asking him to edit their " Review." 
 He was overwhelmed with astonishment at the 
 request, yet accepted. He says the publishers, on 
 thei** part, were much surprised at his youth, when 
 they first met him. He let them do most of the talk 
 ing in the first interview! The Hartford episode was 
 a period of quiet gestation and study, during which 
 he wrote poems and sketches, and edited the literary 
 remains of his friend J. G. C. Brainard. In March, 
 1831, he made a trip home, to be with the good father 
 during his last illness. The publishers of the " Re 
 view " were so pleased with his sketches and poems 
 that they had shortly before issued a collection of 
 them in a small volume, Whittier s first published 
 work, now suppressed, entitled " Legends of New 
 England, in Prose and Verse." The trip to Haverhill 
 was of course by stage-coach. There were no rose 
 wood, upholstered boudoir cars to ride in then, not a 
 single railroad in New England, and but two in the 
 United States, and they just built. 1 Mr. Whittier 
 
 1 One in South Carolina and one in New York, the latter being 
 the Mohawk & Hudson Railway, on which the queer, little De Witt 
 Clinton locomotive had been drawing rude passengers-cars for about 
 two months. On some of these early railways they had open cars 
 for people of small means. As many of the Abolitionists were num 
 bered among this class, they occasionally availed themselves of 
 the open cars. See the fascinating Life of Garrison by his sons. 
 
62 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 wrote at the time an amusing account of the hard 
 ships and miseries of his journey. 
 
 From 1832 to 1837 Whittier toiled on the farm and 
 finally succeeded in paying off the debt with which it 
 was encumbered. It is stated that he used to drive 
 over to the head of tide-water on the Merrimack with 
 apples and vegetables, which he exchanged for salt- 
 fish with the owners of coasting vessels. Hard work 
 and little yield is the rule on most Massachusetts 
 farms. In the intervals of farm work he managed to 
 print " Moll Pitcher" (of which more hereafter) and 
 " Mogg Megone." His hero "Mogg " he has styled 
 "a big Injun strutting around in Walter Scott s 
 plaid." He says that for his early poems and literary 
 articles he received absolutely nothing, with the 
 exception of a few dollars from the " Democratic Re 
 view " and " Buckingham s New England Magazine," 
 his pronounced views on slavery making his name 
 too unpopular for a publisher s uses. In a prefatory 
 note to " Moll Pitcher," he humorously owns up to 
 the unremunerative nature of his literary work : "I 
 have not enough of the poetical in my disposition to 
 dream of converting, by an alchemy more potent 
 than that of the old philosophers, a limping couplet 
 into a brace of doubloons, or a rickety stanza into a 
 note of hand." All this time, it is to be understood 
 that he was by no means indifferent to the subject of 
 slavery, but was earnestly examining it in all its 
 aspects. Some time early in 1833, while he was thus 
 engaged, Garrison, as if divining his thoughts, wrote 
 as follows to three young ladies of Haverhill: 
 
 " You excite my curiosity and interest by informing me that 
 my dearly beloved Whittier is a friend and townsman of yours. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 63 
 
 Can we not induce him to devote his brilliant genius more to 
 the advancement of our cause, and kindred enterprises, and 
 less to the creations of romance and fancy, and the disturbing 
 incidents of political strife ? . . . You think my influence 
 will prevail with Whittier more than yours. I think otherwise. 
 If he has not already blotted my name from the tablet of his 
 memory, it is because his magnanimity is superior to neglect. 
 We have had no correspondence whatever for more than a 
 year with each other ! Does this look like friendship between 
 us ? And yet I take the blame all to myself. He is not a 
 debtor to me I owe him many letters. . . . Pray secure 
 his forgiveness, and tell him that my love to him is as strong 
 as was that of David to Jonathan. Soon I hope to send him a 
 contrite epistle, and I know he will return a generous pardon." l 
 
 Presently, as if in response to the appeal in this 
 letter, Whittier publishes at his own expense, in June, 
 1833, his "Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery Con 
 sidered with a View to its Rightful and Effectual 
 Remedy, Abolition." An edition of 5,000 copies was 
 afterwards issued by Lewis Tappan, for gratuitous 
 distribution. Tappan wrote Whittier a very kind 
 letter about the essay, and it was appreciatively 
 reviewed by the anti-slavery editor, Nathaniel P. 
 Rogers. A notice of it in a Virginia paper called 
 forth two long and noble responses from its author. 
 They were published in the " Liberator," and are 
 included in the latest edition of his prose works. In 
 a foot-note to the pamphlet Whittier calls the atten 
 tion of his friends to " Thoughts on Colonization, a 
 very able and eloquent pamphlet by a much-traduced 
 and noble-hearted philanthropist, William L. Garri 
 son, of Boston." Garrison returns the compliment 
 
 1 Life of Garrison, i. 331. 
 
64 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 in a little paragraph in his paper, to the effect that 
 " John G. Whittier, of Haverhill, a member of the 
 Society of Friends, and a gentleman distinguished as 
 a writer, has published an excellent pamphlet on the 
 subject of slavery. . . . Friend Whittier deserves 
 to be called the Stuart of America." 
 
 " Justice and Expediency" is a thorough piece of 
 argument, terribly in earnest, abounding in italicised 
 and capitalized sentences (as first printed), and solemn 
 appeals to the religious nature. In Great Britain the 
 long struggle for emancipation in the West Indies 
 was just drawing to a close, and the writings of the 
 British anti-slavery chiefs were drawn upon by Whit 
 tier for material and illustrations, although perhaps 
 not quite so tellingly as in Mrs. Child s "Appeal," 
 published four months later in the same year. A 
 few sentences from " Justice and Expediency " will 
 give an idea of the treatment: 
 
 " But it may be said that the miserable victims of the sys 
 tem have our sympathies. 
 
 " Sympathy ! the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, 
 looking on, and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from 
 mortal suffering. Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken 
 of heart, and does the blessing of those who are ready to per 
 ish answer it ? Does it hold back the lash from the slave, or 
 sweeten his bitter bread ? 
 
 "Oh, my heart is sick my very soul is weary of this sympa 
 thy this heartless mockery of feeling. . . . 
 
 "No let the TRUTH on this subject undisguised, naked, 
 terrible as it is, stand out before us. Let us no longer seek to 
 cover it let us no longer strive to forget it let us no more 
 dare to palliate it. ... 
 
 " Sisters, daughters, wives, and mothers, your influence is 
 felt everywhere, at the fireside, and in the halls of legislation, 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 65 
 
 surrounding, like the all-encircling atmosphere, brother and 
 father, husband and son ! And by your love of them, by every 
 holy sympathy of your bosoms, by every mournful appeal which 
 comes up to you from hearts whose sanctuary of affections has 
 been made waste and desolate, you are called upon to exert it 
 in the cause of redemption from wrong and outrage. . . . 
 
 " In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs ; in vain is indi 
 vidual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed thing 
 is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense 
 remains. Drag, then, the Achan into light ; and let national 
 repentance atone for national sin. . . . 
 
 " But a few months ago we were on the verge of civil war. 
 . . . The danger has been delayed for a time ; this bolt has 
 fallen without mortal injury to the Union, but the cloud from 
 which it came still hangs above us, reddening with the ele 
 ments of destruction." 
 
 Soon after the publication of " Justice and Expe 
 diency" there appeared in the Haverhill "Gazette" 
 Whittier s first anti-slavery poem, the lines to Gar 
 rison, " Champion of those who groan beneath 
 oppression s iron hand," a poem which had, how 
 ever, been in his portfolio since 1832, and which was 
 quickly followed by " Toussaint L Ouverture " and 
 " The Slave-Ships," the handsel of a long and remark 
 able series of poems of freedom, extending over a 
 period of thirty years, during which the stirring music 
 of these northern pibrochs never ceased to be heard. 
 
 Whittier has now unfurled his flag and taken his 
 place in the ranks of freedom, and it behooves us to 
 ascend to some elevated point and sweep the horizon 
 with our glass, in other words, get some idea of 
 the situation, appreciate the sacrifice made, under 
 stand the obloquy and danger undergone by the 
 reformers, the sufferings of the slave and the attitude 
 5 
 
66 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of society and the Church toward the doctrine of 
 immediate emancipation. In short, I purpose to fore 
 cast the years, and briefly touch on the more salient 
 features of the Abolition struggle, so that those who 
 were not of it may better understand the part played 
 by Whittier in the movement. I shall then give an 
 account of the poet s adventures and sufferings as a 
 member of the anti-slavery band, and of his anti- 
 slavery poems and the enthusiasm of humanity they 
 awakened in the minds of all true men. 
 
 In brief, the situation was this: The nation at large 
 was lulling a guilty conscience with the music of the 
 cotton-gin, stopping its ears against the languid pro 
 tests and half-forgotten example of the Quakers, and 
 paying no attention at all to the timid voice of Ben 
 jamin Lundy, but had been suddenly startled and 
 angered by the loud voice of William Lloyd Garrison 
 of Massachusetts calling for Immediate Emancipa 
 tion. Garrison had been imprisoned in Baltimore for 
 opposition to the slave-trade, and a price of $5,000 set 
 on his head by the Legislature of Georgia. The 
 "Liberator " had been conducted by him in Boston 
 for two years and a half, and he had put forth a 
 crushing pamphlet against the iniquitous Coloniza 
 tion Society, which, with full apology for existing 
 slavery, and cheerfully recognizing the status of the 
 slave as a chattel, was filled with bitter prejudice 
 against the free " niggers," and sought their unjust 
 expulsion from the country. Finally, the school of 
 Prudence Crandall, established in Canterbury, Con 
 necticut, for the education of young colored girls, 
 after a long struggle against insane prejudice, had at 
 last been closed by the State authorities. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 67 
 
 Of the stainless moral integrity of Garrison, by 
 whose side Whittier now stood bravely forth, there can 
 be no question. That to Garrison more than to 
 any other single individual was due the creation of 
 the public sentiment that made possible the Eman 
 cipation Proclamation, and sustained Congress in 
 the passing of the Constitutional Amendment forever 
 abolishing slavery in this country, it seems to me 
 fatuous to deny. His words were " sparkles hot and 
 seed ethereal " dropped into the moral nature of the 
 American people, to kindle there an undying flame. 
 In half a dozen years, the society founded by him in 
 Boston had multiplied to eight hundred, three hun 
 dred of which were in Ohio alone, and one of these 
 societies numbered four thousand members. All bear 
 witness to the purity of Garrison s character, his 
 beautiful domestic life, his gay-heartedness, and his 
 gentleness and moderation in private conversation. 
 Harriet Martineau deemed him to be " one of God s 
 nobility," "covered all over with the stars and orders 
 of the spiritual realm." It is related of Charles Sum- 
 ner that shortly after the assault upon him by Brooks, 
 and while the wounds on his head were yet new and of 
 a dangerous character, and his physician had strictly 
 charged him not to take off his hat out of doors, 
 yet, when he caught sight of William Lloyd Garrison 
 on a street of Boston, he took off his hat to him, and 
 to him alone of all he met. Intensely positive souls 
 Garrison attached to his own by the strongest ties. 
 But people who did not know him personally were 
 incensed by the violent language of his editorials and 
 speeches. He wrote with very strong ink, his words 
 were not musk-scented by any means, and the lip of 
 
68 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the medicine-glass he offered the South was not 
 smeared with honey. Like most journalists of that 
 day, he could speak daggers and make every word 
 stab. He was almost as headstrong in his attempts 
 to defend and enforce his doctrines of Perfectionism, 
 Non-Resistance, Non-Political Action, and Disunion, 
 as in his battle against the slave-power. He caused 
 a split in the ranks of the Abolitionists, alienated 
 many stanch friends, and poured his scorn upon such 
 advocates of gradual and conciliatory anti-slavery 
 measures as Dr. William Ellery Channing and Henry 
 Ward Beecher. 
 
 Now, there are thousands of Southern gentlemen 
 who were as humane in their treatment of their 
 slaves as ever was Thomas Jefferson or George 
 Washington. They did not therefore quite fancy 
 being described in the columns of the " Liberator," 
 in staring capitals, as THIEVES, ROBBERS, and 
 MAN-STEALERS, " man-hyenas," "fiends in hu 
 man shape," "assassins of bleeding humanity." 
 Vituperative epithets such as these bespatter all the 
 early pages of the " Liberator." For example, allud 
 ing editorially to an article in the " Colonization 
 Herald " of Philadelphia, written just after the burn 
 ing by a mob of the Abolitionists splendid new 
 Pennsylvania Hall, the " Liberator " speaks of its 
 "brutally contemptuous and fiendishly malignant" 
 language, its " vulgar billingsgate," and thinks that 
 "the man who can write such an article is a ruffian 
 capable of any crime." But now the article, as 
 reprinted on the same page, contains no billingsgate 
 whatever, and no fiendish language : it is only 
 quietly satirical. The clergy the " Liberator" styles 
 " a brotherhood of thieves." A certain Dr. Baird is 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 69 
 
 delicately alluded to as " this lickspittle of European 
 despotism and aristocracy." In reference to Rev. 
 William S. Plummer, D.D., a slaveholder of Virginia, 
 the "Liberator s" Philadelphia correspondent re 
 marks, " Can there be a more detestable, a more 
 infamous, and more diabolical character on earth 
 than a professedly man-stealing minister?" Caleb 
 Gushing is styled by Garrison " an impudent, canting 
 demagogue," " a fool," " a political adventurer," "a 
 shallow sophist," "a dissimulator," and "a recreant 
 son of Massachusetts" ("Liberator," Feb. 5 and 19, 58). 
 Nathan Hale, father of Edward Everett Hale, and edi 
 tor of the Boston " Advertiser," wrote some temper 
 ate and not unkindly articles on the evils of the inter 
 marriage of distinct types, /. e., on race degeneration 
 (with reference to the amalgamation laws of Massa 
 chusetts); whereupon Garrison bestows upon him 
 some tender and charitable appellations, as, " the 
 twaddling, cowardly, doughfaced editor of the 
 Advertiser" ("Liberator," xv. i); "impertinent 
 intermeddler," "impudent," "shameless," "de 
 praved"; "this man aspires to the level of respect 
 able society, though in spirit he seems to be as 
 degraded as the lowest frequenters of Billingsgate"; 
 "in the struggle for liberty, he will distinctively 
 espouse the side of villainy" ("Liberator," Feb. 24, 43). 
 However, the " Liberator s " intemperate lan 
 guage, although regretted by the more judicious of 
 the Abolitionists, was by no means disliked by all. 
 And, in truth, it may be doubted whether mild lan 
 guage would have excited any attention. Language 
 both fierce and loud was needed to pierce to the con 
 science of a people whose ears were stopped with 
 
70 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Southern cotton. And then observe, please, that the 
 Abolitionists got rough language as well as gave it. 
 Throw a scoop-net back into almost any part of the 
 anti-slavery brine, and you will fetch up grewsome 
 proofs of this, live and quivering. Here, for example: 
 In one of the martyrical lecturing tours of apostles 
 Stephen Foster and Abby Kelley they had been 
 stoned by the boys of a certain town; the local paper 
 blames the boys for putting themselves on a level 
 with " most consummate blackguards." If Saint 
 Stephen called them robbers and nigger-baby thieves 
 and their ministers servants and ambassadors of the 
 devil, they retorted in kind. Abby and Stephen 
 charge two cents for the privilege of signing a peti 
 tion of theirs for the dissolution of the Union; the 
 local paper exclaims, " Dissolve the Union ! may the 
 heart that could conceive the thought be torn from 
 its resting-place, and thrown to the dogs ! " The 
 Abolitionists tongues are likened to " serpents fangs 
 bedabbled in corruption s foulest dregs." 
 
 Abolition was a religion to those who believed in 
 it, a sublime consecration, a solemn sacrament. They 
 called each other brother and sister, and sang their 
 Abolition hymns with all the fervor of Methodist re 
 vivalists. Said Miss Martineau, after her first acquaint 
 ance with the Abolitionists: " Ordinary social life is 
 spoiled for them; but another which is far better has 
 grown up among them. ... A just survey of the 
 whole world can leave little doubt that the Abolition 
 ists of the United States are the greatest people now 
 living and moving in it." 2 So Lydia Maria Child 
 
 Liberator, Oct. 17, 1845. 
 Westminster Review, xxxii. 59 (1839). 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 7 1 
 
 says, somewhere in one of her published letters, that 
 socially she lost nothing by her advocacy of Aboli 
 tionism, for she made thereby the acquaintance of 
 the noblest people, morally and intellectually, that 
 she had ever known. Miss Martineau especially notes 
 the " bright faces " and continual cheerfulness and 
 courage of the Abolitionists. Wendell Phillips said 
 that Garrison s life was the happiest he ever knew, 
 and all of Mr. Garrison s friends say the same. So 
 Oliver Johnson is called by his friend, John Chadwick, 
 " the happiest of men." 
 
 Of course the movement brought out the long 
 haired fraternity and the cranks (" long-heels," 
 the Boston boys dubbed them), but in no greater 
 number than in the case of every unpopular moral 
 reform. 1 The justness of a cause is not impeached 
 
 1 Oliver Johnson tells an amusing story of good Abigail Folsom, 
 an innocent monomaniac on the subject of free speech, who used 
 to annoy anti-slavery meetings by her grotesque interruptions, but 
 was respected for her generous gifts to deserving folk. She was 
 very witty, and was always roundly cheered by the hostile charac 
 ters that usually fringed the anti-slavery meetings. On one occa 
 sion when, seated in a chair, she was being gently carried out of a 
 meeting by Wendell Phillips, Oliver Johnson, and another, she 
 said to the crowd in the aisle, " I m better off than my Master was: 
 he had but one ass to ride, I have three to carry me." 
 
 Mr. Whittier has recently told another story which matches 
 this. They were having a stormy anti-slavery meeting in New 
 York. Difference of opinion threatened to break up the meeting. 
 But it so happened that near each other on the platform were Gar 
 rison, whose head was very bald; William A. Burleigh, whose 
 hair fell in heavy masses to his shoulders ; and a coal-black negro. 
 " All at once," says Mr. Whittier, " during a brief lull, some man 
 
72 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 by the imperfections of its defenders. There were 
 all kinds of apples in the Abolition barrel. There 
 was plenty of raving fanaticism in the brains of the 
 anti-slavery lecturers, and a plenteous lack of judg 
 ment and high breeding. On the one hand, you have 
 the fiery indignation, tempered by courtesy and char 
 ity, of such men as Whittier, and such women as 
 Lucy Stone, the Grimke sisters, and Lucretia Mott; 
 and, on the other, such fanatical apostles as poor, 
 meek, non-resistant Stephen S. Foster, and brawny 
 Parker Pillsbury, " reviled and pelted Stephen" 
 (who became thoroughly familiar with the odor of 
 rotten eggs and the nature of brickbats and sole- 
 leather), and " brown, broad-shouldered Pillsbury," 
 whose book, full of shrieks and superlatives and de 
 nunciations, on the anti-slavery crusade, as waged 
 in the schoolhouses and churches of country towns 
 by himself and brethren, must be read by all who 
 want to know what Abolitionism was in all its phases. 
 A little incident in the career of one of these minor 
 prophets of the cause, Stephen Foster, will help us to 
 understand why he was " chucked " into lamp closets 
 and kicked out of churches so often. He was one 
 evening sitting on the platform waiting for his audi 
 ence, when a woman came up to the front seat with a 
 child in her arms. Foster pointed his finger at her, 
 
 in the back part of the hall shouted at the top of his voice, Mr. 
 Speaker! Mr. Speaker! I ve only a word to say. I want that 
 negro to shave Burleigh and make a wig for Garrison! The 
 whole house immediately broke forth into roars of laughter, which 
 had the effect to avert all trouble, which had seemed imminent, 
 and good humor was restored." As Mr. Whittier finished relating 
 the incident he laughed heartily until the tears ran down his cheeks. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 73 
 
 and said to the audience, " There are babies in the 
 South stolen from the cradle much whiter than the 
 one that lady holds in her arms." The poor creature 
 sank down abashed and terror-stricken, as all eyes 
 were bent upon her to see what kind of a black child 
 she had given birth to. 1 Is it any wonder that when 
 sound eggs were worth two cents, rotten ones were 
 worth four cents apiece for certain Abolitionists 
 heads ? 
 
 I have unwillingly dwelt upon the darker side of 
 the Abolition movement in order to make it clear 
 that, when Whittier espoused the cause of the slave, 
 he had counted the cost, and knew that he was bury 
 ing all hope of political preferment and literary gains. 
 Those who gave themselves to the work knew not 
 but that it might be for a lifetime. To be shunned 
 and spat upon by society, mobbed in public, and 
 injured in one s business, this was what it meant to 
 become an Abolitionist. When Miss Martineau 
 avowed her sympathy with them, society shut its 
 doors in her face. When Longfellow put forth his 
 little pamphlet of poems on slavery, weak and harm 
 less as they were, the editor of " Graham s Magazine " 
 wrote to him to offer excuses for the brevity of a 
 guarded notice of the poems, saying that the word 
 " slavery " was never allowed to appear in a Phila 
 delphia periodical, and that the publisher of the 
 magazine had objected to have even the name of the 
 book appear in his pages. This recalls the notorious 
 mutilations made in foreign books republished in 
 America by the American Tract Society. Several of 
 
 Liberator, Oct. 10, 1845. 
 
74 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 their books were "doctored" by cutting out the 
 word " slave" and other matter, and the insertion of 
 harmless equivalents that would give no offense to 
 slaveholders. See Pillsbury s "Acts of the Anti- 
 slavery Apostles," where the details are given. Allu 
 sion only can be made to a few of the innumerable 
 persecutions endured by the friends of the black race. 
 How Lydia Maria Child was deprived of the use of 
 the Athenaeum library in Boston, because the first 
 use she had made of it was to prepare her " Appeal "; 
 how Dr. Follen was deprived of his professorship in 
 Harvard College for his brave espousal ot Abolition 
 ism ; how Prudence Crandall s schoolhouse was 
 defiled with filth, and its windows broken; how 
 Arthur Tappan s house was sacked and his life threat 
 ened; how Dr. Reuben Crandall (teacher of botany 
 in Washington, D. C., and brother of Prudence Cran 
 dall), for having, at his own request, lent to a white 
 citizen a copy of Whittier s " Justice and Expedi 
 ency," was kept in the damp city prison for eight 
 months, until the seeds of consumption were sown, 
 and his life made a sacrifice ; how Amos Dresser was 
 flogged in the public square of Nashville, and his 
 fellow-student of Lane Seminary, the eloquent Marius 
 R. Robinson, was dragged from his bed at night, and 
 tarred and feathered by ruffians, all these things are 
 matters of history. 
 
 But those of the faithful Abolition band who still 
 survive have had ample revenge. Looked upon then 
 as the scum of the earth, they are now regarded as 
 heroes and martyrs. Stone in those days was vio 
 lently applied to their persons : to-day it is used to 
 carve their statues and busts. Brickbats were then 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 75 
 
 employed against them as a posteriori arguments: they 
 are now used for such objects as erecting a $200,000 
 hall to the memory of Wendell Phillips. Frederick 
 Douglass was at that time a fugitive slave hunted by 
 bloodhounds: recently he was United States Minister 
 to Hayti. A " nigger " then was deemed a soulless 
 ape, a malodorous beast of burden: to-day a monu 
 ment to the black man Crispus Attucks stands on 
 Boston Common. The very community that regarded 
 Garrison as an intolerable nuisance made him a pres 
 ent of $30,000; and he and Whittier lived to see them 
 selves regarded, with John Brown and Abraham Lin 
 coln, as the saviours of the colored race, and to receive, 
 by ovations and public letters, the grateful reverence 
 of that rapidly rising and affectionate class of Ameri 
 can citizens. When the first number of the " Liber 
 ator " was issued, it was a deadly crime to teach a 
 negro to read or to write; but since the year 1865 
 more than fifty million dollars have been expended 
 in the education of Southern negroes, and in 1888 
 there were fifteen thousand primary schools and some 
 seventy academies, colleges, and professional schools 
 in the South, established for the education of the 
 colored race. The colored people now edit over one 
 hundred and fifty newspapers. As for the opponents 
 of the Abolitionists, they are now the obscure and 
 despised. Whittier says, in a pleasant rhymed epistle 
 to his fellow-bard John Pierpont, 
 
 " Where now are all the unco good/ 
 The Canaan-cursing Brotherhood, 
 The mobs they raised, the storms they brewed, 
 And pulpit thunder ? 
 
76 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Sheer sunk like Pharaoh s multitude ; 
 They ve all gone under ! " l 
 
 Some of Whittier s strongest poems (for stern sar 
 casm and ironical rebuke) were inspired by the oppo 
 sition of the canting pro-slavery clergy, North and 
 South. That for many years after the anti-slavery 
 agitation had begun the American Church was the 
 bulwark of slavery, has been proved again and again 
 by such writers as Charles K. Whipple, Oliver John 
 son, Parker Pillsbury, and the Garrison brothers. 
 Nothing surprised William Lloyd Garrison more 
 than the discovery of this fact. A hired priesthood 
 has often been the conservator of the popular will 
 If the pulpits had been occupied by unsalaried speak 
 ers, as with the Quakers, the Abolitionists would 
 not have encountered a hundredth part of the oppo 
 sition they did. Some of the preachers, however, 
 were on the right side from the start, Beriah Green, 
 Moses Thacher, Amos A. Phelps ; Dr. Samuel H. 
 Cox and J. R. W. Sloane of New York City ; John 
 Rankin, William H. Furness, and others. 2 The 
 clergy as a body wheeled into line after a time. As 
 early as 1845, one hundred and seventy ministers of 
 Massachusetts signed a protest against slavery, which 
 
 1 Liberator, April 28, 65; not reprinted. 
 
 2 I am glad to remember that the house of my father, Rev. 
 William Sloane Kennedy, of Sandusky, in the Western Reserve, 
 was a station on the Underground Railroad. One of my earliest 
 recollections is that of seeing a group of fugitive slaves, black as 
 coal, standing in our wood-shed waiting for their breakfast, and 
 we children enjoined for our lives not to mention the matter to 
 anyone, 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 77 
 
 had been drawn up by James Freeman Clarke. 1 
 Whittier tells of a minister in the old town of New- 
 bury, Massachusetts, who startled and shamed his 
 brother-ministers, who were zealously preaching 
 the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, by draw 
 ing up for them a form of prayer for use while engaged 
 in catching runaway slaves. 
 
 The record of the Quakers on the slavery o^sti 
 in Abolition times is not one for their body as a whole 
 to be proud of. They had fallen away from the high 
 position they occupied nearly a century previous, 
 when they had voluntarily freed all their slaves, and 
 were become as worldly and selfish as the other 
 churches. Having removed slavery from among 
 themselves, they felt no call to interfere with the con 
 science of Southerners in the matter, especially as 
 their wealth was acquired largely by Southern trade; 
 and Daniel Webster could boast, without fear of con 
 tradiction, that he had the support of the sober and 
 " respectable " part of the Society of Friends in his 
 action in support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Yet the 
 work accomplished by such ardent anti-slavery peo 
 ple as the Grimke sisters, Lucretia Mott, John Ken- 
 rick, Thomas Shipley, Lindley Coates, and John 
 Greenleaf Whittier atones for much that is hard to, 
 forgive in the attitude of the Quakers toward slavery 
 at that time. 2 And one is glad to remember the deed 
 
 1 See his " Anti-slavery Days," p. 131. The protest, with all 
 the names, is in the " Liberator," Oct. 10, 45. 
 
 2 A pleasant picture of the domestic life of an anti-slavery 
 Quaker family during Abolition days is given by Lillie B. Chace 
 Wyman in the " Atlantic Monthly," August, 1889. 
 
78 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of the brilliant philosophical writer and wealthy man 
 ufacturer, Rowland G. Hazard of Rhode Island, a 
 Quaker by birth, who in 1841, being in New Orleans, 
 obtained, by great effort and in the face of threats, 
 the liberation of one hundred free colored men who 
 belonged to ships from the North, and had been placed 
 in the chain-gang as slaves. 
 
 The system of slavery was atrocious, Thomas Car- 
 lyle to the contrary notwithstanding. " Enslave but 
 a single human being/ said Garrison, " and the liberty 
 of the world is put in peril." And another said, 
 " Slavery has a guilt the blackness of which can never 
 be painted except by a pencil dipped in the midnight 
 of the bottomless pit." To deprive a human being of 
 self-respect, to cut the houghs of his manhood, to 
 regard him as a beast of burden to be fed on a peck 
 of corn a week and occasionally given a shirt of coarse 
 bagging and a pair of trousers to hide his nakedness; 
 to make of a woman a breeding-animal, and forbid 
 her the rite of marriage; to tear children from their 
 mother s knees to be carried off where they would 
 never see them again; to whip a human being to 
 death, to tear out his nails by the roots, brand him, 
 cut the tendons of his heels, and burn him to death, 1 
 not very pleasant things these, and not exactly cal- 
 
 1 This seems to be a favorite amusement with lynchers of the 
 negro in the South. The case of the negro Mclntosh who was 
 burned to death in slow agony by the whole street populace of St. 
 Louis, in 1836, is well known. In the month of September, 
 1889, the New York " Nation" copied from a Southern paper an 
 account of the recent burning to death of a negro lad, for the crime 
 of rape. There are on record other cases of negro-burnings. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 79 
 
 culated to make Northern lovers of freedom moderate 
 in their opposition. 
 
 And yet there was a sunny side to slavery. Human 
 nature is at heart good, and much the same every 
 where. The writer, in looking over a manuscript 
 lecture of his father s (written in 1858, shortly after 
 his return from a trip to New Orleans, whither he 
 had gone as a delegate to the General Assembly of 
 the Presbyterian Church), finds several statements 
 that furnish interesting testimony to the general 
 humanity of the slaveholders. Speaking as one 
 known to be anti-slavery in his sentiments, he yet 
 says: "A traveler in the South will learn that there 
 is vastly more creature comfort and contentment 
 amongst the mass of the slaves than he supposed. 
 Their general appearance gives no indication of 
 oppression." (Opinion based upon observations in 
 several cities.) He attended several slave sales, and 
 found no exhibition of brutality, no inhumanity. 
 The physical condition of the blacks was fine: " Their 
 strict regimen and discipline and their restraint from 
 vice tend to develop and perfect their physiques." 
 " Had we been at the South and the planters at the 
 North, unquestionably we should have been the 
 slaveholders, and they the Abolitionists. In habits, 
 appearance, intellectual culture, morals, and religion 
 they are our equals; in hospitality and liberality, our 
 superiors." 
 
 There can be no doubt that kind treatment of the 
 slave was the rule in nearly all parts of the South. 
 The Abolitionists never forgave Dr. Nehemiah 
 Adams, of Boston, for revealing, in his " South-Side 
 View of Slavery," the brighter side of the institution; 
 
80 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and yet he did not refuse to give the darker side also. 
 I am not defending the clerical sophistry by which 
 Dr. Adams shored up the institution, trying to put 
 out a volcano with a shovelful of Northern snow; but 
 any one who has seen a good deal of negro life in 
 the South cannot help having his risibilities excited 
 by the opening pages of Dr. Adams s book, in which 
 he tells how, on going South for the first time, with 
 fearful apprehensions, expecting to meet on all sides 
 the painful evidences of suffering, chains, manacles, 
 the whip, and looks of woe and despair, he landed 
 at Savannah, and, instead of finding negroes on 
 bended knees, with manacled hands raised implor 
 ingly, and saying, "Am not I a man and a brother?" 
 a common picture on anti-slavery broadsides and 
 tracts, he found on the wharf a lot of blacks so 
 polite, jolly, and full of catching "hi-his!" lifting 
 one leg as they laughed that he began to laugh with 
 them in spite of himself. He then goes on to tell of 
 the pleasant relations existing between master and 
 slave, as he noticed them in traveling about. 
 
 The most deeply rooted prejudice encountered by 
 the Abolitionists was " colorphobia." It was some 
 thing that could not be argued with. The cutting 
 irony of Garrison s Shorter Catechism fell upon deaf 
 ears : 
 
 " Why are slaves not fit for freedom ? Because they are 
 black. Why does the Bible justify American slavery ? Be 
 cause its victims are black. Why are the slaves contented and 
 happy ? Because they are black. Why are they not created 
 in the image of God ? Because they are black." 
 
 Negrophobia is, even now, almost as strong among 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 8l 
 
 the vulgar class of whites as it was twenty-five years 
 ago. We have educated colored people now by the 
 thousand singers, authors, judges, journalists, states 
 men even both North and South. It matters not: 
 the least strain of darker blood stamps them as of 
 the pariah caste. Europeans laugh at this color- 
 nervousness, and it is about time we had got rid of 
 it. A few years ago, Prof. Richard J. Greener and 
 Mr. Robert A. Terrell, of Washington (both colored), 
 sons of Harvard College, wished to join the Washing 
 ton Club of Harvard graduates : they were black 
 balled on account of their color, so it is said. And 
 yet, in 1889, the Senior Class of Harvard College 
 elected a gifted black man, Clement H. Morgan, to 
 the class oratorship, the highest honor at its dis 
 posal. This is encouraging, even if it was the result 
 of ballot-and-nomination cabals, as I learned at Har 
 vard. In the same year, also, Yale students chose a 
 colored man for one of the college base-ball nine. 
 Not long ago, I stood in a car of the Old Colony 
 Railroad in Boston, waiting to see a friend off for 
 New York. The seats were all taken but one, and 
 that was partly occupied by a mulatto lady, with fine 
 massive, intellectual face, and an expression of ma 
 tronly dignity. Nobody would share the seat with 
 her. One white boor stood a moment eying the 
 seat wistfully; she moved her package ; he walked 
 away without a word of thanks. The face of the 
 lady only took on a look of deeper patience and suf 
 fering. She was used to such insults. 
 
 A few years ago a beautiful and intelligent 
 lady was attending a private school in Pittsburg. 
 She stood for a year at the head of the school, and 
 6 
 
82 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 was the favorite pupil of the master. One day it 
 transpired that she had a few drops of unsuspected 
 African blood in her veins: she was at once expelled 
 by the poltroon pedagogue. 1 
 
 Again, for the heinous crime of allowing white and 
 colored students to be educated together within its 
 walls, the Atlanta University was refused its annual 
 appropriation of $8,000 by the Georgia Legislature, a 
 short time ago, and this despicable act was heartily 
 approved by the Southern press. 
 
 As the negroes move upward in the social scale, 
 they feel social ostracism more keenly. In the South, 
 the Jim Crow car is still in existence. No negro is al 
 lowed to ride first-class. A colored preacher in South 
 Carolina not long ago brought complaint against a 
 Southern railroad before the Interstate Railway 
 Commission for being ejected from a first-class car; 
 negro murders and riots are common at the South; 
 the negroes are refusing to work for the whites, and 
 the relations between the two races are strained to 
 breaking in some sections. Some of the leaders of 
 the negroes advise emigration, and in their journals 
 utter foolish threats against the " white trash," who 
 are their bitterest enemies. At the celebration of the 
 twenty-fifth anniversary of the Emancipation Procla 
 mation in Boston, Bishop H. M. Turner, the first 
 colored chaplain commissioned in the United States 
 Army, said, " Twenty-five years have made us more 
 enlightened than any freed people on the face of the 
 earth; another twenty-five years, and the white man 
 will tremble at the injustice he has done us." And 
 
 1 The Forum, October, 1889. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 83 
 
 the Hon, George P. Downing, of Newport, Rhode 
 Island, said: " For sixty years I have felt myself to 
 be the victim of injustice. Although I have never 
 committed any crime, I have never seemed to breathe 
 the free air of my native country. ... A fire of 
 dissatisfaction and grief burns in my breast. The 
 conservative speech I am now making would endan 
 ger my life in some States. While my son is spurned 
 from your counting-room, your art-museum, and 
 your church, and while my wife is forbidden to ride 
 with you in the railway car, while my countrymen 
 are murdered in the South, can you expect me to be 
 mild ? " Evidently, the work of Abolitionism is not 
 over yet. There are wrongs demanding its attention 
 nearer home than Africa, and quite as cruel as the 
 Arab slave-trade (if more subtle and more hidden 
 from view). A leading colored man of this country, 
 having recently returned from Europe, where no in 
 vidious and galling discriminations were made against 
 him on account of his color, feels the change to our 
 bigoted atmosphere so bitterly that he has made calls 
 on a large number of the leading men of his race in 
 the vicinity of New York, and secured their coopera 
 tion in the formation of a national defensive league 
 of all the colored people of America. It is clearly the 
 duty and privilege of the surviving Abolitionists and 
 their children to support them in such steps as this. 
 It is a curious fact that the old colonization scheme 
 is coming to the front again, and is by no means 
 dead and buried, as Garrison thought. The plan is 
 advocated not only by some of the blacks themselves, 
 but by Senator Wade Hampton and others. In Texas 
 a plan was recently broached (approved of and sub- 
 
84 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 sidized by the Mexican Government) to colonize the 
 blacks of Texas in Vera Cruz, Mexico, for the raising 
 of cotton and sugar-cane. 
 
 To return now to Whittier. He first saw service in 
 the field as one of the secretaries of the Philadelphia 
 Anti-slavery Convention of 33. Portions of his own 
 graphic sketch of the meeting cannot be condensed 
 or restated without loss. I shall therefore without 
 apology make somewhat copious quotations, filling 
 in the picture with an incident or two from Samuel 
 J. May s " Recollections" and other sources: 
 
 " In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November," says 
 Whittier, " forty years ago, a dear friend of mine, residing in 
 Boston, made his appearance at the old farm-house in East 
 Haverhill. He had been deputed by the Abolitionists of the 
 city William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall, and others 
 to inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the Conven 
 tion about to be held in Philadelphia for the formation of an 
 American Anti-slavery Society, and to urge upon me the neces 
 sity of my attendance. 
 
 " Few words of persuasion, however, were needed. I was 
 unused to traveling; my life had been spent on a secluded 
 farm ; and the journey, mostly by stage-coach, at that time 
 was really a formidable one. Moreover the few Abolitionists 
 were everywhere spoken against, their persons threatened, and, 
 in some instances, a price set on their heads by Southern legis 
 lators. Pennsylvania was on the borders of slavery, and it 
 needed small effort of imagination to picture to one s self the 
 breaking up of the Convention and maltreatment of its mem 
 bers. This latter consideration I do not think weighed much 
 with me, although I was better prepared for serious danger 
 than for anything like personal indignity. I had read Gov 
 ernor Trumbull s description of the tarring and feathering of 
 his hero, MacFingal, when, after the application of the melted 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 85 
 
 tar, the feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, 
 
 until 
 
 Not Maia s son with wings for ears, 
 Such plumes about his visage wears, 
 Nor Milton s six-winged angel gathers 
 Such superfluity of feathers, 
 
 and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom 
 which my best friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at. 
 But a summons like that of Garrison s bugle-blast could scarcely 
 be unheeded by one who, from birth and education, held fast 
 the traditions of that earlier Abolitionism which, under the lead 
 of Benezet and Woolman, had effaced from the Society of 
 Friends every vestige of slave-holding. I had thrown myself, 
 with a young man s fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which 
 commended itself to my reason and conscience, to my love of 
 country, and my sense of duty to God and my fellow-men. 
 My first venture in authorship was the publication, at my own 
 expense, in the spring of 1833, of a pamphlet entitled Justice 
 and Expediency, on the moral and political evils of slavery, 
 and the duty of emancipation. Under such circumstances, I 
 could not hesitate, but prepared at once for my journey. It 
 was necessary that I should start on the morrow, and the inter 
 vening time, with a small allowance for sleep, was spent in 
 providing for the care of the farm and homestead during my 
 absence." 
 
 The expenses of so long a journey were no slight 
 matter, and he had written to Mr. Garrison, when the 
 first proposal was made to him, that he would like to 
 go. " But," said he, " the expenses of the journey 
 will, I fear, be too much for me : as thee knows, our 
 farming business does not put much money in our 
 pockets." In the end his expenses were borne by the 
 generous Samuel E. Sewall. 1 
 
 1 Life of Garrison by his sons. 
 
86 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Taking the stage for Boston, he put up at the 
 old Eastern Stage Tavern, and next morning started 
 for New York by the stage-coach in company with 
 William Lloyd Garrison. On arriving in Phila- 
 delpia, the delegates first held an informal meeting 
 at the house of the Abolition Quaker, Evan Lewis. 
 The chairman of the meeting was Lewis Tappan, one 
 of the pillars of Abolitionism, a handsome, intel 
 lectual-looking man, with clear incisive tones, cool 
 self-possession, fine business qualities, and a pleasant 
 laugh. There were sixty-two members eventually 
 present, representing eleven different States, although 
 only forty were at this preliminary meeting. Their 
 object was one which would subject them to annoy 
 ance and insult, if not danger (threats had already 
 been made, and the police had notified them that 
 their meetings must be held in the day-time, as they 
 could not protect them at night). Accordingly, it was 
 thought best to try to secure a presiding officer from 
 among the prominent philanthropists in the city. So 
 six or seven of the members were delegated to wait 
 upon Thomas Wistar and Robert Vaux, wealthy 
 Quakers. Of their call upon the latter gentleman, 
 Samuel J. May says : " I wish I had some wit that I 
 might be able to do justice to the scene. But I need 
 not help you to see it in all its ludicrousness. There 
 were at least six of us Beriah Green, Evan Lewis, 
 editor of the anti-slavery journal in Philadelphia, 
 called the Advocate of Truth/ Eppingham L. Ca- 
 pron, Lewis Tappan, John G. Whittier, and myself 
 sitting around a richly furnished parlor, gravely 
 arguing by turns with the wealthy occupant, to per 
 suade him that it was his duty to come and be the 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 87 
 
 most prominent one in a meeting of men already 
 denounced as fanatics, amalgamationists, disor- 
 ganizers, disturbers of the peace, and dangerous 
 enemies of the country. Of course our suit was un 
 successful. We came away mortified much more 
 because we had made such a request than because it 
 had been denied. As we left the door, Beriah Green 
 said in his most sarcastic tone, If there is not timber 
 amongst ourselves big enough to make a president 
 of, let us get along without one, or go home and stay 
 there until we have grown up to be men. " 
 
 At the meeting next morning, in the Adelphi 
 Theatre, Beriah Green was chosen president, and 
 Whittier and Tappan secretaries. Mr. Whittier has 
 sketched some of the more prominent persons pres 
 ent, many of whom were young men, enthusiastic 
 and solemnly consecrated to the cause. Beriah 
 Green is described as an eloquent speaker, "a fresh- 
 faced, sandy-haired, rather common-looking man " ; 
 then there was the genial, large-hearted, and brave 
 Samuel May ; " that tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, 
 eagle-faced, upon whose somewhat martial figure the 
 Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley 
 Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern 
 enemy of slavery ; that slight, eager man, intensely 
 alive in every feature and gesture, was Thomas 
 Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector 
 of the free colored people of Philadelphia; . . . 
 beside him sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite 
 school of Friends, fresh from his farm in Lancaster 
 County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form 
 surmounted by a shock of unkempt [brown] hair, 
 the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting strongly 
 
88 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 with the clearness and directness of his spiritual in 
 sight. [When he spoke, says Mr. McKim, "his 
 matter was solid and clear as a bell, and was more 
 over pat to the point in question."] Elizur Wright, 
 the young professor of a Western college, who had 
 lost his place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with 
 a look of sharp concentration in keeping with an 
 intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched 
 the proceedings through his spectacles, opening his 
 mouth only to speak directly to the purpose." 
 
 Directly in front of Mr. Whittier, who sat on the 
 platform, was Joshua Coffin, his old teacher. The 
 best speech in the Convention, all allowed, was made 
 by Lucretia Mott, whose marvelously beautiful, 
 sharp-cut, and intellectual face was radiant with 
 thought. She was dressed in plain but rich Quaker 
 costume, and had a dignified and earnest manner. 
 Only on the subject of slavery was her habitual 
 placidity of manner disturbed. When she first rose 
 to speak, she hesitated in deference to the supposable 
 prejudices of the non-Quaker part of the audience, 
 among whom it was then an unheard of thing for a 
 woman to speak in public. But Beriah Green called 
 out encouragingly, " Go on, ma am, we shall all be 
 glad to hear you." And " Go on, go on ! " was echoed 
 by many more. 
 
 A Constitution was written out and adopted, and 
 officers chosen. Mr. Garrison sat up all night in the 
 attic of his colored host, Lewis Evans, to draft the 
 Declaration of Sentiments, which urged immediate 
 emancipation as a moral duty, to be attained by 
 peaceful measures, and conceded the right of the 
 separate States to manage their own domestic 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 89 
 
 interests, asserting, however, that it was the duty of 
 the general government to suppress the slave-trade 
 between the several States, and to abolish slavery 
 altogether in that territory over which it has exclusive 
 jurisdiction. After the Declaration had been dis 
 cussed, amended, and engrossed on parchment, the 
 sixty-two members (twenty-one of whom were 
 Quakers) signed it one by one. The oldest of the 
 signers, David Thurston, of Maine, lived to see the 
 emancipation of the slaves. Mr. Whittier s words in 
 relation to the Declaration have often been quoted : 
 " 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." In the little study at Amesbury hangs 
 a copy of the Declaration, in a frame made of wood 
 from Pennsylvania Hall. Of this Hall more anon. 
 
 In December, 1863, the thirtieth anniversary of the 
 founding of the American Anti-slavery Society was 
 held in Philadelphia, and interesting addresses were 
 given by Mr. Garrison, J. Miller McKim, and Lu- 
 cretia Mott. 1 In 1883, the fiftieth anniversary was 
 celebrated (after a fashion) in the same city. Only 
 three of the original signers of the Declaration were 
 alive ; namely, Robert Purvis, Elizur Wright, and 
 John G. Whittier. The latter could not come, and 
 sent a letter of regret, so that the meeting consisted 
 of two persons, Robert Purvis the chairman, and 
 Elizur Wright the audience. 
 
 The years 1834 and 1835 are often spoken of in 
 anti-slavery writings as the mob years. Mr. Whittier 
 
 1 Stenographic report of the proceedings in " Liberator," Dec. 
 25, 1863, including an interesting letter by Whittier. 
 
90 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 suffered in two of the mobs and riots of these years, 
 and was present at a third. In 1834 the mobs in New 
 York City were so numerous and violent that the 
 time in which they occurred is spoken of as the 
 Reign of Terror. In 1835 the post-office of Charleston, 
 South Carolina, was broken open by citizens, and all 
 papers judged by them to be of an inflammatory nature 
 were seized and burned. This act was condoned by 
 the United States authorities. At the famous mob 
 bing of Garrison in Boston, October 21, 1835, Mr. 
 Whittier was present, being then in Boston with his 
 sister Elizabeth, his duty as a member of the legis 
 lature requiring his presence there. He was at the 
 State House on Beacon Hill when the mobbing took 
 place ; and he at once hastened down to the old 
 State House where the broadcloth mobocrats were 
 surging wildly to and fro in the attempt to secure 
 possession of the person of Mr. Garrison. After he 
 was lodged in jail, he was visited by Mr. Whittier 
 and other friends, who found him to be in good heart. 
 Mr. Whittier was staying with his sister at the house 
 of Samuel J. May, and, hearing that the crowd had 
 threatened to attack the house, he saw his sister 
 safely bestowed for the night at another friend s, and 
 he and Mr. May passed a sleepless night in the lat- 
 ter s dwelling. Harriet Martineau, in her "Views of 
 Slavery," is amazed at the indifference shown by the 
 "respectable" classes toward this outrage ; and sore 
 amazed, too, was young Wendell Phillips, who wit 
 nessed it : the mob decided his life-work. Miss 
 Martineau writes that an eminent lawyer of Boston 
 said to her: 
 
 " Oh, there was no mob. I was there myself, and 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. QI 
 
 saw that they were all gentlemen. They were all in 
 fine broadcloth. 
 
 " * Not the less a mob for that, said I. 
 
 " Why, they protected Garrison. He received no 
 harm. They protected Garrison. 
 
 " From whom, or what ? 
 
 " Oh, they would not really hurt him. They only 
 wanted to show that they would not have such a 
 person live among them. " 
 
 We are next called upon to notice two mobs that 
 occurred farther north, and both on the same even 
 ing. In the Haverhill mob Mr. Whittier s sister 
 Elizabeth was in danger of her life ; and in that of 
 Concord, New Hampshire, directed against Mr. Whit- 
 tier himself and his friend George Thompson (the 
 English orator, afterwards member of Parliament), 
 these two men were in serious danger. At Haverhill, 
 it was a Sunday evening lecture by Samuel J. May 
 that brought out the lewd fellows of the baser sort. 
 Amid terrible yells and other noises a stone came 
 crashing through the window, after the lecture had 
 begun, and struck a lady on the head. She uttered 
 a shriek, and fell bleeding into the arms of her sister. 
 Mr. May closed the meeting, and escaped by walking 
 out between Elizabeth Whittier and the daughter of 
 a wealthy and determined citizen of the place. 
 
 The mob-ordeal through which Whittier and 
 George Thompson passed in Concord, New Hamp 
 shire, in 1835, was perhaps not excelled in thrilling 
 and picturesque incident by any other during the 
 anti-slavery struggle. 1 It happened in this wise ; 
 
 I have constructed the narrative of the Concord mob not only 
 
92 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 George Thompson, the English lecturer, was visiting 
 Mr. Whittier at Haverhill; and, thinking they would 
 not be recognized, they determined to take a drive 
 up into New Hampshire to visit N. P. Rogers. They 
 stopped over night in Concord at the house of George 
 Kent, a brother-in-law of Mr. Rogers. After they had 
 gone, Mr. Kent, being an Abolitionist, determined 
 to try to hire a hall for a meeting, to be held when the 
 friends should return. Accordingly, it was arranged 
 that they should be back on the Friday following. 
 The use of the Court House was obtained for the 
 meeting, and handbills were posted announcing that 
 George Thompson and John G. Whittier would 
 address the citizens, setting forth the aims and views 
 of the Abolitionists. Now, nobody had anything 
 against the little-known young man Whittier ; but 
 the mention of Thompson created tremendous excite 
 ment and wrath ; for it was then the implicit belief of 
 the people that Thompson, "the carpet-bagger," was 
 an emissary of the British Government, sent over here 
 to foster dissension between North and South, and 
 
 from a description of it given to me by Mr. Whittier himself 
 some years ago, but from the accounts of others to whom he has 
 told the story. My thanks are due to the D. Lothrop Co., of Bos 
 ton, for the use of material embodied in their " Whittier" ; I am 
 also indebted to Underwood s "Whittier"; to reminiscences of 
 Mrs. Julia Ward Ho\re (" Cosmopolitan," July, 1889); to Rossiter 
 Johnson s "Short History of Secession" ; ihe reminiscences of 
 John M. Barbour (Boston " Transcript," August, 1889) ; letter of 
 Mr. Whittier to J.W. Powell (New York "Tribune," 1885); a letter 
 by the same to the Haverhill "Gazette," reprinted in the " Liber 
 ator," Oct. 3, 35 ; and Bouton s " History of Concord," pp. 434, 
 435. which is good for names and dates, but glosses over or is 
 silent about the worst features of the outrage. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 93 
 
 so cripple our industries. The indignation of the 
 townsmen was so strong that Gen. Robert Dana, 
 chairman of the Board of Selectmen, called on 
 George Kent, and advised that the meeting should 
 not be held, and directed that the door of the Court 
 House be locked. 
 
 Nevertheless, at the appointed time, the Abolition 
 ists and their opponents began to assemble around 
 the building. Whittier and Thompson had arrived 
 and put up at George Kent s beautiful residence ; 
 and, not knowing that their arrival had been bruited 
 abroad, Whittier, in company with Mr. C. Hoag (a 
 Quaker) and editor Joseph H. Kimball, started just 
 at dusk down the street. As they passed along the 
 principal thoroughfare, they met a large concourse of 
 men all crazy with liquor, and shouting and yelling 
 furiously. They had just subjected to rough treat 
 ment a poor traveling Quaker preacher who was 
 passing through the town. They took him to be 
 Whittier, the Abolitionist. 
 
 "The good people," writes Mr. Whittier, "were 
 lashing each other into a fine frenzy, cursing the Abo 
 litionists as Federalists, etc. The cry was raised, 
 To George Kenfs and the wine in his cellar ! Fear 
 ing an attack on our friend s house, we turned to go 
 back and give warning of the danger. But our 
 friends, the mobites ["our friends, the enemy ! "] fol 
 lowed us, and insisted that I, notwithstanding my 
 Quaker coat, must be the identical incendiary and 
 fanatic, George Thompson. A regular shower of 
 harmless curses followed, and soon after another 
 equally harmless shower of stones [dirt, and gravel]. 
 These missiles were hurled with some force, and 
 
94 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 might have done us some injury, had not those who 
 projected them been somewhat overdone by their 
 patriotic exertions in drinking destruction to the 
 Abolitionists." 
 
 We know from other sources that Mr. Whittier s 
 hat was knocked off and lost, and that he was bruised 
 in the face by a large stone hurled at him. He was 
 afterwards told by one of the mobbers that it was 
 their intention to catch him and paint his face black. 
 As the trio were retreating, Whittier heard an Irish 
 man say, " They ve killed the Englishman, and now 
 they re going for the Quaker." 
 
 The pelted three were followed up Washington 
 Street and down State, where they found it necessary 
 to take shelter in the house of the Hon. William A. 
 Kent. Although he was not an Abolitionist, the 
 rioters knew him to be a brave man. He barred his 
 door, and addressed the crowd, assuring them they 
 had mistaken their man, that George Thompson was 
 not in the house, and that they should have Whittier 
 only over his dead body. 
 
 In the meantime it had grown dark ; and Whittier, 
 remembering the remark of the Irishman in the 
 crowd concerning Thompson, became so anxious as 
 to his fate that he borrowed a hat, succeeded in 
 passing the enemy s lines, and arrived safe at George 
 Kent s, where he found Mr. Thompson unhurt and 
 cheerful. 
 
 After some delay on the part of the mob, the cry 
 " Onward ! " was raised, and they moved off to 
 George Kent s. After some stone-throwing and 
 much blasphemy, they were decoyed away by a 
 stratagem. But after parading the town for an hour 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 95 
 
 or two, " refreshed with Deacon Giles s best," they 
 once more returned (having discovered the trick), 
 provided with drums, fifes, muskets, and a cannon, 
 and threatened to blow up the house if the d d 
 Abolitionists were not delivered up to them, in the 
 meantime keeping up a continuous uproar of bray 
 ing, cat-calling, and swearing. 
 
 Now, it so happened that a little group of anti- 
 slavery people were met that evening at George 
 Kent s, among them being two nieces of Daniel 
 Webster. They all felt that the lives of Whittter and 
 Thompson were in danger, and that they ought to 
 try to get away. To this proposal Whittier, at least, 
 was able to agree unhesitatingly ; for he had always 
 had a nervous dread, not of death, but of suffering 
 gross personal indignities. The mob filled the street 
 just below Mr. Kent s carriage-gate, leaving a way of 
 possible escape through it. Accordingly, the horse 
 and carriage were drawn up quietly in the shadow of 
 the house. It was a bright moonlight night, and the 
 glint of the musket-barrels could be seen just below. 
 Suddenly the two friends jumped into the carriage, 
 the gate was opened, and the horse driven off at a 
 gallop amid the yells and shots of the rioters. 
 
 After the escape, these fellows paraded an effigy 
 through the streets, and afterwards burned it in the 
 State House yard, concluding the orgie with a dis 
 play of fire-works and discharges of cannon. 
 
 The two friends left the city by way of Hook- 
 set Bridge, the only way open to them, and took the 
 road to Haverhill. They had received minute and 
 careful directions from their friends, and got further 
 directions at the house of an anti-slavery man three 
 
96 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 miles out from Concord. In the morning they 
 stopped at a tavern to give themselves and the horse 
 a breakfast. While they were eating, the landlord 
 entertained them with a report of the Haverhill mob. 
 Said one of the friends to the host, 
 
 " What kind of a fellow is this Whittier ? " 
 " Oh, he s an ignorant sort of chap, a Quaker 
 farmer." 
 
 " And who is this Thompson they re talking 
 about ? " 
 
 " Him ? He s a man sent over here by the British 
 government to make trouble between the North and 
 the South." 
 
 As the two gentlemen were stepping into the 
 carriage, Whittier, with one foot on the step, turned 
 and said to the landlord : 
 
 " You ve been talkin about Thompson and 
 Whittier. This is Mr. Thompson, and I m Whittier. 
 Good morning." 
 
 " And, jumping into the carriage " (said Mr. Whittier 
 to the writer, with a twinkle in his eye), " we stood 
 not on the order of our going." The good Boniface 
 looked stupefied with wonder. " And for all I know," 
 said the poet, " he s standing there still with his 
 mouth open." 
 
 After this adventure, Mr. Thompson was kept 
 quietly at the Whittier farm-house for a couple of 
 weeks. For the indignities he suffered at Concord, 
 Whittier had ample revenge, in that stinging way in 
 which men of the pen have always defended their 
 sensibilities; namely, by the publication of a brace 
 of satirical ballads, the " Letter Supposed to be 
 Written by the Chairman of the Central Clique at 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 97 
 
 Concord " (1846), and the following verses, which, 
 indeed, appeared a year previous to the mobbing of 
 Whittier and Thompson, but were published in the 
 first edition of the poems in 1837, and have not since 
 been reprinted : 
 
 APOLOGY 
 
 TO THE " CHIVALROUS SONS OF THE SOUTH," FOR THE FORMATION OF 
 
 THE LADIES ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, IN c D, N. H. 
 
 Most chivalrous gentlemen, pardon us, pray, 
 
 And pity our present condition, 
 The lady fanatics have carried the day, 
 
 And openly preach Abolition ! 
 The petticoat-plotters, with might and with main, 
 Are tearing the bonds of the Union in twain ! 
 
 We knew, to our sorrow, that over their tea 
 These ladies, for months, had been brewing 
 
 A plot to dismember the Union, and free 
 Your slaves, to their positive ruin: 
 
 But who would have dreamed that they ever would dare, 
 
 In the face of New Hampshire, their purpose declare ! 
 
 Oh, where had the fear of the P 1 gone 
 
 From the eyes of these turbulent ladies ? 
 And where Parson F k s indignation and scorn 
 
 Which overwhelmed all, when he made his 
 Great speech at our Democrat gathering, when 
 Abolition was working its way with the men ? 
 
 Alack and alas ! that we live to relate 
 
 How these Amazons gathered together, 
 Consulting each other, in solemn debate, 
 
 About loosing the slave from his tether ; 
 And gravely resolving your negroes to be 
 Created like all of us equal and free. 
 
 7 
 
98 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 But think not, dear sirs, that with conduct so base 
 
 " The Democracy " rested in quiet : 
 No, it rose in its strength to redeem from disgrace 
 
 The town by a regular riot ! 
 
 And, surrounding the house where the mischief went on, 
 Plied well the " fanatics " with brickbat and stone. 
 
 Through door and through window our missiles went in, 
 
 Disturbing the laces and trimming, 
 Oh, would that " our dear Southern brethren " had seen 
 
 How " Democracy " pelted the women ! 
 And had heard, midst the crashing of brickbats, its shout- 
 " Hurrah for the Union ! you women, clear out ! 
 
 Yet it grieves us to say that in spite of our great 
 
 And most patriotic exertion, 
 These petticoat-traitors regarded our feat 
 
 As merely a cause of diversion ; 
 And still they went on, without let or disaster, 
 To spoil " the relations of servant and master." 
 
 But, though foiled in its efforts to drive away 
 
 This bevy of gossip and beauty, 
 " The Democracy " feels, and rejoices to say, 
 
 That it fully performed its duty ; 
 
 And it trusts that its friends will with cheerfulness own 
 That all that it could do, m safety, was done ! 
 
 We are sadly disheartened, and all in a fret 
 
 Parson F k is about to absquatalize, 
 
 And B t n beneath the State s Prison debt 
 
 Is hiding himself from mortal eyes ; 
 
 Even H 11 cannot help us his hands are too full, 
 
 Making C h n a " Democrat died in the wool." 
 
 WHITE SLAVE, DOUGHFACE, & Co. 1 
 
 The verses first appeared in the "Liberator" Jan. j, 1835. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 99 
 
 In February, 1836, some five months after the 
 event of the mob, we find Whittier addressing an 
 open letter to Edward Everett (printed in " Liber 
 ator," February 20, of that year). 
 
 " To EDWARD EVERETT, GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS : 
 " Exercising, while yet I may, the unsurrendered right of a 
 free citizen of Massachusetts, with due respect for thy official 
 station, but with the frankness which becomes a republican, I 
 feel myself called upon to address thee, in relation to that por 
 tion of thy late Message which is devoted to the subject of 
 Slavery." 
 
 Whittier disagrees with Governor Everett as to his 
 statement that at the time the United States Consti 
 tution was formed the question of slavery was an 
 open one. He affirms that the signers simply left 
 the slavery question as it was, without at all desiring 
 to perpetuate it. In proof, he cites the fact that 
 Benjamin Franklin, although a signer of both the 
 Declaration and the Constitution, also signed another 
 Constitution not long after ; namely, that of the 
 Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. 
 He continues : 
 
 "George Washington was another signer of the Constitution. 
 I know that he was a slaveholder ; and I have not forgotten 
 the emotions which swelled my bosom, when in the metropolis 
 
 and refer to a mob which occurred in Concord, New Hampshire, 
 Nov. 14, 1834 (not noticed in the " History of Concord," but date 
 recoverable from "Liberator" Dec. 13, 34, which contains an 
 
 article on the affair). "Parson F k" is undoubtedly Rev. 
 
 Wilbur Fisk, one of the most abusive and malignant" of the 
 opponents of George Thompson. "C h n" is evidently for 
 Calhoun. 
 
100 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of New England, the Cradle of Liberty, a degenerate son of the 
 Pilgrims pointed to his portrait, which adorns the wall, with 
 the thrice repeated exclamation, That Slaveholder ! I saw 
 the only blot on the otherwise bright and spotless character of 
 the Father of his Country held to open view exposed by 
 remorseless hands to sanction a system of oppression and 
 blood. It seemed to me like sacrilege. I looked upon those 
 venerable and awful features, while the echoes, once wakened 
 in that old Hall by the voice of ancient Liberty, warm from the 
 lips of Adams and Hancock and the fiery heart of James Otis, 
 gave back from wall and gallery the exulting cry of Slave 
 holder, half expecting to see the still canvas darken with a 
 frown, and the pictured lips part asunder with words of rebuke 
 and sorrow. 1 I felt it, as did hundreds more, on that occasion, 
 to be a reproach and a cruel insult to the memory of the illus 
 trious dead. Did not the speaker know that the dying testi 
 mony of Washington was against slavery ? " 9 
 
 1 The famous sentence of Wendell Phillips " I thought those 
 pictured lips would have broken into voice, to rebuke the recreant 
 American " was clearly plagiarized, by an unconscious act of mem 
 ory, from the above eloquent passage by Whittier written nearly 
 two years previous to the Faneuil Hall speech by Phillips. Young 
 Phillips had been mightily aroused by the Garrison mob, some 
 months before the date of Whittier s open letter to Everett, and 
 had resolved to devote his life to the cause of Freedom. He had 
 undoubtedly, therefore, read Whittier s strong and manly letter to 
 the Governor, and remembered, dimly, the passage in question. 
 
 2 By the will of Washington all his slaves were to be freed on 
 the death of his wife. It was his ardent desire to free his own 
 slaves during his life, but their intermarriage with the dower slaves 
 of his wife caused " insuperable difficulties," so he said. It is 
 evident that both he and his wife were guilty of weakness and 
 cowardice in this matter. There were no insuperable difficulties in 
 the way of doing right. However, we must have charity. No 
 doubt they acted in accordance with all the light given them. To 
 an aristocratic Virginia gentleman and lady of the eighteenth 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. IOI 
 
 Whittier then quotes from several letters of Wash 
 ington, in which that statesman expresses an ardent 
 desire for the abolition of slavery : 
 
 " I come now to that portion of thy remarks which of all 
 others seems most reprehensible. After admitting the repug 
 nance of our people to laws impairing the liberty of speech 
 and of the press, the patriotism of all classes of citizens is in 
 voked to abstain from a discussion of the subject of Slavery. 
 Abstain from discussion ! What more does the Holy Alliance 
 require ? What more does Gov. McDuffie demand ? Is this 
 the age are ours the laws are the sons of the Pilgrims the 
 men for advice like this ? What ! when the whole world is 
 
 century, living in something like patriarchal or feudal style, on an 
 isolated estate, emancipation presented itself in a different light 
 from what it does to us now. There is extant a curious open letter 
 addressed to Washington on this subject by a certain Edward Rush- 
 ton, of Liverpool, in 1797, two years before Washington s death. 
 The reason why Washington returned his pamphlet to Rushton 
 " under cover, without a syllable in reply," will appear from the 
 following sentence in it : " The hypocritical bawd who preaches 
 chastity, yet lives by the violation of it, is not more truly disgust 
 ing than one of your slave-holding gentry bellowing in favor of 
 democracy." Rushton s letter is not mentioned in any of the 
 numerous Lives of Washington, which, like nearly all biographies, 
 are careful whitewashes. In 1835 a visitor to Mount Vernon 
 found several of Washington s freed slaves Sambo Anderson, 
 Dick Jasper, and others engaged in gratuitous work for the im 
 provement of the turf about his tomb. They stated that they had 
 offered their services as the only way in which they could show 
 their love for the man who had been more than a father to them 
 (" New Eng. Anti-si. Almanac," 1841, p. 2). See in " Liberator," 
 March 22, 34, a long letter from Washington s degenerate nephew, 
 who tries to excuse himself for selling fifty of his slaves south, and 
 separating wives and husbands. He talks of them as if they were 
 so many hogs, " my property," etc. 
 
102 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 moved when the very foundations of principalities and powers 
 are upheaving with the one great impulse of the age the ir 
 resistible workings of Free Inquiry is it in Massachusetts, 
 over the graves of Adams and Warren and Hancock and Otis, 
 that the spirit of free investigation is to be arrested and stricken 
 dumb ? ... Is this the advice of a republican magistrate 
 to a community of freemen ? Far fitter is it for the banks of 
 the Bosphorus and the Neva than for those of the Connecticut 
 and the Merrimack." 
 
 Whittier then alludes to Edward Everett s atro 
 cious assertion of his willingness to buckle on a 
 knapsack and shoulder a musket to help fight the 
 battles of the slaveholders, and closes with the re 
 fusal to yield the home-bred right of free discussion 
 to the demands of interested politicians. " We can 
 neither permit the gag to be thrust in our mouths by 
 others, nor deem it the part of * patriotism to place 
 it there ourselves." 
 
 The next mob by which Mr. Whittier, in common 
 with others, was made a sufferer was that which was 
 guilty of the burning of the Pennsylvania Hall, in 
 Philadelphia, in the spring of 1838. He had been 
 appointed in 1836 one of the Secretaries of the Amer 
 ican Anti-slavery Society, and had gone to New York 
 City in the autumn of 1837, remaining there three 
 months. His colleagues were Henry B. Stanton and 
 Theodore D. Weld. Late in the autumn he went on 
 to Philadelphia to write for the " Pennsylvania Free 
 man," a paper that had formerly been edited by 
 Benjamin Lundy, under the title of the " National . 
 Enquirer." Mr. Whittier became editor of the " Free 
 man " in March, 1838. He tells us that at this time 
 he used often to be attracted from the heat and 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 103 
 
 bustle of the city by the quiet and beautiful scenery 
 of the village of Frankford, where was the residence 
 of Thomas Chalkley, the West India merchant and 
 Friends minister, " gentlest of skippers, rare sea- 
 saint," who is spoken of in "Snow-Bound," and in 
 Whittier s " Chalkley Hall." In Philadelphia, too, he 
 met his old friends, the Thayers, of Haverhill. 
 
 The little group of anti-slavery people in Phila 
 delphia had united with other progressive philan 
 thropists in the building of a large hall for free dis 
 cussion. It stood on the corner of Sixth and Cherry 
 Streets, near the Adelphi Theatre. It had cost $40,- 
 ooo; and the painter, plumber, and clockmaker were 
 just giving it the last touches when a three days con 
 vention May 15, 16, and 17 was begun in it by way 
 of dedication ceremony. Garrison, Burleigh,Whittier, 
 and other leading Abolitionists were present. The 
 building was large and commodious, the main hall 
 (with the galleries) having a seating capacity of two 
 thousand. On the front were to be seen, in large 
 gilded letters, occupying nearly the whole width of 
 the structure, the words PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 
 On the ground floor were various offices, including 
 the anti-slavery bookstore, and the office of Whittier s 
 " Freeman," which he had just had removed thither. 
 
 During the first day s session there was little dis 
 turbance. On the second day was held an Anti- 
 slavery Convention of American Women in the new 
 hall, five hundred women being present. William 
 Lloyd Garrison opened the meeting with a short 
 speech. Attempts were made by a mob outside to 
 break up the convention by hurling showers of stones 
 against the windows. The glass was broken, but the 
 
104 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 inside blinds prevented the stones from entering the 
 room. Amid the uproar and confusion, Mrs. Maria 
 W. Chapman, of Boston, rose and addressed the audi 
 ence. Sarah Grimke wrote at the time: " She is the 
 most beautiful woman I ever saw; the perfection of 
 sweetness and intelligence being blended in her 
 speaking countenance. She arose amid the yells and 
 shouts of the infuriated mob, the crash of windows, 
 and the hurling of stones. She looked to me like an 
 angelic being descended amid that tempest of pas 
 sion in all the benignity of conscious superiority." 1 
 The next speaker was Angelina Grimke Weld, who, 
 three days previous, had been married to Theodore D. 
 Weld. 2 She spoke for over an hour on the sin of 
 slavery. The influence of her pure, beautiful presence 
 and quiet manner was such that in a few moments the 
 noise within the hall had ceased. But stones continued 
 to crash against the windows. " What is a mob ? " she 
 said. " What would the breaking of every window be ? 
 Any evidence that we are wrong, or that slavery is a 
 good or wholesome institution ? What if the mob 
 should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting, 
 and commit violence upon our persons, would this 
 be anything compared with what the slaves endure ? " 
 
 At the close of the meeting each colored woman 
 present was taken for protection between two white 
 ones ; and thus, amid showers of missiles and jeering 
 words, they passed out. 
 
 The immediate cause of the disturbances of this 
 
 1 Life of the Grimke Sisters, p. 239. 
 
 2 Mr. Whittier is so strict a Quaker that he obeyed the rules of 
 the church, which forbade his attendance at this marriage of two 
 dear friends of his, one of whom, the lady, was a Quaker. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 105 
 
 day and of the crowning catastrophe of the day fol 
 lowing lay in the spread of a ridiculous rumor that 
 the meeting was held in the interests of amalgamation. 
 Amalgamation was the great bugbear (or cantingly 
 feigned to be such) in those days among the unedu 
 cated populace. Not to believe that Abolitionists 
 were all rank amalgamationists was as great a heresy 
 as disbelief in the Plot was during the Lord George 
 Gordon riots. Several incidents unfortunately tended 
 to inflame the popular ideas on this occasion. A 
 wealthy and educated young colored farmer hap 
 pened to come to the Women s Convention in a car 
 riage with his wife, who was darker than himself ; 
 whereupon the report went out that a white man had 
 brought a colored girl with him in his carriage to the 
 hall. Again, the wife and sister-in-law of a respect 
 able colored citizen (who was the son of a governor 
 of one of the Southern States) were seen walking 
 with their own cousin, who was darker than they, 
 and the mob had it that a black man was seen walk 
 ing with two pretty white girls. Said the " Coloniza 
 tion Herald ": u In our quiet city of Philadelphia, in 
 which masquerades are forbidden by legislative 
 enactment, there has been, notwithstanding, a season 
 of carnival. Some hundreds of persons of both sexes 
 and all colors, the more prominent of whom were 
 white, black, and yellow, had agreed to keep high 
 festival in honor of a hybrid and piebald equality, 
 which they invoked in a new and spacious edifice 
 recently erected by some of their associates in the 
 idolatrous worship. . . . But when there was 
 seen here a black beau escorting two interesting and 
 pretty white females there a white man, more advanced 
 
106 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 in years, parading up and down a street with a sable 
 dame on each arm, and a procession in the most public 
 street of black and white duly intermixed [the trios of 
 women before mentioned] the people began to 
 express their dissatisfaction." 
 
 All through the next day the meetings in Pennsyl 
 vania Hall were disturbed by the mob. The presid 
 ing officer was Dr. Daniel Neall. An incident of the 
 day is thus related by Mr. Whittier: 
 
 "I was standing near Dr. Neall while the glass of 
 the windows, broken by missiles, showered over him, 
 and a deputation of the rioters forced its way to the 
 platform and demanded that the meeting should be 
 closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to 
 its utmost height. 
 
 " I am here, he said, the president of this meet 
 ing, and I will be torn in pieces before I leave my 
 place at your dictation. Go back to those who sent 
 you. I shall do my duty. " 
 
 About sunset, a mob of twenty-five thousand men 
 surrounding the hall, the mayor, John Swift, appeared, 
 and told the president that, if the keys of the building 
 were given to him, he could induce the rioters to dis 
 perse. This was done, and he spoke as follows to the 
 crowd: " There will be no meeting here this evening. 
 The house has been given up to me. The managers 
 had the right to hold the meeting, but as good citizens 
 they have, at my request, suspended their meeting 
 for this evening. We never call out the military 
 here ! We do not need such measures. Indeed, I 
 would, fellow-citizens, look upon you as my police ! 
 I trust you will abide by the laws and keep order. 
 I now bid you farewell for the night." 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. IOJ 
 
 The crowd of course understood the double mean 
 ing conveyed in these crafty and ambiguous words, 
 and immediately shouted, "The mayor won t hurt 
 us the mayor is our friend the mayor hates Amal 
 gamation and Abolition as bad as we do ! " 
 
 About seven and a half o clock the rioters (con 
 spicuous among whom were a number of Southern 
 medical students) burst open the door, broke out all 
 the windows to let the air have free circulation, tore 
 down the blinds and piled them around the speaker s 
 desk, adding books and papers from the basement, 
 then set fire to the heap, turned on the gas, and left 
 the room. The crowd gave a great shout of joy as 
 the smoke and flame appeared. The now thoroughly 
 alarmed mayor reappears with the High Sheriff; they 
 are hustled unceremoniously about by the crowd. A 
 number of hand fire-engines are tardily brought 
 along ; but the " gallant " firemen take their cue from 
 the crowd, and the exact truth is represented in the 
 quaint engraving by Sartain, in the pamphlet history 
 of the hall, where the firemen are shown throwing 
 streams of water upon every other building in the 
 vicinity except the hapless hall of liberty. " The fire- 
 companies," says a Southerner, writing to the Au 
 gusta " Chronicle," " repaired tardily to the scene of 
 action, and not a drop of water did they pour upon 
 that accursed Moloch until it was a heap of ruins. 
 Sir, it would have gladdened your heart to have be 
 held that lofty tower of mischief enveloped in 
 flames." 
 
 Whittier s office in the basement was looted, and 
 all his papers, books, and other property destroyed, 
 as were also Benjamin Lundy s effects, his papers, 
 
108 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 books, and all his clothing except what he was wear 
 ing at the time. The publication of the " Pennsyl 
 vania Freeman" was not, however, suspended, but 
 continued to be edited by Whittier for over a year. 
 The day after the fire, the members of the Anti- 
 slavery Society met by the smoking ruins, amid the 
 howling mob, and calmly transacted the business of 
 the day. The tumult continued for a week, during 
 which the Shelter for Colored Orphans was partially 
 burned. It was also the intention of the ruffians to 
 loot the house of James and Lucretia Mott. They 
 accordingly made preparations to receive the mob by 
 sending away the children and a part of their furni 
 ture. They then sat down in the parlor, with a few 
 neighbors, to await the result. About eight o clock 
 in the evening the shouts of the mob could be heard 
 not far off, now here, now there ; but they finally 
 concluded to make the Home for the Orphans the 
 object of their attack, and so the Motts escaped. 1 
 
 The next number of the " Pennsylvania Freeman " 
 contained a full account of the burning of the hall. a 
 I transcribe from Whittier s editorial a few glowing 
 sentences : 
 
 " Not in vain, we trust, has the persecution fallen upon us. 
 Fresher and purer for the fiery baptism, the cause lives in our 
 hearts. . . . Woe unto us if we falter through the fear of 
 man ! . . . Citizens of Pennsylvania ! your rights as well 
 as ours have been violated in this dreadful outrage. . . . 
 In the heart of your free city, within view of the Hall of Inde 
 pendence, whose spire and roof reddened in the flame of the 
 
 1 Life of the Motts by Mrs. Hallowell, p. 129. 
 9 Quoted in the " Liberator," June i, 1838. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 109 
 
 sacrifice [with shame, perhaps ?] the deed has been done, and 
 the shout which greeted the falling ruin was the shout of Slavery 
 over the grave of Liberty. . . . Are we pointed to the smok 
 ing ruins of that beautiful temple of Freedom, which we fondly 
 hoped would have long echoed the noble and free sentiments 
 of a Franklin, a Rush, a Benezet, a Jay ; and as we look sadly 
 on its early downfall, are we bidden to learn hence the fate of 
 our own dwellings if we persevere ? Think not the intimation 
 will drive us from our post. . . . We feel that God has 
 called us to this work, and if it be his purpose that we should 
 finish what we have begun, He can preserve us, though it be 
 as in the lions den, or the sevenfold-heated furnace." 
 
 Whittier s lyrics of freedom were written in the 
 strength of his mature and seasoned manhood, and 
 were either read at anti-slavery gatherings or pub 
 lished in the Abolition papers of the time. They 
 often appeared anonymously, but were always 
 recognized, copied in paper after paper, and quoted 
 again and again in speeches and essays. Occasion 
 ally, when recited in public meetings, their cutting 
 satire would cause the tumult of the men of Alsatia 
 to break out with redoubled fury. They were imi 
 tated freely and copiously by the poetlings of the 
 day, and the old files of newspapers contain many 
 and many a poem written in Whittier s honor by 
 these worthy people. As appeals to manhood and 
 womanhood and spurs to ideal action, the slogans, 
 or war-cries, of the march, the influence of Whittip.r s 
 
 voices of frppdpf" wag rWp anH pprrrmnpnf Like 
 
 grains of ambergris or pungent spices, they diffused 
 their fiery quality through the mind and stole softly 
 and unperceived into the heart. A whole generation 
 drew heroic nourishment from them, as the thirsty 
 
110 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 roots of the willow draw water from the brook. In 
 many families Whittier s poems were learned by the. 
 children for declamation, and recited in concert 
 around their mother s knee. 1 Said Prof. J. B. Thayer, 
 of Harvard College, to an instructor at the Friends 
 School in Providence, in 1884, " Tell your boys and 
 girls that, however much they admire and love Whit- 
 tier, they cannot know what a fire and passion of 
 enthusiasm he kindled in the hearts of the little com 
 pany of anti-slavery boys and girls of my time, when 
 they read his early poems." And Thomas Wentworth 
 Higginson, in a poem to Whittier, writes: 
 
 " At dawn of manhood came a voice to me 
 That said to startled conscience, Sleep no more ! 
 * * * * * * 
 
 If any good to me or from me came 
 
 Through life, and if no influence less divine 
 
 Has quite usurped the place of duty s flame ; 
 
 If aught rose worthy in this heart of mine, 
 
 Aught that, viewed backward, wears no shade of shame ; 
 
 Bless thee, old friend ! for that high call was thine." 
 
 Shortly after the appearance of Whittier s superb 
 poem, " Massachusetts to Virginia," 
 
 " We hear thy threats, Virginia ! thy stormy words and high 
 Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our 
 sky," 
 
 an imitative response, in the same metre, was printed. 
 Its allusions are very interesting as showing how 
 Whittier s lyrics influenced people: 
 
 Lillie B. Chace Wyman, in " Atlantic Monthly," August, 89 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. Ill 
 
 " We greet thee, eldest sister, that from thy lip has broke 
 The voice of warning and rebuke, as if a prophet spoke 
 Unshackled as the mountain winds that o er thy valleys sweep, 
 And, mingling with the swelling waves, their ocean-anthem 
 keep. 
 
 " Our yeomanry have paused to catch the spirit-thrilling tone, 
 The poet s soul around thy words has beautifully thrown, 
 And the maiden stops her busy wheel to cast her flashing eye 
 Along the page that seems to ring the Bay State s banner cry. 
 
 " The schoolboy up among our hills has caught its words of 
 
 truth, 
 
 And shouts them with the fiery heart and eloquence of youth, 
 And moves the souls and stirs the blood of gray and aged men, 
 As if they heard the voice of Stark, or Langdon s words again." l 
 
 The following note to the 37 edition of the poems 
 was probably penned by Garrison, who is thought to 
 have edited the volume. The book was put forth in 
 Boston during Whittier s absence. The editor says : 
 " On the appearance of these stanzas [" Our fellow- 
 countrymen in chains ! "] in the Liberator, it was 
 predicted by Garrison that * they would ring from 
 Maine to the Rocky Mountains, and the prophecy 
 has been fulfilled. They have been circulated in 
 periodicals, quoted in addresses and orations, and 
 scattered broadcast over the land, beneath the kneel 
 ing slave and motto Am I not a man and a brother ? 
 the device of Cowper and the English Abolition- 
 
 1 Other metrical imitations were written from Vermont, Ohio, 
 and Pennsylvania. Indeed, their name was legion. Whittier 
 must have got pretty sick of these parrot-echoes before the fever 
 subsided. 
 
112 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 ists. 1 In this last form, they have roused the con 
 sciences of slaveholders in New Orleans, have been 
 held up to a Boston audience by the sophist Gurley, 
 after a fruitless endeavor to create a tumult by one 
 of his strong appeals to prejudice and selfishness, 
 and have been displayed by the noble-souled May 
 before a Massachusetts legislature, as a refutation of 
 the charge of incendiarism cast on the Abolitionists 
 by the legislature of the South." 
 
 A reviewer in 1848 said of the poems of freedom : 
 " We know nothing of the physical mould of this J. G. 
 Whittier ; but if he can speak his poems, breathing 
 into the delivery the same living fire which is em 
 bodied in them, and if he will do it, even in the 
 strongholds of conventionalism, in the hearing of 
 brave men and fair women, the former may restrain 
 their indignation at the wrong upon which he pours 
 his scathing reproof, and the latter may forbid their 
 tears to flow for the suffering which he commiserates, 
 if they can." a 
 
 There is a striking resemblance between the por 
 trait of Whittier and that of Ebenezer Elliott, the 
 English Corn-Law rhymer. Elliott s poems were 
 published in 1834 in book form, and were often 
 quoted in anti-slavery journals. There can be little 
 doubt that Whittier s style was influenced pretty 
 strongly by Elliott s. He and the Corn-Law rhymer 
 were both ardent admirers of Burns, and wrote many 
 of their reform poems in Burns s eight-line stanza. 
 
 1 The reference is to a huge broadside containing the poem, and 
 headed by the picture of a prodigious manacled black. 
 * D. March, in " New Englander," 1848, p. 63. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 113 
 
 Out of the half hundred or more of the voices of 
 freedom I would indicate the following round dozen 
 as by far the best, and would advise those first mak 
 ing Whittier s acquaintance to read and re-read these: 
 " The Virginia Slave-Mother s Lament," " Massachu 
 setts to Virginia," " The Branded Hand," " Paean," 
 " Stanzas for the Times," " The Hunters of Men," 
 " Clerical Oppressors," " The Slave-Ships," " Stanzas " 
 ( u Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! "), " Ichabod," 
 " The Rendition," and " Laus Deo ! " The American 
 who can read these splendid lyrics without quickened 
 pulse may consider that his patriotism and his moral 
 sense are dead beyond recall. " The Virginia Slave- 
 Mother s Lament," wrote John Bright to a friend in 
 this country, " has often brought tears to my eyes. It 
 is short, but it is worth a volume on the great ques 
 tion. . . . These few lines were enough to rouse 
 a whole nation to expel from among you the odious 
 crime of slavery." 
 
 The poem " Ichabod " (" So fallen ! so lost ! " etc.), 
 concerning Daniel Webster s notorious volte-face on 
 the slavery question, was much admired by Emerson. 
 It was written at a white heat of indignation, just 
 after Webster s famous yth of March speech, 1850, 
 in which he argued that no further restrictions on 
 the extension of slavery into the Territories of Cali 
 fornia and New Mexico were needed, that the Fugitive 
 Slave Law must be obeyed, that colonization of the 
 free negroes was desirable, and that the labors of the 
 Abolitionists had served only to fasten the system of 
 slavery more firmly than ever on the South. After 
 reading this speech, Whittier wrote to Garrison, " The 
 scandalous treachery of Webster and the backing he 
 8 
 
114 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 has received from Andover and Harvard 1 show that 
 we have nothing to hope for from the great political 
 parties and religious sects." All Abolitionists re 
 ceived the blow with wrath and terror, but not with 
 surprise. Webster had been for ten years leaning 
 toward apostasy. I find in an old file of anti-slavery 
 papers (as early as 1840) such sentences as these : 
 " Daniel Webster has at length bowed the knee to 
 Baal" (Advocate)] "Daniel Webster, the champion 
 of the Constitution/ has at length consented to re 
 ceive the mark of the beast in his forehead " (Philan 
 thropist} , " he has at length yielded a freeman s birth 
 right for a chance at the Presidency " (Liberator]. 
 Then when the final blow came, in 1850, "the Free- 
 Soil party quivered and sank for the moment be 
 neath the shock. The whole anti-slavery movement 
 recoiled." 
 
 But Mr. Whittier, at least, cherished no lasting re 
 sentment. He has stated that the poem was com 
 posed after an entirely sleepless night, and that, if he 
 had waited a couple of months, he probably should 
 not have written it. He thinks that, if Webster had 
 lived till the outbreak of the war, he would have in 
 evitably been found on the right side, and would 
 have recovered his ancient renown; and he has said 
 as much in his poem, "The Lost Occasion." Else 
 where he writes: 
 
 "My admiration of the splendid personality and 
 intellectual power of the great Senator was never 
 
 1 An address of congratulation was presented to Webster, signed 
 by eight hundred prominent citizens of Massachusetts, including 
 Rufus Choate, Wm. H. Prescott, and Jared Sparks, and Prof. 
 C. C. Felton of Harvard College. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 1 15 
 
 stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in 
 one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my 
 protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness, its 
 sure results, the slave-power arrogant and defiant, 
 strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme 
 for the extension of its baleful system, or the disso 
 lution of the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty 
 in the free States broken down, and the whole coun 
 try made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In 
 the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, 
 if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of 
 stern and sorrowful rebuke." " Ichabod " should be 
 read in connection with the strong and indignant 
 "Stanzas for the Times: 1850," written on the same 
 subject. The poem " Ichabod " has been compared 
 to Browning s " Lost Leader": 
 
 " Just for a handful of silver he left us, 
 Just for a riband to stick in his coat 
 
 He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
 He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves. 
 
 Deeds will be done while he boasts his quiescence, 
 
 Still bidding" crouch whom the rest bade aspire ; 
 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more." 
 
 Mr. Stedman has also compared, or rather con 
 trasted, " Ichabod " with William W. Lord s remark 
 able lines "On the Defeat of a Great Man," suggested 
 by Folk s victory over Henry Clay in the presidential 
 campaign of 1843 : 
 
Il6 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Fallen ! How fallen ? States and empires fall ; 
 
 O er towers and rock-built walls, 
 And perished nations, floods to tempests call 
 With hollow sound along the sea of time : 
 
 The great man never falls, 
 He lives, he towers aloft, he stands sublime ; 
 
 They fall who give him not 
 The honor here that suits his future name, 
 
 They die and are forgot. 
 
 O Giant loud and blind ! the great man s fame 
 Is his own shadow, and not cast by thee : 
 
 A shadow that shall grow 
 As down the heaven of time the sun descends, 
 
 And on the world shall throw 
 His godlike image, till it sinks where blends 
 Time s dim horizon with Eternity. 
 
 There are a few other of the anti-slavery and reform 
 pieces that need words of comment or illustration 
 other than those given by Whittier in his latest 
 edition. 
 
 For example, " The Burial of Barber " (spelled 
 "Barbour" in early editions). Thos. W. Barber, the 
 second martyr of freedom in Kansas, was shot dead, 
 Dec. 6, 1855, near Lawrence, by Geo. W. Clarke, 
 Indian agent. The impressive funeral services were 
 held in the dining-room of a newly erected building. 
 The walls of the room were of rough unplastered 
 limestone, and seats of plank were placed in rows its 
 entire length. The funeral cortege was a long and 
 solemn one, stretching nearly a mile over the prairie, 
 many riding in ox-carts and mule-carts, and the 
 soldiers marching with arms reversed. 1 
 
 1 " Annals of Kansas," 1856. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 117 
 
 " The Branded Hand " refers to Captain Jonathan 
 Walker of Harwich, Massachusetts. While working 
 as a railroad contractor in Florida (having emigrated 
 thither with his family), he became interested in the 
 slaves, employed them, treated them like men, and 
 won their affection. In 1844 he took seven of these 
 slaves in his open boat south along the coast from 
 Pensacola, hoping to get them to one of the West 
 India Islands. But he fell very ill, it being hot July, 
 and the whole party was captured. Walker was put 
 in irons, carried back to Pensacola, subjected to the 
 ignominy of the pillory, branded on his right hand 
 by a United States marshal with the letters S. S. 
 (slave-stealer), kept for eleven months chained to the 
 floor of a cell bare of all furniture, ill and emaciated 
 as he was, and only released after the payment of his 
 fine of $150 by Northern Abolitionists. The brand 
 ing was done by binding his hand to a post and ap 
 plying a red-hot iron to the palm, which left the 
 letters about an inch long and an eighth of an inch 
 deep, as shown in the cut. 1 The brander was a Maine 
 man named Dorr, another proof of the frequent 
 assertion that New Englanders made the crudest 
 slaveholders. " Lift up that manly right hand," cries 
 the poet, 
 
 " Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our northern air, 
 Ho ! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there ! 
 
 1 The cut is from a daguerreotype of Captain Walker s hand, 
 owned by Dr. Henry I. Bowditch. Reproduced in the " Liberator," 
 xv. 132, to accompany Whittier s poem on the subject ; also given 
 in one of the anti-slavery almanacs. 
 
Il8 JOHN G. WHITTIER. . 
 
 Take it, henceforth, for your standard, like the Bruce s heart 
 of yore, 
 
 In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen be 
 fore ! " 
 
 Captain Walker removed to Muskegon, Michigan. 
 His branded hand got him much respect among his 
 townsmen, and at his death he received marked civic 
 honors. A granite monument costing $700 was 
 erected over his grave by Photius Fiske of Boston, 
 that eccentric, good, rich little Greek fellow, whose 
 benefactions to unfortunates have been innumerable, 
 and who has also erected a monument to Charles T. 
 Torrey in Auburn s Field of God, and others to other 
 anti-slavery martyrs. When his tomb and theirs are 
 mossy with age, may some Old Immortality be as 
 kind to them as he has been to the memory of the 
 heroic dead! 
 
 Whittier s poem " Texas," as first printed, may be 
 seen in the " Liberator," April 19, 1844. One of its 
 stanzas was afterwards so altered as not to put the 
 North in the position of a people demanding dis 
 union. Then the following new lines were added: 
 
 " Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope 
 Bind the starry cluster up, 
 Shattered over heaven s blue cope." 
 
 The phrases changed in other stanzas seem to me 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. lip 
 
 weakened. In the third triplet from the end, as the 
 poem now stands, the line " as the lost in Paradise " 
 was " as the damned in Paradise "; and a line in the 
 following cluster stood, " Freedom s brown and hon 
 est hand " (" brown " changed to " strong"). Other 
 lines in other poems have been clearly injured by re 
 vision, as the first in the " Lines" on the Pinckney 
 Resolutions, " Men of the North-land ! where s the 
 manly spirit," which originally read, " Now, by our 
 fathers ashes ! where s the spirit." 1 
 
 " Rantoul " was penned in grief over the death of 
 Robert Rantoul, the orator and statesman of Beverly, 
 Essex County, Massachusetts. He was a fellow- 
 member of Whittier in the Massachusetts legisla 
 ture in 1835. He became Webster s successor in 
 Congress, was a leader in the Free-Soil party, and a 
 man of rare political genius and promise. 
 
 " One day, along the electric wire 
 
 His manly word for Freedom sped ; 
 
 We came next morn : that tongue of fire 
 
 Said only, He who spake is dead ! " 
 
 "William Francis Bartlett " commemorates Gen 
 eral Bartlett, another brave and lamented soldier of 
 Essex County. He was the son of- a Boston merchant, 
 though born in Haverhill. He was appointed cap 
 tain in the 2oth Massachusetts Regiment while yet a 
 student at Harvard. He was in the battles of the 
 
 1 Good " Saint James " Freeman Clarke, in his Louisville " West 
 ern Messenger" of December, 1836, says the Pinckney lines are 
 " almost *>qual to anything in Campbell"! " Although no friend 
 of Abolitionism," he says, " we like good poetry on any and every 
 subject- * 
 
120 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Wilderness, and lost a leg and was otherwise wounded 
 in the service. He died in 1876: 
 
 " Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore 
 
 Thy beautiful and brave, 
 Whose failing hand the olive bore, 
 Whose dying lips forgave ! " 
 
 The poem " To Ronge " opens with the tremendous 
 apostrophe: 
 
 " Strike home, strong-hearted man ! Down to the root 
 Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel ! 
 Thy work is to hew down. In God s name then 
 Put nerve into thy task ! " 
 
 Jean Ronge (Le Cure Ronge) of Silesia may be 
 styled the founder of the Old Catholic movement of 
 religious reform, of which Dr. Doellinger is a more 
 recent leader. In 1844 Ronge published a remarkable 
 letter (said to have been written by another) in the 
 " Feuilles Nationales," in which he ridiculed the 
 superstitious credulity of the hundreds of thousands 
 of pilgrims who were visiting Treves, by invitation 
 of its Bishop, Arnoldi, to see the seamless robe of 
 Christ. Ronge advocated complete separation of all 
 true Christians from the Church of Rome, and a new 
 organization was actually formed. But in 1848 came 
 the democratic uprisings all over Europe, turning 
 men s thoughts into new channels. Ronge adopted 
 radical views, was made a member of the National 
 Assembly at Frankfort, but in 49 (in consequence 
 of certain incoherent articles published by him) was 
 compelled to fly, with many other political exiles, to 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 121 
 
 the shores of England. 1 He had married a divorced 
 lady, the sister-in-law of Carl Schurz. Martineau 
 and other Unitarians in England had thought highly 
 of Ronge, but his personal presence and ways disen 
 chanted them, and they soon dropped him. He seems 
 not to have had the Lutherian qualities necessary 
 for leadership, although Whittier in America hailed 
 his movement as one calculated to advance the inter 
 ests of freedom in Europe. 
 
 One of the most graphic of the slavery lyrics is the 
 poem u To Governor McDuffie," which has not been 
 reprinted since 1838 or 1840. Probably it is regarded 
 by the poet as too personal, too severe in tone, to say 
 nothing of its two blunders in grammar and quan 
 tity. But poets are not always the best judges of 
 the merits of their own work. There is a fierce 
 sharp rhythm and clash as of steel in this poem, a 
 kind of 
 
 " Suono 1 un brando e 1 altro, or basso, or alto," 
 
 which, joined with the fact that Whittier s friends 
 have besought him to include it in his works, leads 
 me to venture to present it here. The full statement 
 by Governor George McDuffie, as given in his mes 
 sage of 1835, was this: " Domestic slavery, instead of 
 being a political evil, is the corner-stone of our 
 republican edifice," a sufficiently exasperating state 
 ment, surely, to an Abolitionist. McDuffie s dictum 
 was "indorsed without reserve " by Governor Ham- 
 
 1 Larousse, " Dictionnaire Universal. " The best article about 
 Ronge appeared in the " Unitarian Review," of Boston, January, 
 1888, by John Fret well. 
 
122 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 mond of South Carolina, It was McDuffie who said 
 that "the institution of slavery supersedes the 
 necessity of an order of nobility." 
 
 TO GOVERNOR McDUFFIE. 
 
 "The patriarchal institution of slavery," " the corner-stone of our re. 
 publican edifice." Goi>. 
 
 King of Carolina hail ! 
 
 Last champion of Oppression s battle, 
 Lord of rice-tierce and cotton-bale, 
 
 Of sugar-box and human cattle ! 
 Around thy temples, green and dark, 
 
 Thy own tobacco-wreath reposes ; 
 Thyself, a brother Patriarch 
 
 Of Isaac, Abraham, and Moses ! 
 
 Why not ? Their household rule is thine ; 
 
 Like theirs, thy bondmen feel its rigor ; 
 And thine, perchance, as concubine, 
 
 Some swarthy counterpart of Hagar. 
 Why not ? Like patriarchs of old, 
 
 The priesthood is thy chosen station ; 
 Like them thou payest thy rites to gold, 
 
 And Aaron s calf of Nullification. 
 
 All fair and softly ! Must we, then, 
 
 From Ruin s open jaws to save us, 
 Upon our own free workingmen 
 
 Confer a master s special favors ? 
 Whips for the back chains for the heels 
 
 Hooks for the nostrils of Democracy, 
 Before it spurns as well as feels 
 
 The riding of the Aristocracy ! 
 
 Ho ! fishermen of Marblehead ! 
 Ho ! Lynn cordwainers, leave your leather, 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 123 
 
 And wear the yoke in kindness made, 
 And clank your needful chains together ! 
 
 Let Lowell mills their thousands yield, 
 Down let the rough Vermonter hasten, 
 
 Down from the workshop and the field, 
 And thank us for each chain we fasten. 
 
 SLAVES in the rugged Yankee land ! 
 
 I tell thee, Carolinian, never ! 
 Our rocky hills and iron strand 
 
 Are free, and shall be free forever. 
 The surf shall wear that strand away, 
 
 Our granite hills in dust shall moulder, 
 Ere Slavery s hateful yoke shall lay, 
 
 Unbroken, on a Yankee s shoulder ! 
 
 No, George McDuffie ! keep thy words 
 
 For the mail-plunderers of thy city, 
 Whose robber-right is in their swords ; 
 
 For recreant Priest and Lynch-Committee ! 
 Go, point thee to thy cannon s mouth, 
 
 And swear its brazen lips are better, 
 To guard " the interests of the South," 
 
 Than parchment scroll or Charter s letter. 1 
 
 We fear not. Streams which brawl most loud 
 
 Along their course are oftenest shallow ; 
 And loudest to a doubting crowd 
 
 The coward publishes his valor. 
 Thy courage has at least been shown 
 
 In many a bloodless Southern quarrel, 
 Facing, with hartshorn and cologne, 
 
 The Georgian s harmless pistol-barrel. 2 
 
 1 See speech of Governor McDuffie to an artillery company in 
 Charleston. 
 
 2 [The allusion is to a ridiculous affair of honor between Mc 
 Duffie and Colonel Cummings, of Georgia, for which the two men 
 fortified themselves with eau de cologne and spirits of hartshorn.] 
 
124 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 No, Southron ! not in Yankee land 
 
 Will threats like thine a fear awaken ; 
 The men who on their charter stand 
 
 For truth and right, may not be shaken. 
 Still shall that truth assail thine ear ; 
 
 Each breeze, from Northern mountains blowing, 
 The tones of Liberty shall bear, 
 
 God s " free incendiaries " going ! 
 
 We give thee joy ! Thy name is heard 
 
 With reverence on the Neva s borders ; 
 And " turban d Turk," and Poland s lord, 
 
 And Metternich, are thy applauders. 
 Go, if thou lov st such fame, and share 
 
 The mad Ephesian s base example, 
 The holy bonds of UNION tear, 
 
 And clap the torch to FREEDOM S temple ! 
 
 Do this Heaven s frown, thy country s curse, 
 
 Guilt s fiery torture ever burning, 
 The quenchless thirst of Tantalus, 
 
 And Ixion s wheel forever turning 
 A name for which " the pain dest fiend 
 
 Below " his own would barter never, 
 These shall be thine unto the end, 
 
 Thy damning heritage forever ! 
 
 Another poem that was dropped from the collected 
 works some forty-five years ago is " Stanzas for the 
 Times." It appeared in 39, and was called out by 
 the apostasy of David R. Porter, Governor of Penn 
 sylvania, to the cause of freedom. He had once cast 
 his vote in the Pennsylvania legislature in favor of 
 suppressing slavery in the District of Columbia, but 
 afterwards swung over to the pro-slavery side. 
 Whittier s indignation bursts forth in the following 
 fiery verses : 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 125 
 
 " Go, eat thy words. Shall Henry Clay 
 
 Turn round, a moral Harlequin? 
 And arch Van Buren wipe away 
 
 The stains of his Missouri sin ? 
 And shall that one unlucky vote 
 Stick burr-like in thy honest throat ? 
 
 " No : do thy part in putting down 
 
 The friends of Freedom, summon out 
 
 The parson in his saintly gown, 
 To curse the outlawed roundabout, 
 
 In concert with the Belial brood 
 
 The Balaam of the brotherhood ! 
 
 "Quench every free discussion light, 
 
 Clap on the legislative snuffers, 
 And caulk, with * resolutions tight, 
 
 The ghastly rents the Union suffers! 
 Let Church and State brand Abolition 
 As Heresy and rank Sedition. 
 
 " Choke down at once each breathing thing 
 
 That whispers of the Rights of Man : 
 Gag the free girl who dares to sing 
 
 Of Freedom o er her dairy pan ; 
 Dog the old farmer s steps about, 
 And hunt his cherished treason out. 
 
 " Go hunt sedition. Search for that 
 
 In every pedler s cart of rags ; 
 Pry into every Quaker s hat 
 
 And Dr. Fussell s saddle-bags, 
 Lest treason wrap, with all its ills, 
 Around his powders and his pills. 
 
 " Where Chester s oak and walnut shades 
 
 With slavery-laden breezes stir, 
 
 And on the hills and in the glades 
 
 Qf Bucks and honest Lancaster, 
 
126 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Are heads which think and hearts which feel,- 
 Flints to the Abolition steel ! 
 
 " Ho ! send ye down a corporal s guard 
 With flow of flag and beat of drum, 
 
 Storm Lindley Coates s poultry-yard, 
 Beleaguer Thomas Whitson s home ! 
 
 Beat up the Quaker quarters, show 
 
 Your valor to an unarmed foe ! 
 
 " Do more. Fill up your loathsome jails 
 
 With faithful men and women, set 
 The scaffold up in these green vales, 
 
 And let their verdant turf be wet 
 With blood of unresisting men, 
 Ay, do all this, and more, WHAT THEN ? 
 
 " Think ye one heart of man or child 
 
 Will falter from its lofty faith, 
 At the mob s tumult, fierce and wild, 
 
 The prison cell, the shameful death ? 
 No, nursed in storm and trial long, 
 The weakest of our band is strong. 
 
 " We cannot falter ! Did we so, 
 
 The stones beneath would murmur out, 
 And all the winds that round us blow 
 Would whisper of our shame about. 
 No, let the tempest rock the land, 
 Our faith shall live, our truth shall stand. 
 
 " True as the Vaudois, hemmed around 
 With Papal fire and Roman steel, 
 Firm as the Christian heroine, bound 
 Upon Domitian s torturing wheel, 
 We bate no breath, we curb no thought : 
 Come what may come, WE FALTER NOT ! " 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 127 
 
 Of the anti-slavery verses written for special 
 occasions or drawn out by startling events, Mr. 
 Whittier says : 
 
 " Of their defects from an artistic point of view it 
 is not necessary to speak. They were the earnest 
 and often vehement expression of the writer s 
 thought and feeling at critical periods in the great 
 conflict between Freedom and Slavery. They were 
 written with no expectation that they would survive 
 the occasions which called them forth ; they were 
 protests, alarm-signals, trumpet-calls to action, 
 words wrung from the writer s heart, forged at white 
 heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful 
 word-selection which reflection and patient brooding 
 over them might have given. Such as they are, they 
 belong to the history of the anti-slavery movement, 
 and may serve as way-marks of its progress." 1 
 
 Some of the most glowing of the poems of free 
 dom were printed as broadsides or on cards. Such 
 were " Stanzas " (" Our fellow-countrymen in 
 chains ! "), and the " Kansas Emigrants " song. The 
 circumstances that gave birth to this famous march 
 ing song were as follows : Kansas and Nebraska had 
 been opened up for settlement, and a stream of 
 emigration had set in. The hope of the Free-Soilers 
 was that it would be settled by an anti-slavery 
 population. Eli Thayer of Massachusetts caught up 
 the idea, and, apparently from interested motives, 
 organized a company, raised money, and sent out 
 band after band of New England Free-Soil settlers to 
 hold Kansas for the North. With him were asso- 
 
 Preface to the edition of 1888. 
 
128 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 ciated Edward Everett Hale and others. Thayer has 
 written an intemperate and boastful book, in which, 
 like another Colossus, he bestrides the Union, and 
 dares it to say he did n t save it, by saving Kansas. 1 
 But we are not concerned as to the exact amount of 
 his service to the government. Suffice it to say that, 
 directly or indirectly, he sent out some four or five 
 thousand men to Kansas and settled them there. 
 The departure of the first band from Boston, by rail 
 road, was witnessed by an immense and enthusiastic 
 crowd, extending along the track for several blocks. 
 All through New England and the Middle and West 
 ern Middle States the progress of the party was a 
 continued ovation from cheering crowds. This first 
 company founded the city of Lawrence. Before they 
 started, Mr. Whittier sent them his " Kansas Emi 
 grants " song, 
 
 " We cross the prairies as of old 
 The Pilgrims crossed the sea, 
 To make the West as they the East 
 The homestead of the free." 
 
 The song was actually sung, says Mr. Hale, sung 
 when they started, sung as they journeyed, and sung 
 in their new home. To better adapt it to a company 
 of persons, a chorus was originally appended to each 
 stanza, thus : 
 
 Chorus. " The homestead of the free, my boys, 
 
 The homestead of the free. 
 To make the West as they the East 
 The homestead of the free." 
 
 1 See a caustic review of his book in " Nation," Nov. 7, 1889, 
 probably by Wendell Phillips Garrison. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 1 29 
 
 In virtue of this song, as well as his " Marais du 
 Cygne " and " Burial of Barber," Whittier to-day 
 holds a warm place in the affections of the people of 
 Kansas. 
 
 During the Civil War many of the poems of Whit- 
 tier were committed to memory and a few of them 
 sung by the Union soldiers. 1 A signal testimony to 
 the power of his verse is attested by the case of the 
 Hutchinson family and Whittier s " Ein Feste Burg." 
 This war lyric was published in the New York " Inde 
 pendent " in July, 61, in the very first days of the war. 
 It was at once adopted by the people as a campaign 
 song. In the early period of the contest the members 
 of the Hutchinson family (already long known and 
 admired by the public), divided into several bands, 
 were accustomed to visit recruiting stations and sing 
 for the purpose of inspiring patriotic valor and 
 encouraging volunteer enlistments. After the dis 
 couraging defeat of Bull Run, they went to Virginia, 
 very properly thinking, I suppose, that that was the 
 place where they were most needed. They entered the 
 national lines, but were expelled by General McClellan 
 for singing Whittier s " Ein Feste Burg," the spirited 
 third stanza (given below) being especially dangerous, 
 thought McClellan, who still hoped, with Lincoln, 
 that a peace might be patched up with the South : 
 
 " What gives the wheat-field blades of steel ? 
 What points the rebel cannon ? 
 
 1 Collections of patriotic songs of that time generally contain 
 only two or three poems by Whittier, such as " The Crisis," and 
 " Ein Feste Burg." His verses were read more than they were sung. 
 
 9 
 
130 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 What sets the roaring rabble s heel 
 On the old star-spangled pennon ? 
 
 What breaks the oath 
 
 Of the men o the South ? 
 
 What whets the knife 
 
 For the Union s life ? 
 Hark to the answer : Slavery ! " 
 
 The Hutchinson family appealed to President Lin 
 coln. The poem was formally read in Cabinet meet 
 ing by Secretary Chase, and the President said, " It 
 is just the kind of a song I want the soldiers to hear." 
 By the unanimous vote of the Cabinet, then, and by 
 order of the President, the singers were readmitted 
 to the national camps. 1 
 
 But, however marked may have been the influence 
 of Whittier s poems in the war days, let us beware 
 of claiming for him or for any one person an undue 
 share in the honor of having saved the country. 
 Nothing could shock his modesty or hurt his feelings 
 more than such a claim. It was, indeed, not the labor 
 of Benjamin Lundy, or of John Brown, or Mrs. 
 Stowe, or Eli Thayer, or William Lloyd Garrison, or 
 John G. Whittier, or Abraham Lincoln, that saved 
 the Union and abolished slavery, not the work of 
 any one of these alone, nor of the armies of the North 
 alone, nor of the farmers and merchants who furnished 
 food, clothes, and weapons ; but it was the toil of all 
 these together that brought about the result. 
 
 Mr. Whittier s feeling about the war was regret 
 mingled with resignation to " God s will," and a 
 
 1 Appleton s Cyclopaedia of Biography, iii. 334. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 13! 
 
 patriotic acquiescence in what seemed an unavoidable 
 calamity. He recognized that God is sometimes in 
 the whirlwind as well as in the still small voice. He 
 believed that the mission of the Friends in the war 
 was to care for the slave and the freedman and for 
 the wounded. He, as well as Garrison, was sadly 
 tried by President Lincoln s cautious and conciliatory 
 measures as to slavery. Those shackles and chains, 
 those fellow-men in bondage, these were the 
 matters that fretted and chafed him. Garrison and 
 Phillips were even ready for disunion, if our skirts 
 could not be cleared of the sin of slavery in any other 
 way. Not so Lincoln, a man of much profounder 
 statesmanship than any one of the three Abolition 
 chiefs. The blood circulated slowly through his 
 gigantic frame, and he was slow in reaching his con 
 clusions. But he early saw the vital necessity of pre 
 serving the union of the States. The recently issued 
 lives of him by his law partner and by his private 
 secretaries show how deeply he abhorred slavery. 
 But he felt his way slowly and cautiously to emanci 
 pation. He sagaciously refused to move in national 
 matters until he felt that the inertia of the people 
 was overcome and that they were ready for change. 
 He was a profound calculator of forces and events. 
 There was that in him that matched the long suffer 
 ance and taciturnity of nature. Undoubtedly, his 
 feelings about slavery were not so fiery-indignant as 
 those of the Abolitionists. He viewed everything in 
 tellectually. Like Carlyle, he did not consider slav 
 ery absolutely the worst thing under the sun. In his 
 public letter to Horace Greeley he affirmed that, 
 while he wished all men to be free, he could only 
 
132 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 work for immediate emancipation if he were con 
 vinced that it would help to save the Union. And, 
 although he cherished a secret ambition to go down 
 to posterity as the emancipator of the North Ameri 
 can slaves, he would by no means allow emancipa 
 tion to get between his feet and trip him up while he 
 was trying to save the country. He never abolished 
 slavery at all in the loyal border States, always shun 
 ning to exasperate the feelings of these States, and 
 promptly annulling the premature proclamations of 
 freedom by Generals Fremont and J. J. Piatt in Mis 
 souri and Maryland respectively. Lincoln, in his 
 large-hearted charity, pitied the masters of the slaves, 
 and the Abolitionists did not, that was the great 
 difference between them. He even favored coloniza 
 tion, and kept bringing forward his scheme of gradual 
 emancipation, with the issue to the planters of in 
 demnity bonds, or immediate emancipation, with a 
 remuneration in cash from the national treasury for 
 each slave freed (the very measures once proposed by 
 Washington). And when the war was practically 
 over, just a few weeks before the insane act of his 
 assassination, this best friend of the South proposed 
 to his Cabinet a measure for creating a fund of $400,- 
 000,000 for the indemnity of Southern planters. All 
 along, his idea was to hold the raft well together by 
 patience and tact. Broken eggs can never be mended, 
 was his homely illustration. His Emancipation 
 Proclamation, when it came, was only an incident of 
 war, and slavery was only completely abolished years 
 afterwards by the Amendment to the Constitution. 
 It was natural for such men as Whittier, with whom 
 the slave question was of most concern, to be queru- 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 133 
 
 lous and impatient with the President. In a moment 
 of disgust, Garrison once said that Lincoln had not 
 a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins. And at 
 another time he wrote, " Lincoln is very weak in the 
 joints, and wholly unqualified to lead or inspire." 
 But this was in 1861. He learned to put greater trust 
 in him later. In September, 1861, Whittier wrote to 
 Lydia Maria Child, apropos of Fremont s proclama 
 tion of freedom : 
 
 "I am afraid the Government will tie up the hands 
 of Fremont. I was just thinking of trying to thank 
 him for his noble word free, when, lo ! the papers 
 this morning bring us Lincoln s letter to him, repu 
 diating the grand utterance. Well, if the confiscated 
 slaves are not free, then the Government has turned 
 slaveholder, that is all. 
 
 " I am sick of politicians. I know and appreciate 
 the great difficulties in the way of the administration, 
 but I see neither honesty nor worldly wisdom in 
 attempting to ignore the cause of the trouble. 
 
 " They tell us we must trust, and have patience ; 
 and I do not like to find fault with the administra 
 tion, as in so doing I seem to take sides with the 
 secession sympathizers of the North." 
 
 But when at last came the Amendment forever 
 abolishing slavery, and that Black Idol was " blown 
 hellward from the cannon s mouth, while Freedom 
 cheered behind the smoke," Whittier felt that all had 
 been for the best, 
 
 " We prayed for love to loose the chain, 
 T is shorn by battle s axe in twain." 
 
 And in his supreme exultation and exaltation of mind 
 
134 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 he poured forth, as if by a sublime improvisation, 
 that Miriam s song of triumph, " Laus Deo ! " in 
 which there is not a weak line from beginning to end. 
 The poem took shape in Whittier s mind as he sat in 
 the Friends meeting-house in Amesbury and heard 
 the clang of the bells rung in celebration of the 
 event. It is a poem that ought to endure as long as 
 the human race itself. The dungeon of Giant De 
 spair was at last forced open, and the grim iron key 
 presented to the man who best deserved it. 1 
 
 Before passing on from the topic of the Civil War 
 of 1861-65, it is desirable to inquire a little more 
 closely into Whittier s theory and practice as to war, 
 its right or wrong, and its disciplinary value, espe 
 cially as the imagery of war is so frequently employed 
 in his anti-slavery poetry and elsewhere. 
 
 General J. J. Piatt, in a lecture delivered in Cork, 
 Ireland, some years since, on the personality and 
 poetry of Whittier, read to the audience a note he 
 had received from the Quaker bard, as follows: 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, I see thee are selecting Geo. D. Pren 
 tice s poems, and find in the New York Evening Post the 
 following extract from the advance sheets. [The newspaper 
 slip was appended.] The term war-poet especially that of 
 Quaker war-poet is a misnomer, and, in my case, I have never 
 written a poem in favor or in praise of war. If possible, strike 
 out the phrase, as I do not wish to be represented as false to 
 my life-long principles." 
 
 Mr. Whittier s statement is true in the main, but 
 
 1 The iron key of the Richmond slave-pen was sent to Whittier 
 when the city was occupied by Union troops. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 13$ 
 
 will bear some discussion. It is a fact that he has 
 never intentionally written in praise of war, and his 
 prose and his poetry are full of passages reprobating 
 or deploring it. In a note to his poem on Kossuth 
 the soldier, he is careful to state that he believes no 
 political revolution was ever worth the price of human 
 blood; and, in a remark appended to his poem on the 
 storming of the city of Derne, he affirms his belief in 
 a higher and holier heroism than that of war. In 
 "Massachusetts to Virginia," he says, " We wage no 
 war, we lift no arm," against the South ; in " Barclay 
 of Uri," he lauds the non-resistant Quaker ; in 
 " Stanzas," his bugle-call is not to clash of arms, but 
 to the contest of Truth and Love with Error ; he 
 praises peaceful arbitrament in " The Peace Con 
 vention at Brussels "; in "Disarmament," the senti 
 ment is that "hate hath no harm for love, and peace 
 unweaponed conquers every wrong " ; and in " Brown 
 of Ossawatomie " essentially the same idea is devel 
 oped. In a letter to Lydia Maria Child, under date 
 of Oct. 21, 1859, he writes : 
 
 " We feel deeply (who does not ?) for the noble- 
 hearted, self-sacrificing old man [John Brown]. But 
 as friends of peace as well as freedom, as believers in 
 the Sermon on the Mount, we dare not lend any 
 countenance to such attempts as that at Harper s 
 Ferry. ... I have just been looking at one of 
 the pikes sent here by a friend in Baltimore. It is not 
 a Christian weapon ; it looks too much like murder." 
 
 Garrison took Whittier to task for the lukewarm 
 tone of his "Brown of Ossawatomie." He thought 
 he did not so much honor the liberty-loving heroism 
 of Brown as he had the heroes of the Revolution. 
 
136 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 There was undeniable truth in this criticism, and the 
 poet makes but a lame defense in his reply. 1 But 
 we will let all that rest. The war, right or wrong, 
 has come and gone, and 
 
 " Old John Brown s body is a-mouldering in the dust, 
 Old John Brown s rifle s red with blood-spots turned to rust, 
 Old John Brown s pike has made its last, unflinching thrust, 
 His soul is marching on ! " 
 
 Writing on another occasion to Mrs. Child, Whit- 
 tier says : 
 
 "I know nothing nobler or grander than the heroic 
 self-sacrifice of young Colonel Shaw. The only regi 
 ment I ever looked upon during the war was the 54th 
 [colored] on its departure for the South. I shall 
 never forget the scene. As he rode at the head of 
 his troops, the very flower of grace and chivalry, he 
 seemed to me beautiful and awful as an angel of God 
 come down to lead the host of freedom to victory. I 
 have longed to speak the emotions of that hour, but 
 I dared not, lest I should indirectly give a new im 
 pulse to war." (A contemporary account of the 
 embarkation of this regiment says that not a sneer or 
 an unkind word marred the occasion. Streets and 
 balconies were thronged with cheering crowds, flags 
 were hung out, and a lady in Essex Street presented 
 Colonel Shaw with a handsome bouquet.) 
 
 But there is another side to the shield. If Whittier 
 has written no poem in praise of war, he has assuredly 
 written poems full of the warlike spirit. There is a 
 touch of the fighting parson or Friar Tuck in him. 
 
 1 See " Liberator," Jan. 13 and 27, 1860. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 137 
 
 The elder Hawthorne wittily spoke of him as " a 
 fiery Quaker youth to whom the Muse has perversely 
 assigned a battle-trumpet." His favorite metaphors 
 are those of battles and the sword. To an essay on 
 William Leggett he prefixes as motto some strong lines 
 in which the poet Bryant apostrophizes Freedom, not 
 as a fair girl with curls flowing from under her 
 Phrygian cap, but as a strong, bearded man, " armed 
 to the teeth," one hand grasping the shield and the 
 other the sword. Mr. Whittier is himself perplexed 
 over the outbursting of the war-spirit in him : 
 
 "Without intending any disparagement of my 
 peaceable ancestry for many generations, I have still 
 strong suspicions that somewhat of the old Norman 
 blood, something of the grim Berserker spirit, has 
 been bequeathed to me. How else can I account for 
 the intense childish eagerness with which I listened 
 to the stories of old campaigners who sometimes 
 fought their battles over again in my hearing ? Why 
 did I, in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the 
 son of Saul, to smite the garrisoned Philistines of 
 Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun against the 
 cities of Canaan ? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pil 
 grim s Progress, my favorite character ? What gave 
 such fascination to the grand Homeric encounter 
 between Christian and Apollyon in the valley ? Why 
 did I follow Ossian over Morven s battlefields, exult 
 ing in the vulture-screams of the blind scald over his 
 fallen enemies? Still later, why did the newspapers 
 furnish me with subjects for hero-worship in the half- 
 demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti at the 
 head of his knavish Greeks ? I can only account for 
 it on the supposition that the mischief was inherited, 
 
138 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 an heirloom from the old sea-kings of the ninth 
 century. 
 
 " Education and reflection have indeed wrought a 
 change in my feelings. The trumpet of the Cid, or 
 Ziska s drum even, could not now waken that old 
 martial spirit. . . . It is only when a great thought 
 incarnates itself in action, desperately striving to find 
 utterance even in the sabre-clash and gun-fire, or 
 when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and 
 mistrustful of their own powers, put on battle-har 
 ness, that I can feel any sympathy with merely phys 
 ical daring." 
 
 Some curious facts connected with the American 
 Civil War of 1861-65 show that the old war-instinct 
 troubles other Quakers besides Whittier. It was Mr. 
 John S. Gibbons, a Hicksite Quaker, it will be remem 
 bered, who wrote the popular war lyric, 
 
 " We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 Three hundred thousand more." 
 
 During the early days of the war the good Friends 
 of Philadelphia were greatly scandalized at finding 
 their sons rushing to arms with the rest; so that, we 
 are given to understand, there was scarcely a Quaker 
 household from which one or more sons had not gone 
 forth to the cohflict. 1 In northern New Jersey the 
 famous Quaker Regiment, of a full thousand men, 
 was formed in 1862. After two hundred of these 
 men, all wearing straight coats and broad-brimmed 
 hats, had offered themselves and been accepted, their 
 conduct was sharply criticised at the next quarterly 
 
 1 Life of Garrison, iv. 37. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 139 
 
 meeting, whereupon one of them, who was present, 
 arose and told a little story. He said that his grand 
 father once had dealings with an obstreperous "man 
 of the world," who provoked him until his patience 
 was worn out. All at once he threw off his coat and 
 laid it on the ground, saying, " Lie there, Quaker, till 
 I give this rascal his dues ! " and then proceeded to 
 give him a good drubbing. During the later days of 
 the war the Quakers were not exempt from the draft, 
 and some of them strove hard to avoid it; but others 
 were willing to send substitutes. It is recorded that 
 a Quaker merchant of New York said to one of his 
 clerks, " If thee will enlist, not only shall thee have 
 thy situation, but thy salary shall go on while thee is 
 absent. But, if thee will not serve thy country, thee 
 cannot stay in this store." 
 
 It is, one gladly admits, moral heroism alone that 
 Whittier has sometimes seemed to praise, in spite of 
 himself, when he finds it in men with the weapons of 
 death in their hands. Read in illustration a half- 
 dozen or more poems produced in the flower of 
 his manhood and in the heat of the anti-slavery 
 struggle, 1846 to 1858, " What the Voice Said," 
 "Paean," " Yorktown," "Stanzas for the Times," 
 "The Branded Hand," " Lucknow," and "Derne"; 
 also some rollicking verses " written to beguile a 
 rainy day on the farm," about sixty-three years ago. 
 They were published anonymously in some paper, 
 but have not since been admitted into any collection 
 of his works. 1 The poem is called 
 
 1 The time of the poem is in the early days when Vermont was 
 struggling for independent existence, under the lead of Ethan Allen 
 
14 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE VERMONTERS. 
 
 Ho ! all to the borders ! Vermonters, come down, 
 With your breeches of deerskin and jackets of brown ; 
 With your red woolen caps, and your moccasins, come 
 To the gathering summons of trumpet and drum ! 
 
 Come down with your rifles ! let gray wolf and fox 
 Howl on in the shade of their primitive rocks ; 
 Let the bear feed securely from pig-pen and stall ; 
 Here s a two-legged game for your powder and ball! 
 
 On our south come the Dutchmen, enveloped in grease, 
 And arming for battle, while canting of peace ; 
 On our east, crafty Meshech has gathered his band, 
 To hang up our leaders and eat out our land. 
 
 Ho ! all to the rescue ! For Satan shall work 
 No gain for his legions of Hampshire and York! 
 They claim our possessions, the pitiful knaves ! 
 The tribute we pay shall be prisons and graves ! 
 
 and other Green Mountain Boys. The poem is given in Henry W. 
 De Puy s " Ethan Allen," Buffalo, 1853, and in " Littell s Living 
 Age," March 22, 1856. Under date of March 19, 1887, Whittier 
 wrote to the Boston Transcript " a letter, in which he said : " The 
 Song of the Vermonters, by Ethan Allen, was a piece of boyish 
 mystification, written sixty years ago and printed anonymously. 
 The only person who knew its authorship was my old friend 
 Joseph T. Buckingham, and I supposed the secret died with him. 
 We were both amused to find it regarded by antiquarian authorities 
 as a genuine relic of the old time. How the secret was dis 
 covered a few years ago I have never known. I have never in 
 tentionally written anything in favor of war, but a great deal 
 against it." 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 14! 
 
 Let Clinton and Ten Broek, with bribes in their hands, 
 Still seek to divide us and parcel our lands: 
 We Ve coats for our traitors, whoever they are ; 
 The warp is of feathers, the filling of tar ! 
 
 Does the " Old Bay State " threaten ? Does Congress com 
 plain ? 
 
 Swarms Hampshire in arms on our borders again ? 
 Bark the war-dogs of Britain aloud on the lake ? 
 Let em come ! what they can, they are welcome to take. 
 
 What seek they among us ? The pride of our wealth 
 Is comfort, contentment, and labor and health ; 
 And lands which as Freemen we only have trod, 
 Independent of all save the mercies of God. 
 
 Yet we owe no allegiance ; we bow to no throne ; 
 Our ruler is law, and the law is our own ; 
 Our leaders themselves are our own fellow-men, 
 Who can handle the sword or the scythe or the pen. 
 
 Our wives are all true, and our daughters are fair, 
 With their blue eyes of smiles and their light flowing hair ; 
 All brisk at their wheels till the dark even-fall, 
 Then blithe at the sleigh-ride, the husking, and ball ! 
 
 We Ve sheep on the hillsides ; we Ve cows on the plain ; 
 And gay-tasselled corn-fields, and rank-growing grain ; 
 There are deer on the mountains ; and wood-pigeons fly 
 From the crack of our muskets, like clouds in the sky. 
 
 And there s fish in our streamlets and rivers, which take 
 Their course from the hills to our broad-bosomed lake ; 
 Through rock-arched Winooski the salmon leaps free, 
 And the portly shad follows, all fresh from fhe sea. 
 
I4 2 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Like a sunbeam the pickerel glides through his pool, 
 And the spotted trout sleeps where the water is cool, 
 Or darts from his shelter of rock and of root 
 At the beaver s quick plunge or the angler s pursuit. 
 
 And ours are the mountains which awfully rise 
 
 Till they rest their green heads on the blue of the skies; 
 
 And ours are the forests, unwasied, unshorn, 
 
 Save where the wild path of the tempest is torn. 
 
 And though savage and wild be this climate of ours, 
 And brief be our season of fruits and of flowers, 
 Far dearer the blast round our mountains which raves 
 Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves. 
 
 Hurrah for VERMONT ! for the land which we till 
 Must have sons to defend her from valley and hill ; 
 Leave the harvest to rot on the field where it grows, 
 And the reaping of wheat for the reaping of foes. 
 
 Far from Michiscom s valley to where 
 Poosoomsuck steals down from his wood-circled lair, 
 From Shocticook river to Lutterlock town, 
 Ho ! all to the rescue ! Vermonters, come down ! 
 
 Come York or come Hampshire, come traitors and knaves ; 
 If ye rule o er our land, ye shall rule o er our graves ; 
 Our vow is recorded, our banner unfurled ; 
 In the name of Vermont, we defy all the world! 
 
 There is an interesting parallelism between Ruskin 
 and Whittier in their latent sympathy with war and 
 yet their open reprobation of it. The truth is, we 
 are in a transition state from the era of battle to the 
 era of peace. And while to the old soldier-nations 
 the fatal ordeal of the sword man to man and shield 
 to shield seemed the sole condition of high mental 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 143 
 
 attainments, to us a more excellent way presents it 
 self ; namely, battle with the hostile forces of nature, 
 and moral struggle and emulation. But at present 
 we must charitably allow our poets of peace the 
 mere imagery of the old ages of strife ; for poetic 
 material is not easy to obtain unless the whole range 
 of life is open to the poet s use. 
 
 The moral quality of the Quaker poet which leads 
 him to abhor war reveals itself in a milder form in 
 his dislike of the strife and noise of the professional 
 politician s life. Although taking a deep interest in 
 elections and in all questions concerning the nation s 
 welfare, he says that, as a rule, he has declined over 
 tures for acceptance of public station; and adds, "I 
 have not been willing to add my own example to the 
 greed of office." In 1842 he was nominated as a 
 Liberty party candidate for Congress from Massa 
 chusetts, as we shall see. The only offices he has 
 actually held, however, have been unsought by him. 
 lie was twice elected to the Massachusetts legisla 
 ture, and served twice as member of the government 
 Electoral College. He has also been on the Board of 
 Overseers of Harvard and Brown Universities. In 
 1845 ne was a Vice-President of the Massachusetts 
 Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. 
 He made a few anti-slavery speeches, 1 but was more 
 successful as a lobbyist (" a superb hand at it," said 
 
 1 A reviewer of Whittier in 1849 (" Littell s Living Age," January 
 13) says, " We have small sympathy with him as a lecturer," and 
 gives as his reasons that he does n t like the " fierce anathemas and 
 savage denunciations " of the Puritans ! Rather amusing that ! 
 " the savage Whittier" is much like " the ferocious turtle dove." 
 The reviewer continues, "As is generally the case with ultra- 
 liberals, Mr. Whittier exhibits a most vindictive intolerance." 
 
144 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Wendell Phillips) and as an organizer of voters. His 
 keen insight into men s characters, taken in connec 
 tion with his winning address, was what made his 
 election services so highly prized by party managers. 
 He must have startled and almost terrified the quiet- 
 loving_J^gngfellow by proposing to him that he 
 should accept a nomination to Congress on the Lib 
 erty party ticket in 1844. Longfellow had just pub 
 lished his Poems on Slavery, which had pleased 
 Whittier, and he wrote to thank him for them, say 
 ing they had been of important service to the party. 
 " Our friends," said he, " think they could throw for 
 thee one thousand more votes than for any other 
 man." Longfellow answered, " At all times I shall 
 rejoice in the progress of true liberty, and in freedom 
 from slavery of all kinds; but I cannot for a moment 
 think of entering the political arena. Partisan war 
 fare becomes too violent, too vindictive, for my taste; 
 and I should be found but a weak and unworthy 
 champion in public debate." 1 
 
 In 1^34 Whittier was Corresponding Secretary of 
 the Haverhill Anti-slavery Society; and his Reports 
 as Corresponding Secretary of the Essex County 
 Anti-slavery Society in 1837 are extant. 3 In April, 
 37, he spoke at a meeting of the Massachusetts Society 
 in Lynn, and at the anniversary meeting of the Amer 
 ican Anti-slavery Society, in that year, he introduced 
 a resolution advocating no political support to any 
 party candidate who was unwilling to work for the 
 abolition of slavery. In February of this busy year, 
 
 1 Life of Longfellow, by Samuel Longfellow, ii. 20. 
 9 In " Liberator," Jan. 14, 37, and May 5, 37. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 145 
 
 37, he is at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, attending a 
 ~c~oTrvention of the Pennsylvania Society, and writes 
 glowing letters to the papers, saying that Thomas 
 Whitson was there, " firm as rock and true as steel "; 
 Charles GJBurleigh, with his eloquence and his plain 
 homespun appearance, was " moving all before him"; 
 and "sturdy farmer Ritner," the Governor, had flung 
 out on the mountain breezes of Pennsylvania the 
 banner of free discussion. We are told that one of 
 the delegates (honor be to his name !) had the good 
 sense to hold that the negroes had a right to fight 
 for their freedom, and he indignantly withdrew from 
 the convention when the doctrinaires refused to 
 agree with him, saying it was nothing but a Quaker 
 meeting. Ia^8j^, at the anniversary of the Ameri 
 can Society, we finjjLW-hittier introducing a resolution 
 (successfully passed) favoring the ballot as a weapon 
 in the hands of Abolitionists. At a business meeting 
 of the society in January, 1840, he was present and 
 took part in the proceedings; and in July of the same 
 year he serves on a business committee at the Albany 
 Convention. 
 
 He was an ardent supporter ofjCaLeb pushing in 
 his thirteen attempts to secure election to Congress. 
 (Gushing was finally successful.) In 1828, when a 
 mere boy, Whittier, as editor of the " American Man 
 ufacturer," supported Henry Clay, in a sort of per 
 functory way; but, when afterwards his eyes were 
 opened more fully to the wrongs of slavery, he 
 declined to give him his support, because he was a 
 slaveholder, and told him so frankly in a cordial 
 interview he had with him once in Washington. 1 
 
 1 Life of Garrison, i. 190. 
 IO 
 
146 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Mr. Whittier helped to organize the Liberty party, 
 which was the precursor of the Free-Soil party (in 
 the essential matter); and that in turn was merged 
 in the present Republican party. The real founder 
 of the Liberty party was Myron Holley of New York 
 State. The party came into existence in entire inde 
 pendence of the New Organization faction of the 
 Abolitionists, but that faction at once fraternized 
 with it on political grounds. In the ethical field 
 the founding of the American and Foreign Anti- 
 slavery Society, and its organ, the " American and 
 Foreign Anti-slavery Reporter," by the New Organi- 
 zationists, was one of the minor results of division in 
 the Abolition ranks, primarily on the question of 
 woman s rights, and secondarily on the subjects of 
 political action, non-resistance, and moral perfection 
 ism. Garrison and his party thought the Constitution 
 of the United States to be a covenant with death and 
 an agreement with hell, and could not conscientiously 
 vote under it or recognize its authority. But such 
 Abolitionists as Whittier, Samuel E. Sewall, James 
 G. Birney, Gerrit Smith, the Tappans, Joshua Leavitt, 
 Elizur Wright, Henry B. Stanton, Amos A. Phelps, 
 and Rev. John Pierpont were willing to work under 
 the Constitution, and vote under it; and they there 
 fore joined themselves to the Liberty party, and 
 founded their own journals, among them the 
 "Reporter," above mentioned. This short-lived 
 monthly, founded by Lewis Tappan, published in 
 New York, and edited by Whittier, had no great 
 strength or following. Whittier was also placed on 
 the executive committee of the rew society, but 
 excused himself on account of his health. The 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 147 
 
 Garrisonians, and notably the keen-witted Edmund 
 Ouincy, fought the come-outers with tooth and nail ; 
 and the list of names above given shows that well was 
 their need, if they would keep alive after so alarm 
 ing a defection. As for the American and Foreign 
 Society, if it had done nothing else, we should owe 
 it a debt of gratitude for the founding and nursing 
 into self-support of the " National Era," which fur 
 nished a medium for the publication of a Large part of 
 Whittier s best poems (ninety-five of them) and 
 most important of all Mrs. Stowe s "Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin." 
 
 The split in the Abolition ranks, which is of very 
 little interest to most of us now, occupies a conspic 
 uous place in the history of Abolitionism, and created 
 a good deal of hard feeling and not a little bitter 
 speaking between members of the different factions. 
 Whittier was often spoken of as a good editor for 
 projected organs of the new party, and did actually 
 do editorial work both on the "Emancipator" of 
 Joshua Leavittand the " American and Foreign Anti- 
 slavery Reporter," as has been stated. Garrison was 
 extremely jealous of the new journals, and pretty 
 severe in his language about them. He said he was 
 certain that " the grand design was to supplant the 
 1 Liberator, and establish a paper upon its ruins 
 that would be less offensive to the clergy, and less 
 free in its spirit, and that would not dare to utter a 
 word upon any other question of reform unless it 
 were popular ! " This was a most unfair statement, 
 but Garrison firmly believed it. The relation of 
 friendship between him and Whittier was strained, 
 but never entirely broken by these differences of 
 
148 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 opinion. It was hard to quarrel with so gentle and 
 amiable a man as the Quaker poet. 
 
 Still, between the years 1839 an< ^ i86i,the columns 
 of the " Liberator " contain from time to time little 
 flings at Whittierasone of the leaders of the political 
 Abolition party. 
 
 At the beginning of the difficulty, Whittier, as edi 
 tor of the " Freeman," wrote in February, 1839, a piece 
 in which, as always, he poured oil upon the troubled 
 waters. He said, in substance: Let us tolerate and 
 forgive one another everything but wilful and delib 
 erate treachery to the cause. Our merely personal 
 differences must be buried "deeper than plummet 
 ever sounded." "Are we not all brethren, Abolition 
 ists all ? . . . Like the fabled stone of Scio, which 
 Pliny speaks of, that floated on the waves when whole, 
 but sunk like lead beneath them when broken asun 
 der, our strength and safety lie in our union and 
 brotherhood of spirit." 1 
 
 In his comment on this Mr. Garrison characteristi 
 cally said: " All this is certainly in a very amicable 
 spirit. Its object is pacification, but somewhat in 
 the Henry Clay style, when Missouri was admitted 
 into the Union as a slave State, for the sake of peace." 
 
 Whittier wrote in reply in the next number of the 
 " Liberator " but one: 
 
 AMESBURY, 24th, 2d mo., 1839. 
 
 MY DEAR GARRISON, As sickness, in thy opinion, does not 
 always " subdue the temper and chasten the spirit," was it not 
 somewhat hazardous, on thy part, to make an experiment upon 
 my complacency and good nature while suffering from pro- 
 
 1 Liberator, Feb. 22, 1839. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 149 
 
 tracted indisposition ? There are times when " the grasshop 
 per is a burden "; and therefore it ought not to surprise thee, 
 that, without fully indorsing the erudite Dogberry s theory in 
 relation to comparisons, I should take exceptions to one in thy 
 last paper, likening my efforts for the " pacification " of con 
 flicting " Boston notions " to those of Henry Clay on the Mis 
 souri question ; and that the idea of being held up alongside of 
 the " Great Pacificator," right on the heel of his late " surren 
 der " to John C. Calhoun, is peculiarly unsavory. It may have 
 been nothing more than a figure of speech, or a flourish of rhet 
 oric ; but if it was intended to impeach me with having, for the 
 sake of peace, or for any other reason, yielded up one of those 
 great and glorious truths for which for the last six years we 
 have contended side by side, it was unworthy of William Lloyd 
 Garrison far more injurious to himself than to his friend ; and 
 in the free spirit of an Abolitionist, I tread it as the dust under 
 my feet and leave it. 
 
 It may be, however, that, in this matter, my heart will be 
 excused at the expense of my judgment. My views of the 
 existing difficulty may be attributed to a defect of moral 
 vision. Well, be it so. I confess that the habit of my mind is 
 somewhat confiding and unsuspicious. No visions of future 
 treachery haunt and disturb me in my communion with my 
 anti-slavery brethren : no shadows and omens of thick-coming 
 disasters throng before me : no ghosts of treason, wearing the 
 similitude of loved and familiar friends, scowl on me from the 
 Shadow World of the Future. My sphere of vision is mainly 
 limited to the Actual and the Present. For me, " sufficient 
 unto the day is the evil thereof." Yet, when real difficulties 
 come, when the ploughshares of a fiery ordeal lie hot and 
 glowing in the very path of duty, I trust I shall not evince 
 more hesitancy and faltering than those of my brethren who, 
 more clear-sighted than myself, have seen the danger afar 
 off. ... 
 
 But enough I have written far more than I intended when 
 I commenced this note. Make such comments upon it as thou 
 mayst deem proper, or none at all. One thing I would state in 
 
I5O JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 advance. However I may differ from him, I shall not quarrel 
 with the friend of twelve years standing, whom I have known 
 and loved in prosperity and adversity who first stimulated me 
 to active exertion in the cause of the slave. . . . 
 
 Truly thy friend, 
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 To this genial avowal the fiery Garrison, who was 
 in a state of great irritation, appended a half-column 
 of ungracious accusations against the seceded party, 
 headed by the following remark to Whittier, in which 
 he rubs the sore when he should apply the plaster: 
 " We sympathize with our dear friend in his illness. 
 In our allusion to Henry Clay s manner of pacifica 
 tion, we only meant that J. G. W. is for obtaining 
 peace at the expense of consistency, if not of princi- 
 pie." 
 
 Matters were evidently grown to be a little serious 
 between the two friends, and it is easy to see on which 
 side intolerance existed. One could imagine Whittier 
 as saying with Landor, " I do not like your great men 
 who beckon me to them, call me their begotten, their 
 dear child, and their entrails; and if I happen to say 
 on any occasion, * I beg leave, sir, to dissent a little 
 from you, stamp and cry, The devil you do ! and 
 whistle for the executioner." Whittier had sailed 
 quite into the north of Garrison s good opinion, and 
 that reformer took no pains to conceal the fact or to 
 breathe the faults of his friend quaintly, but keeps 
 twitting him and pricking him. Recalls members of 
 the new party " the sightless and priestless dupes of 
 a bigoted clergy." 1 When Whittier was annoyed at 
 
 1 Liberator, xiii. 51. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 15! 
 
 the circulation in the presidential campaign of 1842 
 (as if they were then first written) of some highly 
 encomiastic lines on Henry Clay penned by him in 
 1829 or 1830, Garrison slyly asks why Whittier or 
 any of his friends should marvel at this, since " all s 
 fair in politics." In 1859, when the hanging of John 
 Brown occurs, Garrison keenly remarks that Whittier 
 can t complain of Brown, since he himself votes under 
 a constitution which upholds war. In 1841 there 
 appears on the first page of the " Liberator" a para 
 graph from the "Pennsylvania Freeman" which 
 Whittier had recently edited. The writer of the par 
 agraph expresses regret that " the soul of John G. 
 Whittier should choose to be cramped within such 
 narrow limits" as the editorship of the "American 
 and Foreign Anti-slavery Reporter" imposes. Then 
 comes a veiled sneer about the feeble health of Whit 
 tier being just suited to a task of such slight magni 
 tude. Again, the "Liberator" itself says editorially: 
 " Where is John G. Whittier? At home, we believe, 
 but incapable of doing anything important for the 
 cause except to write political electioneering ad 
 dresses for the Liberty party ! New Organization 
 has affected his spirit to a withering extent, and poli 
 tics will complete his ruin, if he * tarry long in all the 
 field. " In the " Liberator " for Nov. n, 1842, Gar 
 rison holds Whittier up to ridicule. " The most ludi 
 crous feelings are excited within us," he says, "on 
 looking over the Liberty party s list of Congressional 
 nominations." After speaking of three of the nomi 
 nees as " Methodist priests," wholly untrustworthy 
 
 1 Liberator, Aug. 12, 1842. 
 
I$2 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 for the work of Abolitionism, he continues: " In Dis 
 trict No. 3, John G. Whittier is the Liberty party 
 candidate. Like the other two, if elected, he would 
 be speechless on the floor of Congress, not, like 
 them, for the want of intellectual ability, but because 
 public speaking is not his gift. Whittier, it is well 
 known, is a member of the Society of Friends. He 
 is professedly opposed to war, defensive as well as 
 offensive, and to capital punishment. As a member 
 of Congress, he would be compelled to promise, under 
 the pains and penalties of perjury, to support the 
 U. S. Constitution AS IT is. By that Constitution, 
 the life of man may be taken, and war declared and 
 prosecuted the army and navy must be maintained 
 piracy is made lawful, in the granting of letters of 
 marque and reprisal and the judiciary, which sen 
 tences human beings to be hanged by the neck till 
 they are dead, is regarded as the sheet-anchor of 
 4 law and order, to say nothing about the clauses 
 allowing slaveholders to represent their slaves, and to 
 recover fugitives in any part of the Union. How can 
 Whittier promise to support such a bloody instru 
 ment, either as a philanthropist or a Christian ? " 
 
 Now, Whittier was of course sensitive to censure, and 
 quick as lightning to perceive coldness or hostility 
 in a friend. He showed the old party the back 
 seams of his stockings in an unmistakable way, when 
 he found out their animus. From about 1840 to 
 1854 no direct communications whatever from Whit 
 tier appear in the " Liberator," though his poems 
 continue to be regularly quoted from other journals. 
 Still, the trouble between Garrison and his friend 
 was not unsolderable, but was only of the nature of 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 153 
 
 a marked coolness (for a number of years). A little 
 incident is in point here. In the latter part of 1841 
 Whittier happened one day to be in Garrison s office 
 in Boston, after the headquarters of the old American 
 Anti-slavery Society had been removed to that city. 
 " Why can t we all go on together?" said Whittier. 
 "Why not indeed?" said Garrison: " we stand just 
 where we did. I see no reason why you cannot 
 cooperate with the American Society." " Oh," replied 
 Whittier, " hut the American Society is not what it 
 once was: it has the hat and the coat and the waistcoat 
 of the old Society, but the life has passed out of it." 
 "Are you not ashamed," laughingly replied Mr. Gar 
 rison, " to come here wondering why we cannot go 
 on together ! No wonder you can t cooperate with a 
 suit of old clothes." 1 
 
 At heart, however, Whittier often suffered poign 
 antly over the disagreements of the two parties. In 
 1840 he wrote to Joshua Leavitt: 
 
 " MY DEAR BROTHER LEAVITT, I have just returned to 
 the quiet of my home, and have barely had leisure to glance 
 over the anti-slavery newspapers which have accumulated dur 
 ing my absence. 
 
 " Last year I attended the Annual Meeting of the American 
 Anti-slavery Society in New York. It was to me a painful 
 season. The distrust and jealousy which were manifested, and 
 the impeachment of motives which was indulged in, were to 
 me a source of regret, mortification, and sorrow unfeigned. 
 And when, previous to the late Anniversary, I saw the parties 
 mustering for strife, signals and watchwords passing and 
 repassing over the land, and every indication of a desperate 
 struggle for the mastery of numbers, I could not find in my 
 
 Life of Garrison, iii. 
 
154 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 own mind any freedom to attend the meeting. Even had I 
 resolved otherwise, the state of my health must have prevented 
 me from any active participation in the business proceedings, 
 and I felt no disposition to be a spectator of dissension and 
 strife among friends. 
 
 " Of the result of that meeting I need not speak. The anti- 
 slavery host has been severed in twain. The thing which I 
 have greatly feared has come upon us. The original cause of 
 the difficulty a disposition to engraft foreign questions upon 
 the simple stock of immediate emancipation I early discovered, 
 and labored to the extent of my ability to counteract. That in 
 so doing I have been compelled to dissent from the views of 
 some of my dearest personal friends has been no ordinary trial 
 to me." 
 
 Whittier then begs leave, on account of his health, 
 to be excused from serving on the Executive Com 
 mittee of the American and Foreign Anti-slavery 
 Society, and closes with a pious exhortation and ex 
 pression of faith in the cause. 1 
 
 A few months later than the time of the above 
 letter, Whittier had a brilliant word-duel with N. P. 
 Rogers, whose second was Garrison. As the give 
 and take game went on, it was merged into a dis 
 cussion of the right or wrong of the New Organiza 
 tion for political action, and the motives of the differ 
 ent parties, and will therefore give us an oppor 
 tunity to investigate the case a little ourselves, and 
 see if we can, at this distance of time, reach the truth 
 about it. 
 
 The immediate occasion of the clash was a letter of 
 Whittier s written to the "Pennsylvania Freeman," 
 
 Emancipator, July 2, 1840. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 155 
 
 under date of Sept. 24, 1840, l criticising N. P. 
 Rogers for certain published statements about the 
 London Convention of Abolitionists, to which he was 
 a delegate. But it is necessary to go back a little 
 further, in order to see the matter in all its bearings. 
 About half a year previously, Whittier had written 
 a poem on the proposed Convention, couched in 
 beautiful terms and breathing a spirit of charity and 
 peace, 
 
 " Yes, let them gather ! Summon forth 
 The pledged philanthropy of earth. 
 
 ***** 
 Let them come and greet each other, 
 And know in each a friend and brother." 
 
 Alluding to this poem, Garrison, with characteristic 
 hard obstinacy and intolerance, said, " Amen, yes, let 
 them all come, ... all but those who refuse 
 to associate for the slave s redemption with others 
 who do not agree with them as to the divinity of 
 human politics, and the Scriptural obligation to pre 
 vent woman from opening her mouth in an anti- 
 slavery gathering for the suffering and the dumb, 
 and they cannot come, conscientiously they are par 
 excellence New Organizationists ! " 
 
 This was slamming the door in Whittier s face with 
 a vengeance ! Yet the difficulty suggested so deli 
 cately by Garrison did not seem to be insuperable 
 to the New Organizationists, for they sent two of 
 their number James G. Birney (at that time a can- 
 
 1 Quoted in " Liberator " Nov. 27, 1840. None of the letters of 
 Whittier written at this time have been reprinted. 
 
156 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 didate for the Presidency) and Henry B. Stanton to 
 the Convention, and no doubt invited Whittier, but 
 he was very ill at home and could not go, and was 
 besides, as we have seen, in a state of disgust over 
 the everlasting wrangle and jaw of the Garrisonians 
 and their opponents. 
 
 Well, off to London, in high feather, had gone 
 Garrison and Rogers, Lucretia Mott and Wendell 
 Phillips, Birney and Stanton. They were having a 
 grand time there, and sending home letters about 
 it all. 
 
 When the British delegates refused to admit 
 women to the Convention, Garrison declined to take 
 his seat with them, and remained a spectator of the 
 proceedings. Now, as the ostensible ground for 
 the split in the Abolition host had been difference of 
 opinion on the desirability of women taking part in 
 conventions and meetings, of course Whittier, in his 
 letter to the " Freeman," above mentioned, takes the 
 position that the action of the British in rejecting the 
 women delegates affords no ground for sweeping 
 condemnation of the great meeting. He himself, as a 
 Quaker, was used to women speaking in meetings, 
 and has always been what is called a woman s rights 
 man. But, seeing the state of public opinion on the 
 subject, he thought it wise to defer the question, and 
 not swamp the Abolition boat by loading her too 
 heavily with other reforms. And he was right. He 
 repels with warmth, also, the assertion of William 
 Howitt that the Orthodox Friends voted " No " be 
 cause they were unwilling to associate with Lucretia 
 Mott, a heterodox Quaker. He takes issue with Mr. 
 Rogers as to the latter s assertion that the great mass 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. T57 
 
 of British Abolitionism was more despotic, as well as 
 more servile, than our republican pro-slavery folk. 
 " They have no freedom in England, and how can 
 they have anti-slavery?" said Rogers. 
 
 To this Whittier replies: 
 
 "Logical and convincing might this be, did not 
 800,000 FACTS to the contrary, in the redeemed and 
 disenchained islands of the West Indies, start up 
 before us did not the voices of emancipated men 
 and women, and children, in those islands, rising 
 above the roar of many waters, bemurmuring the 
 still vexed Bermoothes, invoke blessings upon the 
 heads of the men whom our brother has termed * des 
 potic and servile less worthy than our pro- 
 slavery mob. . . . The truth is, our friend Rogers 
 has little sympathy with anything staid, sober-paced, 
 prosaic, and formula-fettered; and we suppose he 
 found most of our English brethren mere non-con 
 ductors of his fervid, imaginative, electric-sparkling 
 Abolitionism. He went dreaming of setting a whole 
 world free from all kinds of oppression mental, 
 physical, social, religious, and political; millennial 
 fire-shadowings fell about him in his pathway across 
 the waters; he went to receive and in turn communi 
 cate an enthusiasm which was to go round the 
 world, the pharmakon nepenthes for all its evils and 
 they gave him dull reports, plans for abolishing the 
 slave-trade and for cotton-growing in the East 
 passionless, and figurative only in tables of statis 
 tics. . . . 
 
 " They came to welcome American Abolitionists to 
 their hearts and homes, and join them in promoting 
 the extinction of chattel slavery. They did not, how- 
 
158 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 ever, come prepared to adopt our new doctrines of 
 human equality; and probably knew little of them 
 our declarations, immortal in lithograph and satin; 
 our * platform on which men and women lose their 
 distinctive character, and become souls without sex 
 our long reports, and indignant * protests old 
 and new organization tactics hair-splitting meta 
 physics of the Joseph Tracy school poetical and 
 rhetorical flourishes transcendentalism engrafted 
 upon puritanism; Cousin s Progress and Reform 
 and Cromwell s * sword of the Lord and of Gideon 
 our discussions of ethics, theology, politics, * fore 
 knowledge, will and fate, long drawn out, although 
 not always with the linked sweetness Milton speaks 
 of ! The faintest possible rumor of all this had alone 
 reached our British fellow-laborers. They came to 
 meet American Abolitionists, as men altogether like 
 themselves, intent upon the one common object. 
 That object they supposed might be attained without 
 subscribing to our Yankee doctrines of equality, or 
 sexless democracy. For was not Wilberforce himself 
 a Tory ? Did he not with one breath denounce the 
 slave-trade, and with the next defend that church 
 establishment which Milton, eloquently indignant in 
 the name of his abused and plundered countrymen, 
 declared had been for twelve hundred years a sad 
 and doleful succession of blind guides to the souls of 
 Englishmen: a wasteful band of robbers to their 
 purses ? Was it to carry into practice any abstract 
 doctrine of equality that the measure of West India 
 emancipation received the votes of the Lords Spiritual 
 and Temporal in Parliament ? Did William IV., in 
 giving his royal assent to that Bill, become a radical 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 159 
 
 democrat a second Monsieur Egalite ? And now 
 when members of the Royal Family, Lords and 
 Knights and Right Honorables, England s chivalry 
 and her highest born, grace the platforms of anti- 
 slavery meetings, will Ireland find redress for her 
 wrongs will China, swallowing opium-poison, under 
 the guns of the British navy, obtain a respite will 
 the starving murmur of the miserable Chartists be 
 answered less sternly with pistol-shot and sabre-cut ? 
 Not at all. It were as unreasonable to suppose it as 
 that we ourselves, by reason of our Abolitionism, 
 should be found perfect patterns of consistency, 
 meekness, self-denial, and kind-dealing with no seg 
 ment wanting to complete the circle of our perfect 
 ibility. Our British friends, I suspect, after all, upon 
 a rigid scrutiny, will be found quite as consistent as 
 ourselves." 
 
 The communication closes with the expression of 
 a hope that his old friend Rogers will take what is 
 said in a spirit of kindness. Garrison spoke of this 
 letter as "very reprehensible" and "somewhat con 
 temptuous." Charles C. Burleigh also replied to it 
 in a long and admirably cool review, in which he re 
 gretted the over-statements of his Orthodox Quaker 
 friend, Whittier, and offered indubitable proof (taken 
 from private letters) that William Howitt was right 
 in saying that Lucretia Mott had been given the cold 
 shoulder by many of the Orthodox Quakers in Eng 
 land. 1 Mr. Rogers s reply also soon appeared in the 
 " Anti-slavery Standard ": 
 
 1 This is now confirmed by the recently published Autobiog 
 raphy of Mary Howitt, who says, " The English Quakers will not 
 receive Lucretia Mott because she is a Hicksite." 
 
l6o JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " Who could have thought, while contemplating the lofty 
 effusions of our anti-slavery bard, that new organization 
 would ever be able to tame or to catch his ethereal spirit, 
 or fetter his free limbs in its narrow harness ? Alas ! has it 
 not caught him, and reduced him, and tamed him, as to all 
 further cooperation in the enterprise of which he has ever been 
 the ornament and pride ? It may be to humble us in the dust, 
 that star after star in our enterprise is thus starting from its 
 sphere in the anti-slavery firmament, and disappearing like an 
 exploded meteor. Whittier at length goes out, we fear, among 
 the other wandering luminaries. We speak it with grief, for 
 we have gloried in his light and beauty. But, henceforth, we 
 look for him no longer blazing in the anti-slavery van, bearing 
 his shield gallantly abreast of the Liberator celebrating the 
 triumphs of freedom in deathless verse, and bursting forth on 
 tyranny in volcanic explosion, as it developed itself from time 
 to time, under the Ithuriel-touches of our movement. We look 
 no longer for his banner in the anti-slavery field. He is trans 
 ferred to another service." 
 
 And in a succeeding letter Mr. Rogers adds: 
 
 " He tolerated New Organization [political Abolitionism] 
 and threw the whole weight of his powerful influence against 
 the editor of the Liberator, and the movement he had from the 
 beginning singly (as an Abolitionist) pursued, and cast it into 
 the scale with this new type of clerical appealism, called New 
 Organization ; the most wolfish, as by experience we have else 
 where found, of any sheep-clad hostility that has waylaid the 
 anti-slavery movement." . . . 
 
 " We ask dear friend Whittier to down with his classic pride 
 and up among us again again to unfurl his beauteous white 
 streamer to the wind once more to be the ornament, the ad 
 miration, of our thinned but deathless ranks. May God send 
 him health, and with it his ancient vision and spirit, is our sin 
 cere, our earnest prayer." 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. l6l 
 
 In Mr. Whittier s rejoinder to this he says that he 
 has received a copy of Mr. Rogers s paper, in which 
 he is officially informed that he is no longer an Abo 
 litionist. 
 
 " I am likened to a star shooting madly from its 
 sphere, launching, like Carazan of the Eastern 
 story, into the abyss of infinitude 
 
 A comet shorn, 
 Out into utter darkness borne. 
 
 And a mock lamentation is set up over me, which 
 would be pathetic, did it not partake so largely, under 
 all the circumstances of the case, of the ludicrous. 
 
 "Now, if the editor of the .Standard means by all 
 this simply that he and myself disagree on some 
 points in reference to anti-slavery movements, and if 
 believing, as a matter of course, that his views are 
 correct and mine wrong, he chooses to express in this 
 way his dissent from my conclusions, and to expose 
 their folly and fallacy, I have nothing to say. Let him 
 argue down or laugh down my heresies, if he can. 
 He may rest assured that I can do justice to a sound 
 argument, even if it overthrows a favorite doctrine ; 
 and relish good-natured wit and humor, even when 
 exercised at my expense, consoling myself, like Fal- 
 staff, with the reflection, that if I have not wit myself, 
 I am the cause of wit in others. Even if brother 
 Rogers should so far shut up the bowels of his com 
 passion as to quote my own poetry against me, and, 
 as in the case of poor Cinna, the poet in Shakspeare s 
 Julius Caesar, condemn me for my bad verses, 
 however I might writhe under the infliction, I do n t 
 know as I should complain. 
 ii 
 
162 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " But if Nathaniel P. Rogers means (what his lan 
 guage somewhat strongly implies) to impeach my 
 character as an honest man to assail my moral integ 
 rity to brand me with the foul suspicion of treach 
 ery and hypocrisy ; as one wilfully recreant to the 
 cause of emancipation I have only to say that his 
 recent voyage in search of a World s Convention* 
 has wrought in his head and heart a * sea-change 
 which would have astonished the tenants of Pros- 
 pero s island transforming the generous and high- 
 minded Christian gentleman into a false accuser of 
 his brethren a Titus Gates swearing away more 
 than the life of his friend. 
 
 "I am told, in unqualified terms, that I shall never 
 be able to do anything more for that cause to which 
 I have devoted the morning of my life on whose 
 altar I have laid all that I possessed. Indeed, it may 
 be so. He who, in His * dealings with the children 
 of men, has seen fit to visit me with lingering pain 
 and illness, knows whether more labor will be re 
 quired at my hands in that cause, and, if so, will give 
 me strength to perform it." 
 
 It must be granted that Whittier, like another Ivan- 
 hoe, wielded a respectable weapon in this single- 
 handed fence with his group of opponents. And 
 the enemies of the Liberty party were by no means 
 puny men of their hands. To those named should 
 be added the witty Edmund Quincy, who described 
 the New Organization as the Devil s own. As his 
 Majesty was sitting once on a time (says he) in moody 
 meditation, "gnawing his bitter nail," and pondering 
 how he could destroy the usefulness of the Abolition 
 ists, " on a sudden, a happy thought flashed into his 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 163 
 
 mind: Go to, he exclaimed, rubbing his claws, and 
 wagging his tail in an ecstasy of infernal glee, go 
 to, I have it ! I will make fun of them ! And, even 
 as he spoke, out from his teeming brain, as did Sin 
 of old, leaped forth the Liberty party." 1 
 
 In sober truth, the Liberty party was far from 
 being despicable, as the Garrisonians affirmed, and 
 still affirm. Oliver Johnson, as well as the sons of 
 Garrison, claim too much for their party, it seems to 
 me. It is with them, just as it ever was with William 
 Lloyd Garrison, all or nothing. Orna me ! was his 
 continual cry, and he often tripped over the perpen 
 dicular pronoun. His undying glory lies in his having 
 created, as none other did, unless it was Whittier, the 
 moral sentiment that finally destroyed slavery. Every 
 thing that he said was interesting ; his editorials are 
 trenchant pieces of reasoning (thought clear-cut and 
 lucid, no hair on the nib of his pen); he towers up 
 above everybody in his faction in moral earnestness 
 and strength. But he was unelastic, was lacking in 
 the mobility and tact of genius ; and when, after ten 
 years of agitation, the anti-slavery party was clearly 
 ripe for political action (as the issue demonstrated), 
 he and his adherents made the strategic mistake of 
 remaining stationary. Looking back, we can now 
 see that the despised and ridiculed Liberty party, 
 like the Independents of to-day, was on the right 
 track. Like the little Spartan band of John Brown, 
 their plans were not so wild as they have been repre 
 sented to be. John Brown knew well enough that 
 his force was small, but he expected to draw to it 
 
 1 Liberator, Jan. 5, 43. 
 
164 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 thousands of blacks along the great Alleghany range. 
 So the new party of Liberty, seeing the South march 
 ing on from victory to victory, and the great question 
 of Texas looming up, saw that the time was come to 
 send the electric current through the nation and 
 crystallize the discordant elements into the serried 
 ranks of a great party : they expected to be joined 
 by hundreds of thousands of Whigs and Democrats 
 who should find their organization the nucleus of 
 union. "They judged, and the event has proved that 
 they judged wisely " (says Henry Wilson, in his " Rise 
 and Fall of the Slave Power ") " that by narrowing 
 the platform, even if it did not contain all that the 
 most advanced Abolitionists desired, if such men as 
 John P. Hale, Wilmot, Giddings, Palfrey, Seward, and 
 Mann could be drawn from the Whig and Democratic 
 parties and be thus arrayed in a compact and vigor 
 ous organization against the Slave Power, there 
 would be great gain." 
 
 The declaration of objects and principles of the 
 Liberty party, as set forth in their journals, and 
 notably in their Almanac for 1846, J shows that their 
 plans were well seasoned and not unfeasible, and 
 reveals their essential identity with the platform of 
 the Free-Soil party that came later. The Almanac 
 announces that their aim was to secure an anti- 
 slavery Congress and Executive, and thereby abolish 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, do away the 
 slave-trade, annul the Fugitive Slave Law, and, by 
 excluding slaveholders from all offices in the gift of 
 
 1 This seems to be the best and fullest statement of the objects 
 of the party that has been made. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 165 
 
 the appointing power, virtually disfranchise the 
 South, and render it imperative to close out the busi 
 ness of slavery altogether. 
 
 Now, the party did not succeed exactly in the way 
 it had hoped to do, yet indirectly did succeed. For 
 it was the elder brother of the Free-Soil party, and 
 got so mixed up with it in the bath-tub of the Buffalo 
 Convention of 1848 that its identity disappeared. 
 It is well known that at this Convention the members 
 of the Liberty party, after due consultation, dissolved 
 their organization (they were met in the same city, 
 at the same time) and took their seats among the 
 delegates of the just-born Free-Soil party; and it was 
 remarked by one of the speakers and the mot was 
 applauded that " without tasting death the Liberty 
 party had been translated." 1 But, now, remember 
 that the Free-Soil party was merged in the Repub 
 lican party, which held Kansas for the North, abol 
 ished slavery, and saved the Union. 
 
 Internal dissension was what killed the Liberty 
 party. In 1844, however, in voting for James G. Bir- 
 ney, it held the balance of power in New York, and 
 decided the presidential election against Clay, who 
 had expressed himself as willing to see Texas annexed 
 as a slave State. Says Schouler, " Had half of the 
 Birney votes of the election of 1844 been given to 
 Clay, he would have won the State." a This is a mat 
 ter of figures, and has not been disputed. It seems 
 to me that, if this Third party could have been held 
 together by some great leader, it would have drawn 
 
 1 Wilson s " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," ii. 157. 
 
 2 History of United States, iv. 479. 
 
166 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 to it all the elements that afterwards went to make 
 up the Republican party. It is idle to say that it did 
 not represent genuine anti-slavery principles because 
 it affiliated with Free-Soilers, who were many of them 
 only half-way anti-slavery. The fact remains that 
 the fiery thread of freedom ran through all the par 
 ties, Liberty, Free-Soil, and Republican, either 
 darkling or in the light, until it burst into flame in the 
 Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Then, it is in 
 fact a great mistake to say that the Free-Soil party 
 was not anti-slavery. In their platform of 1852, arti 
 cle five demands that there shall be no new slave 
 territory; article seven, "immediate and total repeal 
 of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850"; and article six 
 declares that " slavery is a sin against God, and a 
 crime against man, which no human enactment or 
 usage can make right; and that Christianity, human 
 ity, and patriotism alike demand its abolition." Can 
 language be stronger or more unequivocal than this? 
 Honor, then, to the gallant little Liberty party! And 
 let it never be forgotten that, while the Garrison and 
 Phillips faction of the Abolitionists was resting in 
 masterly inactivity (politically speaking) and coun 
 selling disunion, the Whittier and Birney party (as a 
 part of the Republican host) was rushing on amid the 
 whirl of events, and gathering in the Great West the 
 votes that saved the Union. 
 
 We have faithfully recorded, as a matter of history, 
 the differences of opinion and the partial alienation 
 of Garrison and Whittier; and we now note with 
 pleasure the gradual growth of reconciliation. 
 
 When in 1854 the souls of lovers of freedom in 
 Massachusetts were deeply stirred by the remanding 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 167 
 
 of Anthony Burns to slavery, Whittier wrote to Garri 
 son that Abolitionists must forget all past differences 
 and unite their strength for the conversion of the 
 North. " If I had any love for the Union remaining," 
 he writes, " the events of the last few weeks have 
 crushed it out. 1 But I do not forget that the same 
 power which is needed to break from the Union may 
 make the Union the means of abolishing slavery. At 
 any rate, what we want now is an abolitionized North. 
 To this end Unionists and Disunionists can both con 
 tribute. At least let us have union among ourselves. 
 In our hatred of slavery, our sympathy for our 
 afflicted colored brethren, and in our indignation 
 against the oppressor, we are already united; and let 
 us now unite, as far as may be, in action. For one, 
 my heart goes out to all who in any way manifest 
 love of liberty, and pity for the oppressed." 1 
 
 In 1856 Whittier sends Garrison a copy of a new 
 edition of his poems, inscribed to his " old and affec 
 tionate friend," and Garrison graciously acknowl 
 edges the gift in a review in his paper. 
 
 With the outbreak of the Civil War, which took 
 the work of emancipation out of the hands of the 
 Abolitionists altogether, the last vestige of variance 
 disappears from the mind of Garrison (Whittier, as 
 we have seen, never had any hard feeling at all), and 
 henceforth all is concord. At the anniversary meet 
 ing of the American Anti-slavery Society in 1863, 
 Whittier was warmly eulogized by Garrison, who 
 said, " There are few living who have done so much 
 to operate upon the public mind and conscience and 
 
 1 Liberator, June 9, 54. 
 
l68 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 heart of our country, for the abolition of slavery, as 
 John Greenleaf Whittier." And, when the poet s 
 seventieth birthday was celebrated in 1877, Garrison 
 wrote some cordial lines (which by a stretch of imag 
 ination might be called verses) in his honor. 
 
 It is almost needless to say that John G. Whittier 
 cast his vote and used his influence in favor of the 
 election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidential 
 chair. There are some humorous, ringing campaign 
 verses written by him for the first of the two Lincoln 
 election struggles. They have not heretofore appealed 
 in book form, but only as a campaign leaflet, or broad 
 side, and in newspapers thirty odd years ago. 1 They 
 were read at a Republican meeting in Georgetown, 
 Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1860 : 
 
 THE QUAKERS ARE OUT. 
 
 Not vainly we waited and counted the hours, 
 
 The buds of our hope have burst out into flowers. 
 
 No room for misgiving no loop-hole of doubt, 
 
 We Ve heard from the Keystone ! The Quakers are out. 
 
 The plot has exploded we Ve found out the trick ; 
 The bribe goes a-begging ; the fusion won t stick. 
 When the Wide-Awake lanterns are shining about, 
 The rogues stay at home, and the true men are out ! 
 
 The good State has broken the cords for her spun ; 
 Her oil-springs and water won t fuse into one ; 
 The Dutchman has seasoned his Freedom with Krout, 
 And slow, late, but certain, the Quakers are out ! 
 
 1 The leaflet is headed " A Voice from John G. Whittier." The 
 poem may also be found in the "Liberator," 1860. 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONTEST. 169 
 
 Give the flags to the winds ! set the hills all aflame ! 
 Make way for the man with the patriarch s name ! 
 Away with misgiving away with all doubt, 
 For Lincoln goes in when the Quakers are out ! 
 
 By way of response, somebody, assumed to be a 
 Quaker, wrote some verses in reply : 
 
 " The Quakers are out ! They had better stay in 
 Than mix with the world in political din ; 
 What though the earth s potsherds together may smite ? 
 Keep the eye firmly fix d and unmoved on the right," etc. 
 
 Since the war, brief letters from Mr. Whittier, in 
 support of candidates for the Republican party, have 
 appeared from time to time in the journals, and some 
 of them are included in the latest edition of his prose 
 writings. Every autumn, regularly, he goes down to 
 Amesbury, where he is a legal voter, and casts his 
 vote. He also takes a live interest in the struggles 
 of other peoples for freedom and for republican forms 
 of government, 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHITTIER AT HOME. 
 
 WHITTIER is tall and erect in form, with quick 
 movements and alertness of glance. The strict old 
 Quaker regime forbade bows of salutation. The 
 Quaker poet s jerky nod is therefore a concession to 
 the world, but its deficiencies are amply supplied by 
 the pleasant smiJe that generally accompanies it. He 
 inherited one of those enviably sweet and lovable 
 natures that so often serve to insure success in life. 
 He is somewhat hard of hearing now, and his face is 
 grave and sad when not animated by conversation. 
 But ever and anon, as you talk with him, the features 
 are illumined by a sweet and sudden smile and a 
 kindly flash of the dark eyes. His "thee s" and 
 "thou s" and quaint rural solecisms of speech come 
 with the shock of a surprise when you first meet him. 
 But you like him all the better for them. The more 
 liberal Quakers have discarded the broad brims and 
 antique drab garments of Charles the Second s time. 
 Mr. Whittier generally wears a black or drab tile hat 
 and blacK undercoat. I have seen him on the street 
 in Amesbury, wearing a cinnamon-colored overcoat 
 and a small gray tippet around his neck. The long 
 backward and upward slope of the head gives it just 
 the shape of Walter Scott s and Emerson s. Mr. 
 Wasson keenly observes that this feature, together 
 170 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 171 
 
 with the dark deep eyes full of shadowed fire, the 
 Arabian complexion, the sharp-cut, intense lines of 
 the face, the light tall stature, and quick axial poise 
 of movement, shows that Whittier is of the Saracenic 
 type. Mr. J. Miller McKim, who was with Whittier 
 at the Philadelphia Convention of 1833, says that at 
 that time, with his dark frock-coat with standing 
 collar, black flashing eyes, and black whiskers, he had 
 something of a military look, and was a noticeable 
 figure in the convention. 
 
 The next pen-portrait, in order of time, is given by 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 1 He describes an 
 interview he had with Whittier in 1843, " when the 
 excitement of the * Latimer Case still echoed through 
 Massachusetts, and the younger Abolitionists were 
 full of the joy of eventful living. a I was then nine 
 teen," writes Mr. Higginson, "and saw the poet for 
 the first time at an eating-house, known as Campbell s, 
 then quite a resort for reformers of all sorts. I saw 
 before me a man of striking personal appearance ; 
 tall, slender, with olive complexion, black hair, 
 straight black eyebrows, brilliant eyes, and an Orien 
 tal, Semitic cast of countenance. This was Whittier 
 at thirty-five. I lingered till he rose from the table, 
 and then, advancing, I said with boyish enthusiasm, 
 and I doubt not with boyish awkwardness also, I 
 
 1 In the " Literary World," December, 1877. 
 
 2 The reference is to the attempt made in 1842 by James B. Gray, 
 of Norfolk, Virginia, to carry back from Boston his fugitive slave 
 George Latimer. A tremendous excitement was the result, and 
 meetings were held in Faneuil Hall, at which Wendell Phillips, 
 Frederick Douglass, and others made speeches. The excitement 
 was repeated on the floor of Congress. 
 
172 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 should like to shake hands with the author of " Massa 
 chusetts to Virginia." The poet, who was, and is, 
 one of the shyest of men, broke into a kindly smile, 
 and said briefly, * Thy name, friend ? I gave it, and 
 we shook hands, and that was all. But to me it was 
 like touching a hero s shield ; and though I have 
 since learned to count the friendship of Whittier as 
 one of the great privileges of my life, yet nothing has 
 ever displaced the recollection of that first boyish 
 interview." 
 
 A writer in the " Democratic Review" for 1845 
 notices in Whittier the " union of manly firmness and 
 courage with womanly sweetness and tenderness, 
 alike in countenance and character." Fredrika Bre- 
 mer writes in 1847 of his over-strained nervous sys 
 tem, his " nervous bashfulness." And here is a rather 
 flattering picture of him at forty-five, by George W. 
 Bungay : " His temperament is nervous-bilious ; [he] 
 is tall, slender and straight as an Indian ; has a superb 
 head ; his brow looks like a white cloud under his 
 raven hair ; eyes large, black as sloes, and glowing 
 with expression, . . . those starlike eyes flash 
 ing under such a magnificent forehead." 
 
 The truest picture of all, it seems to me, is given 
 by genial Robert Collyer : 
 
 "When you see Whittier, you see instantly it is the 
 Whittier of the pictures, only more thin and gray. 
 The pictures give you a larger head, yet not so fine 
 in the lines that mean most in a man of genius ; and 
 no picture can give you the eyes, smaller than those 
 we see in the portraits of Burns, but dark, intense, 
 
 Every Saturday, June 3, 1871. 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 173 
 
 and tender, and, when he speaks of what touches him 
 intensely, all aglow with the light of his soul, such 
 eyes, indeed, as you only see now in a picture by one 
 of the great masters. There is a hint of the Quaker, 
 you notice, in the cut of his dress, but not in the 
 color, which is black, not new at all, but so spotless 
 as to make you wish he would take all your new gar 
 ments and put them through a course of training for 
 a few months, that they might get the habit of look 
 ing as pure and sweet as that when you came to wear 
 them. A Quaker in his speech, but using thee and 
 * thou with such a shy sweet grace as to make you 
 wonder whether the finest manners may not lurk, 
 after all, within the homely old Saxon terms ; quick 
 with his words, contrary to all his traditions and 
 training, and with no hint of the sacred sing-song his 
 sect has always held in such profound esteem, especi 
 ally in meet n ." 
 
 And here is a little photograph showing the poet 
 among the voters of his own town of Amesbury. It 
 may go down to posterity to interest admirers of his 
 " After Election," a marvelous improvisation, a 
 triumph over what to all but a poet would have 
 seemed hopelessly prosaic material. 1 When George 
 M. White was in Amesbury on election day in Novem 
 ber, 1883, he went to the town-hall where farmers, 
 tradesmen, and mechanics were discussing in groups, 
 
 1 The strong phrases of this poem are familiar. The poet repre 
 sents himself as awaiting telegraphic election returns: "Hark! 
 there the Alleghanies spoke " " That signal from Nebraska 
 sprung" " Is that thy answer strong and free, O loyal heart of 
 Tennessee?" " In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke ! Cheer an 
 swers cheer from rise to set of sun. We have a country yet . " 
 
174 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 larger or smaller, the local issues: "Among these 
 figures there was pointed out to me the tall thin fig 
 ure of an old man wrapped in a long brown coat, 
 with a high fur collar and woolen mantle around 
 his neck, almost coming up to the brim of his tall 
 black hat. He was talking with the various groups 
 around him. He is much above the average height 
 of men, and few of his pictures that I have seen 
 resemble him. His hair and beard are quite white, 
 he wears no moustache, and his lips are set with an 
 expression of much decision and energy, which is 
 emphasized by a short quick utterance." 
 
 Of late years Mr. Whittier has passed the greater 
 part of each winter in Boston, taking rooms in some 
 quiet hotel, such as the Winthrop, in Bowdoin Street, 
 on the northern slope of Beacon Hill. When he reads 
 a book, he usually takes up old and tried favorites ; 
 and, although very near the Athenaeum library, 
 neither he nor Dr. Holmes (so far as I know) is often 
 seen there, eagerly browsing among the latest books 
 and journals, as is their friend, Dr. Bartol. Occa 
 sionally Mr. Whittier can be entrapped into taking 
 an early tea with a Boston friend; but he never feels 
 able to stand the excitement of a large company and 
 late hours. 
 
 It was formerly his custom, and I believe still is 
 such, to spend a few weeks of each summer amid the 
 sublime and yet quiet and pastoral scenery of the 
 outskirts of the White Mountains. He used to put 
 up at the old Bearcamp House before this was burned 
 down. This old inn commanded a view of rough and 
 
 Harper s Monthly, Februaiy, 1883. 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 175 
 
 savage Chocorua Mountain, and Mounts Israel and 
 Whittier. " There is an atmospheric bloom over all 
 the jagged ridges," writes Mr. S. J. Pickard, " which 
 is to the eye like the softness of velvet, but which 
 hides no outline and does not obliterate the distinc 
 tion between rock and forest. The colors change 
 from hour to hour: rich blues and dark purples alter 
 nate during the day, varied with cloud-shadows and 
 drifting gray mists." In the valley through which 
 the tree-fringed Bearcamp flows are orchards loaded 
 with fruit ; the tinkle of cow-bells is heard on the 
 mountain slopes. In the autumn the wayside fences 
 are festooned with clematis in bloom. By the road 
 side are masses of golden-rod and purple asters, and 
 the trees are crimson with woodbine. 
 
 Whittier s "Sunset on the Bearcamp" gives the 
 higher inspiration of this mountain scenery. There 
 was an inspiration equally strong, too, in the open 
 fireplaces of the inn. Your hot and ruddy wood fire 
 is a great thawer-out of conventional frigidities ; 
 and the fireplace of the Bearcamp Inn parlor was not 
 inferior to its fellows in this good work. Around it 
 used to gather not only Whittier and his friends, but 
 such celebrities as Lucy Larcom and Gail Hamilton, 
 with their relatives arid acquaintances ; and in the 
 basking heat the merriment often waxed deep and 
 subtle. Comic verses were improvised on rainy days, 
 and Whittier s gift of impromptu composition was 
 drawn upon for nonsense verses to season the feast. 
 
 Amesbury was Whittier s home for many years 
 before the death of his mother and sisters, and he 
 still owns the old home there. It is occupied by 
 friends. Portraits of mother and sister hang in the 
 
176 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 little parlor; and he keeps in his study a few books 
 and pictures. The region round about has been cele 
 brated in his verse. From the study window the 
 green dome of Powow Hill is to be seen, an eleva 
 tion which he frequently climbed with friends; across 
 the Merrimack rise "The Laurels"; and nearby is 
 the Powow River, and farther off the Artichoke, Lake 
 Attitash.and the green hills of Newbury. The intro 
 ductory lines of " Miriam " describe the view from 
 Powow Hill. The town contains manufactories of 
 cloth and of carriages. It is said to be named after 
 Ambresbury in England. It is a quiet peaceful old 
 village, especially in its outskirts of orchards and 
 meadows. Mr. Whittier s wooden house on Friend 
 Street is as plain as plain can be. It was originally a 
 one-story structure, but a second story with attic has 
 been added. A few hundred yards from it, in the 
 delta formed by the meeting of two streets, stands 
 the wooden meeting-house of the Friends, where the 
 poet has worshiped God after the ways of his 
 fathers ever since he was a boy. When the family 
 first came to Amesbury, he had with him his mother, 
 sister, and Aunt Mercy: the brother, Matthew, seems 
 early to have married and set up his own household 
 apart. After mother, aunt, and sister had succes 
 sively passed away, Greenleaf s niece kept house for 
 him until her marriage with Mr. S. T. Pickard. Whit- 
 tier then removed to Oak Knoll, a fine estate in Dan- 
 vers, nearer Boston, which is the property of cousins 
 of his. 
 
 On the table in the tiny parlor at Amesbury stands, 
 or stood, Rogers s group, " The Fugitive s Story," 
 representing Whittier, Garrison, and Henry Ward 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 177 
 
 Beecher listening to a black woman as she relates the 
 story of her flight from bondage. On the wall used 
 to hang a large picture of Longfellow facing one of 
 Whittier himself. The gracious and benignant face 
 of his mother, who is clothed in spotless drab, looks 
 down upon you, as does a crayon of the loved sister. 
 Here is a sketch of the little parlor as seen through 
 the eyes of an Englishman in 1885 : J 
 
 "The small parlor into which the visitor is shown 
 is furnished with the dreary and prim commonplace- 
 ness of horsehair upholstery and the old-fashioned 
 conventional ornaments under glass shades. It might 
 be a Dissenting Minister s front room in some pro 
 vincial English town, like Leicester or Northampton, 
 not yet reached by the iconoclasm of modern aesthet- 
 icism. But Mr. Whittier s kindly greeting of * How 
 do thee do ? I m glad to see thee, dispels all surprise 
 by recalling the fact that he is not only a New 
 Englander, which means simple living from necessity, 
 but also a Quaker, which means simple living from 
 choice." 
 
 The study, or garden room, in the Amesbury house 
 is in the rear, one of its windows giving upon a long 
 strip of garden full of pear-trees and grape-vines, 
 and the other (a glass door) opening upon a little 
 side porch. Above was formerly his sleeping-room. 
 The Franklin stove with brass andirons furnishes the 
 open fire which is loved by all poets, but especially 
 by this one. Near the sashed door is the writing- 
 desk. Six book-shelves are fitted into the space 
 between the chimney and the side of the house, and 
 
 1 Quoted from the " Pall Mall Gazette." 
 12 
 
178 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 contain such works as Charles Reade s novels, Irish 
 ballads, and the poems of Browning. A side shelf 
 on the wall is completely filled with a blue-and-gold 
 edition of the poets. On the walls hang a pen-and- 
 ink sketch of his brother Matthew, a portrait of 
 Emerson, paintings of Essex County scenes, includ 
 ing water-colors by Harry Fenn and Celia Thaxter, 
 fringed gentians painted by Lucy Larcom, and Hill s 
 picture of the old farm-house. To this shrine of 
 poetry have come in days past such men as Garrison, 
 Longfellow, Sumner, Bayard Taylor, Wendell Phillips, 
 James T. Fields, Higginson, Wasson, Emerson, Whip- 
 pie, and many more as famous men. "To this nook," 
 says Mrs. Spofford, "came Alice and Phoebe Gary on 
 their romantic pilgrimage, and here have come many 
 others of the illustrious women of the day, most of 
 whom he reckons as his friends in this generation, 
 as he did Lydia Maria Child and Lucretia Mott and 
 their contemporaries of the last. Here the poet has 
 taken his ease in the slippers that Gail Hamilton 
 made for him, the cunning fingers reconciling his 
 belligerency with his principles by clothing in Quaker 
 drab the enraged American eagle wrought upon them; 
 here he has amused himself teaching tricks to the 
 house animals, which, if he does not love, he loves to 
 play with; here has this verse been struck off like a 
 spark, and that one painfully labored after ; and here, 
 in spite of his laurels, have the thunder-bolts of the 
 gods twice sought the wearer, the last time felling 
 him to the floor as he stood in the doorway, pros 
 trating his niece at the same time, shattering a mirror, 
 and piercing a rolled-up window-shade till it left the 
 burned mark of a dozen jagged bullet-holes. After 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 179 
 
 that the treacherous lightning-rods were removed, 
 his nephew tells us, but the pertinacious vender of a 
 new variety, who could not make the poet his victim, 
 had his revenge by heading his prospectus with a cut 
 of the lightning descending upon Mr. Whittier s 
 house, and doing the havoc it could not have done, 
 had the house owned this peculiar and particular 
 protector." 
 
 Whittier is as deeply loved by the people of Ames- 
 bury as was Emerson by his neighbors in Concord, 
 or as was the Good Gray Poet by the citizens of Cam- 
 den. And the same is true of Whittier s neighbors 
 in Danvers, his other home, which is an hour s ride 
 by cars from Amesbury, by the leisurely local train. 
 
 The old Boston path to Newburyport once led, by 
 an alternate and scarcely secondary line, directly by 
 the estate of Oak Knoll. Here once lived the Rev. 
 George Burroughs, who was pressed to death with 
 heavy weights for questionable dealings with Satan in 
 the days of the witchcraft delusion. The sounding- 
 board of the pulpit in the church where the witches 
 of the neighborhood were tried now covers the mouth 
 of a well on the estate. Oak Knoll is a farm of some 
 sixty acres, and lies about a mile and a half north 
 west of the village of Danvers. The stately house, 
 with its great Doric pillars, fronts the south, and 
 stands on elevated ground commanding a view of 
 distant hills and farms and towns. At some distance, 
 on the opposite side of the road, are the farm build 
 ings. The charms of landscape-gardening vie with 
 the wildness of nature to render this a place of 
 
 1 Harper s Monthly, January, 1884. 
 
l8o JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 delightful quiet and seclusion. The carriage-way 
 winds upward through bosky lawns kept trim by the 
 horse lawn-mower. 
 
 " Directly in front of the house," says Mr. Pick- 
 ard, " and completely encircled by the curving ap 
 proaches, is a picturesque knoll in the form of a 
 dome, covered with a luxuriant carpet of grass, 
 making one of the most charming lawns it is pos 
 sible to imagine. This knoll, the summit of which 
 is a little higher than the site occupied by the 
 house, is crowned by two magnificent trees, an oak 
 and a hickory. The estate might well have been 
 named for either of these noble trees. The grounds 
 slope toward the east, the south, and the west, with 
 just enough of irregularity to heighten the beauty of 
 the landscape in each direction. Trees, in clumps 
 and singly, deciduous and evergreen, are placed 
 with careful reference to artistic effect. The variety 
 of trees is very great, many of them being rarely 
 seen in New England. There is a fine magnolia 
 near the house, and farther off a tulip-tree. The 
 rich dark hue of a purple beech calls attention to 
 a fine grove in the western distance. There are 
 English elms and English oaks, an immense Norway 
 spruce, also hemlocks, pines, chestnuts, and almost 
 every other tree that can be made to grow in this 
 cli-mate. There are great orchards of apples and 
 pears ; a garden flanked with luxuriant grape-vines, 
 and yielding all the smaller fruits, as a matter of 
 course, also roses in abundance. Near the eastern 
 piazza of the house is a large circular flower garden 
 surrounded by a neat hedge, with great green arches 
 for gateways to it. In the centre of this garden is 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. l8l 
 
 a fountain throwing a fine spray to a considerable 
 height. In this garden Mr. Whittier is to be seen at 
 work each pleasant morning before breakfast, with 
 rake, hoe, and broom. All the beds and walks are 
 kept exquisitely neat, for the poet is thorough in 
 everything he undertakes." 
 
 No shooting is allowed on the estate, and squirrels 
 and birds sometimes come to the window to be fed. 
 The squirrels, says Mrs. Spofford, take liberties that 
 " puzzle such fellows as the little Dandie Dinmont 
 who has the care of the house upon his shoulders, 
 and who darts after them in a terrible fury, and 
 when he has treed them, in his wrath stands on his 
 hind feet, waves his paws, and whines, begging them 
 to come down." Mrs. Bolton writes, in one of her 
 books for young people, of one of the dogs coming 
 out to welcome her and holding up a bruised paw 
 for sympathy, while the mocking-bird on the porch 
 talked so much louder than she and Mr. Whittier 
 that he was obliged to cover up its cage. 
 
 Among the ornaments of the roomy parlor are 
 a portrait of Whittier painted when he was about forty, 
 a statuette of Charles Sumner, and a verd-antique 
 statue of Hercules once owned by Mr. Sumner. A 
 little library, opening on the western veranda, was 
 built especially for Mr. Whittier. On its walls are 
 hung paintings of the Bearcamp and Ossipee region. 
 "Above the parlor," says Mrs. Spofford, " is his 
 spacious sleeping-room, furnished after Mr. East- 
 lake s ideas. Here hang a fine marine view, a sketch 
 of the Shoals, and a portrait of Hawthorne, an 
 other cherished friend. The windows, which are on 
 three sides of the room, command all the beauty 
 
l82 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of the place flower-garden and fountain, the velvet 
 turf of the knoll, the stately groups of trees against 
 a western sky, and the lofty lawns about the turreted 
 asylum on the distant hill." 
 
 In the autumn of 1889 Sir Edwin Arnold pub 
 lished in his paper, the London " Telegraph," brief 
 notes of a visit paid by him to Oak Knoll : 
 
 " Mr. Whittier s conversation, which was of the 
 Quaker fashion, full of thees and * thous, was 
 pointed, animated, and marked by the felicity of 
 his printed works ; nor can any cultured person 
 need to be told how classic and lucid and happy 
 are many of Whittier s best lines. He smiled, half 
 sadly, when I expressed the wish that he could 
 come across the Atlantic to see, under the memorial 
 window to Milton, in St. Margaret s Church at West 
 minster, his own admirable verse : 
 
 The New World honors thee, whose lofty plea 
 For England s freedom made her own more sure. 
 Thy page, immortal as its theme, shall be 
 Their common freehold, while the worlds endure. 
 
 He dropped a bright epigram in the course of our 
 chat. I had been praising Emerson, and lamenting 
 that a great authority known to us both dis 
 sented, and compared the Concord philosopher s 
 style in prose to the shooting forth of stones from 
 a sack. Ah! but, replied instantly the old poet, 
 * thee knows well, friend, they are all precious 
 stones. And I was happy enough to obtain an 
 interesting avowal from his lips. He had been 
 speaking of the enduring and gloomy influence of 
 the old accustomed Puritan doctrines upon the 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 183 
 
 minds of New Englanders, of their pernicious dark 
 ening of life and literature, and how he himself had 
 come under the cloud of Calvinism and its terrors. 
 
 * But you, I said, * sir, born in the purple of the 
 Muses, never were, and never could have been, a 
 Calvinistic Puritan. * Nay, thee are right, he an 
 swered, the world was much too beautiful and God 
 far too good. I never was of that mind. " 
 
 In the midsummer of 89 the veteran Abolitionist 
 John M. Barbour published in the "Watchman" 
 some reminiscences of Whittier and Oak Knoll which 
 have the charm of old-fashioned graciousness and 
 entire unconsciousness of any infringement of the 
 laws of propriety. Indeed, the privileges of age and 
 life-long friendship bar that. Mr. Barbour says what 
 I should not dare to say, and I shall therefore let 
 him speak: 
 
 " On Tuesday, June 4, I was at the depot at the 
 hour named. The coach was there: the lovely young 
 daughter of the genial and accomplished Mrs. Wood 
 man (who has just published the charming book, 
 
 * Picturesque Alaska, which everybody should read) 
 jumped from the carriage with the buoyancy of health 
 ful youth, and gave me a hearty welcome. We soon 
 arrived at * Oak Knoll, one of the most delightful 
 spots on earth. The copious rains seemed to have 
 drawn the living verdure from the ground, while the 
 century-old oaks and elms shading the old mansion 
 made everything beautiful in the extreme. The five 
 ladies and the venerable poet gave me a genuine wel- 
 
 1 " Picturesque Alaska," by Abby Johnson Woodman, Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co., 1889. Introductory note by Mr. Whittier. 
 
184 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 come ; though they feared Uncle Greenleaf was 
 too tired to enjoy my company, as nineteen unex 
 pected callers had been there yesterday. I told them 
 I would behave as well as I knew how ; that they 
 must not allow me to trespass upon his time or 
 strength. We then retired to his sanctum. He 
 seated me in a large, plush arm-chair, convenient to 
 his best ear. We began the eventful history of mutual 
 friends by whose agency, through God s mighty pur 
 pose, the dark stain of slavery was swept from our 
 country. Alvan Stewart, Gerrit Smith, Pierpont, 
 Adams, Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, Rantoul, Leavitt, 
 Colver, Webster, Gushing, and others now with the 
 great silent majority, were discussed. We threw 
 aside all restraint, were young again, reviewed the 
 past, when, as disciples of Wilberforce, Clarkson, 
 Buxton, and Sturge, we knew it was wrong to buy 
 and sell human souls, before Garrison and Phillips 
 came on the active stage of life. He said, Friend 
 Barbour, I can remember but four of the old Aboli 
 tionists Bowditch, Sewall [Samuel E. Sewall has 
 since passed away], thyself, and myself now living. 
 Did thee ever get hurt in any of the mobs that have 
 so disgraced our country? I told him I had been 
 driven from many places by violence. I inquired 
 whether he had ever suffered personal injury. Yes, 
 said the good man, * I was pelted by the mob and 
 badly hurt in my face by a large stone. I was sub 
 sequently told, by one of the party, that their pur 
 pose was to catch me and paint my face black, so 
 that I would be a " real nigger." But it was not 
 accomplished. 
 
 "The little silver bell rang for dinner. Mrs. Wood- 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 185 
 
 man called me from the library, and placed us in 
 proper order at the table. I was near the poet, 
 whom they almost idolize. The six ladies and two 
 men bowed their heads in silent prayer, for about the 
 space of three or four minutes of marked solemnity. 
 Then the most social, genial, cheerful conversation 
 marked the more than an hour of the admirably pre 
 pared and highly appreciated dinner. Mrs. Mary A. 
 Livermore was announced at the door. Mr. Whittier 
 retired with her to the library. The others of this 
 sweet domestic circle, with myself, gathered in a large 
 room nearly filled with cherished memorials and 
 valuables, presented to him by hosts of friends and 
 admirers from all parts of the world. At this 
 moment in rushed Robin Adair, the huge Scotch 
 collie which I had known in my former visits. He 
 seemed to know me, was quite familiar, but the grand- 
 niece of Whittier mildly rebuked him for his ardor. 
 I invited him to rest his head in my lap, fondled him, 
 and he seemed as happy as the rest of the family, of 
 whom he is a decided pet. 
 
 " Mr. Whittier has just passed his eighty-first year, 
 is feeble, and suffers much from neuralgic pains. 
 When I told him that at eighty-four I was unac 
 quainted with pain of any kind, never spent a whole 
 day in bed in my long life, he said, with an expressive 
 smile, that I * ought to be a better man, however good 
 I might be. 
 
 " I was after this led by the young lady to the 
 home of the valued Jersey cows, with their young 
 calves. They never slaughter any of their animals. 
 Robin Adair accompanied us, and was directed to 
 call them from their hiding-places under the barns, 
 
l86 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 which he did with vociferous alacrity. She asked 
 me if they were not beauties. I candidly acknowl 
 edged that they were. I told her that one of my 
 grandsons had a string of twenty-five such Jerseys 
 in Oregon, which he milked every morning and 
 evening, and had a personal acquaintance with each 
 cow. 
 
 " The time for my departure seemed near. She 
 said, No, not yet, I am posted as to trains; at the 
 proper moment I will have the coach at the door. I 
 was then led to the garden surrounded by the old- 
 fashioned box-plant, trimmed to about eighteen 
 inches high. It was filled with magnolia and tulip 
 trees, and flowers of various kinds in all their lavish 
 beauty. They pressed upon me an armful to be 
 taken to my home for my grandchildren, which, after 
 examination, the venerable poet said was not com 
 plete; he added a new variety which he thought they 
 had not seen. This delightful family is based 
 upon the religion of Jesus Christ; its members be 
 lieve in the constant influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 They are Friends in word and deed, of high culture 
 and intelligence." 
 
 The young lady spoken of by Mr. Barbour above, 
 Phcebe Woodman, assists " Uncle Greenleaf " with his 
 correspondence, and he in turn has presented her 
 with a beautiful horse. 
 
 Mr. Barbour s paper may be supplemented by a 
 few notes on the poet s personal traits. 
 
 I have already alluded to his rural peculiarities of 
 speech. This is something that elicits the sympathy 
 of the farmers and laborers who meet him. A friend 
 
 Mr. William M. Fullerton, ex-editor of the Boston "Advertiser." 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 187 
 
 once got on his track up somewhere by Mt. Monad- 
 nock. "Why," said an old farmer, "he s just as 
 natural and like folks as can be. He wrote some 
 poems [!] right out here in the yard, on a board he 
 picked up, and he was sittin in a kitchen chair he 
 brought out, lookin toward Chusett yonder. His 
 poems we can understand, though we re not book 
 people; he s like folks, Whittier is." 
 
 Mr. George M. White gives in " Harper s Monthly " 
 some amusing chat by Whittier on onions and boiled 
 dinners, etc. He never uses tobacco in any shape, 
 nor drinks alcoholic liquors, it seems, but stated that 
 he had once, when he was unwell, and nothing tasted 
 good, derived much benefit from cider. Cabbage and 
 cucumbers he eschews as abominations. Cabbage 
 cooked in the house makes the most diabolical smell 
 that was ever invented; you have got to burn your 
 house down to get rid of the odor (" and Whittier, 
 who was sitting near the open-stove cfi ate, upon the 
 top of which he had deposited his ttu. hat, folded his 
 hands and laughed a hearty, silent laugh "). Onions 
 he thought not quite so bad, for you can get the 
 odor of those out of the house after three or four 
 days. 
 
 "Then," said his friend, "you would not approve 
 of the old-fashioned boiled dinner?" 
 
 " No. I think that is a detestable dish. I remem 
 ber that my father used to have it, in which cabbage, 
 onions, beets, potatoes, turnips, and carrots were all 
 boiled up together, and turned out into a great dish all 
 in a heap, with a great greasy piece of meat in the mid 
 dle. I think that is the reason why the present gene 
 ration is not so strong as the former. It is owing to 
 
188 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the way the parents lived, eating so much pork and 
 potatoes. Our last war showed that. The farmers 
 were not nearly so strong as the men recruited in the 
 cities, Portland, Portsmouth, and Boston." 
 
 Recent investigations are showing that color 
 blindness affects vastly more people than was imag 
 ined. And the same is true of the newly talked of 
 astigmatization, or inability to rightly estimate the 
 dimensions of objects. A lady friend of the poet 
 (Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford) tells us that he 
 must be classed with the color-blind. Once when 
 the library fire had damaged the wall-paper near it, 
 he matched the pattern at the store " and triumph 
 antly replaced it before detection." But great was 
 the amusement of the women to find that he had sub 
 stituted a crimson vine for a green one. 
 
 Mr. Whittier s health has always been delicate. He 
 says he thinks he was born with a headache. Since 
 the Philadelphia mob he has only at intervals been 
 free from pain ; and this accounts for his almost in 
 variably having to decline invitations to public 
 gatherings. 
 
 Writing to Garrison in 1855 to enclose a contribu 
 tion to the Vigilance Committee fund for helping on 
 the cause of resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, 
 Whittier says : " Does thee remember Felicia He- 
 mans s lyric of the Captive Crusader? From his cell 
 the prisoner hears the march of his troop, the ringing 
 of bridle chains, and the sound of trumpets, and 
 sees the flash of their spears, and the flutter of their 
 pennons in the sun and wind. I think I can appreci 
 ate the captive s state of mind, since illness, for the 
 most part, has made me a spectator where I would 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 189 
 
 fain have been an actor, for the past three or four 
 years." 
 
 In another place he writes : " I inherited from both 
 my parents a sensitive, nervous temperament ; and 
 one of my earliest recollections is of pain in the head, 
 froiH which I have suffered all my life. For many 
 year I have not been able to read or write for more 
 than half an hour at a time, often not so long. Of 
 late, my hearing has been defective. But in many 
 ways I have been blessed far beyond my deserving, 
 and, grateful to the Divine Providence, I tranquilly 
 await the close of a life which has been longer, and 
 on the whole happier, than I had reason to expect, 
 although far different from that which I dreamed of 
 in youth." 
 
 Such sentiments as these last give the key to his 
 temperament, which is never morbid or melancholy, 
 but light and cheerful, in spite of ill health. The 
 sense of the ludicrous is very keen in him. This is 
 remembered of him by his old associates of the Hav- 
 erhill Academy days; and everybody who has talked 
 with him perceives it. In his writings it appears in 
 such verses as "The Demon of the Study," 4< The 
 Pumpkin," and " The Double-headed Snake." When 
 on his vacations, he likes to sit on the piazza of the 
 hotel, noting with keen eye the foibles and idiosyn 
 crasies of people who go and come. Speaking once 
 of his early anti-slavery toils and sufferings, he said, 
 " I try to remember only the bright and good." Then, 
 with merriment in his eye, " I have forgotten all the 
 mischief I did." If the letters of Whittier shall any 
 
 Liberator, April 6, 55. 
 
190 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of them be published hereafter, the genial humor of 
 his nature will be seen to be a very conspicuous trait. 
 Two letters, already printed, are here given. To the 
 National Carriage Builders Association of which he 
 and Holmes were oddly made members in 1880, he 
 wrote as follows: 
 
 " I am not a builder, in the sense of Milton s phrase 
 of one who could build lofty rhyme. My vehicles 
 have been of humbler sort, merely the farm-wagons 
 and backwoods of verse, and not likely to run so 
 long as Dr. Holmes s One-Horse Shay, the construc 
 tion of which entitles him to the first place in your 
 Association. I should not dare to warrant any of my 
 work for a long drive." 
 
 To an officer of the Egypt Exploration Fund 
 society he wrote in 1884: 
 
 "I am glad to have my attention called to the ex 
 cavation of Zoan. The enterprise commends itself 
 to every reader of the Bible, and every student of the 
 history and monumental wonders of Egypt. I would 
 like to have a hand in it. I hesitate a little about 
 disturbing the repose of some ancient mummy, who, 
 perchance, hobnobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass, 
 or dropped a halfpenny in Homer s hat, or doffed his 
 own to let Queen Dido pass. But curiosity gets the 
 better of sentiment, and I follow the example of Dr. 
 Holmes by enclosing an order on Lieut. -Gov. Ames 
 for one of his best shovels." 
 
 In reference to his bachelorhood and early loves, 
 some have thought they were on the right trail in his 
 poems. "Benedicite,"" My Playmate, "and "Memories." 
 But he guards his secret well. He was evidently in 
 terested, like all young men, in a good many girls in 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 191 
 
 his neighborhood. In 1832 he wrote the following 
 stanzas, which are perhaps autobiographic: 
 
 " I do not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art most fair ! 
 I know the tempting of thy lips, the witchcraft of thy hair, 
 The winsome smile that might beguile the shy bird from his 
 
 tree; 
 But from their spell I know so well, I shake my manhood free. 
 
 " I might have loved thee, Isabel ; I know I should, if aught 
 Of all thy words and ways had told of one unselfish thought ; 
 If through the cloud of fashion, the pictured veil of art, 
 One casual flash had broken warm, earnest from the heart. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " I do not love thee, Isabel ; I would as soon put on 
 A crown of slender frost-work beneath the heated sun, 
 Or chase the winds of summer, or trust the sleeping sea, 
 Or lean upon a shadow, as think of trusting thee." 
 
 Some years ago an article appeared in a Western 
 paper stating that a lady who had recently died was 
 the fair one once beloved of Whittier. He wrote to 
 the editor that the article was very interesting, but 
 decidedly imaginative, since he had not seen the per 
 son mentioned since she was nine years old. 8 
 
 His love of children is very marked. He has writ 
 ten several children s poems (" Red Riding Hood," 
 " King Solomon and the Ants," etc.) and stories in 
 prose, and published two books of Selections for 
 children s reading. He will take a hand in children s 
 sports, and has been known to lose an important 
 train that he might give a ride to a group of village 
 
 1 From the library edition of the poems, 1888. 
 
 2 Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton s " How Success is Won," p. 54. 
 
IQ2 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 children who besieged the door of his hack. He was 
 known among the children of Amesbury as the man 
 with the parrot. He describes this bird in one of his 
 poems: 
 
 " Behind us at our evening meal 
 
 The gray bird ate his fill, 
 Swung downward by a single claw, 
 And wiped his hooked bill. 
 
 " He shook his wings and crimson tail, 
 
 And set his head aslant, 
 And, in his sharp impatient way, 
 
 Asked, What does Charlie want ? " 
 
 This plaintive bird also had the habit, we are told, 
 of crying " Whoa ! " when teams passed the house, 
 and " Run in, boys ! run in ! " to the schoolboys when 
 their bell rang. Another little incident will show 
 Whittier s popularity among the boys. In the summer 
 of 1876, while he was staying at the Sturtevant farm 
 house, back of Centre Harbor on Lake Winnepesau- 
 kee, word was sent to him that a lot of boys from 
 Camp Chocorua in Holderness would make their 
 picnic rendezvous next day under the great Whittier 
 pine on Sunset Hill. He gladly complied with the im 
 plied invitation to be present ; and, shortly after the 
 boys got there, he was seen approaching in a carriage 
 through the woodland road, and was greeted with a 
 round of tremendous cheers. He of course re 
 sponded by shaking hands all around and enjoyed it 
 as much as did the boys. 1 
 
 1 Boston Advertiser, Dec. 17, 1887. 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 193 
 
 His kindness to children is matched by his tender 
 sympathy for unfortunate men and women, and his 
 generous toleration of opinions and customs different 
 from his own (smoking, for instance). He says he 
 always reads a book with sympathy for the author ; 
 that it is easy to tear it to pieces by criticism, but he 
 tries to find its merits. His purse has always been 
 open for the relief of the destitute, $50, for example, 
 to the sufferers by a recent fire in Lynn. His 
 hospitable nature he inherits from his mother, and 
 will put himself to serious inconvenience rather than 
 turn away a worthy guest. And yet he is keen to 
 detect mere curiosity-hunters and spongers. Though 
 even these he is too tender-hearted harshly to rebuff. 
 Mrs. Child writes amusingly of his attempts to get 
 rid of bores. " I was amused," she says, " to hear 
 his sister describe some of these irruptions [of gen 
 teel tramps] in her slow Quakerly fashion. Thee 
 has no idea, said she, how much time Greenleaf 
 spends in trying to lose these people in the streets. 
 Sometimes he comes home and says, " Well, sister, I 
 had hard work to lose him, but I have lost him." 
 But I can never lose a her, said Whittier. The 
 women are more pertinacious than the men ; don t 
 thee find them so, Maria? I told him I did. How 
 does thee manage to get time to do anything? said 
 he. I told him I took care to live away from the 
 railroad, and kept a bulldog and a pitchfork, and 
 advised him to do the same." Like all prominent 
 literati, Whittier is deluged with manuscripts for his 
 perusal and opinion, and with applications for auto 
 graphs. His patience is unfailing; and, notwithstand 
 ing his almost constant headaches, he reads and 
 13 
 
194 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 returns, often at his own expense, many long manu 
 scripts sent to him. He used to answer, it is stated, 
 as many as two thousand applications for autographs 
 in a year. To an English friend he said, " My letters 
 average twenty-five and thirty a day, and when I m 
 sick they accumulate ; and then, when I get well, I 
 make myself sick again trying to catch up with my 
 answers to them." 
 
 As the years roll on the bores increase with alarm 
 ing rapidity. Whittier s life at present is said to be 
 made a burden to him by inroads of gaping tourists, 
 who push into his house to look at the curiosity, but 
 have no adequate idea of himself or his works. 
 
 Speaking of bores, a little story about his poem 
 "The Barefoot Boy " is in point : Mr. Whittier once 
 wrote to Prang, the publisher of chromos, some 
 words of praise for his chromo of " The Barefoot 
 Boy." His words were stolen by rival publishers 
 and affixed to a mean imitation of the Prang picture, 
 a piece of baseness which elicited the following 
 indignant letter to Mr. Prang: " I have heard of writers 
 who could pass judgment upon works of art without 
 seeing them ; but the part assigned me by this use 
 of my letter to thee, making me the critic of a thing 
 not in existence, adds to their ingenuity the gift of 
 prophecy. It seems to be hazardous to praise any 
 thing. There is no knowing to what strange uses 
 one s words may be put. When a good deal younger 
 than I am now, I addressed some laudatory lines to 
 Henry Clay ; but the newspapers soon transferred 
 them to Thomas H. Benton, and it was even said that 
 the saints of Nauvoo made them do duty in the 
 apotheosis of the Prophet Joseph Smith. My opinions 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 19$ 
 
 as an art-critic are not worth much to the public ; 
 and, as they seem to be as uncertain and erratic in 
 their directions as an Australian boomerang, I shall, 
 I think, be chary in future of giving them. I do n t 
 think I should dare speak favorably of the Venus de 
 Medici, as I might expect to find my words affixed to 
 some bar-room lithograph of the bearded woman." 
 
 It is a happy custom nowadays in America publicly 
 to celebrate the birthdays of our elder poets. Mr. 
 Whittier has been at least five times the recipient 
 of this honor. His seventieth birthday was celebrated 
 by a grand symposium of writers in the " Literary 
 World " newspaper, and by a banquet given in his 
 honor at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston by his pub 
 lishers. Mr. Garrison returned the compliment that 
 had been paid him by Whittier forty-five years before, 
 and wrote some lines in honor of his life-long Quaker 
 friend. So did Longfellow and Holmes. Emerson 
 read Whittier s " Ichabod " to the company. Whit- 
 tier s " Response " (" Beside that milestone where the 
 level sun ") is a fragment of verse of great power. 
 Over the centre of the dining-table was hung a new 
 portrait of Whittier wreathed with ivy, and opposite 
 it was a view of his birthplace. It is interesting to 
 note that the negro waiters took a deep interest in 
 the proceedings, delighted with the reverence paid to 
 the man who had done so much for them. 
 
 About the same time a Whittier Club was formed 
 in Haverhill, and the ladies of Amesbury presented 
 their distinguished townsman with a portfolio of 
 water-color views of many scenes in the Merrimack 
 Valley that he has described in his poems. 
 
 1 Evenings in the Library, by George W. Stewart, Jr. ,p. 138. 
 
196 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Mr. Whittier s seventy-fifth birthday, in 1882, was 
 passed quietly in his rooms at the Hotel Winthrop in 
 Boston. The citizens of Amesbury wished him to 
 spend the day in Amesbury and hold a reception, but 
 he was obliged to decline on account of indisposition. 
 He said that it seemed a rather queer thing to con 
 gratulate a man that he was seventy-five years old. 
 He thought the weather of Boston very trying. 
 " I am a New Englander, and I love New England," 
 said he ; " but my seventy-five years of life here have 
 failed fairly to acclimate me." 
 
 On the day when he attained his seventy-seventh 
 year many friends called to congratulate him at 
 Oak Knoll, more than forty letters were received 
 from friends abroad, and baskets of roses and a huge 
 birthday cake from nearer friends. A few weeks before 
 he had written to a friend apropos of public congrat 
 ulations: " I have reached an age when flattery 
 ceases to deceive and notoriety is a burden, and the 
 faint shadow of literary reputation fails to hide the 
 solemn realities of life." 
 
 On Sept. 10, 1885, a reunion of the Haverhill Acad 
 emy class of 1827-30 was held in the rectory of St. 
 John s Church, in Haverhill. The central figure and 
 theme was the poet Whittier. A representative of the 
 Boston "Advertiser" who was present says: In the 
 company was one man who seemed neither to accept 
 nor comprehend the situation. That man was John 
 G. Whittier. His face and demeanor would have 
 afforded study for a psychologist. The face was one 
 on which was " a look of shyness, of surprise, of per 
 plexity, withal; a countenance irradiated by recipro 
 cal affection and pleasure in seeing others pleased. 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 197 
 
 That it was fifty-seven years since he had 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 would persist in talking of him when he wanted 
 other more congenial topics to be uppermost, these 
 things evidently puzzled him." The reporter speaks 
 of the winning way in which Whittier seemed to take 
 him into his confidence as he placed in his hands the 
 manuscript of the verses he had written for the occa 
 sion, explaining to him the motives for various lines 
 as called forth by old memories. A few days after 
 this meeting Mr. Whittier was presented with an 
 album containing photographs of many of his old 
 classmates. 
 
 By 1887 Whittier could say with the old man in 
 "Macbeth": 
 
 " Threescore and ten I can remember well : 
 Within the volume of which time, I have seen 
 Hours dreadful, and things strange." 
 
 But not more dreadful hours than hours delightful, 
 surely, if one may judge by those of his eightieth 
 birthday. James Parton wrote of him ! that he was 
 carrying his burthen of eighty years with considerable 
 ease and with constant cheerfulness, walking with 
 alert step, and seeming better than he was five years 
 before. His birthday was celebrated by the school 
 
 1 In the pleasant memorial tribute which occupied several pages 
 of the Boston " Advertiser " of Dec. 17, 1887, and which has been 
 several times quoted in this volume. 
 
198 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 children of the whole country. The Essex Club of 
 Boston presented him with a large album containing 
 a eulogy by Senator Hoar and other papers. At Oak 
 Knoll there was a busy day. The morning was clear 
 and brilliant, air bracing, skies high and blue. Every 
 room in the house was adorned with gift-baskets and 
 bouquets of roses and other flowers. An overflowing 
 basket of fruit arrived, and was placed on the dining- 
 room table opposite the great birthday cake. In the 
 library stood a basket of eighty roses edged with 
 ferns, the gift of ladies of Boston. On an open book 
 of Cornelia Cook roses, margined with yellow ones 
 and intersprinkled with violets, lay a pen of violets; 
 on the broad white satin book-mark was inscribed the 
 closing stanza of " My Triumph": 
 
 " I feel the earth move sunward, 
 I join the great march onward, 
 And take, by faith, while living, 
 My freehold of thanksgiving." 
 
 The colored students of Hampton sent a sofa cushion ; 
 and from the new town of " Whittier " in California 
 came an advance copy of the town s newspaper, with 
 an editorial greeting. The Governor of the Common 
 wealth cut the birthday cake and offered pieces to 
 each visitor. All day the poet passed to and fro 
 among the guests, now greeting a bevy of children in 
 the parlor, now conversing with old friends in the 
 library, and again in the dining-room offering refresh 
 ments to some new caller. 
 
 Contributors to the " Boston Advertiser s " sym- 
 posial Whittier number were such friends as Edward 
 Everett Hale, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whit- 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 199 
 
 man, Dr. Bartol, Senator Hoar, and T. W. Higginson. 
 Here is Walt Whitman s striking bit of verse: 
 
 " As the Greek s signal flame, by antique records told, 
 Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory, 
 Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero, 
 With rosy tinge reddening the land he d served, 
 So I aloft from Mannahatta s ship-fringed shore 
 Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet." 
 
 And here are some of the lines of Dr. Holmes: 
 " Friend, whom thy fou , score winters leave more dear 
 Than when life s roseate summer on thy cheek 
 Burned in the flush of manhood s manliest year, 
 Lonely, how lonely ! is the snowy peak 
 Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near ! 
 Close on thy footsteps mid the landscape drear 
 I stretch my hand thine answering grasp to seek, 
 Warm with the love no rippling rhymes can speak! 
 
 On Dec. 17, 1889, Whittier s health was so poor 
 that he was obliged to ask his editorial friends to 
 state his inability to endure the excitement of birth 
 day demonstrations or to answer many letters. The 
 day was celebrated by a flag-raising at a Whittier 
 School, and by a general observance of Whittier Day 
 in the public schools of the country. 
 
 On Dec. 17, 1891, the fullest and most enthusias 
 tic birthday celebration of all and the last was 
 held at the home of Joseph Cartland in Newburyport 
 (also once the home of the Harriet Livermore of 
 " Snow-Bound "). Mr. Whittier exercised all his old- 
 Hme hospitality, and stood the fatigue very well. The 
 " Boston Advertiser " and the " Boston Journal " pub 
 lished notable Whittier numbers in honor of the 
 New England poet. 
 
JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 LAST HOURS. 
 
 And here, alas, our narrative of the poet s life must 
 draw to a close. For the fell sergeant Death has laid 
 his mace upon the shoulder of the revered minstrel, 
 the beloved citizen-poet of New England, and sum 
 moned him away. It but remains briefly to tell of 
 his last hours, and then to let the curtain fall. 
 
 Mr. Whittier had been passing the summer of 1892 
 in quiet enjoyment at "Elmfield," in Hampton Falls, 
 N. H., the town where his Batchelder and Hussey an 
 cestors once lived, the home of his young Quaker 
 friend, Miss Abby Gove. Miss Gove is a member of 
 the once flourishing society of Friends in Hampton 
 Falls, but has of late years worshiped in- the little 
 Friends church in Amesbury. Mrs. Edward Gove 
 was an eloquent preacher, and Whittier wrote a 
 memorial poem on her death. 1 What drew him to 
 Miss Gove s was his desire to escape summer visitors. 
 One day, after meeting, he said to her, " Abby, has 
 thee a spare room up at thy house? " Her answer 
 was Yes. His room opened on a balcony command 
 ing a view of the sea near Rivermouth Rocks and 
 Hampton Beach, scenes of his earlier poems. He 
 and his friends took their meals at the tavern adjoin 
 ing, reached by a moment s walk through a pine 
 grove. 
 
 The Gove residence on "the hill" is rich in treas- 
 
 1 So Mr. F. B. Sanborn says, who, as well as Whittier, is a de 
 scendant of Stephen Batchelder, and lived as a boy in this neigh 
 borhood. 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 1 99& 
 
 ures of old Colonial days. It stands a little off of the 
 winding road with its venerable elms. Across the 
 way is an old orchard containing paths and rustic 
 seats. Here Whittier otten strolled, or from the 
 piazza watched through a glass the sails upon the 
 blue sea, or conversed with friends, or read the 
 papers and magazines. It had been his intention to 
 return with the Cartlands to their home in New- 
 buryport on September 6. He was first takjn ill on 
 August 31. By Saturday, September 3, a remarkable 
 irregularity of the heart s action was experienced, 
 and he grew suddenly worse. Dr. John A. Doug 
 las of Amesbury, and Dr. Frances E. Howe of Nevv- 
 buryport, and Dr. Sarah Ellen Palmer of Boston 
 were the physicians called to his bedside. Mr. Whit- 
 tier was conscious and able to recognize those about 
 him, but was at first unable to articulate, and seemed 
 to be suffering from partial paralysis of the left side. 
 He made several unavailing attempts to communi 
 cate something to his nephew, Mr. Pickard, appar 
 ently on some matter of business. On September 
 5 he seemed slightly better and took a little nour 
 ishment. He was fully aware of his critical condition, 
 and whispered to the loving friends who were con 
 stantly bathing his head, " It is of no use." To his 
 niece, Mrs. Pickard, who asked him if he knew her, 
 he replied, " Yes, I have known you all the time." 
 
 A cable message of sympathy was received on 
 Wednesday from friends in England. Neighbors 
 calling wero, however, not allowed to enter the room 
 of the dying man. 
 
 At 4.30 of the yth of September Whittier calmly 
 breathed his last, surrounded by some of his closest 
 
199^ JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 relatives. In Amesbury and Haverhill, as soon as 
 the news was known, bells were tolled and flags dis 
 played at half-mast. The funeral occurred at the 
 Whittier home in Amesbury on Saturday at 2.30. 
 Memorial exercises were held and addresses made 
 (in place of the usual funeral exercises) in the pretty 
 garden in the rear of the house, while the dead poet 
 lay within, flower-surrounded, in the little front par 
 lor. E. C. Stedman, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Parker 
 Pillsbury, Mrs. Spofford, and many other personal 
 friends were present. Whittier was buried in the 
 Friends Cemetery in the family lot. Thousands of 
 people visited the grave on the days immediately 
 following the funeral. The old farmhouse at Haver- 
 hill was draped in mourning and the public offices 
 closed during the hour of the funeral, while the 
 city schools at the same time gave up the hour to 
 exercises appropriate to the occasion. Memorial 
 services were also held in Danvers and Salem and by 
 citizens of Amesbury. 
 
 By his will Whittier bequeathed to relatives some 
 $50,000 or more in sums ranging from $500 to $15,- 
 ooo, the largest bequest being to his niece, Mrs. 
 Lizzie T. Pickard, who kept house for him so long in 
 Amesbury. He left her $15,000, his two houses in 
 Amesbury, and two or three minor gifts. The list 
 of relatives remembered by cash gifts is a long one 
 no one forgotten (good, kind Uncle Greenleaf!). To 
 Lucy Larcom he left $500 and the copyright of two 
 of his works, and to Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie 
 Fields a painting each. His Amesbury furniture and 
 pictures and books go to Mrs. Pickard, and the same 
 at Oak Knoll to the members of that household. 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 199^ 
 
 Various charitable organizations of Essex County 
 and the Hampton (Virginia) school each received 
 legacies. His manuscripts and other papers go u 
 his literary executor, Mr. S. T. Pickard. The amount 
 of property he left from $75,000 to $100,000 about 
 will be a surprise to those who suppose poetry never 
 pays. But to be a popular poet and a Quaker means 
 thrift and wealth. 
 
 On the day of Whittier s death a Boston paper 
 gave some interesting gossip about his old winter 
 haunt, the Hotel Winthrop in Boston. It seems that 
 he got acquainted with this quiet hostelry through 
 the accident of going there to call on Celia Thaxter 
 in 1881, and in November of that year he joined the 
 ladies of his Oak Knoll home at this hotel in Boston 
 and passed his first winter there. The fire-escape of 
 his room made a little balcony looking out upon the 
 ivied old church of St. John the Evangelist. His 
 reception-room was the parlor. His method of get 
 ting about for long distances was to take a herdic. 
 Writing from Amesbury in 1884, he said, alluding to 
 the severe winters of New England, "I wish the Pil 
 grim Fathers had drifted around Cape Horn and 
 landed at Santa Barbara instead of Plymouth Rock, 
 and I had in consequence been born in a land of 
 flowers instead of ice." However, to the same corre 
 spondent he wrote that " life at four-score was worth 
 living." Mr. Whittier said he liked the Winthrop be 
 cause of its quiet and because in the great hotels he 
 was overwhelmed with service, but here it seemed 
 more like home. He had always been used to wait 
 ing upon himself, and he liked a place where they 
 would let him do so. 
 
199 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Little facts of interest that transpired after his 
 death were such as that he never spent more than 
 $50 a year on his dress; that his income was "about 
 that of the average college professor"; that he was 
 fond of splitting wood for exercise; that his tea was 
 imported especially for him, and kept in a painted 
 porcelain jar; that he had no musical sense and didn t 
 know one tune from another; that he never at 
 tended a theatrical performance in his life nor 
 (so the tradition in Amesbury runs) ever rose to 
 speak on religion in the Friends meetings; that he 
 once or twice expressed regret that he had never 
 married; and that his reason for never having traveled 
 was that the reading of books of travel left such a 
 vivid picture in his mind of the scenes described as 
 made it seem superfluous for him to visit them himself. 
 
 Those who know something of Elizabeth Whittier 
 will thank me for closing these final and supplement 
 ary notes with a rarely drawn portrait from the pen 
 of the most accomplished and scholarly of living 
 American essayists. 1 
 
 " Elizabeth Whittier," he says, " was one of the 
 rarest of women, her brother s complement; possess 
 ing all the readiness of speech and facility of inter 
 course which he wanted; taking easily, in his pres 
 ence, the lead in conversation which the poet so 
 gladly abandoned to her, while he sat rubbing his 
 
 1 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in New York "Evening Post," 
 September 7, 1892. Higginson was the friend of Whittier because 
 he knew him, but the bitter and malignant enemy of Walt Whitman 
 (a greater than Whittier) because he did not know him. Such is 
 the limitation of the human mind! 
 
WHITTIER AT HOME. 
 
 hands and laughing at her daring sallies. She was 
 as unlike him in person as in mind: for his dignified 
 erectness, even amounting to stiffness, she had end 
 less motion and vivacity; for his regular and hand 
 some features she had a long Jewish nose, so full of 
 expression that it seemed to enhance instead of injure 
 the effect of the large and liquid eyes that glowed 
 with merriment and sympathy behind it. There was 
 something bird-like in Elizabeth Whittier s look and 
 in the movements of her head; her quick thoughts 
 came like javelins; a saucy triumph gleamed in the 
 great eyes; the head moved a little from side to side 
 as with the quiver of a weapon; and, lo! you were 
 transfixed. Her poems, tragic, sombre, imaginative, 
 give no impression of this side of her nature; but it 
 was as if long generations of parents who had * held 
 the Quaker role had broken into reactionary sun 
 shine and rollicking gayety in her. Her wit had 
 play upon the grave Friends themselves, as they 
 gathered at the time of Quarterly Meetings under 
 the roof which latterly held all of Quakerism that was 
 left in Amesbury; she wound them round her finger 
 in spite of themselves, and did not hesitate to dis 
 cipline the most venerable Friend on the high seats 
 until she had compelled him to rise and close the 
 meeting by shaking hands in good seasor, lest the 
 dinner should be overdone. She was a woman never 
 to be forgotten; and no one can truly estimate the 
 long celibate life of the poet without bearing in mind 
 that he had for many years at his own fireside the 
 concentrated wit and sympathy of all womanhood in 
 this one sister." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 
 
 To speak of all of Mr. Whittier s friends would re 
 quire an enumeration of several thousand names ; 
 for every one who has ever known him loves him. 
 Among the eminent persons with whom he has been 
 on terms of intimate association are Dr. Samuel G. 
 Howe, Edwin P. Whipple, George L. Stearns, Samuel 
 Sewall, Theodore D. Weld, James T. Fields and Mrs. 
 Annie Fields, Bayard Taylor, N. P. Rogers, Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, and 
 Lowell ; Mary Howitt, Harriet Prescott Spofford, 
 Gail Hamilton, Celia Thaxter, Elizabeth Stuart 
 Phelps, Charles Sumner, John Bright, and Dom 
 Pedro, the late Emperor of Brazil. 
 
 The occurrence of poets names in this list would 
 seem to falsify Landor s affirmation, that poets hate 
 poets the world over. 
 
 Whittier admired Sumner for his noble advocacy 
 of peace doctrines, in "The True Grandeur of Nations" 
 and other orations, and for his magnanimous attitude 
 toward the South after the close of the Civil War. 
 
 Longfellow s Journals record frequent visits paid 
 by him to Whittier and by Whittier to him. Not a 
 great while before Longfellow died he wrote to his 
 friend to come and see him. Mr. Whittier was not 
 able to go at once ; and, when he did at last come, it 
 200 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 2OI 
 
 was too late : Longfellow was then too ill to see any 
 one, and died shortly afterward. 
 
 Emerson, too, was a frequent visitor at Amesbury. 
 Elizabeth Whittier used to say that she liked him 
 better than any man who visited them, because he 
 never talked over her head. And her brother has 
 said, " Emerson was a delightful companion, and was 
 often here. No matter who remained, when he left 
 there was a void." 1 
 
 Of the genial relation existing between Holmes and 
 Whittier the following from a letter of the Amesbury 
 poet to Dr. Holmes on occasion of one of Dr. 
 Holmes s birthday celebrations is ample witness : 
 " My father," says he, " used to tell of a poor inno 
 cent in his neighborhood who, whenever he met him, 
 would fall to laughing, crying, and dancing: I can t 
 help it, I can t help it; I m so glad you and I are alive. 
 And I, like the poor fellow, can t help telling thee 
 that I am glad thee and I are alive ; glad that thy 
 hand has lost nothing of its cunning and thy pen is 
 still busy ; and I say to thee, in the words of Solomon 
 of old, * Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let 
 thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth. But 
 do n t exult over thy seniors who have not found the 
 elixir of life and are growing old and past their use 
 fulness. I have just got back from the hills and am 
 tired, and a pile of unanswered letters are before me 
 this morning ; so I can only say, God bless thee." 
 
 The charmed circle must be drawn to include 
 James Russell Lowell, also, who on occasion of the 
 
 1 Conversation with Frank A. Burr, Boston " Herald," Nov. 18, 
 1883. 
 
202 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 unveiling of a life-size portrait of Whittier by Edgar 
 Parker in the Friends School in Providence, in 1884, 
 wrote a prose greeting, accompanied by these poetical 
 lines: 
 
 " New England s poet, rich in love as years, 
 Her hills and valleys praise thee, and her brooks 
 Dance to thy song : to her grave sylvan nooks 
 Thy feet allure us, which the wood-thrush hears 
 As maids their lovers, and no treason fears. 
 Through thee her Merrimacks and Agiochooks, 
 And many a name uncouth, win loving looks, 
 Sweetly familiar to both Englands ears. 
 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." 
 
 To a young lady who visited him in 1887 Whittier 
 said : " I remember the first time that I saw Haw 
 thorne. I went to make him a visit, and Mrs. 
 Hawthorne called him in to see me. He came into 
 the room with a look on his face that made me feel 
 as though he had been sitting writing for a long time 
 in a dark place." Whittier s face lighted up as he 
 added, in homely, telling phrase, " He looked as 
 though he had just come up from down cellar." 
 Elsewhere alluding to this same call, apparently, 
 Whittier says that Hawthorne remarked of the plot of 
 a book he was writing, " It darkens damnably." 
 
 To Harriet Prescott Spofford, who is a not very 
 distant neighbor of Whittier s, in her home, 
 
 1 As published in Boston " Advertiser," Oct. 25, 84. 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 203 
 
 " Set like an eagle s nest 
 Among Deer Island s immemorial pines, 
 Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks 
 Its last red arrow," 
 
 to this dear friend Whittier dedicates his " Bay of 
 Seven Islands." 
 
 For the Quaker writer Mary Howitt Mr. Whittier 
 had a hearty regard. Her Autobiography records 
 the reception from him, in 1874, through Mrs. A. D. 
 T. Whitney, of verbal greetings and a letter of friend 
 ship. To William Howitt, author of the fine 
 Whittieresque lyric of freedom, 
 
 " The land for me, the land for me, 
 Where every living soul is free," 
 
 our poet does not seem to have been so much at 
 tracted. Both the Howitts were ardent in the anti- 
 slavery cause, and we are told of Mary s good old 
 mother knitting " a quantity of nice things for the 
 anti-slavery bazaar in Boston." Whittier, no doubt, 
 would say " Amen " to this effusion of Kit North s 
 shepherd, in the " Noctes " : " The twa married 
 Hooitts I love just excessively, sir. What they write 
 canna fail o bein poetry, even the most middlin o t. 
 For it s aye wi them the ebullition o their ain feel 
 ing and their ain fancy ; and, whenever that s the 
 case, a bonny word or twa will drap itsel intil ilka 
 stanzy, and a sweet stanzy or twa intil ilka pome, 
 and sae they touch, and sae they sune win a body s 
 heart." 
 
 John Bright, a Quaker, was naturally an admirer of 
 the Quaker poet of America. Writing in 1884, he 
 
204 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 said : " In the poem of Snovv-Bound there are lines 
 on the death of the poet s sister which have nothing 
 superior to them in beauty and pathos in our lan 
 guage. I have read them often, with always increas 
 ing admiration. I have suffered from the loss of 
 those near and dear to me, and I can apply the lines 
 to my own case and feel as if they were written for 
 me. The Eternal Goodness is another poem which 
 is worth a crowd of sermons which are spoken from 
 the pulpits of our sects and churches, and which I do 
 not wish to undervalue." 
 
 Mr. Bright told James Grant Wilson that he val 
 ued Whittier s poems more than those of any other 
 poet of the present century. When Garrison and 
 John Bright were one sunny afternoon standing in 
 the Library of the House of Parliament conversing, 
 and watching the busy scene on the Thames, Mr. 
 Bright repeated " with exquisite feeling " Whittier s 
 apostrophe to his sister Elizabeth above mentioned. 1 
 
 I have mentioned Dom Pedro s love of Whittier. 
 He had translated some of his poems into Portuguese, 
 and, when he was in America in 1876, he paid Mr. 
 Whittier a visit of affection. Later, on hearing that 
 slavery was at last abolished in Brazil, Mr. Whittier 
 cabled these words to the Emperor, who was then 
 lying ill at Milan : " With thanks to God, who has 
 blessed your generous efforts, I congratulate you on 
 the peaceful abolition of slavery in Brazil." 
 
 Bayard Taylor, who was a Quaker by descent, on 
 his father s side, was a welcome guest in Amesbury. 
 There was in Bayard Taylor s hearty, robust phy- 
 
 1 Life of Garrison, iv. 279, 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 205 
 
 sique just that complement of Whittier s invalid, 
 feminine nature needed by the latter in a friend. 
 Taylor s letters seem to me the most vivacious and 
 interesting in our published literature, and only to be 
 matched for verve and snap (so far as my epistolary 
 experience enables me to judge) by those of his 
 friend E. C. Stedman or by William Douglas O Con 
 nor of Washington. Taylor is the traveler de 
 scribed in the " Tent on the Beach " (" one whose 
 Arab face was tanned by tropic sun," etc.). 
 
 Writing in July, 1850, Mr. Taylor says : " Friday 
 morning, early, Lowell and I started for Amesbury, 
 which we reached in a terrible northeaster. What a 
 capital time we had with Whittier, in his nook of a 
 study, with the rain pouring on the roof and the wind 
 howling at the door ! " On the day of the publica 
 tion of Taylor s " Faust," Mr. and Mrs. James T. 
 Fields gave a dinner in the translator s honor. Whit- 
 tier wrote to Mr. Fields : " I take up the lamentation 
 of Falstaff : There are but few of us good fellows 
 left, and one of them is not fat, but lean, and grows 
 old. It would be pleasant to sit down with thy 
 special guest, my dear friend Taylor, and with others 
 whose poetical shoestrings I hold myself quite un 
 worthy to untie, the wisest of philosophers and 
 most genial of men from Concord ; the architect of 
 the only noteworthy * Cathedral in the new world ; 
 and his neighbor, the far-traveled explorer of Purga 
 tory and Hell, and the scarcely less dreary Paradise 
 of the great Italian dreamer." The last parting of 
 these two friends, Whittier and Taylor, took place 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, i. 176. 
 
206 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 under the elms of Boston Common, after a visit they 
 had just been making at the house of Richard H. 
 Dana. 
 
 Whittier has a general poem on Taylor : 
 
 " And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend ? 
 My sister asked our guest one winter s day. 
 Smiling, he answered in the Friends sweet way 
 Common to both : Wherever thou shalt send ! 
 What wouldst thou have me see for thee ? She laughed, 
 Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire s glow : 
 Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low, 
 Unsetting sun on Finmark s fishing-craft. 
 All these and more I soon shall see for thee ! 
 He answered, cheerily ; and he kept his pledge." 
 
 One of Mr. Whittier s earliest friendships was that 
 between himself and Edwin P. Whipple. He wrote 
 in 1886 of Whipple : " I cannot now dwell upon his 
 authorship while thinking of him as the beloved mem 
 ber of a literary circle now, alas ! sadly broken. I recall 
 the wise, genial companion and faithful friend of 
 nearly half a century, the memory of whose words 
 and acts of kindness moistens my eyes as I write." 
 And again, in another place : " To him more than to 
 any other person I was indebted for public recogni 
 tion as one worthy of a place in American literature, 
 at a time when it required a great deal of courage 
 to urge such a claim for a proscribed Abolitionist. 
 Although younger than I, he had gained the reputa 
 tion of a brilliant essayist, and was regarded as the 
 highest American authority in criticism." Mr. Whit- 
 tier refers to the critical review written by Whipple in 
 1848 or earlier. Whipple, in this paper, quotes the 
 old saying of John Dennis, of Queen Anne s time, 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 2O ; 
 
 that genius is " a furious joy and pride of soul on the 
 conception of an extraordinary hint," and keenly 
 notes that Whittier has this "furious joy and pride of 
 soul " even when the hints are not extraordinary. He 
 observes that his vehement sensibility does not allow 
 his inventive faculties fully to complete what they 
 have begun. " Whittier has the soul of a great poet, 
 and we should not be surprised if he attained the 
 hight of excellence in his art." 1 
 
 We have seen how close was the friendship between 
 William Lloyd Garrison and Greenleaf Whittier. 
 Mr. Garrison had an extremely amiable, cheerful 
 nature, and was domestic in his tastes. The same is 
 true of Whittier. In their younger years, especially, 
 was the bond that knit them together strong. In the 
 work of reform they were at that time like two heads 
 under one hat. For seven years at least, they toiled 
 shoulder to shoulder in the anti-slavery harness. 
 Garrison was often at Whittier s home, and Whittier 
 more than once shared the bowl of bread and milk 
 of the editor of the " Liberator," in the dingy little 
 printing-room in Boston. They ate at the same table 
 when both were young men editing Boston papers ; 
 together they drafted the Magna Charta of the 
 nation s anti-slavery society, worked often in the 
 same conventions, wrote poems in each other s praise, 
 and together shared the plaudits of the world on the 
 overthrow of slavery. 
 
 Whittier s many letters to Lydia Maria Child, some 
 of which have been published, sufficiently indicate 
 the sympathy that bound these two together. Dear 
 
 1 Whipple s Essays, i. 
 
208 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Mrs. Child, with her beautiful sweet face under that 
 funny, old-fashioned bonnet that made the children 
 snicker, what a pleasant life she led with her brave, 
 though semi-invalid husband ! they two alone in 
 Wayland in their little home on the quiet by-road 
 overlooking broad green meadows. 
 
 James T. Fields was the constitutional complement 
 of Whittier, had the strong, healthy, rich nature in 
 which such temperaments as Whittier s love to bask. 
 Fields, with his full, jet-black beard, and with 
 chest thrown out, reciting " Douglas, Douglas, tender 
 and true ! " is a memory in my mind only matched 
 by the equally powerful recital of Byron s " Senna 
 cherib " by Bayard Taylor. One can imagine how 
 Fields and Taylor must have rivaled Demosthenes 
 in spouting poetry along the Salisbury sands in that 
 episode of the Tent on the Beach. In the poem, 
 Fields is 
 
 " A lettered magnate, lording o er 
 
 An ever-widening realm of books. 
 In him brain-currents, near and far, 
 Converged as in a Leyden jar ; 
 The old, dead authors thronged him round about, 
 And Elzevir s gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out. 
 
 " Pleasant it was to roam about 
 The lettered world as he had done, 
 And see the lords of song without 
 Their singing-robes and garlands on." 
 
 It seems a regrettable thing that Mr. Whittier 
 should have felt impelled to destroy a large mass of 
 his correspondence with friends. He might have 
 appointed a literary executor in whose judgment he 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 209 
 
 had perfect confidence. No literature is so valuable 
 as contemporary memoirs and letters. There is such 
 a thing as being morbidly sensitive as to the privacy 
 of a letter. Ruskin has said that he never wrote a 
 Better in his life that all the world are not welcome 
 to read if they will. Mr. Whittier s act and the 
 motives that led to it are spoken of by him in the 
 following note published in the " Brooklyn Magazine " 
 in the spring of 1886: 
 
 " The report concerning the burning of my letters 
 is only true so far as this: Some years ago I destroyed 
 a large collection of letters I had received, not from 
 any regard to my own reputation, but from the fear 
 that to leave them liable to publicity might be in 
 jurious or unpleasant to the writers or their, friends. 
 They covered much of the anti-slavery period and the 
 War of the Rebellion, and many of them I knew were 
 strictly private and confidential. I was not able at 
 the time to look over the mass, and thought it 
 safest to make a bonfire of all. I have always 
 regarded a private and confidential letter as sacred, 
 and its publicity in any shape a shameful breach of 
 trust, unless authorized by its writer. I only wish 
 my own letters to thousands of correspondents may 
 be as carefully disposed of." 
 
 Undoubtedly the distinguished friends, from the 
 "world s people," who have maintained constant 
 intimacy with Whittier have been of great benefit to 
 him in getting him partially out of the rut of nar 
 row sectarianism. Whittier is not only an Orthodox 
 Quaker by birth, but from heart-felt conviction. 
 He is a constant attendant at Quaker meetings, 
 14 
 
2IO JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 submits to the authority of the Quaker discipline, 
 and for Sunday wear has an Orthodox Quaker coat 
 made in Philadelphia. His Westminster Abbey is a 
 little white wooden box of a church, in the fields, 
 capable of holding forty persons. In winter the 
 congregation sometimes dwindles to seven or three 
 members. His soul here communes with God more 
 closely, he finds, than when distracted by the fuss 
 and talk and music of the great churches, or even 
 by the shows of nature. This is all well, and even 
 beautiful. For the Quaker doctrine of the Inner 
 Light there is a sound psychological basis. Philo 
 sophical and religious thinkers of all times have 
 found silence indispensable to the mind s best work 
 ing. But it is the thousand and one narrowing, 
 unmanly, old-woman rules and discipline of the 
 Quakers that Whittier needed friends to free him 
 from. And, as it is, he has never succeeded in per 
 manently throwing off the dead weight he came into 
 life handicapped with. Indeed, when you consider 
 Quakerism on its weak side, its phlegmatic utilita 
 rianism, its icy formalism, selfishness, reprobation of 
 music, poetry, painting, the theatre, the dance, hunt 
 ing, fine manners, rich dress, nearly all that makes 
 life noble and distinguished, you wonder that 
 Whittier ever produced any great poetry at all. 
 Fiery lyrics by a Quaker are like passion flowers in 
 Nova Zembla ; t is a miracle that such bitter cold 
 should yield such tropic blooms. It is largely due 
 to Quakerism that Philadelphia has never produced 
 a genius. Of Mr. Whittier we must affirm that the very 
 depth and intensity of his religious nature have been 
 an injury to his work as an artist. Always in pro- 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 211 
 
 portion to the strength and tenderness of the religious 
 feeling of the artist is the weakness of the art. Great 
 art is a depicting of man s noble deeds and emotions; 
 but the artist must himself have passed through the 
 stage of distracting emotion when he gives his 
 ideas final shape. Religious emotion is especially 
 apt to becloud and agitate the mind, unhinges it, 
 blurs the impressions (as of a sensitized chemical 
 plate) that fall upon it. While many of Mr. Whit- 
 tier s religious hymns are of exquisite beauty, and 
 are found in large numbers in the hymn-books, it 
 is still true that the vast mass of his verse is in 
 jured by weak religious didacticism. " Prythee, 
 Senor Curedo, let God s finger alone. Very worthy 
 men are apt to snatch at it upon too light occa 
 sions: they would stop their tobacco-pipes with it." 
 
 It is only the Quakeristic atmosphere in which he 
 has grown up, the unconscious influences of his 
 secluded life, that have crippled his genius. His 
 creed is a broad one; his religious sympathy, or toler 
 ance, is as wide as Christianity; his gonfalon has 
 always fluttered in the van of all progressive and 
 liberal movements. To the Principal of the Friends 
 School in Providence he wrote in 1884: "Though I 
 am a Quaker by birthright and sincere convictions, 
 I am no sectarian in the strict sense of the term. My 
 sympathies are with the Broad Church of Humanity." 
 Elsewhere he has said, " I have never felt like quar 
 reling with Orthodox or Unitarians who were willing 
 to pull with me, side by side, at the rope of Reform." 
 In the " Liberator" of Sept. 22, 1837, he wrote: "In 
 the anti-slavery cause I have cheerfully held counsel 
 with Catholic and Protestant, Unitarian and Trini- 
 
212 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 tarian, Jew and Christian; and have done so, without, 
 on the one hand, sacrificing my own principles, and, 
 on the other, without doing violence to the feel 
 ings and consciences of others. I have, it is true, 
 heard and read many things at lectures and conven 
 tions, and in anti-slavery publications, which, as a 
 member of the Society of Friends, I could not approve 
 of, and which have been as unwelcome to me as any 
 thing in the Liberator can possibly have been to 
 the signers of the Protest. 1 But I have not felt free 
 to denounce my friends of other denominations, and 
 withdraw from them, on that account. 
 
 In 1889 he said in the " Jewish Messenger," "I 
 do n t know what it is to be a Jew, but I know what 
 it is to be a Christian, who has no quarrel with others 
 about their creed, and can love, respect, and honor a 
 Jew who honestly believes in the faith of his fathers, 
 and who obeys the two great commandments Love 
 to God and Love to Man. " 
 
 Mr. Whittier s confession of faith is perhaps most 
 fully set down in two public letters of his published 
 in 1870. Here are a few key sentences which breathe 
 a pretty liberal spirit: 
 
 " A very large proportion of my dearest personal 
 friends are outside of our communion; and I have 
 learned with John Woolman to find no narrowness 
 respecting sects and opinions. But, after a kindly 
 and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own 
 Society, thankful to the Divine Providence which 
 
 1 Reference is had to a disagreement in the ranks of the Aboli 
 tionists at the time of a certain " Clerical Appeal." 
 9 Included in his prose works, edition 1889. 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 213 
 
 placed me where I am; and with an unshaken faith 
 in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism, the 
 Light within, the immanence of the Divine Spirit in 
 Christianity. ... I am not blind to the short 
 comings of Friends. I know how much we have lost 
 by narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the over 
 estimate of external observances, the neglect of our 
 own proper work while acting as a conscience-keeper 
 for others." The remedy is " not in setting the letter 
 above the spirit; not in substituting type and sym 
 bol, and Oriental figure and hyperbole, for the simple 
 truths they were intended to represent; not in schools 
 of theology; not in much speaking and noise and 
 vehemence; nor in vain attempts to make the plain 
 language of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of 
 man-made creeds: but in heeding more closely the 
 Inward Guide and Teacher ; in faith in Christ, not 
 merely in His historical manifestation of the Divine 
 Love to humanity, but in His living presence in the 
 hearts open to receive Him; in love for Him mani 
 fested in denial of self, in charity and love to our 
 neighbor. . . . 
 
 " Quakerism, in the light of its great original 
 truth, is exceedingly broad. As interpreted by 
 Penn and Barclay, it is the most liberal and catholic 
 of faiths. . . . 
 
 " They fail to read clearly the signs of the times 
 who do not see that the hour is coming when, under 
 the searching eye of philosophy and the terrible 
 analysis of science, the letter and the outward evi 
 dence will not altogether avail us; when the surest de 
 pendence must be upon the Light of Christ within." 
 
 One cannot but admire in Whittier his stanch loy- 
 
214 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 alty to the faith of his fathers, in respect of confess 
 ing it before men. He has never been ashamed of 
 his religion. His attitude recalls an anecdote told of 
 Thomas Ellwood. As he was one day coming out of 
 meeting, among a hostile crowd, some one called out, 
 "Do n t stone that man, he is not a Quaker, see his 
 fur cap!" Ellwood instantly snatched his cap from 
 his head and dashed it to the ground, saying, "I am 
 a Quaker!" 
 
 A writer in the Chicago " Inter-Ocean " in the 
 autumn of 1880 reports Whittier as having said in 
 conversation that he believed in an absolute religion 
 above all written revelations : all revelations presup 
 pose and appeal to it. " There is an afr^]^ ha sis 
 of truth in-a-lt- minds, which is the same ; and in all 
 difficulties growing out of the relations of old relig 
 ious ideas to new facts we shall have enough of 
 absolute truth to carry us through. . . . Authority 
 as, a ground and element of religion must whoTljTdis- 
 appear . . . The claims for Christ must be based 
 on the perfect character of His life and teachings, and 
 not on His authority." For a right nurture of the 
 religious nature the sensibilities must be brought 
 more into cultivation and active influence. " After 
 early childhood, the cultivation of the sensibilities 
 begins to give place to intellectual training, and soon 
 ceases entirely, and the young mind is left to train 
 its own sensibilities. It is also taught to smother 
 and conceal the impressions and sensibilities, and 
 eventually it hardens into a spiritual indifference." 
 
 On the doctrine of Predestination and Endless 
 Punishment he has written as follows to the Univer- 
 salists : " I recognize the importance of the revolt of 
 
iiUENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 215 
 
 your religious society from the awful dogma of pre 
 destined happiness for the few and damnation for the 
 many, though in the outset that revolt brought with 
 it something of the old fatalistic belief in the arbi 
 trary will and power of the Almighty. Assuming 
 that a favored few can be saved by a divine decree 
 irrespective of any merit on their part, it was logical 
 at least to suppose that all might be saved in the 
 same way. If I mistake not, this view has been 
 greatly modified by the consideration that the 
 natural circumstances of death cannot make any 
 real change of character ; that no one can be com 
 pelled to be good or evil; that freedom of choice be 
 longs to both worlds, and that sin is, by its very 
 nature, inseparable from suffering. I am not accus 
 tomed to attach very great importance to speculative 
 opinions, and am not disposed to quarrel with any 
 creed which avoids the danger, on the one hand, of 
 attributing implacable vengeance and cruelty to the 
 heavenly Father, and on the other of underrating the 
 exceeding sinfulness of sin and its baleful conse 
 quences. Slowly but surely the dreadful burden of 
 the old belief in the predetermined eternity of evil is 
 being lifted from the heart of humanity, and the 
 goodness of God, which leadeth to repentance, is tak 
 ing the place of the infinite scorn which made love 
 well-nigh impossible." 1 
 
 In his poem "The Minister s Daughter " will be 
 found a strain of thought similar to this. 
 
 A contributor to the Syracuse "Journal" in the 
 summer of 82 writes that in a conversation with 
 
 1 The Critic, June 5, 86. 
 
2l6 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Whittier the talk drifted into the topic of death and 
 the nearness or distance of the departed to different 
 individuals. 
 
 " I have never felt the influence you describe, 
 said the poet; no one who has passed away seems 
 near to me now. Life is such a mystery that I do 
 not ask to penetrate the secrets of eternity; but I can 
 imagine that you and others are conscious of the 
 unseen presence of those whom you have loved and 
 lost. 
 
 " And who are eternally happy, I added. 
 
 " Well, I am not certain about that, he continued, 
 with an expression of abstraction. I believe that 
 we may have troubles there, as well as here ; if not, 
 the contrast would not be so sweet. The difference 
 will be that we shall be better enabled to bear them. 
 Heaven is a place of harmony. Everything will be 
 harmonized there. 
 
 " Then you do not admire a state of complete 
 bliss ? 
 
 " No, why should I, any more than I like clams at 
 high tide, 1 and, after joining me in a moment of 
 merriment, he turned suddenly and said, 
 
 " When are you the happiest ? 
 
 " * You will laugh, Mr. Whittier, but it is when I 
 hear the first note of a robin in the early spring 
 time. 
 
 " * No, I shall not laugh; for I understand that 
 pleasure, too. 
 
 1 Those who have never lived by the sea may need to be told 
 that clams are only obtainable when the water has receded, at low 
 tide. 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 2 17 
 
 " Then I described the meadows of Central Park, 
 which he said was all new to him, and he had not 
 supposed any one would go there to hear a robin s 
 song. A merry twinkle came in his eyes as he 
 added, * I like Boston Common because they hung 
 some Quakers there once upon a time. " 
 
 Here are some cheerful thoughts of Whittier s 
 from a talk on Communism and the Shakers : 1 
 
 " You young men will have your trials, too," he 
 said, " and your conflicts will be with subtler diffi 
 culties than ours." 
 
 " Is Professor Goldwin Smith s * Moral Interreg 
 num probable?" asked his questioner. 
 
 " I think there is some prospect of it," said Whit- 
 tier. " The breaking of old forms has begun. I have 
 no fears for the result." The communism of the 
 French Revolution is impossible with us. 
 
 " The most successful form of communism," said 
 he, humorously, u is the Shaker Community. They 
 have broken down the family, and have common 
 property; but they also have industry, frugality, 
 purity, and temperance. They have the spirit of 
 thrift and cleanliness. But even in this form com 
 munism is not a good thing. It would extinguish 
 the race in time. 
 
 " The Shakers have always been very careful about 
 running after strange notions; but they publish a 
 paper now called The Shaker Manifesto, a rather 
 smart title, in which they give their views of things in 
 
 1 From the New York " Tribune," Oct. 4, 1880 (the Inter- 
 Ocean " conversation above referred to). 
 
2l8 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 general. They send it to me, and I take some interest 
 in looking at it, and seeing what they are thinking 
 about. They have a column of poetry in it that is 
 interesting reading. They have a machine for mak 
 ing poetry as well as everything else; and they com 
 pose tunes of their own for these songs. I do not 
 think the world will steal their music. It is the most 
 singular music I have ever heard." 
 
 Quakerism, in virtue of its doctrine of Inward 
 Illumination, is the sworn foe of caste and class 
 privilege. Every man and woman may receive the 
 honor of inspiration from above. Hence perfect 
 equality among classes of men, and the unavoidable 
 corollary the co-equality of the sexes. Whittier 
 favored " woman s rights " from the start, though 
 during the anti-slavery struggle he deemed it unwise 
 to keep introducing the subject into the meetings of 
 the Abolitionists. It was irrelevant, and hurt the 
 cause. " Let other reforms stand on their own in 
 trinsic merit," he said. " The Abolition car moves 
 heavily enough already, without dragging after it 
 everything which our thousand and one reformers 
 may choose to hitch to it." l In 1880 his words are 
 reported as follows: 2 
 
 u Woman suffrage I regard as an inevitable thing, 
 and a good thing. Women in public life will bring 
 it up more than it will bring them down. There will 
 be considerable floundering about before society will 
 be completely adapted to the change; but, after it 
 shall be fairly accomplished and in working order, 
 
 1 Liberator, Oct. 27, 37. 
 
 * New York Tribune, Oct. 4, 1880. 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND OPINIONS. 219 
 
 the work of society will go on without any deteriora 
 tion, and with a gain of purity in motives and unself 
 ishness of law-makers and administrators. I fear its 
 effects in large cities, where bad women will come 
 forward. Women are so intense that bad women will 
 be worse in public life than bad men. But the dif 
 ficulty is in the nature of the city. Yet I do not be 
 lieve that woman s work will be done mainly by 
 voting. Disinterested lives are the things needed in 
 society, and women will do most in showing the 
 practicability and value of such lives in all forms of 
 work." 
 
 Similarly he speaks in a published letter: J 
 " I frankly confess that I am not able to foresee all 
 the consequences of the great social and political 
 change proposed. But of this I am at least sure: it is 
 always safe to do right, and the truest expediency is 
 simple justice. . . . I have no fear that man will be 
 less manly or woman less womanly when they meet on 
 terms of equality before the law. On the other hand, 
 I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman 
 will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she 
 justly complains. It is her right as truly as mine; 
 and, when she asks for it, it is something less than 
 manhood to withhold it. But unsupported by a 
 more practical education, higher aims, and a deeper 
 sense of the responsibilities of life and duty, it is not 
 likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more than 
 in man s." 
 
 1 Prose Works (edition 1889), iii. 228. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 "TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 
 
 " 1 knew a very wise man that believed that if a man were per 
 mitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the 
 laws, of a nation" FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. 
 
 INASMUCH as I have elsewhere published a critical 
 estimate of Mr. Whittier s poems, pointing out the 
 gradual growth of his art away from homiletical, or 
 didactic, work until it culminated in the beautiful 
 ballads of his riper years, I do not purpose to go over 
 that ground again in this volume, but will content 
 myself with quoting (by the tacit permission of its 
 writer) the following weighty and condensed bit of 
 criticism from an eminent fellow-poet and contem 
 porary of Mr. Whittier, and will then pass on to 
 annotate and illustrate some of his most fascinating 
 stories in verse: " Whittier s poetry stands for moral 
 ity (not its ensemble, or in any true philosophic or 
 Hegelian sense, but) as filter d through the positive 
 Puritanical and Quaker filters; is very valuable as a 
 genuine utterance; with many capital local and Yan 
 kee and genre bits all unmistakably hued with 
 zealous partisan anti-slavery coloring. Then thegenre 
 bits are all precious; all help. Whittier is rather a 
 grand figure pretty lean and ascetic no Greek 
 also not composite and universal enough (does n t 
 
 220 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 221 
 
 wish to be, does n t try to be) for ideal American 
 ism." 1 
 
 If the Essex poet is not composite and universal, he 
 is at least very near the heart of the people, and never 
 more so than in. his best ballads, such as " Telling 
 the Bees," " Maud Muller," " Barbara Frietchie," 
 Skipper Ireson," " The Witch s Daughter," and 
 "The Witch of Wenham." These musical arrows, 
 shot as with the miraculous bow of Rama, are un 
 doubtedly feathered for a far flight into the future. 
 And a chief reason for their perpetuity lies in the 
 fact that they are free from the disfigurement (from 
 an artistic point of view) of so many of Whittier s de 
 scriptive pieces; namely, the moral at the end. A 
 direct homiletical application of a story, instead of 
 pointing it, weakens its point: it is the button on the 
 sword. A poem with a moral reminds one of Ed 
 ward Lear s " scroobious snake, who always wore a 
 hat on his head for fear he should bite anybody." 
 
 The determination of Whittier upon the moral is 
 complete and radical. The roots, trunk, branches, 
 and blossoms of his life are steeped in the sense of 
 duty. The obligation to high daring and heroic do- 
 ing rests upon his soul like a solemn sanction. He 
 has received a commission from on high. Will the 
 Commander-in-chief approve of his sitting down to 
 write pretty ballads in the heat and burden of the 
 day? he keeps anxiously asking himself. To an 
 
 1 The poet of Camden, letter to the author, Oct. 10, 8g. It is a 
 significant and historically fitting circumstance that the three chief 
 democrats of the New World Whitman, Lincoln, and Whittier 
 should all be, remotely or immediately, of Quaker stock. 
 
222 JOHN G. WHITTIER, 
 
 edition of his poems published in 1849 he prefixes 
 these lines of Coleridge: 
 
 " Was it right, 
 
 While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, 
 That I should dream away th intrusted hours 
 On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart 
 With feelings all too delicate for use ? " 
 
 In the dedication of one of his prose works to his 
 sister Elizabeth he is still seen to be debating the 
 question in his mind, but leans to the opinion that 
 it is all right : 
 
 " And knowing how my life hath been 
 A weary work of tongue and pen, 
 A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men, 
 
 Thou wilt not chide my turning 
 To con, at times, an idle rhyme, 
 To pluck a flower from childhood s clime, 
 Or listen, at Life s noon-day chime, 
 For the sweet bells of Morning ! " 
 
 Had he consulted his choice, he would not have entered 
 into the political field at all, but would have loved all 
 his life to drift idly up and down among the drowsy 
 Venetian canals of legendary lore. As he says at the 
 close of " The Panorama ": 
 
 " Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong 
 I leave the green and pleasant paths of song. 
 
 * ***** 
 
 More dear to me some song of private worth, 
 Some homely idyl of my native North." 
 
 The quaint and touching European custom, de- 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 223 
 
 scribed in " Telling the Bees," of informing the occu 
 pants of the hives of a death in the family, and drap 
 ing the hives with crape in order that the swarms may 
 not take their departure, has been transplanted to our 
 country, and is still observed by isolated individuals 
 here and there among the country folk, especially in 
 New York State. It is a pretty idea, and a very 
 natural one, that those marvelous little waxen-thighed 
 flower-riflers, those winged geometers and potters 
 whose whirling wheel turns out such cunning vases 
 of scented sweets, should have the power of compre 
 hending all that men do and say. It is among the 
 peasantry of Europe, of course, that the idea is most 
 prevalent. Some of them think that the bees sense 
 of smell, which is known to be very acute, is offended 
 by the presence of a dead body. At any rate, it is 
 imperative to inform them of the death and invite 
 them to the funeral. Some drape the hives with 
 shreds of black, and some do not ; some also place 
 on the alighting-boards of the hives fragments of the 
 funeral cake or bread, soaked in beer, wine, or honey. 
 Bees also expect to be invited to a wedding, and to 
 have their hives decorated with wedding favors. In 
 Buckinghamshire, England, on the occasion of a 
 death, the nurse of the family, or a servant, goes to 
 all the beehives in the garden and taps gently three 
 times, saying each time in a low voice, " Little brownie, 
 little brownie, your master s dead," whereupon the 
 bees begin to hum, showing that they understand 
 and are willing to remain. In Derbyshire and Wilts 
 the custom is a common one. Three taps are made 
 on the hive with the house-key, and the informant 
 says, " Bees, bees, your master [or mistress] is dead, 
 
224 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and you must work for ," naming the heir or 
 
 successor. A piece of black crape is then fastened to 
 the hive. An old farmer s wife in Cheshire, England, 
 had from fifteen to twenty hives of bees. 
 
 " Well," said a friend one day to her, " how have 
 the bees done this year?" 
 
 " Ah! " she replied, " they are all gone. When our 
 Harriet lost her second child, a many of them died. 
 You see they were under the window where it lay; 
 and then when Will died, last spring, the rest all 
 died, too. I always say that bees are very curious 
 things." 
 
 In some parts of France, on the day of Purification 
 women read the gospel to the bees, and it is believed 
 that, if children or grown people swear within ear 
 shot of them, they will swarm out and attack them. 
 The belief is alluded to by Beranger in one of his 
 chansons. In Westphalia, when the death of the mas 
 ter of the household occurs, the servant puts on a 
 Bienenhelm, or bee-bonnet, and, going out into the 
 garden to the hives, stoops down and says in a low 
 voice, "The mistress sends her best compliments, and 
 the master is dead." In some parts of Germany they 
 say, 
 
 " Bienchen, unser Herr ist todt, 
 Verlass mich nicht in meiner Noth." 
 
 "Little bee, our master is dead. Forsake me not in 
 my distress." 1 
 
 1 See Farrer s " Primitive Manners and Customs," p. 281; Eng 
 lish "Notes and Queries" (consult the indexes); "American 
 Notes and Queries," i. 312, and ii. 328, 374; " Scribner s Month 
 ly," May, 1879 (article by Burroughs); "Open Court," Sept. 12, 
 1889 (article by L. J. Vance); and Brand s " Popular Antiquities." 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 225 
 
 In regard to the ballad " Maud Muller," Mr. Whit- 
 tier tells us that the name Muller he took from the 
 descendants of a Hessian deserter in the Revolution 
 ary War. " The poem," he says, " has no real foun 
 dation in fact, though a hint of it may have been 
 found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a 
 journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my 
 sister some years before it was written. We had 
 stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an 
 apple-tree, and refresh Kim with water from a little 
 brook which rippled through the stone wall across 
 the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantiest 
 summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and, as 
 we talked with her, we noticed that she strove to 
 hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blush 
 ing as she did so through the tan of her cheek and 
 neck." 1 "Maud Muller" was first published in 
 the " National Era," December, 1854. It is a poem 
 sweeter and purer in sentiment than Browning s 
 "Statue and the Bust"; the root-idea of this poem 
 also is embodied in the phrase, " It might have been." 
 The name, being German, should have been written 
 Muller. The English author Walter Hamilton says 
 in volume five of his "Parodies" that Mr. Whittier 
 pronounces it as if written Miiller. Mr. Hamilton 
 adds a remark of the poet: "If I had had any idea 
 that the plaguey thing would have been so liked, I 
 would have taken more pains with it." 
 
 The story of Skipper Ireson a was first told to 
 
 1 Note to the library edition of 1888 of Whittier s poems. 
 
 2 The sources of information for this ballad are as follows: His 
 tory of Marblehead, by Roads, Jr., p. 233; article by John Chad- 
 
 15 
 
226 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Whittier by a schoolmate, a young girl from Marble- 
 head, when he was attending the Academy in Haver- 
 hill. He says he remembers thinking it over while 
 walking to and fro under Hugh Tallant s sycamores, 
 which formed a leafy archway beside the river. 
 Thirty years later he wrote and published the ballad. 
 For doing so, he has excited the unappeasable wrath 
 of the good Marbleheaders, especially the women, 
 who in reality had nothing to do with the " torring" 
 of the skipper, and do not like their portrait as 
 sketched by the balladist. As for the " men-folks," 
 they have been laboring for years to convince the 
 world that it was n t Skipper Ireson who was to 
 blame for leaving the shipwrecked sailors to perish: 
 it was his men. But, as these were also Marbleheaders, 
 one cannot see how the reputation of the town would 
 be in any way bettered by shifting the odium onto 
 the shoulders of Ireson s crew. 
 
 The refrain of " Skipper Ireson " was originally 
 written without the use of the queer local pronuncia 
 tion, but was afterwards changed to its present form 
 at the suggestion of Mr. Francis H. Underwood, then 
 editor of the " Atlantic Monthly," in which the poem 
 first appeared. The event chronicled in the ballad took 
 place in 1807 ; and, when Mr. Whittier took up the 
 story for literary purposes, it had been talked about 
 and sung about in Marblehead for a generation, and 
 
 wick in " Harper s Monthly," July, 1874, and one by George M. 
 White in the same for February, 1883; Underwood s " Whittier," 
 p. 219; Boston " Evening Transcript," Sept. 23 and Oct. 3, 1889; 
 and a note by Mr. Whittier in the library edition (1888) of his 
 poems. The poem first appeared anonymously in the "Atlantic 
 Monthly " in 1857. 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 227 
 
 was regarded by him as a legend. The original 
 doggerel, as sung by the boys of Marblehead, is said 
 to have run in this wise : 
 
 " Old Flud Oirson, for his horrd hort, 
 Was torred and feathered and corried in a cort ; 
 He left foive men upon a wrack, 
 And was torred and feathered all over his back." 
 
 By 1837 this had got changed and amplified (accord 
 ing to the Gloucester " Telegraph " of that year) into 
 
 " Old Flood Ireson, for his hord hort, 
 Was torr d and feathered and corried in a cort ! 
 Old Flood Ireson, for leaving the wreck, 
 Was torr d and feathered all up to his neck ! 
 Old Flood Ireson, for his great sin, 
 Was torr d and feathered all up to his chin ! 
 Old Flood Ireson, for his bad behavior, 
 Was torr d and feathered and corried to Salem ! 
 
 In the early part of this century the Marblehead 
 vessels usually made three fishing trips in a season to 
 the Grand Banks, from March to December. A crew 
 generally consisted of the skipper, five men, and a 
 cook. In the autumn of 1807 a capable and intelligent 
 young Marbleheader of twenty-three years of age, 
 named Captain Benjamin Ireson (Flood, or Flud, or 
 Floyd, was a nickname), was placed by her owner in 
 charge of the schooner " Betty " and despatched to 
 the Grand Banks. As he was homeward bound on 
 his third trip, he found himself one midnight with 
 Cape Cod under his lee, and a high sea running and 
 a strong wind blowing. The situation was not a 
 pleasant one to the sailors, who were anxious to get 
 home. Presently the lumber-schooner " Active," of 
 
228 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Portland, was descried in a sinking condition, lying 
 on her beam ends, and the crew were clinging to the 
 rigging- As to what took place next there is consid 
 erable uncertainty. The defenders of Captain Ireson 
 say that he ordered the crew to lie by the wreck till 
 "doming" (dawn), and then turned in for a little 
 sleep. Another account says that he and one other 
 were for immediately rendering assistance ; but the 
 rest of the crew (being part-owners in the cargo) 
 refused to do so. The crew themselves, when they 
 returned, said the captain deserved all the blame. It 
 is pretty clear that they were all alike guilty. As 
 for the skipper, the damning fact is not denied that 
 he never by a word repelled the charge of having 
 abandoned the ship. The " Betty " arrived in Mar- 
 blehead October 30, and the very next day who 
 should come sailing into the port, aboard the sloop 
 " Swallow," but the captain of the " Active." He had 
 been rescued, with three of the passengers, by Mr. 
 Hardy of Truro, in a whale-boat ; but four of his 
 crew had gone down to Davy Jones s locker. 
 
 The story of the abandonment gradually spread 
 through the town. But no steps were taken at first, 
 although the wrath and excitement grew more intense 
 (it being now the idle season with the fishermen). 
 The fare of fish was unloaded and dried on the flakes 
 (or platforms of sticks), the " wessel " laid up for the 
 winter, and " the v yage sittl d." 
 
 For some days previous to the tarring and feather 
 ing, a restless, unsettled spirit was manifested by the 
 more indignant ones, and finally a deputation waited 
 upon young Captain Ireson, as he was walking to 
 and fro on Pitman s Wharf, to inquire into the truth 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 229 
 
 or falsity of the accusation against him. He is said 
 to have been a very taciturn man, and to their inter 
 rogatories returned no answer, maintaining a dogged 
 silence to the last. This seemed to them proof posi 
 tive of his guilt. 
 
 Accordingly, the Freemasons held secret meetings 
 to discuss the matter. Their plan of action was soon 
 matured, and on the following day the conspirators 
 suddenly sprang upon him, threw him into a con 
 demned dory lying on the wharf, where he was held 
 by one Morse until his hands were tied behind his 
 back. He made no resistance. A bucket of tar had 
 been prepared, and the crowd, to the number of a 
 hundred, laid hold of the long rope tied to the boat s 
 painter and started on a run through the town, halt 
 ing at the corner of Darling Street. They had 
 received a gift of two feather pillows as they came 
 along, from the wife of Captain David Bruce, 1 and, 
 proceeding to the outskirts of the village, they 
 applied the tar and feathers, rubbing it in well, and 
 dabbing two huge lumps of tar on each temple, 
 wherein were stuck goose feathers. The march was 
 then resumed toward Salem, and, when the bottom 
 of the dory came out, the skipper was placed in a 
 cart. The Salem authorities refused to allow the 
 crowd to enter that town, whereupon they returned 
 to Marblehead, and unbound their prisoner, who 
 said, "I thank you for my ride, gentlemen; but you 
 will live to regret it." This was the only word he 
 spoke during the proceedings. He did not return to 
 
 1 From this circumstance, the mythical story of the women being 
 engaged in the matter possibly took its rise. 
 
230 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 his home until night set in, reaching it by a round 
 about way. 
 
 One of his contemporaries, on being asked what 
 effect the tarring had on Ireson, answered, " Cowed 
 him to death, cowed him to death." He never went 
 skipper but once more, and that was the next year. 
 Thereafter he earned his living by dory-fishing in the 
 bay, selling his daily catch in a wheelbarrow trun 
 dled from door to door. He appeared to become 
 reckless of his life. On one occasion the story goes 
 he landed near the house of one of his old perse 
 cutors, and deliberately made fast a noose to a large 
 log, which he then towed away into deep water, hurl 
 ing bad names at the owner, who called out, 
 
 " Stop, Ireson, or I ll shoot you! " 
 
 To which he replied, 
 
 " Fire away, old man! You can t hit me! " 
 
 Another old salt tells of having once picked Ireson 
 up far out at sea, where he had been driven in his 
 dory by a storm. His savior took him into Glouces 
 ter. He had not a cent with which to buy a meal 
 or to get back home. A benevolent individual gave 
 him his supper, kept him over night, and next day 
 took up a subscription to pay his fare to Marblehead. 
 When Ireson had gone, he informed the subscribers 
 who he was, whereupon they swore, in great wrath, 
 that, if they had known it, they would not have given 
 him a penny. 
 
 When old age and blindness at last overtook him, 
 and his last fishing-trip had been made, his old dory 
 was hauled up into the lane by his house, and there 
 rotted away. Whittier s ballad appeared in 1856, a 
 year or two after his death. 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 231 
 
 As has been stated, the " women of Marblehead " 
 have a very poor opinion of the Quaker poet. In the 
 autumn of 1889 some young ladies from Salem went 
 over to Marblehead, on a boating trip, and, while 
 there, went in search of Floyd Ireson s house. As 
 they were inquiring their way, a woman thrust her 
 head out of the window, exclaiming: 
 
 " Want to find Flood Ireson s house, do ye? Well, 
 you won t find out here, I can t tell ye! Flood 
 Ireson was every bit as good as you be; and you 
 treatin his house s if t was a curiosity! You better 
 go right away from here! " 
 
 The young ladies declined to take the advice, and 
 were not molested. But shortly after another party 
 on the same errand were pelted with mud by street 
 gamins. 
 
 Mr. Whittier, who has been pained by the way the 
 ballad has been received, has written a note to 
 Samuel Roads, Jr., the historian of Marblehead (and 
 has taken the pains to prefix it to the ballad as pub 
 lished in the latest edition of his poems), in which 
 he says, " My verse was founded solely on a frag 
 ment of a rhyme which I heard from one of my early 
 schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed 
 the story to which it referred dated back at least a 
 century. I knew nothing of the participators, and 
 the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am 
 glad for the sake of truth and justice that the real 
 facts are given in thy book [Mr. Roads follows the 
 popular feeling of the town, and attempts to exoner 
 ate the skipper]. I certainly would not knowingly 
 do injustice to any one, dead or living." 
 
 Mr. Charles T. Brooks, the genial Unitarian divine 
 
232 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of Newport, and translator of Richter, wrote some 
 compassionate verses about " Old Flud," the best of 
 which are given below. One cannot but feel, how 
 ever, that his pity is just a little misplaced (like a 
 good deal of Unitarian philanthropy), and that those 
 four poor sailors, drowned through the crime of the 
 skipper, would be fitter subjects for the poet s sym 
 pathies : 
 
 " Old Flood Ireson ! all too long 
 Have jeer and jibe and ribald song 
 Done thy memory cruel wrong. 
 
 " Old Flood Ireson sleeps in his grave; 
 Howls of a mad mob, worse than the wave, 
 Now no more in his ear shall rave. 
 
 " Gone is the pack and gone the prey, 
 Yet old Flood Ireson s ghost to-day 
 Is hunted still down Time s highway. 
 
 Old wife Fame, with a fish-horn s blare 
 Hooting and tooting the same old air, 
 Drags him along the old thoroughfare. 
 
 " Shall Heaven look on and not take part 
 With the poor old man and his fluttering heart, 
 Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart ? " 
 
 " Barbara Frietchie " is a ballad that cannot be 
 read by an American without deep emotion. It has 
 
 1 The name is properly spelled Fritchie, judging from the in 
 scriptions on the tombstones of Barbara and her husband in 
 Frederick. 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 233 
 
 been twice translated into German, 1 and was highly 
 valued by the ex-Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro, who, 
 shortly after its appearance, read it repeatedly in Eng 
 lish in the presence of members of his Court, and then 
 brought it to the notice of the Princesses and their 
 husbands, the Count d Eu and the Prince of Saxe- 
 Coburg-Gotha, as one of the rarest specimens of 
 poetry in any literature in its portrayal of the heroic 
 patriotism of woman. 
 
 Not long after the publication of the ballad, in 
 1863, while sympathy for the South was still strong 
 and determined in Maryland, the Secession relatives 
 of Dame Barbara, not relishing such extreme North 
 ern patriotism as hers, united with the disloyal citi 
 zens of Frederick in spreading reports of the unau- 
 thenticity of the incident pictured by the poet ; and it 
 is surprising to see with what ingenuity they have 
 wrenched the facts, so as to make them fit their ver 
 sion of the affair. A dozen and one accounts have 
 been put forth, and each is inconsistent in one or 
 more points with the others. 
 
 Now, Mr. Whittier wrote to a friend in 1872 that 
 a nephew of Barbara had visited him and had con 
 firmed the authenticity of the incident 2 To the 
 editors of the " Century " he also wrote, in the autumn 
 of 1886: 
 
 " My attention has been called to an article in the 
 
 1 The free rendering of the late Hon. Theodore S. Fay, In his 
 work, " Die Sklavenmacht," is not unspirited, 
 " Frisch vom Septembermorgen umhaucht, 
 Aus goldenen Aehrenvvogen taucht, 
 Umgriint von den Hiigeln Maryland s, 
 Der Kirchthurm Frederick s im Sonnenglanz," etc. 
 
 8 Potter s American Monthly, 1875, p. 416. 
 
234 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 June number of the Century, in which the writer, 
 referring to the poem on Barbara Frietchie, says: 
 * The story will perhaps live, as Mr. Whittier has 
 boasted, until it gets beyond the reach of correction. 
 Those who know me will bear witness that I am not 
 in the habit of boasting of anything whatever, least 
 of all of congratulating myself upon a doubtful state 
 ment outliving the possibility of correction. I cer 
 tainly made no boast of the kind imputed to me. 
 The poem of Barbara Frietchie was written in good 
 faith. The story was no invention of mine. It came 
 to me from sources which I regarded as entirely 
 reliable; it had been published in newspapers, and 
 had gained public credence in Washington and Mary 
 land before my poem was written. I had no reason 
 to doubt its accuracy then, and I am still constrained 
 to believe that it had foundation in fact. If I thought 
 otherwise, I should not hesitate to express it. I have 
 no pride of authorship to interfere with my allegiance 
 to truth." 
 
 The writer referred to by the poet is Colonel Henry 
 Kyd Douglas of the Confederate army, who, in his 
 article on General Jackson in the "Century," June, 
 1886, p. 287, goes out of his way to affront Mr. Whit- 
 tier. He says no such incident ever happened, since 
 he was with General Jackson at the time. He shows 
 how much he knows about the matter by adding con 
 temptuously that there was such an old woman as 
 Barbara Frietchie, but that she was bed-ridden. The 
 falsity of the latter part of this affirmation will appear 
 as we unfold the true account. It is very clear from 
 the tone of this Confederate colonel s remarks that 
 such stanzas in the ballad as 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 235 
 
 " Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 
 
 But spare your country s flag, she said," 
 must have pricked hard the consciences of the South 
 erners. T was a home thrust, especially to soldiers, 
 who are sensitive to the approval or the disapproval 
 of woman, and who are placed by the poet in the 
 light of naughty boys being spanked by their mamma, 
 Dame Columbia (typified, one may say, in old Barbara 
 Frietchie). 
 
 Now, the poet Whittier has been considerably dis 
 turbed by the rumpus kicked up by the Southerners 
 over this ballad, and, wishing to be obliging, has pre 
 fixed a note to it in the recent library edition of his 
 poems, in which he makes unnecessary concessions, 
 as I think I shall show. He says: "The story was 
 probably incorrect in some of its details. It is admit 
 ted by all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but 
 a worthy and highly esteemed gentlewoman, intensely 
 loyal, and a hater of the Slavery Rebellion, holding 
 her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; 
 that when the Confederates halted before her house, 
 and entered her dooryard, she denounced them in 
 vigorous language, shook her cane in their faces, and 
 drove them out; and, when General Burnside s troops 
 followed close upon Jackson s, she waved her flag and 
 cheered them. It is stated that May Quantrell, a 
 brave and loyal lady in another part of the city, did 
 wave her flag in sight of the Confederates. It is 
 possible that there has been a blending of the two 
 incidents." 
 
 Mrs. Mary A. Quantrell was a pretty, black-haired 
 woman of thirty-two at that time. She stood at her 
 gate with her daughter " Virgie," and both courage- 
 
236 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 ously waved Union flags in the face of the Confed 
 erates. As the little girl was flourishing a small flag, 
 an officer cut the stick in two with his sword. She 
 picked up another, and that, too, was cut out of her 
 hand, the men exclaiming, " Throw down that flag! " 
 Mrs. Quantrell waved a larger flag, and was not 
 molested. Some of the officers, with characteristic 
 Southern politeness, raised their hats, saying, " To 
 you, madam, not your flag." 1 
 
 Reports of Barbara Frietchie s patriotism and valor 
 were carried to Washington by citizens of Frederick. 
 It was Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, of Washington, 
 who first sent an account of her to Whittier, enclos 
 ing a newspaper slip about her spirited treatment of 
 the Confederates under Jackson, as described by Mr. 
 Whittier above. Mr. Whittier was afterwards as 
 sured by Miss Dorothea L. Dix, who had been caring 
 for the wounded in a hospital in Frederick, that the 
 story was true, virtually as he has sung it. Later he 
 was presented with a cane made from the wood of 
 Barbara s house. 
 
 About the year 1881, Mrs. Caroline H. Dall went to 
 Frederick and made an exhaustive study of the 
 whole matter. 3 The result of her investigation was 
 a conviction that the poem has an historic basis. The 
 deniers of its authenticity affirm that Jackson was 
 not riding at the head of his troops at all. But Mrs. 
 Dall learned that he had only ridden hastily back for 
 
 1 Article by Joseph Walker in Baltimore " Herald," Sept. 29, 
 1884; quoted in " American Notes and Queries," Oct. 6, 1888. 
 
 2 See the Boston " Evening Transcript," June, 1888, Query 
 12,827. 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 237 
 
 a few moments to leave a note at the door of a friend 
 with whom he intended to pass the Sunday follow 
 ing, and overtook the column just as the guns were 
 pointed at Barbara s flag. In continuation of their 
 subterfuges and quibbling with the literal text of the 
 ballad, the Southerners affirm that Jackson s army 
 did not enter Frederick at all. This is literally true, 
 but practically false. The army did not pass through 
 the town, but did pass within fifteen or twenty feet 
 of one of its boundary lines. Frederick town is 
 separated from Frederick County by Carroll Creek, 
 a very narrow stream (about the width of an ordinary 
 street), and the road traversed by Jackson s soldiers 
 lay along the farther side of that creek. But Barbara 
 Frietchie s house overhung the stream. Her husband 
 was a glover, and the house had been so constructed 
 that the trimmings of the shop might be swept into 
 the stream through a trap door. There was but one 
 window on the side of the house next to the creek, 
 and that was in the attic. It was here that she waved 
 the flag, and in the photographs sold in the town it 
 is always represented as fluttering from this window. 
 The little flag is about 12 x 18 inches, has but thirty- 
 four stars, is of silk, and is attached to a staff some 
 three feet long. It is still preserved by her niece, 
 Mrs. Handschue. This good lady affirms that the 
 incident is apocryphal, for she was in the house and 
 saw nothing of it. But Mrs. Dall said she learned 
 on inquiry that the niece was at the time hidden 
 under the bed, saying her prayers in German ! Mrs. 
 Handschue s daughter, Mrs. Abbott, writes that, 
 when later the Union troops under Burnside marched 
 by the front door, the old lady stood on her porch, 
 
238 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 leaning on her cane, and waving her silken flag of 
 the Union. She was then over ninety-six. The men 
 cheered her again and again. Some even ran into 
 the yard to shake hands, exclaiming: " God bless 
 you, old lady! May you live long! " On the oppo 
 site side of the narrow street stood a white-haired 
 German pastor, over a hundred years old, and it was 
 said that the tears of joy streamed down the cheeks 
 of both as they waved their flags. 
 
 We are told also that on other occasions, if, on go 
 ing out, she found rebel soldiers encumbering her 
 door steps, she would strike them right and left, cry 
 ing, " Off, off, you lousy Rebels ! " 
 
 Let it be noted that General Jackson passed 
 through Frederick, en route to capture Harper s 
 Ferry, on Sept. 6, 1862, and that on December 18, three 
 months later, Barbara Frietchie died, and was buried 
 in the cemetery of the German Reformed Church in 
 Frederick. a Whittier s ballad did not appear until 
 October, 1863, when it was published in the "Atlan 
 tic Monthly," nearly a year after Barbara had passed 
 away. Mr. Joseph Walker, her son-in-law, claims to 
 know all about the matter, and speaking, probably 
 from hearsay or remembrance, twenty-two years 
 after the event, says Barbara never claimed the credit 
 of the General Jackson incident nor even alluded to 
 it. Perhaps not. But why should she? It would not 
 have seemed to her anything very extraordinary to 
 do. She may have said nothing to the Confederate 
 
 1 Sunday Afternoon Magazine, April 8. 
 
 2 The Century Company s " War Book," ii. 618 ; article by 
 George O. Seilheimer. 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 239 
 
 soldiers, and there may possibly have been no firing 
 at the flag, or, if there was, she would have deemed 
 it prudent not to mention it to her terrified niece. 
 Her well-known patriotism makes it nearly certain 
 that she would not have allowed a Confederate army 
 to pass under her window without rebuking it (as 
 she did in the case mentioned by Mr. Whittier). 
 Very well. The incident of the flag happened, and 
 was forgotten. Gradually, as we know, her reputa 
 tion for patriotism spread; and then some citizen or 
 one of Jackson s soldiers recalled that little scene at 
 the attic window; the account reached Washington, 
 and later was sent on to Mr. Whittier. In the hurly- 
 burly of war it may well have happened that her own 
 niece remained in ignorance that the flag-story was 
 circulating elsewhere. Then in three months the old 
 lady was beyond the reach of questions. 
 
 In further confirmation of the incident Mrs. Dall 
 states (" Unitarian Review," September, 1878) that 
 she had received a letter from an Englishman of 
 education, a member of the Shakespeare Society, who 
 was a soldier in the Union Army and member of 
 Burnside s Ninth Army Corps. He states that on 
 September 18, 1862, twelve days after the entrance of 
 Jackson into Frederick, he passed through the town 
 with an ambulance of wounded men. Stopping for 
 refreshments at a restaurant, they were told by a 
 pretty Irish girl the story of the firing on the flag. 
 The girl was a Confederate sympathizer, and ex 
 claimed, " Bully for Jackson ! " This shows that the 
 story was common talk twelve days after the event. 
 This Englishman went South after the war, and once 
 read the ballad aloud at a public meeting. Persons 
 
240 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 present testified to their personal knowledge of the 
 countermanding by Jackson of the order to fire. In 
 1868 a Union officer, one of the convalescent patients 
 in the Frederick hospital at the time, told Mrs. Dall 
 that he himself saw the shot fired at the flag. 
 
 One day, shortly before her death, says Mrs. Dall, 
 two friends called on Barbara Frietchie to pay her 
 some money owed her. They found her sitting by 
 the window knitting. She wore a black satin dress 
 and a snow-white cap; a white kerchief was pinned 
 over her shoulders. When the money had been paid, 
 a pen was put into her hand, and she was shown 
 where to make her mark. She pushed back her gold 
 spectacles, and with a smile drew her pen through the 
 name that had been written for her, writing it her 
 self with a steady hand, saying to her friend, " Honey, 
 I wrote my name before you were born." 
 
 There is another ballad of Whittier s founded on 
 an incident the authenticity of which is denied by 
 certain authorities. I refer to the poem " Brown of 
 Ossawatomie," and especially to the second stanza, 
 in which are embodied the subject and raison d etre of 
 the whole piece: 
 
 "John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die ; 
 And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed 
 
 nigh. 
 Then the bold blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face 
 
 grew mild, 
 As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the 
 
 negro s child ! " 
 
 Mr. Thomas Hovenden, of Philadelphia, has put 
 this scene into a powerful realistic painting, contain- 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 241 
 
 ing twenty-two figures, eight or nine of them care 
 fully finished studies. It is a great historical work, 
 the value of which will enormously increase with 
 time. My description of this painting in successive 
 numbers of the Boston "Index" in 1885 brought out 
 important evidence as to the authenticity of the story 
 upon which the painting is based, especially a long 
 editorial in the New York " Sun " of September 27th 
 of that year, written by Edward F. Underbill. Mr. 
 Underhill thinks that my belief in the truth of the 
 story of the child-kissing by Brown is built upon 
 sand. It may be so, but let us see. No one knew 
 before the appearance of Mr. Underbill s editorial 
 where the famous passage came from which was 
 taken by Redpath from the New York " Tribune " 
 for his Life of John Brown, and thence extracted by 
 Greeley for his History of the Civil War, and which 
 formed the basis of Whittier s poem and Hovenden s 
 painting. The truth is now revealed: it came from 
 the journalistic brain of Mr. Underhill. In his " Trib 
 une " article, he tells a number of journalistic false 
 hoods, assumes to have been an eye-witness of every 
 thing he relates, speaks of the very expression of 
 Brown s face, his smile, the elasticity of his step, and 
 says he (the writer) was present at the scaffold. But 
 Mr. Underhill now tells us that this was only a jour 
 nalistic trick. He was detailed by the editor-in-chief 
 to write the article, and to put it in the form of corre 
 spondence, in order to deceive the vigilant Southern 
 ers at Charleston, who were ready to string up the 
 authors of all letters to Northern papers. The infor 
 mation for his article Mr. Underhill got from the 
 Abolitionist, Mr. J. Miller McKim, who came to the 
 16 
 
242 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 11 Tribune " office two days after the hanging, in com 
 pany with Mrs. John Brown. Mr. McKim had not 
 been allowed to go to Charleston where Brown was, 
 but waited at Harper s Ferry while Mrs. Brown went 
 on to see her husband. After her return to the Ferry, 
 and while they were both waiting there for Brown s 
 remains to be delivered to them, McKim heard, in 
 conversation with others, the statement about the 
 kissing of the slave-child. It did not come at first 
 or even second hand to him. But somehow it had got 
 abroad. Was it true ? Only two persons whose word 
 is entitled to any weight have denied it. These are 
 Mr. Redpath and John Brown s jailer, Captain Avis. 
 Brown s best biographer, Mr. F. B. Sanborn, wrote 
 to me, in 1885: " Redpath, who gave currency to the 
 story, told me five years ago that it was not true. He 
 depended on Ned House (the Tribune correspond 
 ent) for it (as he said), and he had discovered that 
 House invented it." Now, Edward H. House was 
 present during the entire trial and execution, and 
 sent on letters, by secret channels, to the New York 
 papers. But we have just seen that it was not he 
 who furnished the narrative to the " Tribune." So 
 that Mr. Redpath was mistaken. House did not in 
 vent the "Tribune" narrative. As for Captain Avis, 
 he testified in 1882 as follows : "Brown was between 
 Sheriff Campbell and me; and a guard of soldiers 
 surrounded him, and allowed no person to come be 
 tween them and the prisoner, from the jail to the 
 scaffold, except his escorts." But may we not believe 
 that in the confusion of the party as they emerged 
 from the jail through the narrow little porch, and 
 just before the formal positions of the march to the 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 243 
 
 wagon had been assumed, the rough old hero, who 
 had helped so many slaves out of bondage, stooped, 
 with his usual alertness, although his arms were tied 
 behind him, to kiss the slave-child (as a last example 
 to the world), and passed on, Captain Avis being at 
 that instant separated from him by an intervening 
 body, or having his attention drawn to the military 
 before the door? 
 
 " The most charming and best authenticated of all 
 our traditions," says Edward Everett Hale, " is that 
 commemorated in Whittier s beautiful ballad The 
 Palatine. It is a story of the pillage and burning 
 of a ship by wreckers, and of its annual reappearance as 
 a phantom ship of fire. The scene of the legend is 
 Block Island, called by the Indians Manisees, " the 
 Isle of the Little God." Here once, it is remem 
 bered, came bold Captain Underbill, and in an 
 Indian fight received an arrow against his helmeted 
 forehead. Picturesque in its bluffs and in its fifteen 
 miles of surf-beaten sea-coast, encircled by seas 
 always blue, there it lies, menacing alike in its smile 
 and its frown, with its death-scented traditions of 
 innumerable wrecks and wreckers, and pirate deeds, 
 planted right athwart the track of ships sailing out 
 of and into Long Island Sound, not the fabled 
 Symplegades shunned more by mariners (even now 
 with its fine lighthouses and brilliantly lighted sum 
 mer hotels), such is Block Island. Leagues north 
 from the mainland, 
 
 " Point Judith watches with eye of hawk ; 
 Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk." 
 
 Whittirr. 
 
244 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 We have a picture of the sea view in Walt Whit 
 man s " From Montauk Point " : 
 
 " I stand as on some mighty eagle s beak 
 Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and 
 
 sky,) 
 
 The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance, 
 The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps that inbound 
 
 urge and urge of waves, 
 Seeking the shores forever." 
 
 That Nestor of American poets, the elder Dana, 
 describes Block Island in his " Buccaneer " : 
 
 " The island lies nine leagues away, 
 
 Along its solitary shore, 
 
 Of craggy rock and sandy bay, 
 
 No sound but ocean s roar, 
 
 Save where the bold wild sea-bird makes her home, 
 Her shrill cry coming through the sparkling foam. 
 
 " But when the light winds lie at rest, 
 And on the glassy heaving sea 
 The black duck, with her glossy breast, 
 Sits swinging silently, 
 How beautiful ! no ripples break the reach, 
 And silvery waves go noiseless up the beach." 
 
 So far as can be discovered, the essential facts of 
 the wreck of the " Palatine," as handed down by tra 
 dition, are these : The " Palatine" was a German 
 
 1 1 have consulted the following authorities : William P. Shef 
 field s " Historical Sketch of Block Island," 1876; S. T. Liver- 
 more s " History of Block Island," 1877 ; Charles Lanman s 
 " Recollections of Curious Characters and Pleasant Places," 
 pp. 297-304; Drake s " New England Legends," p. 406; Edward 
 E. Hale s " Christmas in Narragansett," p. 285; and the Poems of 
 Richard H. Dana, Sen. 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 245 
 
 emigrant ship, though many of her passengers were 
 quite wealthy. The captain had either died or been 
 murdered on the voyage hither, and the diabolical 
 crew had caused the ship to lie off and on, skirting 
 the coasts of Delaware for weeks, while they robbed 
 the passengers of all they could extort by the process 
 of starving them nearly to death and then charging 
 exorbitant rates for morsels of food and drink. 
 When they had got all they could, the crew forsook 
 the ship, which drifted ashore on Block Island one 
 bright Sabbath morning, between the festivals of 
 Christmas and New Year s. The wreckers boarded 
 her, and found that some of the miserable passengers 
 were delirious. They landed them all except one 
 woman, Mary Vanderline, who had much gold and 
 silver plate aboard, and who refused to leave the 
 ship. Many of the suffering emigrants died shortly 
 afterwards, and were buried on the island. The 
 wreckers towed the ship into a little cove, where, 
 having pillaged her, they set her on fire and let her 
 drift out to sea with the unfortunate woman on 
 board (probably having stolen her treasure-chest, as 
 we shall see). The ship drifted away into the dark 
 ness of a stormy winter night, her spars and cordage 
 painted in flame on the sky, and the waves blood-red 
 below, while the surf boomed on the shore, the wind 
 flung the swirling sand about, and (as tradition says) 
 the shrieks of the abandoned woman could be heard 
 far off, growing each moment fainter and fainter. 
 
 " In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped, 
 The sea and the rocks are dumb/ they said ; 
 There 11 be no reckoning with the dead. 
 
246 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " But the year went round, and when once more 
 Along the foam-white curves of shore 
 They heard the line-storm rave and roar, 
 
 " Behold ! again, with shimmer and shine, 
 Over the rocks and the seething brine, 
 The flaming wreck of the Palatine ! " 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the poet Dana had 
 heard this legend of the phantom ship, which he thus 
 describes in his hysterical, blood-and-thunder poem, 
 "The Buccaneer": 
 
 " T is near mid-hour of night : 
 What means upon the waters that red light? 
 
 " Not higger than a star it seems, 
 
 And now t is like the bloody moon ! 
 
 And now it shoots in hairy streams ! 
 
 It moves ! T will reach us soon ! 
 A ship ! and all on fire ! hull, yard, and mast ! 
 Her sails are sheets of flame ! she s nearing fast ! 
 
 " And now she rides upright and still, 
 
 Shedding a wild and lurid light 
 
 Around the cove, on inland hill, 
 
 Waking the gloom of night. 
 All breathes of terror ! men, in dumb amaze, 
 Gaze on each other in the horrid blaze." 
 
 No phenomenon is better authenticated than this 
 of the moving flame of Block Island. It is probably 
 to be classed with such electrical appearances at sea 
 as the St. Elmo s light so often seen on the tips of 
 spars and masts. I notice that Winthrop, in the first 
 volume of his History of New England, speaks of a 
 great light seen in the night on a river near Boston : 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 247 
 
 " When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about 
 three yards square ; when it ran, it was contracted 
 into the figure of a swine. It ran as swift as an arrow 
 toward Charl[es]ton, and so up and down about two 
 or three hours." 
 
 In 1811, Dr. Aaron C. Willey, who then lived on 
 Block Island, wrote a letter to Dr. Samuel Mitchell, 
 of New York City, in which he described the "Pala 
 tine " light. His letter was printed in a publication 
 called " The Parthenon." Following are extracts 
 from this letter : 
 
 " The people who have always lived here are so 
 familiarized to the sight that they never think of 
 giving notice to those who do not happen to be 
 present, or even of mentioning it afterwards, unless 
 they hear some particular enquiries are made. 
 
 " This curious irradiative rises from the ocean near 
 the northern part of the island. Its appearance is 
 nothing different from a blaze of fire. Whether it 
 actually touches the water, or merely hovers over it, 
 is uncertain, for I have been informed that no person 
 has been near enough to decide accurately. It beams 
 with various magnitudes, and appears to bear no more 
 analogy to the ignis fatuus than it does to the Aurora 
 borealis. Sometimes it is small, resembling the light 
 through a distant window ; at others expanding to the 
 highness of a ship with all her canvas spread. . . . 
 
 " When most expanded, this blaze is generally 
 wavering like the flame of a torch. At one time it 
 appears stationary, at another progressive. . . . 
 
 " It is often seen blazing at six or seven miles dis 
 tance, and strangers suppose it to be a vessel on 
 fire. . . 
 
248 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " The first time I beheld it was at evening twilight, 
 in February, 1810. It was large and gently lambent, 
 very bright, broad at the bottom .and terminating 
 acutely upward. . . . 
 
 " I saw it again on the evening of December the 
 2oth. It was then small, and I supposed it to be a 
 light on board of some vessel, but I was soon unde 
 ceived. It moved along, apparently parallel to the 
 shore, for about two miles, in the time that I was 
 riding one at a moderate pace." 
 
 In his treatment of the tradition of the " Palatine," 
 Mr. Whittier has been charged with having accused 
 the now dead and gone wreckers of Block Island of 
 acts of which they were never guilty. Rev. S. T. 
 Livermore thinks that "the representing of an entire 
 community of law-abiding Christian people as bar 
 barians and pirates is intolerable." But his attempts 
 to invalidate the tradition seem quite weak. He says 
 that after the appearance of Mr. Whittier s ballad 
 researches were made in the customs archives of 
 Rotterdam and Amsterdam, but that no record of 
 any ship named the " Palatine " could be found, 
 except of one that was wrecked in the Bay of Bengal 
 in 1784. This proves conclusively, thinks Mr. Liver- 
 more, that the " Palatine " was not wrecked on Block 
 Island! But is it not ridiculous to assume that there 
 was in the world but one ship of that name ? There 
 were probably many. Two ships of the same name 
 were once wrecked on Block Island itself, and on the 
 same day. Then the attempts that have been made 
 to bolster up the character of the old islanders have 
 not been very successful, it seems to me. Mr. Sam 
 uel Adams Drake (one of the first authorities on New 
 
11 TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 249 
 
 England traditions) says of Block Island: "Somehow, 
 the reputation of the island was never good." "Sail 
 ors always shook their heads when they spoke of 
 Block Island. A bad lee shore, a place of no good 
 hap for the unlucky mariner who might be driven 
 upon it, were prevailing notions, and firmly rooted 
 ones, to which dark hints, and still darker traditions, 
 concerning shipwrecked crews and valuable cargoes, 
 give a certain color and consistency. * I would rather 
 be wrecked anywhere than on Block Island, became 
 a common and significant saying in the forecastle or 
 the midnight watch, when the dark mass of the island 
 heaved in sight." 1 
 
 " As a general rule, most wreckers would be called 
 hard characters," says Mr. W. F. G. Shanks. 2 Charles 
 Lanman, in his valuable chapter on Block Island, 
 states that there have been as many as one thousand 
 wrecks on the island during the past century, and 
 that the wreckers have grown rich from them. 
 
 The hint for his poem " The Palatine " came to Mr. 
 Whittier from James Hazard, of Newport. When 
 complaints of the islanders came to the poet in 1876, 
 he wrote to Charles E. Perry, a Block Islander, as 
 follows : 
 
 " In regard to the poem Palatine, I can only say 
 that I did not intend to misrepresent the facts of 
 history. I wrote it after receiving a letter from Mr. 
 Hazard, of Rhode Island, from which I certainly 
 inferred that the ship was pillaged by the islanders. 
 He mentioned that one of the crew, to save himself, 
 
 1 New England Legends, p. 406. 
 
 2 Harper s Monthly, xxxviii. 433. See also xviii. 577. 
 
250 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 clung to the boat of the wreckers, who cut his hand 
 off with a sword. It is very possible that my corre 
 spondent followed the current tradition on the main 
 land. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Hazard is a gentleman of character and 
 veracity, and I have no doubt he gave the version of 
 the story as he had heard it." 
 
 The reader will notice that a part of the letter is 
 withheld from the public by Mr. Perry. 
 
 Now, what is the value of the traditions as handed 
 down ? The occurrence of the wreck is known to 
 have been about the year 1750. The gulf of time 
 from that day to this is spanned by two or three 
 lives, and the chain of tradition is admitted to be 
 unbroken. Two of the women who were saved had 
 the same name, Kate, and were styled by the 
 islanders Short Kattern and Long Kattern. It was 
 Long Kattern who told of the starving of the emi 
 grants by the crew of the ship. Her descendants are 
 living to-day. The tradition is traced back along 
 two or three other threads. It must be remembered 
 that the Block Islanders were for a hundred -and 
 seventy years without mails or printing-press, 
 entirely cut off from regular communication with the 
 mainland. In such cases traditions are always ten 
 acious and of great historical value. Memory is 
 cultivated by fishermen to an astonishing extent. I 
 once talked with one of this class living at the mouth 
 of the Connecticut River who could quote by the 
 hour from all the great English poets. 
 
 Again, if the " Palatine " were not wrecked, how is 
 it, I would ask, that logs of Lignum vita from her 
 cargo were obtained by the islanders, worked up 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 251 
 
 into mortars for grinding corn, and transmitted to 
 the descendants of the original wreckers? These 
 mortars are to be seen still, and no one has denied 
 that they were from the " Palatine." Then it is not 
 denied that a number of the silver cups which 
 belonged to the passengers are still shown on the 
 island, and Mr. Whittier was presented with a plate 
 which is said to have come from the ship. It seems 
 pretty evident that these silver cups were from the 
 treasure-box of poor Mary Vanderline, the woman 
 who perished on the burning vessel. The poet Dana, 
 who lived comparatively near the island, and was 
 born only about thirty-five years after the wreck, has 
 in his poem " The Buccaneer " a Spanish lady who is 
 murdered for her gold by the Block Island cut-throat, 
 Lee. That Dana had in mind the " Palatine " tradi 
 tion when he wrote is proved not only by this inci 
 dent, but by other correspondences too close to be 
 the result of chance. For example, in the poem, as 
 by the tradition, the vessel is set on fire and then 
 abandoned; and in both the spectre ship appears. 
 
 It is a curious thing, this bitter determination of 
 our times to deny the possibility of heroic deeds, 
 and, conversely, to soften down or wholly excuse 
 great crimes. There is no such thing as genius, they 
 are happy to inform us; and self-sacrificing heroism 
 is laughed at, unless interest is somehow spied as a 
 motive. Homer never wrote the Iliad, nor Shakspere 
 his plays; Christ never really existed; Joan of Arc 
 was no heroine at all; Cromwell was a humbug, and 
 so was John Brown; grand old Walt Whitman is a 
 disgrace to the earth; William Lloyd Garrison was 
 only actuated by love of fame; the pipers did n t pipe 
 
252 /OHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 at Lucknow, Barbara did n t wave her flag, and Sheri 
 dan rode only eight miles, not twenty. The diluted 
 ethical wash is applied with a broad brush to nearly 
 every great personality and noble deed in history. 
 There is the story of John Brown magnanimously 
 kissing the little slave-child in its mother s arms. 
 Assuming the incident to be true, we may suppose 
 he did it on purpose to rebuke the shameful color- 
 caste which makes America as provincial and as infe 
 rior to England in social ethics as she is in the matter 
 of free trade and copyright. 1 But the very idea of 
 such an act excites our repugnance. Oh, no! John 
 Brown never did such a thing. Christ had a darker 
 skin than thousands of negroes in America, but he 
 would never have taken a little negro child in his 
 arms and blessed it, poor thing ! And little Eva 
 caressing and kissing Uncle Tom, what a shocking 
 matter! You may hug and kiss your poodle dogs, 
 my dear children, but do n t touch even with the tongs 
 such persons as Frederick Douglass, or Crispus 
 Attucks, or Toussaint L Ouverture, or Alexandre 
 Dumas. 
 
 Precisely the same spirit that would drag down 
 the great to the common level seeks to lift up to that 
 level those who have fallen below it, the great 
 criminals of history, from Napoleon and Henry VIII. 
 down to Boss Tweed and Jim Fiske and the whole 
 
 1 Strong, robust natures never have this hysterical-morbid horror 
 of the negro. Louisa M. Alcott, in her "Hospital Sketches" 
 (p. 76), tells how her Abolition blood took fire one day in Wash 
 ington and, just to give a lesson to a nase-weis Southern woman, 
 she caught up a funny little black cherub and kissed it. She was 
 henceforth regarded as a dangerous fanatic. 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 253 
 
 rogues-gallery brigade of American plutocratic 
 scoundrels. There, for example, is Skipper Ireson, 
 the poor fellow ! Do you know it is all a mistake 
 about the young skipper s leaving those men to 
 drown? It was n t he, after all: it was somebody else. 
 And there were those men of Block Island a hundred 
 and fifty years ago, not savage, stony-hearted 
 wreckers at all, but God-fearing, benevolent gentle 
 men of the sea, who tenderly cared for shipwrecked 
 crews, and were never in their lives known to plunder 
 a cargo, knock a sailor on the head, or burn a ship. 
 Oh, no, not they! It was those other fellows, the 
 pirates, you know, who used to come to the island. 
 People read about the pirates, and gradually came 
 to think that all the inhabitants of the island were 
 cut-throat rascals like these, say the modern Block 
 Islanders. But fair and softly, good friends! We 
 cannot dress up all our grim forbears in stoles and albs. 
 This is a wild rough world, and some pretty grisly 
 things have been done on its surface. It won t hurt 
 us to admit it, either. 
 
 There has been a little discussion about the 
 authenticity of the thrilling incident told in Whit- 
 tier s " Pipes at Lucknow": 
 
 " Pipes of the misty moorlands, 
 
 Voice of the glens and hills; 
 The droning of the torrents, 
 
 The treble of the rills ! 
 Not the braes of hroom and heather, 
 
 Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
 Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, 
 
 Have heard your sweetest strain ! 
 
254 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " Dear to the Lowland reaper, 
 
 And plaided mountaineer, 
 To the cottage and the castle 
 
 The Scottish pipes are dear ; 
 Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 
 
 O er mountain, loch, and glade ; 
 But the sweetest of all music 
 
 The pipes at Lucknow played." 
 
 The Lucknow incident was enticing to poets, and 
 in Scotland it gave birth to many a ballad and song. 
 But Whittier s in America excelled them all. Late 
 in his life, Tennyson wrote a wretched piece of 
 fustian on the subject. The closing lines are good: 
 
 " Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved by the blessing of 
 
 Heaven ! 
 
 Hold it for fifteen days ! we have held it for eighty-seven! 
 And ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England 
 blew." 
 
 The city of Lucknow consists chiefly of a long 
 straggling street of houses stretching away from the 
 great compound house called the Residency, which 
 rises from an eminence by the river Goomtee. The 
 garrison building is, or was, in the form of a squarish- 
 built, battlemented structure. For a mile or so in 
 front of it are enormous Versailles-like palaces and 
 court-yards and tombs of princes. Not long after 
 the rebellion broke out, Sir Henry Lawrence had put 
 the Residency into a state of siege. Martial law had 
 been proclaimed; treasure and ammunition buried; 
 houses unroofed or blown up; carriages, mahogany 
 tables, and a splendid Oriental library converted into 
 a barricade; batteries made; stockades formed; and 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS 255 
 
 the racket-court thatched and stored with bhoosa for 
 the cattle. The heroic garrison, at the time of the 
 incident of the poem, had held out for nearly three 
 months against the ferocious Sepoys. All hope of 
 rescue had been abandoned; the Residency was rid 
 dled with cannon-shot and bullets, and surrender 
 had become only a question of days. It was known 
 that a rescuing force was approaching, but no one 
 knew where it was. 
 
 Here, now, comes in the account which gave rise 
 to the poem. It was published in the " Jersey Times" 
 (England) Dec. 10, 1857, with this editorial prefix: 
 "The following is an extract from a letter written by 
 M. de Banneroi, a French physician in the service 
 of Mussur Rajah, and published in " Le Pays " (Paris 
 paper) under the date of Calcutta, Oct. 8." 1 
 
 " I give you the following account of the relief of 
 Lucknow, as described by a lady, one of the rescued 
 party: 
 
 " * On every side, death stared us in the face; no 
 human skill could avert it any longer. We saw the 
 moment approach when we must bid farewell to 
 earth, yet without feeling that unutterable horror 
 which must have been experienced by the unhappy 
 victims of Cawnpore. We were resolved to die 
 rather than yield, and were fully persuaded that in 
 twenty-four hours all would be over. The engineers 
 had said so, and all knew the worst. We women 
 
 1 The whole extract is quoted in the Boston " Liberator," Jan. 
 22, 1858. A poor rewritten copy, with some of the choicest mor 
 sels gnawed out, was printed in " LittelPs Living Age," Jan. 23, 
 1858. Whittier s poem " Lucknow " was printed in the " National 
 Era " in the same month. 
 
256 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 strove to encourage each other, and to perform the 
 light duties which had been assigned to us, such as 
 conveying orders to the batteries, and supplying the 
 men with provisions, especially cups of coffee, which 
 we prepared day and night. I had gone out to try 
 and make myself useful, in company with Jessie 
 Brown, the wife of a corporal in my husband s regi 
 ment. Poor Jessie had been in a state of restless 
 anxiety all through the siege, and had fallen away 
 visibly within the last few days. A constant fever 
 consumed her, and her mind wandered occasionally, 
 especially that day, when the recollections of home 
 seemed powerfully present to her. At last, overcome 
 with fatigue, she lay down on the ground, wrapped 
 up in her plaid. I sat beside her, promising to 
 awaken her when, as she said, her father should 
 return from the ploughing. She fell at length into 
 a profound slumber, motionless and apparently 
 breathless, her head resting in my lap. I myself could 
 no longer resist the inclination to sleep, in spite of 
 the continued roar of cannon. Suddenly, I was 
 aroused by a wild, unearthly scream close to my ear; 
 my companion stood up beside me, her arms raised, 
 and her head bent forward in the attitude of listen 
 ing. A look of intense delight broke over her coun 
 tenance; she grasped my hand, drew me toward her, 
 and exclaimed, Dinna ye hear it ? dinna ye hear it ? 
 Ay, I m no dreamin , it s the slogan o the Highlanders! 
 We re saved, we re saved! Then, flinging herself on 
 her knees, she thanked God with passionate fervor. 
 
 " I felt utterly bewildered : my English ears heard 
 only the roar of artillery, and I thought my poor 
 Jessie was still raving ; but she darted to the batteries, 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 257 
 
 and I heard her cry incessantly to the men, " Courage I 
 Courage! Hark to the slogan to the MacGregor, the 
 grandest of them a ! Here s help at last !" To 
 describe the effect of these words upon the soldiers 
 would be impossible. For a moment they ceased 
 firing, and every soul listened in intense anxiety. 
 Gradually, however, there arose a murmur of intense 
 disappointment, and the wailing of the women who 
 had flocked to the spot burst out anew as the colonel 
 shook his head. Our dull lowland ears heard nothing 
 but the rattle of the musketry. A few moments more 
 of this death-like suspense, of this agonizing hope, 
 and Jessie, who had again sunk on the ground [the 
 best place for detecting a distant sound], sprang to 
 her feet, and cried in a voice so clear and piercing 
 that it was heard along the whole line, " Will ye no 
 believe it noo ? The slogan has ceased, but the Camp 
 bells are comin ! D ye hear, d ye hear ?" At that 
 moment we seemed to hear the voice of God in the 
 distance, when the pibroch of the Highlanders brought 
 us tidings of deliverance, for now there was no longer 
 any doubt of the fact. That shrill, penetrating, cease 
 less sound, which rose above all other sounds, could 
 come neither from the advance of the enemy nor 
 from the work of the sappers. No, it was indeed the 
 blast of the Scottish bagpipes, now shrill and harsh, 
 as threatening vengeance on the foe, then in softer 
 tones seeming to promise succor to their friends in 
 need. " 
 
 " Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 
 
 Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
 Came the wild MacGregor s clan-call, 
 Stinging all the air to life. 
 
 17 
 
258 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 But when the far-off dust-cloud 
 
 To plaided legions grew, 
 Full tenderly and blithesomely 
 
 The pipes of rescue blew ! " 
 
 " Never surely was there such a scene as that 
 which followed. Not a heart in the Residency of 
 Lucknow but bowed itself before God. All by one 
 simultaneous impulse fell upon their knees, and noth 
 ing was heard but bursting sobs and the murmured 
 voice of prayer. Then all arose, and there rang out 
 from a thousand lips a great sound of joy which 
 resounded far and wide, and lent new vigor to that 
 blessed pibroch. To our cheer of " God save the 
 Queen," they replied by the well-known strain that 
 moves every Scot to tears, " Should auld acquaint 
 ance be forgot." After that, nothing else made any 
 impression on me. I scarcely remember what fol 
 lowed. Jessie was presented to the General on his 
 entrance into the fort, and at the officers banquet 
 her health was drunk by all present, while the pipers 
 marched round the table playing once more the 
 familiar air of " Auld Lang Syne." " 
 
 Another lady wrote : " Never shall I forget the 
 moment to the latest day I live. It was most 
 overpowering. We had no idea they were so near, 
 and were breathing air in the portico as usual at that 
 hour, speculating when they might be in, not expect 
 ing they could reach us for several days longer, when 
 suddenly, just at dark, we heard a very sharp fire of 
 musketry quite close by, and then a tremendous 
 cheering ; an instant after, the sound of bagpipes, 
 then soldiers running up the road, our compound 
 and veranda filled with our deliverers, and all of us 
 
" TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 259 
 
 shaking hands frantically, and exchanging fervent 
 1 God bless you s with the gallant men and officers 
 of the ySth Highlanders. Sir James Outram and 
 staff were the next to come in, and the state of joyful 
 confusion and excitement is beyond all description. 
 The big rough-bearded soldiers were seizing the 
 little children out of our arms, kissing them with 
 tears rolling down their cheeks, and thanking God 
 they had come in time to save them from the fate of 
 those at Cawnpore. . . . The faces of utter 
 strangers beamed upon each other like those of 
 dearest friends and brothers." 1 
 
 There was one incident of the rescue that, stupefied 
 and blunted as their feelings were by scenes of car 
 nage, touched the hearts of all. I refer to the bayo- 
 netting of several loyal Sepoys by mistake as the 
 infuriated Highlanders rushed in. One of these 
 natives, as he was dying, waved his hand and said : 
 " It is all for the good cause. Welcome, friend ! " 
 
 The war-cry of the MacGregors, alluded to by 
 Whittier, is " O ard choille ! " 
 
 No sooner was the story of Jessie Brown and the 
 Highlanders published than the sceptical and criti 
 cal fry began to open fire on it. Some one in 
 " Notes and Queries " thought the whole story must 
 be apocryphal, because the narrator of it seemed 
 stupidly to confound the slogan, or war-cry, with the 
 pibroch, or music of the bagpipes (but look back, and 
 you will see that it is not so). Mr. Critic thought, 
 further, that the ancient slogans were not likely to 
 
 1 A Lady s Diary of the Seige of Lucknow, London, Murray, 
 1858, p. 119. 
 
260 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 have been used by modern Highlanders. Then, the 
 Calcutta correspondent of the " Nonconformist " 
 murmurs, with a rich purr of self-complacency : 
 
 " We have read with some surprise and amusement 
 that wonderful story published in the English papers 
 about Jessie Brown and the slogan of the Highland 
 ers, in Havelock s relief of Lucknow. I have been 
 assured by one of the garrison that it is a pure inven 
 tion, i. No letter of the date mentioned could have 
 reached Calcutta when the story is said to have 
 arrived. 2. There was no Jessie Brown in Lucknow. 
 3. The y8th neither played their pipes nor howled out 
 the slogan as they came in; they had something else 
 to do. 4. They never marched round the dinner- 
 table with their pipes the same evening at all." 
 
 " There was no Jessie Brown "; but L. G. R. Rees, 
 one of the surviving defenders, says in his authorita 
 tive work on Lucknow that there were at the time 
 eight hundred women and children in the Residency. 
 Pray, how did our Calcutta correspondent know 
 them all ? Did he know one of them ? Probably not. 
 Did his informer know more than a dozen or more of 
 their names ? It was impossible. There were at 
 least two women named Brown there, as appears 
 from Mr. Rees s list of commisioned officers and vol 
 unteer helpers and their families. Again, " There 
 was no playing of bagpipes," says our critic, hun 
 dreds of miles away from the scene. But every book 
 account we have, written by the besieged, states that 
 the Highlanders did play their pipes, not when they 
 were rushing in of course, hard pressed by the 
 enemy, but at some time in the slow march towards 
 the garrison. As for the playing of the pipers around 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 261 
 
 the dinner-table, we need only recall George MacDon- 
 ald s " Malcolm," and ask whether the piping was not 
 almost sure to have occurred. 
 
 In the " Diary of the Defence of Lucknow " by a 
 staff officer, p. 170, it is stated that, some time be 
 fore the y8th Highlanders (which was fighting its 
 way slowly up the streets a few miles away) reached 
 the Residency, several of the besieged thought they 
 heard musketry in the distance, " and the sound was 
 listened to with the most intense and painful anx 
 iety by the garrison." Later in the day another 
 distant cannonade was heard. " This elicited many 
 and divers opinions, and created the greatest pos 
 sible excitement." Is it not clear that, on this or 
 just such another occasion after it, the incident 
 related of the Scotch woman, with such circum 
 stantial detail and verisimilitude, was just the kind 
 of thing likely to happen? Is there anything in the 
 lady s narrative (which furnished the text of the 
 poem) that looks like fiction ? Does it not bear the 
 stamp of artless truth in every word and line ? Fi 
 nally (to finish up the Calcutta fellow), let me prick 
 the wind out of his assertion that no letter 
 could have reached Calcutta in the time implied by 
 the date of the French physician s letter to Paris. 
 Now, the distance from Lucknow to Calcutta is 
 given in the gazetteers as less than 564 miles ; 
 the relief of the garrison occurred on September 26; 
 the date of M. de Banneroi s letter is October 8; 
 this gives fourteen days for the letter-courier, travel 
 ing less than the paltry distance of forty miles a 
 day, over roads smooth as a floor, to reach Calcutta 
 Anything impossible in that ? 
 
262 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 We will close this chapter with some remarks on 
 one other ballad of Whittier s, the accuracy of which 
 has been challenged. 
 
 Besse, in his " Sufferings of the Quakers," tells us 
 that the person chiefly instrumental in procuring 
 from Charles II. the letter, styled by Whittier the 
 King s Missive, which prohibited further severe 
 punishment of Quakers in Massachusetts, and re 
 quired the Governor to send culprits to England for 
 trial, was Edward Burroughs. It is said that Bur 
 roughs was had to the King while he was playing 
 tennis out of doors. Seeing that the Quaker kept 
 his hat on, the King gracefully removed his plumed 
 hat and bowed. " Thee need st not remove thy hat," 
 said Burroughs. " Oh," replied his Majesty, " it is 
 of no consequence, only that when the King and an 
 other gentleman are talking together it is usual for 
 one of them to take off his hat." Burroughs told the 
 King that there was " a vein of innocent blood 
 opened in his dominions, which, if it were not stopt, 
 might overrun all." Charles replied, "But I will stop 
 that vein." It was presently arranged, then, that a 
 certain Samuel Shattuck should be the bearer of a 
 letter to America. He sailed with a Friend named 
 Ralph Goldsmith, and arrived in Boston Harbor on 
 a Sunday in the latter part of November, 1661. 
 
 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, l 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 Shattuck (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 Shattuck, the King s deputy, went on 
 shore, and, sending the boat back to the ship, they 
 two went directly through the town to the Gover- 
 nour 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 Shattuck s hat to 
 be taken off, and having received the deputation and 
 the mandamus, he laid off his own hat; and order 
 ing Shattuck s hat to be given him again, perused 
 the papers, and then went out to the Deputy-Gov- 
 ernour 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 deliver 
 ance." 
 
 After the appearance of the poem by Mr. Whittier, 
 based on this narrative, in the " Memorial History of 
 Boston," Mr. George E. Ellis attempted, unsuccess- 
 
264 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 fully, to prove that the treatment of the subject by 
 the poet was historically inaccurate. He affirmed 
 that there was no releasing of imprisoned Quakers, 
 since none were held in custody at that time, and 
 that a meeting for praise and thanksgiving would 
 not have been allowed. 
 
 Mr. Whittier, in reply, said that it was not easy to 
 be strictly accurate in every detail of a ballad; yet in 
 "The King s Missive " he believed he had preserved 
 with tolerable correctness the spirit, tone, and color 
 of the incident and its time. He quotes from Besse 
 the very order of the Court addressed to William 
 Salter, the jailer, ordering the release of the Quakers. 
 As to the meeting of Friends for jubilation, Mr. 
 Whittier might have referred to the passage in Besse 
 which I have just cited for proof that there was such 
 a meeting, and he does quote from the journal of 
 George Fox the statement that " the passengers in 
 the ship and the Friends in the town met together, 
 and offered up praise and thanksgiving to God, who 
 had so wonderfully delivered them out of the teeth 
 of the devourer," and that, while they were thus met, 
 " in came a poor Friend, who, being sentenced by 
 their bloody law to die, had lain some time in irons, 
 expecting execution." 
 
 In view of these facts, Mr. Whittier very justly 
 says that he sees no reason to rub out any of the fig 
 ures or alter the lines and colors of the poem. He 
 admits that the interview took place at the Gover 
 nor s residence, and not in the town hall, as the poem 
 has it, but thinks, with Mr. Justin Winsor, that this 
 variation from the facts is a fair poetic license. 
 
 The lines, 
 
"TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 265 
 
 " He had shorn with his sword the cross from out 
 The flag," 
 
 are the poetical statement of an historical event 
 which is thus dramatically worked out by Hawthorne 
 in his story of " Endicott and the Red Cross " : 
 
 " Endicott gazed round at the excited counte 
 nances of the people, now full of his own spirit, and 
 then turned suddenly to the standard-bearer, who 
 stood close behind him. 
 
 " * Officer, lower your banner ! said he. 
 
 "The officer obeyed; and, brandishing his sword, 
 Endicott thrust it through the cloth, and with his 
 left hand rent the red cross completely out of the 
 banner. He then waved the tattered ensign above 
 his head. 
 
 " * Sacrilegious wretch ! cried the High Church 
 man in the pillory, unable longer to restrain him 
 self, thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy 
 religion! 
 
 " Treason, treason! roared the royalist in the 
 stocks. He hath defaced the King s banner ! 
 
 " Before God and man I will avouch the deed, 
 answered Endicott. * Beat a flourish, drummer ! 
 shout, soldiers and people ! in honor of the ensign 
 of New England. Neither Pope nor Tyrant hath 
 part in it now ! 
 
 " With a cry of triumph, the people gave their 
 sanction to one of the boldest exploits which our his 
 tory records." 
 
 The poet has also wrought into the texture of his 
 rich tapestry a pretty little picture of old Nicholas 
 Upsall. Amid the hootings of the rabble that fol 
 lowed the joyful Quakers about the streets 
 
266 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " One brave voice rose above the din. 
 
 Upsall, gray with his length of days, 
 Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn : 
 Men of Boston, give God the praise ! 
 
 Upsall was at that time an aged and highly 
 respectable citizen of Boston, a member of the Puri 
 tan church. For showing kindness to the Quakers 
 such as having the spot on the Common where the 
 martyred Quakers were buried surrounded by a 
 fence he was fined, banished, and, on his return, 
 imprisoned for several years, until the hardships he 
 had endured finally broke down his health. Besse 
 says that the old man, when banished, went to Rhode 
 Island in the winter, where he received hospitality 
 from an Indian chief, who said, if he would stay with 
 him, he would build him a warm home. Said the 
 Indian, " What a god have the English who deal so 
 cruelly with one another about their god ! " 
 
 Upsall s Red Lion Inn stood on what is now the 
 corner of North and Richmond Streets and near the 
 old Red Lion Wharf, North Street being then the 
 shore-line of the city, and corresponding to the mod 
 ern Atlantic Avenue. Upsall s granddaughter mar 
 ried one of the Wadsworth ancestors of the poet 
 Longfellow. This Wadsworth was a gunsmith, and 
 his sign may still be seen imbedded in a brick wall 
 on the site of Red Lion Inn. 
 
 The " much-scourged Wharton " of the " King s 
 Mis sive" is Edward Wharton of Salem, the same 
 "aged stranger" who was sheltered by Thomas 
 Macey, as described in Whittier s " Exiles." 
 
 " Snow Hill " is the Copp s Hill of later times, and 
 
TELLING THE BEES," AND OTHER BALLADS. 267 
 
 on it stood the principal windmill of the town. " Gen 
 try Hill " is now Beacon Hill. 
 
 The jail that held the imprisoned Friends stood on 
 the site of the present Old Court House, the scene 
 of the attempted rescue of Anthony Burns in anti- 
 slavery times. The "Council Chamber" was in the 
 Town House on the site of the present Old State 
 House. 
 
 " The Xeck " means the long ligature of land by 
 which the city once " hung to the mainland" at Rox- 
 bury : it has now been incorporated into a vast area 
 of * made" land. 
 
 Readers of New England poets living in other 
 parts of the country need to be reminded that " wal 
 nut " in New England means hickory-nut, and not 
 the dumpling-like nut with the black undivided hull 
 which is known as walnut in the West and South. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 STORIES IN RHYME. 
 
 WHILE I have attempted to show that there is a 
 sound historical basis for all the ballads discussed in 
 the preceding chapter, I would not be understood as 
 maintaining that Whittier in his rhymed stories has 
 not taken advantage of poetical license in the work 
 ing out of details. On the contrary, he has oftener 
 than most poets given pictures discrepant with the 
 bare historical facts. As Lowell sings of him, 
 
 " Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction, 
 And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, 
 While, borne with the rush of the metre along, 
 The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 
 Content with the whirl and delirium of song." 
 
 But it is the privilege of the raconteur to embellish 
 his verse with the flowers of imagination, and the 
 strict accuracy of the historian is not always required 
 of the poet or the painter. 
 
 Let no one think that, in giving in the succeeding 
 pages the authentic prose source of Whittier s most 
 interesting idyls and ballads, I am actuated by any 
 impertinent desire to make manifest wherein the 
 poet has or has not followed the precise facts of 
 his text. On the contrary, in glancing behind the 
 268 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 269 
 
 scenes at the apparatus by which he has produced 
 his tableaux, the object mainly has been to show how 
 genius can glorify the baldest material and by a skill 
 ful mise en sdne turn it into an immortal work of art. 
 The scene of Whittier s poem "The Cry of a Lost 
 Soul " is laid in the great tropical forest-belt of 
 South America. The traveler s canoe is floating down 
 the Amazon by night; the lamp burns dimly at the 
 prow; vast submerged forests, intertwined with giant 
 lianas and filled with animal life, stretch wide on 
 either hand; and overhead sparkle the brilliant con 
 stellations of the tropics. Suddenly a cry, " as of the 
 pained heart of the wood," startles the gliding dream 
 ers, the half-naked Indian at the oar crosses himself 
 and exclaims, "A lost soul! No, Seiior, not a bird. 
 I know it well." But the voyager lifts his eyes to the 
 stars, and lo! "the Cross of pardon lights the tropic 
 skies": 
 
 " Father of all ! he urges his strong plea, 
 Thou lovest all : thy erring child may be 
 Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee ! 
 
 I have already stated that this poem was a favorite 
 with the late Emperor of Brazil, who translated 
 it into Portuguese. He also sent to the poet some 
 specimens of the bird whose note suggested the poem. 
 The myth was found by the poet in Lieutenant Will 
 iam L. Herndon s Government Report on the Explo 
 ration of the Amazon in 1853 (ist ed., Chap. III.). 
 Says Lieutenant Herndon: 
 
 "After we had retired to our mats beneath the 
 shed for the night, I asked the governor if he knew 
 a bird called La Alma Perdida. He did not know it 
 
270 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 by that name, and requested a description. I whistled 
 an imitation of its notes; whereupon an old crone, 
 stretched on a mat near us, commenced, with ani 
 mated tones and gestures, a story in the Inca lan 
 guage, which, translated, ran somehow thus: 
 
 "An Indian and his wife went out from the village 
 to work their chacra, carrying their infant with them. 
 The woman went to the spring to get water, leaving 
 the man in charge of the child, with many cautions 
 to take good care of it. When she arrived at the 
 spring, she found it dried up, and went farther to 
 look for another. The husband, alarmed at her long 
 absence, left the child and went in search. When 
 they returned, the child was gone; and to their re 
 peated cries, as they wandered through the woods in 
 search, they could get no response save the wailing 
 cry of this little bird heard for the first time, whose 
 notes their anxious and excited imaginations syl 
 labled into pa-pa, ma-ma (the present Quichua name 
 of the bird). I suppose the Spaniards heard this 
 story, and, with that religious poetic turn of thought 
 which seems peculiar to this people, called the bird 
 The Lost Soul. 
 
 " The circumstances under which the story was 
 told," continues Lieutenant Herndon, "the beauti 
 ful, still starlight night, the deep dark forest around, 
 the faint-red glimmering of the fire, flickering upon 
 the old woman s gray hair and earnest face as she 
 poured forth the guttural tones of the language of a 
 people now passed away, gave it a sufficiently 
 romantic interest to an imaginative man." 
 
 The dense forests of the tropics are full of mysteri 
 ous sounds. Sometimes in the midst of deep silence 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 271 
 
 a piercing yell or scream is heard, and at times the 
 sound of an iron bar struck against a hard hollow 
 tree. The natives turn pale and cross themselves 
 when these unaccountable noises are heard. The 
 songs of many of the birds have a pensive mysterious 
 character. For example, the Goatsucker s startling 
 cry of hopeless sorrow " Ha, ha, ha, ha! " or the Sin 
 ghalese Devil Bird s magnificent clear shout, ending 
 in "an appalling cry like that of a boy in torture 
 whose screams are being stopped by strangulation"; 
 or the human-like singing of the Realejo, or Organ 
 Bird; or the sweet minute-tolls of the snow-white 
 Campanero, whose pendulous, feather-covered crest, 
 connected with the palate, is a spiral tube capable of 
 being inflated at pleasure. It is said that any of 
 these weird sounds will fill the soul of the traveler 
 with a strange poetic thrill, at once poignant and 
 awesome. 
 
 Mr. Whittier s studies in Norse literature have 
 borne fruit in several ballads, the prettiest of which 
 is his free rendering of Christian Winther s " Henrik 
 and Else " under the title " King Volmer and Elsie." 
 He undoubtedly had his attention drawn to the poem 
 by the somewhat close translation of his friends the 
 Howitts, given in the second volume of their " Litera 
 ture and Romance of Northern Europe." Whittier 
 knows nothing of Danish (nor, indeed, of any other 
 foreign language, except that he has a school smat 
 tering of French and Latin); and we are therefore to 
 regard " King Volmer and Elsie " as a poetical para 
 phrase of the Howitts translation. To see what 
 magical work the genius of a true poet can produce, 
 
272 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 compare the following prosaic stanzas by the How- 
 itts with Whittier s poem: 
 
 " Nay, nay, my noble Lord ! I speak the truth to you : 
 She only loves her Henrik, and to him will be true. 
 Pure as the slender lily will she, my Else, prove, 
 Though she has fired your bosom with such a flame of love. 
 
 " My brave good man, to-morrow it is again a day; 
 Then will I woo your daughter and win her as I say. 
 Thus spoke the wily Lord and looked upon the ground. 
 The other Lords smiled to themselves as they stood listen 
 ing round. 
 
 " When sang the summer lark o er the town of Vording- 
 
 borough, 
 And the weathercock shone golden in the fresh dawn of the 
 
 morrow ; 
 
 When the cool and gentle breeze came wafting o er the corn, 
 Were heard amid the leafy wood the sounds of hound and 
 
 horn. 
 
 " Sweet Else sate so calmly her father s door beside, 
 All busy at her wheel, and round her blossomed wide 
 The tulip and the peony, the box and mint so rare ; 
 But the maiden was the fairest of all the flowers there. 
 
 " Her fair form was attired in a dark blue woolen gown, 
 And the sleeves of snow-white linen unto her wrists came 
 
 down; 
 
 And busily and rapidly her little foot turned round 
 The ever-whirling wheel with its cheerful humming sound. 
 
 " The humming-bee flew by, the sun shone bright and warm, 
 When she raised her head and shaded the sunshine with her 
 
 arm ; 
 
 A troop of gallant hunters came on with thundering speed, 
 Over hill and hollow, and right across the mead. 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 273 
 
 " Each rider was apparelled in all his best array, 
 Yet still was he the fairest who rode the charger gray. 
 He glittered like the sun amid that splendid train ; 
 She stopped her busy wheel and he checked his charger s rein. 
 
 " Mong roses here thou sittest, thyself a rose so fair, 
 Sweet Else, I have loved thee, yet all were unaware. 
 Then bowed that modest maiden, and cast to earth her eye, 
 For bashfulness and terror she was about to die." 
 
 That last line is much more dramatic and truer to 
 nature than Whittier s, 
 
 " She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and fear." 
 
 Indeed, it must be admitted that the strong simpli 
 city of the Dane s old-ballad style is considerably 
 weakened by the diffusive paraphrase of the Amer 
 ican, in many stanzas, just as the prose of the " Morte 
 d Arthur " is weakened by Tennyson. The gain, 
 however, in each case, lies in the increased delicacy 
 of the limning, to say nothing of the melody, as, for 
 example, in the two following stanzas by Whittier: 
 
 " In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins, 
 And, singing with the ear.ly birds, her daily task begins. 
 Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden- 
 bower, 
 But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower. 
 
 " About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white 
 As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small round wrists 
 
 in sight ; 
 
 Below the modest petticoat can only half conceal 
 The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel." 
 
 The Volmer of the poem is King Valdemar IV., 
 18 
 
274 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 surnamed Atterdag. It was a frequent saying of his, 
 Morgen er after en Dag, " To-morrow is again a day." 
 Valdemar suffered from an unfaithful wife, whom he 
 put away. Other stories of him may be found in 
 Thorpe s " Northern Mythology." 
 
 Christian Winther was the son of a clergyman, 
 and himself studied theology. He died in Paris. 
 Schweitzer, in his recent " Geschichte der Altskandi- 
 navischen Litteratur," says that Winther " is unique 
 in the beauty and melody of his verse and the tender 
 ness and animation of his diction." His special field 
 was Zealand peasant life in its romantic and idyllic 
 aspects. He is spoken of as " der Sanger der danischen 
 meerbespulten Inselnatur." He once said that crea 
 tion was with him purely spontaneous : " I have never 
 striven for a direct object. ... I consider myself 
 as the passive agent of a higher Power, as an instru 
 ment that is played upon by the hands of the Uncon 
 scious." Schweitzer translates into German a pretty 
 poem of his describing a summer night s storm : 
 " Kanarienvoglein schlaft im Bauer, 
 
 Es piepst ganz sacht der kleine Wicht, 
 
 Und nur die Uhr dort an der Mauer 
 
 Ihr unermiidlich Tik-Tak spricht, 
 
 Ans Fenster Regengiisse schlagen, 
 
 Durch Baum und Strauch die Windsbraut fliegt ; 
 
 Die Blume trinkt rnit Wohlbehagen, 
 
 Und leise sich im Grase wiegt." 
 
 The story of the building of a church by the aid 
 of a powerful Troll is wide-spread in Scandinavian 
 countries. The essentials of the narrative followed 
 by Mr. Whittier in his " Kallundborg Church " appear 
 in Thorpe s " Northern Mythology," as follows : 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 275 
 
 When Esbern Snare was building Kallundborg 
 church, the work did not go forward as fast as he 
 wished. So he accepted the offer of a Troll to help 
 him : 
 
 " Build, O Troll, a church for me 
 At Kallundborg by the mighty sea ; 
 Build it stately, and build it fair, 
 Build it quickly, said Esbern Snare." 
 
 The Troll agreed, on condition that he should tell 
 him his name when he was through, or forfeit his 
 heart and eyes. Esbern accepted the terms, and the 
 work went bravely on. One day, when all was 
 finished except one pillar, Esbern Snare was wander 
 ing disconsolate in the fields, and, chancing to lie 
 down on UlshOi Banke to rest, he heard a Troll-wife 
 within the earth say, " Be still, my child ; to-morrow 
 Fin thy father will come and give thee Esbern Snare s 
 eyes and heart to play with." (This is the English 
 of the motto prefixed to Whittier s poem.) Esbern 
 returned home overjoyed, and saluted the Troll by 
 name, which so enraged him that in spite he imme 
 diately vanished with the remaining half-pillar in 
 his arms. 
 
 Trolls always lose their power when a Christian 
 man calls them by name. The above legend is told 
 of St. Olaf and his building the first church in Norway, 
 and of the building of the cathedral of Lund, opposite 
 Copenhagen, by St. Lawrence. Kallundborg church 
 still stands in the town of that name on the west 
 coast of Seeland, its five towers rendering it a con 
 spicuous mark for miles around. The legend appears 
 also in Jon Arnason s collections of Icelandic folk 
 tales under the title, "Who built Reynir Church?" 
 
276 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 In the Icelandic version the forfeit is the builder s 
 son. The Troll-wife sings, 
 
 " Soon will thy father come from Reynir, 
 Bringing a little playmate for thee here." 
 
 The farmer-builder runs home and says to his work 
 man, " Well done, friend Finnur ! how soon you have 
 finished your work ! " The Troll lets fall the plank 
 he is holding, and vanishes. 
 
 In Whittier s ballad " The Brown Dwarf of Riigen " 
 he has just hit the plain simplicity of style of the 
 genuine folk-ballads. He took only the main idea 
 from Arndt s Mdrchen, and seems to have relied on 
 memory for the rest, there being little correspondence 
 in the details of the poem and the unusually pretty 
 prose folk-tale. This fills sixty small pages in Arndt, 
 under the title of " The Nine Hills of Rambin." The 
 story goes that these hills were formed by a giant 
 spilling earth out of a rent in his apron, as he was 
 going to bridge over the chasm that separates the 
 Isle of Riigen from the mainland of Pomerania. 
 Under the hills now dwell the brown little earth-men, 
 the Trolls. Johann Dietrich (not Deitrich as Whit- 
 tier has it), the hero of the tale, is an enterprising 
 peasant lad who goes out at midnight to listen for 
 the Trolls, and secures one of their little caps adorned 
 with a tinkling bell. The loss of his cap by a Troll 
 compels him and all his tribe to serve the finder to 
 the utmost of their power. When Dietrich clapped 
 the cap on his own head, it revealed to him the little 
 men who were before only audible, not visible. By 
 warrant of his cap he becomes master of the hill-folk, 
 is drawn down by them to their realm, through a 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 277 
 
 glass door, by chains fastened to a great silver barrel. 
 He lives in great magnificence there ten years, going 
 to school and learning to dance wondrous well and 
 to make little silver flowers and fruits of exquisite 
 designs. He falls in love with a sweet maiden, Lis- 
 beth, who was stolen away by the Trolls from the 
 same village that he lived in. By the law of the 
 unterirdischc fellows she, with other children they 
 have stolen, is to stay there fifty years as their ser 
 vant; but Dietrich one day happens to split a crystal 
 in which is a living toad, The dwarfs abhor a toad 
 so unutterably that they are completely at the mercy 
 of him who holds one near them, and are thrown 
 into convulsions before they even see it. In virtue of 
 the toad-find, the lovers and the other youths get 
 away with several wagonloads of gold and silver 
 treasure, besides the library and rich furniture of 
 Dietrich s room. 
 
 " They left the dreadful under-land and passed the gate of 
 
 glass ; 
 
 They felt the sunshine s warm caress, they trod the soft 
 green grass." 
 
 All march down the mountain in the early morn 
 ing, and enter in procession the village of Rambin, 
 stared at and followed by the wondering peasants. 
 The story ends with the happy marriage of Dietrich 
 and Lisbeth. 
 
 " And for his worth ennobled, and rich beyond compare, 
 Count Deitrich and his lovely bride dwelt long and happy 
 there." 
 
 Probably not one reader in twenty thousand of 
 Whittier s has ever seen his early poem "Moll Pit 
 cher." The two copies which I had the luck to dis- 
 
278 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 cover had evidently lain undisturbed for fifty-seven 
 years. The poem is by no means worthless, although 
 it is not worth reprinting as a whole. It is in part 
 suffused with a delicate poetical glow which later was 
 to burst into the fierce flame of the poems of freedom. 
 The motto is from old Cornelius Agrippa, the German 
 astrologer : " If the seeker be of an haute and stom- 
 achful carriage, and maketh merrie of the wisdom of 
 thine art, thou mayest gain an empery over his orgu 
 lous and misbelieving spirit, by some full strange and 
 terrible misterie, or cunning device, whereat he may 
 be amort with doleful misgivings." Whittier remarks 
 in a prefatory note that the poem " is the offspring of 
 a few weeks of such leisure as is afforded by indis 
 position, and is given to the world in all its original 
 negligence." He playfully says that it is not pub 
 lished for poetical reputation nor for money, and 
 thinks it would puzzle the French cook who made 
 fifty different dishes out of a parsnip to make meat or 
 drink out of a poetical reputation. He changed 
 his mind later in life ; when, for example, Robert 
 Bonner s Sons sent him a cheque for $1,000 for his 
 little ballad " The Captain s Well," published in the 
 " Ledger " in 1890. 
 
 The Moll Pitcher of the poem must not be con 
 founded with the gunner Moll of Revolutionary fame. 
 The two were contemporary ; the fortune-teller of 
 Nahant died in 1813. Whittier s sketch of her is a 
 piece of pure fancy and bears very little resemblance 
 to the reality. She was no withered and malignant 
 hag, but a kind, humane woman, of striking presence 
 and intellectual features, and of respectable family. 
 She had married a poor man, and adopted fortune- 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 279 
 
 telling for the purpose of supporting her son and 
 three daughters, and through her exertions they were 
 enabled to make good marriages. Among her descend 
 ants are some of the handsomest women in Lynn. 
 Her fame as a fortune-teller spread all over the globe 
 wherever an American ship sailed. The well-worn 
 path up the rocks to her cottage was trod by the feet 
 of sailors, merchants, lovers, adventurers of every 
 sort, and people in search of lost or stolen goods. 
 Upham, in his Lectures on Witchcraft, says that she 
 was " the most celebrated fortune-teller, perhaps, that 
 ever lived," and it is thought that her predictions 
 influenced the destinies of thousands of persons. In 
 her day many a vessel was known to lie idly at the 
 wharf for weeks, deserted of its superstitious crew in 
 consequence of her adverse predictions. " An air of 
 romance is breathed around the scenes where she 
 practised her mystic art, the charm of which will 
 increase as the lapse of time removes her history back 
 toward the dimness of the distant past. Her name has 
 everywhere become the generic title of fortune-tellers^ 
 and occupies a conspicuous place in the legends and 
 ballads of popular superstition." 
 
 Mary Pitcher s maiden name was Dimond. Her 
 father was captain of a small sailing-vessel of Marble- 
 head. She inherited her gifts of clairvoyance and 
 fortune-telling from her grandfather, who, the legend 
 goes, used to pace up and down in the churchyard 
 during violent storms and direct the course of ships 
 attempting to make the harbor. His voice was always 
 audible to the crew, no matter how far off they might 
 be. 1 
 
 1 Hobbs s " Lynn and its Surroundings," 1886. 
 
280 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 For fifty years the " witch of Nahant " (so called) 
 dwelt in her little cottage under the shadow of High 
 Rock, on what was then a lonely road, but is now 
 Pearl Street in a thickly inhabited part of the city. 
 The house still stands, the prospect is a fine one, 
 embracing a view of rocky Marblehead, the beaches 
 of Chelsea and Nahant, and " the islands sleeping 
 like green-winged sea-birds in the distant bay of Bos 
 ton." Over the gateway of the house opposite hers, 
 in her lifetime, were the jaw-bones of a whale, form 
 ing a Gothic arch, and sea-faring strangers who 
 wished to consult her were often heard furtively 
 inquiring the way to the big whalebones. 
 
 Whittier s portrait of Moll Pitcher was painted in 
 the land of dream : 
 
 " She stood upon a bare, tall crag 
 
 Which overlooked her rugged cot 
 A wasted, gray and meagre hag, 
 
 In features evil as her lot. 
 She had the crooked nose of a witch, 
 
 And a crooked back and chin ; 
 And in her gait she had a hitch, 
 And in her hand she carried a switch 
 
 To aid her work of sin, 
 A twig of wizard hazel, which 
 Had grown beside a haunted ditch." 
 
 The notes to his poem show that he had only read 
 Upham s two pages about the fortune-teller. The 
 true portrait lay ready to his hand in Lewis s History 
 of Lynn (1817), and would have furnished a richer 
 material to the flame of that ardent young fancy of 
 his. Moll Pitcher was of medium height (says Lewis, 
 who knew her), good form, and agreeable manners, 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 281 
 
 her forehead broad and full, hair dark brown, nose 
 inclining to long, face pale and thin and rather intel 
 lectual. " She had that contour of face and expres 
 sion which, without being positively beautiful, is 
 nevertheless decidedly interesting, a thoughtful, 
 pensive, and sometimes downcast look, almost 
 approaching to melancholy an eye, when it looked 
 at you, of calm and keen penetration and an expres 
 sion of intelligent discernment, half mingled with a 
 glance of shrewdness." Mrs. Pitcher was of a benev 
 olent disposition, as I have said, and she was once 
 known to rise before day and walk two miles to a mill 
 to get a destitute woman meal for her breakfast. 
 
 As to the source of her power, it clearly lay in her 
 canny native shrewdness in reading character and in 
 that indescribable mind-reading or soul-piercing 
 faculty called genius which she possessed. She 
 would usually, or always, enter into conversation 
 with her visitors, and, having got her clew, make her 
 prediction. Her visible apparatus of divination a 
 cup into which she poured tea or coffee, for the pur 
 pose of seeing how the dregs arranged themselves 
 was of course only a simulated assistance, a sop to 
 the credulous. 
 
 The legend of Whittier s poem is of a maiden 
 whose sailor lover had gone on a long voyage in 
 order to get rich and come back and marry her. In 
 his absence her mind becomes filled with gloomy 
 forebodings, and she goes up the rocky path to the 
 witch s cottage to consult her. Now the hag 
 cherishes a secret enmity against her, and determines 
 to have her revenge. The poem opens in a curious 
 way: 
 
282 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " Ha, ha ha, ha ha, ha ! 
 
 The old witch laughed outright 
 Ha, ha ha, ha ha, ha ! 
 
 That cold and dismal night 
 The wind was blowing from the sea 
 As raw and chill as wind might be, 
 Driving the waves, as if their master, 
 Towards the black shore, fast and faster, 
 Tossing their foam against the rocks 
 
 Which scowl along yon island s verge, 
 And shake their gray and mossy locks 
 
 Secure above the warring surge. 
 
 " Keen blew the wind, and cold, 
 
 The moon shone dim and faintly forth. 
 ****** 
 And now and then a wan star burned, 
 Where er its cloudy veil was rended 
 A moment s light, but seen and ended, 
 As if some angel from on high 
 Had fixed on earth his brilliant eye, 
 And back to heaven his glances turned! " 
 
 The maiden meets the fortune-teller on the path to 
 her house. 
 
 " The twain passed in a low dark room, 
 
 With here and there a crazy chair, 
 A broken glass a dusty loom 
 A spinning-wheel, a birchen broom, 
 
 The witch s courier of the air, 
 As potent as that steed of wings 
 
 On which the Meccan prophet rode 
 Above the wreck of meaner things 
 
 Unto the Houris bright abode. 
 A low dull fire by flashes shone 
 Across the gray and cold hearthstone, 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 283 
 
 Flinging at times a trembling glare 
 On the low roof and timbers bare. 
 
 " In contrast strange, 
 Within the fire-light s fading range 
 The stranger stands in maiden pride, 
 By that mysterious woman s side. 
 The cloak hath fallen from her shoulder^ 
 
 Revealing such a form as steals 
 Away the heart of the beholder 
 
 As, all unconsciously, it kneels 
 Before the beauty which had shone 
 Ere this upon its dreams alone. 
 If you have seen a summer star, 
 Liquidly soft and faintly far, 
 Beaming a smiling glance on earth 
 As if it watched the flowret s birth, 
 Then have you seen a light less fair 
 Than that young maiden s glances were. 
 Dark fell her tresses. You have seen 
 
 A rent cloud tossing in the air, 
 And showing the pure sky between 
 
 Its floating fragments here and there: 
 Then may you fancy faintly how 
 The falling tress, the ringlike curl, 
 Disclosed or shadowed o er the brow 
 
 And neck of that fair girl. 
 Her cheek was delicately thin, 
 
 And through its pure transparent white 
 The rose-hue wandered out and in, 
 
 As you have seen th inconstant light 
 
 Flush o er the Northern sky of night. 
 Her playful lip was gently full, 
 
 Soft curving to the graceful chin, 
 And colored like the fruit which glows 
 Upon the sunned pomegranate boughs ; 
 
284 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 And, oh, her soft-low voice might lull 
 
 The spirit to a dream of bliss, 
 As if the voices sweet and bland 
 Which murmur in the seraph-land 
 
 Were warbling in a world like this ! 
 
 " Out spoke the witch : I know full well 
 
 Why thou hast sought my humble cot. 
 Come, sit thee down : the tale I tell 
 
 May not be soon forgot. 
 She threw her pale blue cloak aside, 
 
 And stirred the whitening embers up, 
 And long and curiously she eyed 
 
 The figures of her mystic cup ; 
 And low she muttered, while the light 
 Gave to her lips a ghastlier white, 
 And her sunk eye s unearthly glaring 
 Seemed like the taper s latest flaring : 
 Dark hair eyes black a goodly form 
 
 A maiden weeping wild dark sea 
 A tall ship tossing in the storm 
 
 A black wreck floating where is he? 
 Give me thy hand : how soft and warm 
 
 And fair its tapering fingers seem ! 
 
 And who that sees it now would dream 
 That winter s snow would seem less chill 
 Erelong than these soft fingers will? 
 A lovely palm, how delicate 
 
 Its veined and wandering lines are drawn I 
 Yet each are prophets of thy fate, 
 
 Ha ! this is sure a fearful one f . 
 That sudden cross that blank beneath, 
 
 What may these evil signs betoken ? 
 Passion and sorrow, fear and death, 
 
 A human spirit crushed and broken! 
 Oh, thine hath been a pleasant dream, 
 But darker shall its waking seem ! " 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 285 
 
 The words of the fortune-teller were like the icy 
 hand of death upon the maiden s heart: 
 
 "Like the mimosa shrinking from 
 
 The blight of some familiar finger 
 Like flowers which but in secret bloom, 
 
 Where aye the sheltering shadows linger, 
 And which beneath the hot noon ray 
 Would fold their leaves and fade away, 
 The flowers of Love, in secret cherished, 
 In loneliness and silence nourished, 
 
 Shrink backward from the searching eye, 
 Until the stem whereon they flourished, 
 Their shrine, the human heart, has perished, 
 Although themselves may never die." 
 
 The girl becomes mildly insane, and is always 
 standing on the rocky headland of Nahant watching 
 for the ship of her lover. One day it comes sailing 
 into the bay, with the beloved one aboard. At first 
 she does not recognize him, but gradually her reason 
 returns. After many years the witch dies miserably 
 in her hut, attended in her last illness by the daughter 
 of the woman she once so deeply wronged. 
 
 The opening lines of Part Two are certainly finer 
 than many a poem which the poet has retained in his 
 works: 
 
 " Nahant, thy beach is beautiful ! 
 
 A dim line through the tossing waves, 
 Along whose verge the spectre gull 
 
 Her thin and snowy plumage laves, 
 What time the summer s greenness lingers 
 
 Within thy sunned and sheltered nooks, 
 And the green vine with twining fingers 
 
 Creeps up and down thy hanging rocks. 
 
286 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Around, the blue and level main ; 
 
 Above, a sunshine rich as fell 
 Brightening of old with golden rain 
 
 The isle Apollo loved so well ; 
 And far off, dim and beautiful, 
 The snow-white sail and graceful hull, 
 
 Slow dipping to the billow s swell. 
 Bright spot ! the Isles of Greece may share 
 A flowery earth, a gentle air ; 
 The orange-bough may blossom well 
 In warm Bermuda s sunniest dell ; 
 But fairer shores and brighter waters, 
 Gazed on by purer, lovelier daughters, 
 
 Beneath the light of kindlier skies, 
 The wanderer to the farthest bound 
 Of peopled earth hath never found 
 
 Than thine, New England s Paradise ! 
 Land of the forest and the rock, 
 
 Of dark blue lake and mighty river, 
 Of mountains reared aloft to mock 
 The storm s career, the lightning s shock, 
 
 My own green land forever ! " 
 
 Of the sailor it is said in Part Three, 
 
 "Oh, he hath been a wanderer 
 
 Beneath Magellan s moveless cloud, 
 And where in murmurs hoarse and loud 
 
 The Demon of the Cape was heard ; 
 
 And where the tropic sunset came 
 
 O er the rich bowers of Indostan, 
 
 And many a strange and brilliant bird 
 Shone brighter in the western flame." 
 
 The last lines recall Tennyson s sumptuous imagery 
 in the apostrophe to Milton, which everyone ought to 
 have by heart : 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 287 
 
 " Me rather all that bowery loneliness, 
 The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, 
 And bloom profuse and cedar arches 
 Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, 
 Where some refulgent sunset of India 
 Streams o er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, 
 And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods 
 Whisper in odorous heights of even." 
 
 The idea of Whittier s " Cassandra Southwick"is 
 worked out also by Longfellow in his " New Eng 
 land Tragedies," his Edith Christison corresponding 
 to Whittier s heroine. 
 
 Whittier, as usual, has availed himself of poetic 
 license. His imprisoned Quaker maiden sees the 
 sunset melt through the prison bars, and across the 
 floor of her cell falls the quiet light of the stars. 
 Sleepless she watches, thinking of her schoolmates, 
 sitting by the warm bright hearth of home, 
 
 " How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads white and 
 
 fair, 
 On eyes of merry girlhood half hid in golden hair." 
 
 With the breaking of the morn, the heavy bolts fall 
 back, and the sheriff comes and leads her down to 
 the wharves, where dark and haughty Endicott, and 
 Rawson, his cruel clerk, ask the sea-captains who of 
 them will take her away to sell. Grim silence from 
 the bronzed seamen; she feels the hard hand of one 
 of them press her own; and a word of encourage 
 ment is whispered in her ear. 
 
 " And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me, 
 Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea, 
 
288 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Span 
 ish gold, 
 
 From keel-piece up to deck-plank the roomage of her hold, 
 By the living God who made me, I would sooner in your bay 
 Sink ship and crew and cargo than bear this child away ! 
 
 ****** 
 
 " I looked on haughty Endicott, with weapon half-way drawn ; 
 Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and 
 
 scorn; 
 
 Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back, 
 And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his 
 track." 
 
 Whittier found the quarry for his poem in the books 
 of George Bishop and Joseph Besse. Bishop s book, 
 having been published fifty years earlier than Besse s, 
 may be considered the more trustworthy. With a 
 poet s true instinct Whittier has chosen the musical 
 name of Cassandra for his heroine. But in reality it 
 was Cassandra Southwick s daughter " Provided " 
 and her son Daniel who were offered for sale. She 
 herself, with her husband Lawrence, had already 
 been banished to Shelter Island, and another son 
 exiled to Europe. Lawrence and Cassandra, "an 
 aged grave couple " of Salem, cultivators of the soil, 
 had previously been imprisoned for entertaining two 
 Quaker preachers. The husband, wife, and son were 
 stripped in the coldest season of the year and whipped 
 with a knotted thong of three cords that cruelly cut 
 their flesh, " the executioner measuring his ground, 
 and fetching his strokes with all his strength." At 
 another time they were imprisoned in a dark un- 
 ventilated room during all of harvest time, when their 
 crops were suffering. 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 289 
 
 " And now," says Bishop, " I shall declare the exe 
 cution of your warrant on the said Daniel Southwick 
 and Provided, whom Edmund Batter (a cruel wicked 
 man, one fit for your purpose) sent your marshall for, 
 who fetch d them accordingly, and sought out for 
 passage to Barbadoes, to send them there for sale, as 
 men sell goods, to fill his purse, who was your treas 
 urer ; but the man to whom he spake would not 
 carry them on that account (a thing so horrible !), 
 and one of them, to try Batter, said * that they would 
 spoil all the vessel s company, laying that as an argu 
 ment why he should not carry them. Oh, no, said 
 Batter, you need not fear that, for they are poor 
 harmless creatures, and will not hurt anybody (or 
 words to this purpose). Will they not so ? said the 
 ship-master. And will ye offer to make slaves of so 
 harmless creatures? So Batter sent them home again 
 . . . till he could get a convenient opportunity to 
 send them away." 
 
 Another of Mr. Whittier s ballads on Quaker sub 
 jects is " The Exiles." It is very interesting to see 
 how, out of a mere word of history and a bit of manu 
 script, he has built up so long and capital a poem. 
 Thomas Macey was far from being the brave man he 
 is represented to be in the verses, as the following 
 from his humble and deprecatory letter to the Gen 
 eral Court proves: 
 
 "On a rainy morning there came to my house Ed 
 ward Wharton and three men more. The said Whar- 
 ton spoke to me, saying that they were traveling 
 eastward, and desired me to direct them in the way 
 to Hampton, and asked me how far it was to Casco 
 
2QO JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Bay. I never saw any of ye men afore except Whar- 
 ton, neither did I require their names, or who they 
 were, but by their carriage I thought they might be 
 Quakers, and told them so, and therefore desired 
 them to passe on their way, saying to them I might 
 possibly give offence in entertaining them; and as 
 soone as the violence of the rain ceased (for it rained 
 very hard) they went away, and I never saw them 
 since. The time that they stayed in the house was 
 about three-quarters of an hour, but I can safely 
 affirme it was not an hour. They spake not many 
 words in the time, neither was I at leisure to talke 
 with them, for I came home wet to the skin immedi 
 ately afore they came to the house, and I found my 
 wife sick in bed." 
 
 Two of the friends harbored by Macey that day 
 were Robinson and Stevenson, afterwards hanged on 
 Boston Common. The antiquaries all say that Macey 
 did not fly from direct persecution. The records of 
 Salisbury and of the State only show that he sailed 
 to Nantucket in an open boat, with his family and 
 two friends, not to escape the paltry fine of thirty 
 shillings and his admonishment, but at his leisure, in 
 disgust at the intolerance of the Puritan leaders. 
 Whittier, in a note to his "Exiles" in the "North 
 Star" anthology, says that "a quaint description of 
 Macey s singular and perilous voyage, in his own 
 handwriting, is still preserved." It is said that during 
 the voyage a storm arose, and Macey sa4d to his terri 
 fied wife, " Woman, I fear not the witches on earth, 
 nor the devils in hell." His place of refuge was Nan- 
 tucket Island, nurse of great women and brave men, 
 the birthplace of Lucretia Mott, Maria Mitchell, and 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 29! 
 
 the mother of Benjamin Franklin. The island had 
 been bought as a place of refuge in 1659 by ten men, 
 among whom were Whittier s remote kinsmen, Chris 
 topher Hussey and Stephen " Greenleafe." There 
 were no other white men on the island when they 
 came. 1 
 
 " She came and stood in the Old South Church, 
 
 A wonder and a sign, 
 With a look the old-time sibyls wore, 
 Half-crazed and half-divine. 
 
 Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound, 
 
 Unclothed as the primal mother, 
 With limbs that trembled and eyes that burned 
 
 With a fire she dared not smother." 
 
 In the poem of which the foregoing are the two 
 opening stanzas, Mr. Whittier has, with the freedom 
 permitted to a poet, wrenched the actual facts for a 
 dramatic end. He makes it appear that the cause of 
 his heroine s appearing in the Old South Church 
 clothed in sackcloth was to exhort preacher and peo 
 ple to religious toleration. But the original accounts 
 in Besse, including the warrant for her arrest and the 
 verbatim report of the trial, prove that her object on 
 that occasion was simply to warn the people of the 
 coming of the black-pox. But as she had addressed 
 a petition to the Governor that he would not put in 
 force th e " cruel laws" that required oath-taking 
 
 1 Mr. Whittier refers his readers to James S. Pike s book on 
 this incident of Macey. But Pike is only a borrower, and is not 
 so good as S. J. Macy in his "Genealogy of the Macy Family," 
 1868, and Hough, " Nantucket Papers" (Albany, 1856). 
 
2Q2 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 even from Quakers, and since during her trial she 
 incidentally besought him not to persecute the 
 Friends for meeting together to worship God after 
 their own way, the poet was justified in slightly 
 changing the facts for artistic ends, so as to make the 
 central idea that of a plea for religious toleration. 
 The name of the woman was Margaret Brewster. She 
 had come to Boston from the Barbadoes, perhaps to 
 collect money due her, and hence her trouble of mind 
 about the oath-taking. Her appearance so amazed 
 and frightened the congregation that it was said sev 
 eral women were in danger of miscarrying. She was 
 kept in prison for a month, and then stripped to the 
 middle, tied to a cart s tail, and whipped up and 
 down the town, all of which she endured with a forti 
 tude worthy of a better cause. Her fanatical folly 
 was, however, well matched by the unmanly cruelty 
 of the Governor s sentence. 
 
 Old Judge Sewall in his Diary (i. 43) makes a 
 minute of the scene in the church : 
 
 "July 8, 1677. New Meeting House [not the pres 
 ent Old South, but its predecessor] Mane : In Sermon 
 time there came in a female Quaker, in a Canvass 
 Frock, her hair disshevelled and loose like a Periwigg, 
 her face as black as ink, led by two other Quakers, 
 and two other followed. It occasioned the greatest 
 and most amazing uproar that I ever saw. Isaiah 
 i. 12, 14." 
 
 The venerable ex-magistrate William Coddington 
 wrote to a friend in the Barbadoes as follows : 
 
 RALPH FRETWELL! 
 
 Friend, 
 I have written to thee already concerning the apprehending 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 393 
 
 of Margaret Brewster, and committing her to prison, upon her 
 going into Thatcher s meeting in sackcloth, with ashes upon 
 her head, and barefoot, and her face blacked. With her was 
 Lydia Wright of Long Island, and Sarah Miles and Elizabeth 
 Bowers, jun., and John Easton, jun., who took her riding-clothes 
 and shoes when she went into the house. 
 
 At the trial the Governor says, 
 
 " Are you the woman that came into Mr. Thatcher s meeting 
 house with your hair fruzled, and dressed in the shape of a 
 devil ? " 
 
 She replies, 
 
 " I am the woman that came into priest Thatcher s house of 
 worship with my hair about my shoulders, ashes upon my head, 
 my face colored black, and sackcloth upon my upper garments." 
 
 Another poem commemorating a brave fight for 
 religious freedom is " Calef in Boston : 1692." Robert 
 Calef, merchant of Boston, was the author of " More 
 Wonders of the Invisible World," published to counter 
 act the influence of Cotton Mather s " Wonders of the 
 Invisible World," and especially his " Brand Pluckt 
 from the Burning." The incident that brought the 
 two men to a clash of arms was the case of Margaret 
 Rule, a young girl supposed to have been bewitched, 
 whose experiences are detailed in Mather s " Brand 
 Pluckt from the Burning." That credulous old 
 prodigy of learning says in this booklet that " the 
 devils have with most horrendous operations broke 
 in upon our neighborhood." Margaret he affirms to 
 have been " most prodigiously handled by the evil 
 angels." The enchantments she endured were such 
 as being stuck with invisible pins, pinched black and 
 blue, made to swallow brimstone by the devils, and 
 
294 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 drawn up by them to the garret ceiling with such 
 violence that she could scarcely be drawn down 
 again by a strong man. She described herself as 
 being haunted by eight demons led on by a black 
 Master. Whittier s words, " Your spectral puppet- 
 play," refer to the pranks of these demons, who would 
 stand at one side of the room and stick pins into 
 puppets, or dolls, that she might feel the pain in her 
 own flesh. And when they were not able to stick the 
 pins into the " Poppets " she would deride them, where 
 upon their black Master, in a rage, would strike them 
 and kick them, " like an overseer of so many negro s, 
 to make them to do their work." 1 The superstition 
 that persons could be made to suffer by proxy is an 
 old one. In his " Wonders," Mather tells of the con 
 sternation of some workmen when they discovered, 
 in holes in the cellar wall of a house belonging to a 
 reputed witch, certain " poppets " made up of rags 
 and hogs bristles, with headless pins in them, the 
 points being outward. The delusion is common 
 among our Southern negroes at the present day. 
 They make a waxen or dough image of their enemy, 
 and then pierce it with pins or burn it. To find on 
 his door-sill, says Cable, a little box containing a 
 wax heart stuck full of pins, will strike terror to the 
 heart of a Louisiana negro. 
 
 Calef was a man much in advance of his time, 
 brave, clear-headed, and liberal. A fac-simile of his 
 vigorous signature is given in Drake s History of 
 Boston, p. 568. He was one of those who were bold 
 
 1 Calef s work, original ed., 1700, p. 9. Other editions, as Mr. 
 Deane has shown, are very inaccurate. 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 295 
 
 enough to brave public opinion by having his children 
 inoculated for the small-pox. He pressed the Mathers 
 hard, arraigned their methods of extracting informa 
 tion from Margaret Rule, and was even arrested for 
 libel by them ; but no prosecutor appeared, and he 
 was released. His book was burned in the college 
 yard at Cambridge by President Increase Mather. 
 
 It appears from Cotton Mather s " Brand " that 
 Calef was not the only incredulous person in Boston. 
 "The learned witlings of the coffee-houses" are 
 sarcastically described by Mather, who says that, if 
 anyone would but read one or two little books he 
 names, he or she could "give a far more intelligible 
 account of these appearances than most of these 
 blades can give why and how their tobacco makes 
 em spit ; or which way the flame of their candle 
 becomes illuminating." 
 
 It seems to be an indispensable condition of poetical 
 inspiration with Whittier, in writing a ballad, that 
 his legend, or story, shall first have been read or 
 heard by him, and then laid away in his mind. 
 When it lies dim and somewhat vague in his mem 
 ory, it assumes the hues of romance ; and at some 
 happy moment, perhaps after the lapse of years, the 
 finished poem is detached, like a ripened pear from 
 its bough. It may be historically accurate or it may 
 not: as it comes, so it must be; he is only the scribe 
 to write down what his genius dictates. 
 
 Yet it must not be thought that all, or perhaps 
 any, of the poems of the Essex minstrel have been at 
 once transferred from the mind to the paper in their 
 final shape. Many of his poems were first conceived 
 
296 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 in the open air, and jotted down in rough state on 
 such paper as he might have in his pocket-book. 
 Mr. Charles E. Hurd, assistant editor of the Boston 
 " Transcript," has the original MS. of Whittier s " My 
 Playmate." It is written, with many erasures and 
 interlineations, on three sides of an old letter. 
 
 Whittier s portrait of the Puritan Indian fighter, 
 John Underhill, in the poem of that name, is con 
 siderably idealized. The real man bears more re 
 semblance to Captain Dalgetty, in the " Legend of 
 Montrose," than to the frail soldier-saint pictured by 
 our poet. Underhill was banished from the Massa 
 chusetts Colony for making slighting remarks about 
 the authorities. Some two years before this sentence 
 of banishment, he had been publicly questioned and 
 admonished on suspicion of incontinency with a 
 neighbor s wife. 
 
 Underhill retired to the Cocheco settlement in 
 Maine, where he was made governor. After his de 
 parture from Boston, proof of his adultery was dis 
 covered, and he was summoned to appear and stand 
 his trial. He parleyed and quibbled and hesitated a 
 long time, but finally appeared one day in 1640, and 
 after sermon, upon the lecture day, the pastor of the 
 church gave him leave to speak. The scene that fol 
 lowed is both amusing and dramatic. It was a spec 
 tacle that caused many weeping eyes. His penitence 
 seemed to be sincere; but the piercing eye of Win- 
 throp detected its superficial nature, notwithstanding 
 his " blubbering " and sobbing. 
 
 " He came," says Winthrop, " in his worst clothes 
 (being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery 
 and neatness), without a band, in a foul linen cap 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 297 
 
 pulled close to his eyes; and, standing upon a form, 
 he did with many deep sighs and abundance of tears 
 lay open his wicked course." 1 
 
 This scene of repentance is by Whittier laid at 
 Cocheco. Underhill afterwards took service with the 
 Dutch. The Mantinenoc Indians gave him a hun 
 dred and fifty acres of land on Long Island, which is 
 still in the possession of his descendants. 
 
 Out of the following bit of bare prose in Mather s 
 "Magnalia Christi " Whittier has constructed his bal 
 lad, so rich in picturesque incident, " The Garrison of 
 Cape Ann" : 
 
 "Now, in the time of that matchless war [made by 
 " the spirits of the invisible world upon the people of 
 New England "] there fell out a thing at Gloucester 
 which falls in here most properly to be related. 
 
 "Ebenezer Bapson, about midsummer, in the year 
 1692, with the rest of his family, almost every night 
 heard a noise as if persons were going and running 
 about his house. But one night being abroad late, at 
 his return home he saw two men come out of his 
 door, and run from the end of the house into the corn. 
 But those of the family told him, there had been no 
 person at all there ; whereupon he got his gun, and 
 went out in pursuit after them, and coming a little 
 distance from the house, he saw the two men start up 
 from behind a log, and run into a little swamp, saying 
 to each other, The man of the house is come now, else 
 we might have taken the house. So he heard nor saw 
 no more of them. 
 
 Winthrop s History of Massachusetts, ii. 13. 
 
298 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " Upon this the whole family got up, and went with 
 all speed to a garrison nearby ; and being just got 
 into the garrison, they heard men stamping round the 
 garrison. Whereupon Bapson took a gun and ran out 
 and saw two men again running down a hill into a 
 swamp. The next night, but one, the said Bapson, 
 going toward a fresh meadow, saw two men which 
 looked like Frenchmen, one .of them having a bright 
 gun upon his back, and both running a great pace 
 towards him, which caused him to make the best of 
 his way to the garrison, where being come, several 
 heard a noise as if men were stamping and running 
 not far from the garrison." 1 
 
 After a great deal of shooting, and running, and 
 missing fire, both on the part of the beleaguered and 
 the besiegers, the men of the garrison-house, " con 
 cluding they were but spectres," took little further 
 notice of them. 
 
 The story of " The Swan Song of Parson Avery," as 
 related by Whittier with his usual latitude, is told by 
 the Rev. Anthony Thacher in a letter given in Increase 
 Mather s "Essay for the Recording of Illustrious 
 Providences." The persons shipwrecked were in all 
 twenty-three souls, the two families of the ministers, 
 a passenger, and four sailors. The island upon which 
 their pinnace went to pieces is off Cape Ann and the 
 town of Rockport. It is now a United States light 
 house station, containing about eighty acres of rocky 
 soil. It is a pretty trip to visit the lighthouses, as 
 the writer did recently. You hoist a signal on the 
 
 1 First edition, 1702, p. 82. 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 299 
 
 mainland, and one of the keepers will sail or row 
 over from the island and take you across. The view 
 is magnificent. The storm in which the ship was 
 wrecked was of terrible force, overturning houses, 
 tearing up and twisting off thousands of trees, and 
 nearly ruining the harvest. 
 
 There was in reality no dying song by Parson Avery, 
 but a deal of praying and pious discourse back and 
 forth betwixt the poor man and his cousin. 
 
 The letter of Thacher is a classic in its kind, and a 
 few extracts will be appreciated. The style is pure 
 Greek, and is worthy of Defoe. 
 
 " I must turn my drowned pen and shaking hand," 
 says he, " to indite the story of such sad news as 
 never before this happened in New England. There 
 was a league of perpetual friendship between my 
 cousin Avery ["note," says Mather, " that this Mr. 
 Avery was a precious holy minister, who came out of 
 England with Mr. Anthony Thacher"] and myself 
 never to forsake each other to the death, but to be 
 partakers of each other s misery or welfare, as also 
 of habitation in the same place." They were solicited 
 to go to Marblehead to become the pastors of the 
 place, and accordingly set sail from Ipswich, with 
 their families and substance, in a pinnace. They had 
 rough weather and were two days in getting around 
 Cape Ann, when suddenly in a fresh gale their sails, 
 " being old and done," were split. The anchor slipped, 
 the storm burst upon them, the ship was beaten 
 to pieces, and about daylight all were drowned except 
 Thacher and his wife, who were washed ashore. The 
 good man, after narrating all these woes, continues: 
 " I and my wife were almost naked, both of us, and 
 
300 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 wet and cold, even unto death. I found a Knapsack 
 cast on the shore, in which I had a steel and flint and 
 powder-horn. Going further I found a drowned goat, 
 then I found a hat, and my son William s coat, both 
 which I put on. My wife found one of her petti 
 coats, which she put on. I found also two cheeses 
 and some butter, driven ashore. Thus the Lord sent 
 us some clothes to put on, and food to sustain our new 
 lives which he had lately given unto us; and means 
 also to make fire, for in an horn I had some gun 
 powder, which to my own (and since to other men s) 
 admiration was dry; so taking a piece of my wife s 
 neckcloth, which I dried in the sun, I struck fire, and so 
 dried and warmed our wet bodies, and then skinned 
 the goat; and having found a small brass pot, we 
 boiled some of her. Our drink was brackish water; 
 bread we had none. There we remained until the 
 Monday following [three days in all]. When about 
 three of the clock, in the afternoon, in a boat that 
 came that way, we went off that desolate island, 
 which I named after my name, Thacher s Woe; and 
 the rock [on which the vessel split] Avery his Fall: 
 to the end that their fall and loss and mine own 
 might be had in perpetual remembrance. In the isle 
 lieth buried the body of my cousin s eldest daughter, 
 whom I found dead on the shore." 
 
 Winthrop in his Journal says, "The general court 
 gave Mr. Thatcher 26: 13:4: towards his losses, and 
 divers good people gave him besides. The man was 
 cast on shore when he had been (as he supposed) 
 a quarter of an hour beaten up and down by the 
 waves, not being able to swim one stroke, and his 
 wife sitting in the scuttle of the bark, the deck 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 30! 
 
 was broke off and brought on shore as she stuck 
 in it." 
 
 In reading for the sources of this poem, I discovered 
 that Whittier got its title out of Cotton Mather s 
 " Magnalia Christi " (I. ii. 3). Speaking of Avery s 
 prayer, Mather quotes a line 
 
 " Carmina jam Moriens, Canit exequialia Cygnus " 
 
 which had been found in the chair of a Dr. Hottinger 
 eight days before he was drowned (in Lake Leman, 
 Switzerland). This Latin line about the song of the 
 dying swan Mather applies to Avery : " Never forget 
 the memorable swan-song which Avery, not eight days, 
 but scarce eight seconds of a minute, before his ex 
 piration, sang in the ears of heaven." 
 
 On July 6, 1724, Rev. Christopher Tappan, of New- 
 bury, wrote to Cotton Mather the account of a double- 
 headed snake, or Amphisbsena, from which, as given 
 in Joshua Coffin s History of Newbury, Whittier got 
 the materials for his ballad " The Double-headed 
 Snake of Newbury." Coffin copied it from the orig 
 inal now in the library of the American Antiquarian 
 Society at Worcester, and it is found nowhere else in 
 the literature of the time: 
 
 " Concerning the amphisbsena, as soon as I received 
 your commands I made diligent enquiry of several 
 persons, who saw it after it was dead, but they could 
 give me no assurance of its having two heads, as they 
 did not strictly examine it, not calling it the least in 
 question because it seemed as really to have two 
 heads as one. They directed me for further informa 
 tion to the person I before spoke of, who was out of 
 
302 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 town, and to the persons who saw it alive and killed 
 it, which were two or three lads, about twelve or 
 fourteen, one of which a pert sensible youngster told 
 me yt one of his mates running towards him cryed 
 out there was a shake with two heads running after 
 him, upon which he run to him, and the snake, get 
 ting into a puddle of water, he with a stick pulled 
 him out, after which it came towards him, and as he 
 went backwards or forward, soe the snake would doe 
 likewise. After a little time, the snake, upon his 
 striking at him, gathered up his whole body into 
 sort of a quoil, except both heads, which kept to 
 wards him, and he distinctly saw two mouths and two 
 stings (as they are vulgarly called), which stings or 
 tongues it kept putting forth after the usual manner 
 of snakes, till he killed it. Thus far the lad. This 
 day, understanding the person mentioned before 
 was returned, I went to him, and asked him about 
 the premises. He told me he narrowly examined 
 the snake, being brought to him by the lads after 
 it was dead, and he found two distinct heads, one 
 at each end, opening each with a little stick, in each 
 of which he saw a sting or tongue, and that each 
 head had two eyes. Throwing it down and going 
 away, upon second thoughts he began to mistrust 
 his own eyes, as to what he had seen, and there 
 fore returned a second time to examine it, if pos 
 sible, more strictly, but still found it as before. 
 This person is so credible that I can as much 
 believe him as if I had seen him myself. He tells 
 me of another man yt examined it as he did, but I 
 cannot yet meet with him. 
 
 " Postscript. Before ensealing I spoke with the 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 303 
 
 other man, who examined the amphisbaena (and 
 he is also a man of credit), and he assures me yt it had 
 really two heads, one at each end, two mouths, two 
 stings or tongues, and so forth." 
 
 " Far and wide the tale was told, 
 Like a snowball growing while it rolled. 
 The nurse hushed with it the baby s cry ; 
 And it served, in the worthy minister s eye, 
 To paint the primitive serpent by. 
 Cotton Mather came galloping down 
 All the way to Newbury town, 
 With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, 
 And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; 
 Stirring the while in the shallow pool 
 Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, 
 To garnish the story, with here a streak 
 Of Latin, and there another of Greek : 
 And the tales he heard and the notes he took, 
 Behold ! are they not in his Wonder-Book ? " 
 
 The last two lines seem to imply that the story of 
 the snake can be found in the Wonder-Book. But you 
 will search in vain for it there. There is no gallop 
 ing down to Newbury in that book; but there are 
 rich " tales," such as that of the black creature with 
 the body of a monkey, the feet of a cock, and the 
 face of a man, which was going to fly at a certain 
 man, and when he cried out, " The whole armour of 
 God be between me and you," it " sprang back, and 
 flew over the apple-tree; shaking many apples off the 
 tree in its flying over. At its leap, it flung dirt with 
 its feet against the stomach of the man." 
 
 There is a snake (really a lizard) which is called 
 the Amphisbaena, but is found only in tropical Amer- 
 
304 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 ica. It actually has the habit of moving backward 
 or forward at pleasure. The tail is thick and short, 
 and the eyes of the head so small (it lives mostly 
 under ground) that it is almost impossible to tell 
 head from tail. The story of the Newbury Amphis- 
 baena is as well attested as anything can be, and we 
 may suppose the creature to have been a mon 
 strosity of the true snake species, like the two- 
 headed chickens, calves, etc., which occasionally 
 occur. 
 
 In the " Tent on the Beach" the locality is the mouth 
 of Hampton River at the northern extremity of Salis 
 bury Sands. The scene of two of the ballads sung in 
 the tent of the three friends is also here ; namely, " The 
 Changeling" and " The Wreck of Rivermouth." In the 
 latter poem, " the grisly head of the Boar," " the 
 green bluff" breaking the chain of sand-hills north 
 ward, refers to the wind-swept and treeless headland 
 known a the Boar s Head. It is a heap of gravel- 
 drift with bowlders sticking in the sides. " A low 
 reef, stretching out towards the southeast, resembling 
 the broken vertebrae of some fabled sea-monster," 
 says Drake, " shows in what direction the grand old 
 headland has most suffered from the unremitting 
 work of demolition carried on by the waves, which 
 pour and break like an avalanche over the blackened 
 bowlders, and fly hissing into the air like the dust 
 rising from its ruins." 
 
 "And Agamenticus lifts its blue 
 
 Disk of a cloud the woodlands o er." 
 
 Mount Agamenticus is a bold landmark for sixty 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 305 
 
 miles or more up and down the Atlantic coast. The 
 mountain rears its huge form almost at the edge of 
 the sea in Maine. On its summit is said to be buried 
 Saint Aspenquid, a converted Indian, who, according 
 to tradition, had wandered all over the continent 
 preaching the gospel of Christ. Lowell paints Aga- 
 menticus in his " Pictures. from Appledore": 
 
 " He glowers there to the north of us, 
 Wrapt in his mantle of blue haze, 
 
 ***** 
 
 Him first on shore the coaster divines 
 Through the early gray, and sees him shake 
 The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines." 
 
 The wedge of the Boar s Head, as I saw it in 1890, 
 was a superb earth-poem, its level surface covered 
 with grass and flowers, the green lines of the sod 
 merging into the blue of the sky, not a discord any 
 where. To the south, a mile away, are always seen 
 the Rivermouth Rocks, black and grisly in their gar 
 ments of sea-weed. 
 
 The Goody Cole who figures in " The Changeling " 
 and in " The Wreck of Rivermouth " was Eunice 
 Cole of Hampton, New Hampshire, who lived alone 
 in a little hovel near where the Hampton Academy 
 now stands. Once when she was imprisoned the 
 Court ordered a padlocked chain to be attached to 
 her leg. She died alone in her cottage, and it was 
 some days before her death was known; whereupon 
 she was hastily buried, and a stake driven through 
 her poor body to exorcise the evil spirit. She was as 
 much feared as was old Susanna Martin, alluded to 
 in "The Witch s Daughter." Goody Martin lived 
 
 20 
 
306 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 near the Old Ferry in Pleasant Valley on the Merri- 
 mack. 
 
 Goody Cole was first prosecuted in 1656; in 1657 
 occurred the catastrophe described in " The Wreck 
 of Rivermouth." Whittier puts the two things 
 together, imagines the shipwreck to have been attrib 
 uted to the witch, and makes a ballad which for 
 choice English, perfect melody, and native savor can 
 scarcely be surpassed. The prose text of the story is 
 merely this dry paragraph, referred to by the poet 
 in the " Atlantic Monthly," where the poem first 
 appeared: 
 
 "A boate going out of Hampton River was cast 
 away and the psons all drowned who were in number 
 eight: Em. Hilliar, Jon. Philbrick and An Philbrick 
 his wife; Sarah Philbrick there daughter; Alice the 
 wyfe of Moses Cox, and John Cox his sonne, Robert 
 Read; who all perished in ye sea ye 2oth of the 8 mo. 
 1657. " 
 
 The convent song of sister Maria in Whittier s 
 " Hymn of the Dunkers " 
 
 " Wake, sisters, wake ! the day-star shines ; 
 Above Ephrata s eastern pines 
 The dawn is breaking, cool and calm. 
 Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm ! " 
 
 somehow recalls that little snow-tinted poem, Tenny 
 son s " St. Agnes," 
 
 1 From the " Norfolk County Records," quoted in vol. i., No. 2, 
 of the " New England Historical and Genealogical Register" (not 
 vol. ii. , as the printers got it in the " Atlantic "). 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 307 
 
 " Deep on the convent roofs the snows 
 
 Are sparkling to the moon," 
 
 a poem of the quality of a diamond or a lily, in which 
 the sentiment of vestal purity and mediaeval Chris 
 tianity is embodied in flawless music. 
 
 About a hundred years ago there were occasionally 
 to be seen in the streets of Philadelphia certain 
 strange foreign-looking persons offering country prod 
 uce for sale. The men wore no hats, which were 
 supplanted by the Capuchin hoods of the long white 
 woolen gowns they wore (belted at the waist). The 
 women concealed their faces when they walked. The 
 visages of the men were pale, their beards long and 
 shaggy, and their hair short. In summer the woolen 
 dress described was exchanged for one of linen. 
 
 These people were Dunkers (or Tunkers, Taeuffer, 
 i. e. Baptists) from Ephrata in Lancaster County, 
 Pennsylvania, eleven miles out from Lancaster town. 
 Their land lay in a beautiful vale between two wood- 
 crowned hills, a stream flowing through the vale. 
 The town of Ephrata lay on the southeastern slope 
 of a little hill. At first the members of the commu 
 nity dwelt alone, each in a little cottage, that one 
 might not interrupt the devotions of another. They 
 were celibates, and of course the women dwelt apart. 
 If any one married, he or she left the order, but set 
 tled in the neighborhood. They touched no animal 
 food, had worship four times a day, and slept at 
 night upon benches with little wooden blocks for pil 
 lows (reminds one of the Japanese and Chinese head 
 rests). The sisters drew beautiful ornamental texts 
 in Gothic characters (the members of the order spoke 
 German) to adorn the church walls. 
 
308 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 The Dunkers had their origin in Schartzenau, 
 Germany. Being frowned upon and shunned there, 
 they separated from their Pietist brethren and came 
 to Pennsylvania about 1719. The founder of the 
 fraternity at Ephrata was Conrad Beissel, whose self- 
 chosen fraternity name was Friedsam Gottrecht. 
 
 About 1738 (the date prefixed to Mr. Whittier s 
 poem) their life became conventual, and the church 
 building was converted into a nunnery called Kloster 
 Kedar, 1 another building being erected for the men. 
 It was now that monastic rules were adopted, and 
 the Capuchin dress chosen. 
 
 The Dunkers denied original sin, reprobated war 
 and all kinds of violence, and denied eternal punish 
 ment. Affection was their bond of union. A part of 
 the title of one of their hymn-books reads, " The 
 songs of the solitary and forsaken turtle-dove, that 
 is, the Christian Church, . . . brought into spirit 
 ual rhymes, by a Peaceable pilgrim wandering to silent 
 eternity." It is by Friedsam Gottrecht, who puns 
 upon his Christian name in the italicized word. The 
 Dunkers, it will be seen, spoke and wrote in a highly 
 metaphorical, mystical style. These ascetics, in their 
 ecstatic reveries and fasts, created an imaginary 
 world, or heaven, wherein their imaginations ran riot. 
 They believed in a mystical union with the Redeemer: 
 " He was the little infant they carried under their 
 hearts, the dear little lamb they dandled on their laps." 2 
 
 1 Name chosen in allusion to their agricultural, or pastoral, life, 
 Kedar being the name of a pastoral tribe descended from Ishmael, 
 " the glory of Kedar," " the tents of Kedar," " the flocks of 
 Kedar." 
 
 5 Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for 1827, 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 309 
 
 A Pennsylvania critic of Mr. Whittier affirms that 
 his sketch of Meister Eckhart, in " The Vision of 
 Echard," and his " Hymn of the Dunkers," are both 
 failures as historical studies, the lyrical element over 
 powering the historical. He thinks a Dunker mystic 
 would not have singled out Rome and Geneva as the 
 embodiment of the ecclesiasticism against which he 
 protested, and says very truly that the sect "founded 
 by Alexander Mack " never suffered from the 
 "prison" and "the stake." Whittier catches the 
 Adventist doctrine of the sect, but misses the mystic 
 theosophical character of the doctrine as held by 
 them. 
 
 One of the " Tent " poems is a blank-verse piece on 
 " Abraham Davenport," the text for which was taken 
 from old Dr. Dwight, of New Haven. "The igth 
 day of May, 1780," says he, " was a remarkable dark 
 day. Candles were lighted in many houses ; the 
 birds were silent and disappeared, and the fowls 
 retired to roost. The legislature of Connecticut was 
 then in session at Hartford. A very general opinion 
 prevailed that the day of judgment was at hand. 
 The House of Representatives, being unable to trans 
 act their business, adjourned. A proposal to adjourn 
 the Council was under consideration. When the 
 opinion of Colonel Davenport was asked, he answered, 
 I am against an adjournment. The day of judg 
 ment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, 
 there is no cause for an adjournment ; if it is, I 
 
 ii. 130 ff. This seems to be the sole printed account of this curious 
 order. 
 
310 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore 
 that candles may be brought. " * 
 
 " And there he stands in memory to this day, 
 Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen 
 Against the background of unnatural dark, 
 A witness to the ages as they pass 
 That simple duty hath no place for fear." 
 
 Abraham Davenport s grandfather was one of the 
 founders of New Haven, a friend of the Regicides, 
 Goffe and Whalley, and first suggested the establish 
 ment of the college now called Yale : he was known 
 by the Indians as " so big study man." 
 
 When Abraham Davenport was well stricken in 
 years, and, as Chief Justice of the Court of Common 
 Pleas, was hearing a case at Danbury, the summon 
 ing hand of death was suddenly laid upon him. But, 
 firm and unflinching to the last, he refused to leave 
 the Court until he had given the charge to the jury, 
 and called their attention to an article in the testi 
 mony that had escaped the notice of the counsel on 
 both sides ; he then retired to his home, and was 
 soon afterward found dead in his bed. 
 
 Whittier got the nucleus of his " Bridal of Penna- 
 cook " from Book I., Chapter XL, of that dry old 
 chronicle of border wars and Indian history, the 
 " New English Caanan," written by that dissolute 
 and jolly Roger Wildrake, Thomas Morton. In this 
 book Morton gives an account of the May Pole of his 
 Merry Mount, and the far from innocent festivities 
 connected with it. For the writing of this book he 
 
 Quoted in Barber s Connecticut Historical Collections, p. 403. 
 
STORIES IN RHYME. 311 
 
 was imprisoned for a year by the Puritan authorities, 
 and fined. 
 
 In his "Prophecy of Samuel Sewall " Whittier 
 speaks of Newbury as Sewall s " native town," but, says 
 Tyler, Sewall was born at Horton, England. He also 
 describes Sewall as an " old man," propped on his 
 staff of age, when he made his famous prophecy; but 
 Sewall was then forty-five years old. Samuel Sewall 
 was one of the witchcraft judges, and the author of 
 the quaint diary recently published. It was said that 
 his wife Hannah Hull, daughter of a goldsmith in 
 Boston received her own weight in silver pine-tree 
 shillings as a wedding portion. 
 
 " The Golden Wedding of Longwood " was cele 
 brated in the rich old rural town of Kennett, Chester 
 County, near Philadelphia : 
 
 " Again before me, with your names, fair Chester s landscape 
 
 comes, 
 
 Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone- 
 builded homes. 
 
 The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage 
 
 green and soft, 
 Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft." 
 
 The poem was written for the fiftieth anniversary 
 of- the marriage of John and Hannah Cox, Quakers. 
 Whittier, with Bayard Taylor who lived near by, 
 often visited at the house of these Friends. Lowell, 
 too, speaks of the " Arcadia of Friends in Chester 
 County," and of the beautiful homes to which he was 
 welcomed there. 
 
312 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " Conductor Bradley, (always may his name 
 Be said with reverence !) as the swift doom came, 
 Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame, 
 
 " Sank with the brake he grasped just where he stood 
 To do the utmost that a brave man could. 
 
 " Lo ! the ghastly lips of pain, 
 Dead to all thought save duty s, moved again: 
 Put out the signals for the other train ! 
 
 Following the date-clew given by the poet, I look 
 up an old file of newspapers and find in the New 
 York " Times," May 9, 1873, an obscure item, such as 
 we see dozens of every year, how two cars of a 
 freight-train were thrown from the track at Tolles 
 Station on the Hartford, Providence, and Fishkill 
 Railroad, and Conductor George F. Bradley mortally 
 injured. Heroic Conductor Bradley found his poet, 
 and a hundred, a thousand, others just as heroic did 
 not : that is all the difference. It is the privilege of 
 genius to touch with immortal lustre what is ordi 
 narily regarded as a dry prosaic idea. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 i. 
 
 REFERENCE TABLE FOR DATES. 
 
 1807. Whittier born, December 17. 
 1821. Reads Burns for the first time. 
 1824. Writes poem on William Penn. 
 Uncle Moses dies. 
 
 1826. Poem, " The Deity," published. 
 
 1827. Attends Haverhill Academy six months. 
 Teaches school at West Amesbury. 
 
 1828. Another six months term at Haverhill Academy. 
 Editor of the " American Manufacturer " in Boston. 
 
 In April, Garrison invites subscriptions for the purpose 
 of publishing a volume of Whittier s poems, to enable 
 him to pursue his studies longer. Project not realized. 
 
 1829. June, 1829, to July, 1830, at home. 
 
 1830-31. Edits the " New England Weekly Review " at Hart 
 ford, Connecticut. 
 
 First book published at Hartford, the little 
 " Legends of New England." 
 
 1831. Visits his father in his last sickness at the Haverhill 
 
 farm. Father dies in June. 
 
 1832. Gives up editorship of " New England Weekly Review." 
 
 From 1832 to 1837 manages the farm in Haverhill. 
 Writes for " Buckingham s New England Magazine." 
 In 1832 publishes " Moll Pitcher," and edits the " Lit 
 erary Remains of J. G. C. Brainard." 
 
 1833. Publishes "Justice and Expediency." 
 
 Delegate to the National Anti-slavery Convention at 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 1834. Corresponding Secretary of the Haverhill Anti-slavery 
 
 Society. 
 
314 APPENDIX. 
 
 1835. Mobbed at Concord, New Hampshire. 
 
 Chosen member of the Massachusetts State Legislature. 
 
 1836. Publishes " Mogg Megone." 
 Editor of Haverhill " Gazette." 
 
 1837. In New York as Secretary of the National Anti-slavery 
 
 Society. Visits John Quincy Adams, and edits that 
 statesman s Letters to his Constituents ; also edits 
 Miss Harriet Martineau s "Views of Slavery." First 
 collection of his poems issued by Isaac Knapp. 
 
 1838. Joseph Healey, of Philadelphia, publishes a collection of 
 
 his poems. From 1838 to 1840 Whittier is in Phila 
 delphia, editing the " Pennsylvania Freeman." Burn 
 ing of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838. 
 
 1839. In December, 1839, still in Philadelphia (see Preface to 
 
 "The North Star"). 
 
 1840. Edits a booklet of poems called " The North Star." 
 Farm sold ; family removes to Amesbury. 
 
 1841. Helps edit the "American and Foreign Anti-slavery 
 
 Reporter " (a monthly) in New York City. 
 
 1842. Temporary editor of the "Emancipator" in Boston 
 
 (during December, 1841, and January, 1842). 
 
 1843. " Lays of my Home " published. 
 
 1844. In Lowell, editing the " Middlesex Standard." First 
 
 English edition of his poems published in London ; 
 introduction by Elizur Wright. 
 
 1845. Publishes "The Stranger in Lowell." 
 
 1846. Aunt Mercy Hussey dies. " Voices of Freedom " pub 
 
 lished in Philadelphia by Thomas S. Cavender. 
 
 1847. " Supernaturalism in New England." 1847-1850, 
 
 associate, or corresponding, editor of the " National 
 Era." 
 
 1849. "Voices of Freedom" (Philadelphia); Mussey s com 
 plete edition of his poems published in Boston ; 
 " Leaves from Margaret Smith s Journal." 
 
APPENDIX. 315 
 
 1850. "Songs of Labor"; "Old Portraits and Modern 
 Sketches"; " Little Eva "; collected poems published 
 in London. 
 
 1853. "The Chapel of the Hermits," " A Sabbath Scene." 
 
 1854. " Literary Recreations," " Maud Muller." 
 
 1856. " The Panorama." 
 
 1857. Mother died ; Ticknor s blue and gold edition of poems ; 
 
 " Skipper Ireson." 
 
 1860. Chosen Member of Electoral College ; publishes " Home 
 
 Ballads, and Other Poems." 
 
 1861. Death of his sister, Mary Whittier Cartland. 
 
 1863. " In War Time, and Other Poems "; "Barbara Frietchie " 
 
 published in October in " Atlantic Monthly " ; com 
 plete edition of his works. 
 
 1864. Again member of the Electoral College; death of Eliza 
 
 beth Whittier, September 3. 
 
 1866. "Snow-Bound"; Prose Works, 2 Vol. edition; "Na 
 
 tional Lyrics " published. 
 
 1867. " The Tent on the Beach." 
 
 1868. " Among the Hills." Also an illustrated edition of his 
 
 poems. " Whittier College " founded at Salem, Iowa. 
 
 1869. Illustrated edition of " Ballads of New England. " 
 
 1870. " Miriam, and Other Poems." 
 
 1871. " Child-Life : A Collection of Poems." 
 
 1872. " The Pennsylvania Pilgrim." 
 
 1873. " Child-Life in Prose " ; Journal of John Woolman 
 
 edited. 
 
 1874. " Mabel Martin." 
 
 1875. " Songs of Three Centuries " ; " Hazel Blossoms." 
 
 1876. " Centennial Hymn " published. 
 
 1877. Seventieth birthday celebrated in Boston ; founding of a 
 
 Whittier Club in Haverhill. 
 
316 APPENDIX. 
 
 1878, " The Vision of Echard." 
 
 1881. "The King s Missive." 
 
 1882. Letters of Lydia Maria Child edited ; " Bay of Seven 
 
 Islands " published. 
 
 1883. Death of Matthew Franklin Whittier, January 7. 
 
 1884. Portrait of Whittier unveiled in Friends School in 
 
 Providence, Rhode Island. 
 
 1885. September 10, Reunion of Haverhill Academy gradu 
 
 ates. " Poems of Nature " published. 
 
 1886. "St. Gregory s Guest, and Recent Poems," published ; 
 
 dedicated to General S. C. Armstrong. 
 
 1887. Birthday celebrated by school children throughout the 
 
 country ; Boston " Advertiser s " Whittier Memorial 
 issue ; social greetings and gifts of friends at Oak 
 Knoll. 
 
 1890. Birthday again celebrated at Oak Knoll. For his 
 
 ballad " The Captain s Well " receives $1,000 from 
 " New York Ledger." 
 
 1891. Eighty-fourth birthday celebrated at home of Joseph 
 
 Cartland in Newburyport, Mr. Whittier being present. 
 
 1892. Death of Whittier at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 
 
 7. Publication of his posthumous volume, " At Sun 
 down," dedicated to E. C. Stedman. 
 
II. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 NOTES ON RARE AND EARLY EDITIONS. 1 
 
 COLLECTED WORKS. 
 
 New England Legends in Prose and Verse. 
 
 Hartford : Hanmer & Phelps, 1831. 
 
 A slender volumet issued in February by the publishers of 
 the " New England Weekly Review," which Whittier had 
 been editing. It is his first book, and is now suppressed. A 
 copy was sold in Boston for $14. The poems are juvenile in 
 character. Titles of some of the sensational prose tales are 
 " The Midnight Attack," " The Rattlesnake Hunter," " The 
 Human Sacrifice," and " The Unquiet Sleeper." " The Spectre 
 Ship " is a tale in verse. 
 
 Poems written during the Progress of the 
 Abolition Question in the United States, 
 between the years 1830 and 1838. Boston. 
 Isaac Knapp, 25 Cornhill, 1837. 
 
 Very rare, and quite a pretty booklet ; the first separate col 
 lection of his poems. Price 37 ^ cts. " Issued in compliance 
 with the urgent request of a large number of the admirers of 
 Whittier " (p. 97). Garrison is thought to have been the 
 
 1 All the information imparted here has been derived at first 
 hand from the original copies and first editions. 
 
318 APPENDIX. 
 
 editor. Underwood says published in 38 ; so perhaps there 
 were other editions. Most of the poems were republished in 
 the " Emancipator" of 1839 and 1840. The frontispiece is a 
 fine copper-plate engraving, " just received from London " ; it 
 shows Britannia rebuking a planter who is whipping a slave, 
 and illustrates a stanza in Cowper s " Morning Dream," a 
 poem which is prefixed to the text. Facing each other on fly 
 leaves are two medallions of slaves in chains, one a man and 
 the other a woman. Each poem is followed by a pretty tail 
 piece, a branch of a tree with fruit, or a sheaf of grain, etc., 
 emblems of peace. The weak poem " To George Bancroft, 
 Esq., Author of the Worcester Democratic Address," not after 
 wards reprinted ; nor the fine verses on " Governor McDuffie "; 
 nor a poem by Elizabeth Whittier, " Our Countrymen." 
 
 Ballads, Anti-slavery, etc. Joseph Healey: Phil 
 adelphia, 1838. 180 pp. 
 
 Issued November i, Whittier being then editor of the " Free 
 man " in Philadelphia. Healey was the financial agent of the 
 National Anti-slavery Society. The motto is from Coleridge : 
 " I concluded this was not the time to keep silence ; for Truth 
 should be spoken at all times, but more especially at those 
 times when to speak Truth is dangerous." 
 
 Lays of my Home, and Other Poems. Wm. D. 
 
 Ticknor. Boston, 1843. 
 
 Issued in May ; the dedication, " To John Pierpont," is in 
 cluded in the recent complete poetical works. Twenty-three 
 poems, chiefly non-slavery. 
 
 Voices of Freedom. Philadelphia : Thos. S. 
 Cavender ; Boston: Waite, Pierce & Co.; New 
 York: Wm. Harned. 5th ed., 1846, 192 pp. 
 " Several years having elapsed since the first edition," the 
 
 preface states. Underwood describes an ed. with the title 
 
 "Voices of Freedom. From 1833 to 1848," published by 
 
 Lindsay & Blakiston : Philad., 1849. 
 
APPENDIX. 319 
 
 Poems by John G. Whittier. Boston : Benjamin 
 B. Mussey & Co., 1849. 
 
 This is, on the whole, the most beautiful eel. of the poems ; 
 a second ed. appeared in 1850; copyrighted 1848 ; an ed. from 
 same plates appeared in 1856 (new title-page) by Sanborn, 
 Carter, & Bazin of Boston. The exquisite steel plates (by H. 
 Billings), the heavy paper, and large type are explained by the 
 fact that Mussey was a Free-Soiler, and took a pride in seeing 
 the laureate s verses in rich dress ; he died in 1857. The plates 
 were bought by Ticknor & Fields. Mussey was a pill-seller as 
 well as a publisher. Whittier was overcome with amazement, 
 and thought the man was demented, when, one day, as they were 
 walking in Cornhill, Mussey offered him $500 for the copyright 
 of his poems and a percentage on the sales. However, he 
 closed with his offer, and was still more astonished at the large 
 sales of the hitherto ill-dressed and somewhat obscure children 
 of his brain. 
 
 Other noteworthy collections are the little 2-vol. 
 blue and gold ed. of Ticknor & Fields, 1857, and the 
 4-vol. ed. of 1888 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The 
 latter forms part of a superb 7-vol. ed. of Whittier s 
 complete works, with four admirable portraits, hun 
 dreds of new illustrative notes by Whittier, as well as 
 new prefaces, entirely new arrangement, or grouping, 
 of the poems, table of first lines, inclusion of many 
 early poems which had been dropped out or forgotten, 
 and a collection of fugitive prose pieces. This ed. is 
 worth all the others put together, for the scholar. 
 The present volume, however, contains a half-dozen 
 of Mr. Whittier s most interesting poems that are not 
 included in this Boston edition of the poems, besides 
 many valuable letters and prose articles not included 
 in the volumes of prose in said edition. 
 
320 APPENDIX. 
 
 SINGLE POEMS. 
 
 Moll Pitcher. Boston : Carter & Hendee, 1832. 
 
 The two copies I have seen are in pamphlet form, and 
 probably the whole ed. was of that character. The brochure 
 is printed by Joseph H. Buckingham of Newburyport; no 
 author s name anywhere given ; 28 pp. in all, including a page 
 of notes. Poem dedicated to Eli Todd of Hartford; motto 
 from Cornelius Agrippa ; prefatory note by Whittier. Nearly 
 a column quotation was made from the poem by Garrison in 
 his "Liberator," May 8, 1840, eight years after its publication. 
 
 There is a poor dramatic poem, " Moll Pitcher," by a certain 
 J. S. Jones. It was put on the boards at the original National 
 Theatre in Boston in 1839, the part of Moll being played by 
 Mrs. William Pelby. The play was given in every State in 
 the Union which then permitted dramatic performances. The 
 plot is entirely different from Whittier s, though the heroine 
 appears as the conventional witch, with red cloak, spectacles, 
 crutch, and black cat, much as in Whittier s poem. 
 
 Mogg Megone. Boston : Light & Stearns, No. i 
 
 Cornhill. 1836. 
 A tiny 32mo of 69 pp. 
 
 Little Eva ; Uncle Tom s Guardian Angel. Boston 
 
 and Cleveland, 1852. 4to, 4 pp. 
 Music by Emilio Manuel ; present title " Eva." 
 
 A Sabbath Scene. Boston : Ticknor, Reed, & 
 
 Fields, 1853. 
 
 A thin volume, illustrated by Baker, Smith, and Andrew, in 
 quaint Sunday-school style. 
 
 Snow-Bound is translated in Karl Knortz s 
 " Zwei Amerikanische Idyllen," with the title " Ein- 
 geschneit," " Snowed In." 
 
APPENDIX. 321 
 
 THE NORTH STAR. 
 
 The North Star : The Poetry of Freedom by 
 her Friends. Philadelphia: Printed by Mer- 
 rihew & Thompson, No. 7 Carter s Alley, 1840. 
 
 Cream-colored covers ; motto from William Penn ; preface 
 dated " Philadelphia, I2th mo., 1839." That it was edited by 
 Whittier is certain. In looking over an old bundle of " Eman 
 cipators " I lighted on a notice of the book by the editor, 
 Joshua Leavitt, in his issue of Jan. 9, 1840. This was the very 
 time when Whittier was his contributor and editorial assistant. 
 Says Mr. Leavitt : " That it is edited in the best taste, and by 
 one whose real worth does not need to sound its own praises, 
 may be certainly known from the exclusion of the following 
 lines, which, we happen to know, were written expressly for 
 the work, but excluded by the editor." The lines contain a 
 prophecy that has long since been fulfilled : 
 
 TO JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 BY JONATHAN BLANCHARD. 
 
 Thy soul is gentle, WHITTIER yet thy mind 
 Was made to startle and instruct mankind : 
 And tyrants dread thee, gentle though thou art 
 A lamb in temper with a lion s heart ! 
 Yet so averse to scourge the sins of men, 
 That others sufferings only move thy pen. 
 If thou alone hadst felt the oppressor s wrong, 
 The world had lost the lightning of thy song. 
 God, in thy genius, crowned thee with the art 
 To pour thyself upon the human heart 
 Bid thine own soul to thrill along thy line, 
 An inbreathed fervor only not divine. 
 New England yet shall hail her gifted son, 
 When Freedom s work (and Slavery s) is done ; 
 And own thy fire, caught from her pilgrim-grave* 
 21 
 
322 APPENDIX. 
 
 Hath taught the world that poets are no slaves ! 
 The slave shall hail thee, when his sorrows end, 
 In nature, as by name and birth, a FRIEND. 
 
 In a long notice of the book in the " Liberator," Garrison 
 says : " Right glad are we to find that the anti-slavery women 
 of Philadelphia, at their recent fair, have procured the publica 
 tion of a beautiful little volume, all glittering with light, called 
 The North Star : The Poetry of Freedom by her Friends. 
 We are indebted for a copy of it, superbly bound, to our es 
 teemed friend Lucretia Mott, and have perused its contents 
 with a keen relish and perfect satisfaction." 
 
 The preface is in Whittier s style exactly, and is dated Quaker 
 fashion. So is the longest poem in the book, " ALgypt : a Frag 
 ment from an Unpublished Poem " ( Philadelphia, Eleventh 
 mo., 1839"). I had attributed this to Whittier, from internal 
 evidence of italicizing, etc., before I read Garrison s notice in 
 which he also says he ventures to attribute it to him. The 
 only poem accredited to Whittier in the contents is "The 
 World s Convention " ; out his " Exiles " ballad here appears for 
 the first time. Among the contributors are Lucy Hooper (the 
 Brooklyn, Long Island, young lady on whose subsequent 
 untimely death Whittier has a poem), Elizabeth Whittier, 
 James T. Fields, and W. L. J. Kiderlen, who has a poem in 
 German, " Der Sterbende Sclave." 
 
 Those who have examined the old files know that very many 
 of Whittier s poems appeared anonymously at first, and it 
 would have been inconsistent with his habits to acknowledge 
 the editing of an anthology which contained three or four 
 poems of his own. And, then, the printing of that " yEgypt " 
 poem probably gave him qualms afterwards. 
 
 Justice and Expediency. Whittier published his 
 pamphlet " Justice and Expediency " in June, 1833 (500 copies). 
 In September it appeared as No. 4 of Vol. I. of the " Anti- 
 slavery Reporter" (monthly), the organ of the American Anti- 
 slavery Society, and is advertised as for sale by the single 
 
APPENDIX. 323 
 
 copy or by the thousand. This is evidently the Tappan issue 
 of 5,000 copies. The " Anti-slavery Reporter " was merged 
 with an " American Anti-slavery Reporter," and the name 
 was afterwards revived by Lewis Tappan in the " American 
 and Foreign Anti-slavery Reporter," which Whittier helped 
 edit in 1840. 
 
 Notes. In 1856, C. H. Brainard, of Boston, published on 
 one sheet the portraits of Whittier, Seward, Sumner, John P. 
 Hale, H. W. Beecher, Salmon P. Chase, and Horace Greeley, 
 styling them the "Seven Champions of Freedom. Rather 
 an ill-assorted group ! Whittier s portrait occupies the place 
 of honor, in the centre. 
 
 Poems of Whittier especially autobiographic are " Burns," 
 " To J. T. F.," " My Birthday," " My Namesake," " My 
 Triumph," "My Playmate," and " Benedicite." 
 
 The first volume of that mild and dainty annual, the 
 " Liberty Bell," contains five stanzas by Whittier, which, like a 
 number of his early poems, he has wisely dropped. The last 
 remark applies to " Reflections of a Belle," in " Liberator," 
 Sept. 10, 1831 (quoted from " New England Weekly Review "), 
 to several pieces in " The Yankee," and early verses in his 
 "Legends of New England." The " Liberator," Sept. 2, 64, 
 has a letter by Whittier in defence of General Fremont, who 
 was nominated for the Presidency at same time with Lincoln. 
 Whittier cherishes the kindliest feelings for the old standard- 
 bearer of freedom in 56. 
 
 In 1846 Whittier published a poem on the Mexican War. 
 The entire piece is given in the " Literary World " of Boston, 
 March 22, 84. The following stanza is the only one of any 
 particular merit : 
 
 " Ghostly hands in Tenochitlan 
 
 Strike the old Aztec battle-drum ; 
 Sharp of beak and strong of talon, 
 Lo ! Mexitli s eagles come !" 
 
 The writer was told in Amesbury by a friend of Mr. Whit- 
 
324 APPENDIX. 
 
 tier s that his nephew, Mr. Pickard, was one day passing the 
 ash-barrel in the yard, when he noticed a roll of wet crumpled 
 manuscript. Smoothing it carefully out, he discovered to his 
 joy that it was the original draft of " Snow-Bound, " written on 
 fragments of paper pasted together. He spread it out in the 
 orchard to dry, but on returning after an hour s absence found 
 his treasure gone ! The poet himself had found it, and de 
 stroyed it. 
 
 For an inscription to be engraved below the cliff-carved 
 Indian of Preston Powers in Colorado, Mr. Whittier wrote in 
 1891 these strong lines: 
 
 " The eagle stooping from yon snow-blown peaks, 
 For the wild hunter and the bison seeks 
 In the changed world below, and finds alone 
 Their graven semblance in the eternal stone." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 " Abraham Davenport," 310. 
 
 "Advertiser, Boston," 196,198. 
 
 Allen, Ethan, 140. 
 
 Amesbury, 176. 
 
 Anti-slavery Convention of 33, 84-89. 
 
 "Apology," etc., poem (Concord, N. H.), 97, 98. 
 
 Armies of North, Songs sung in, 8. 
 
 "Atlantic Monthly," 7. 
 
 Bantum, the Quaker, 15. 
 
 " Barbara Frietchie," 232. 
 
 Barbour, John M., 183. 
 
 Bartlett, Wm. Francis, 119. 
 
 Batchelder, Stephen, 18. 
 
 Bearcamp, 174, 175. 
 
 Birthdays, 7oth, 195; 7$th, 196; 77th, 196; 80^,197,198; 
 
 82d, 199. 
 
 Birthplace, 37~39- 
 Boar s Head, 304, 305. 
 Bores, 193. 
 
 "Branded Hand," 117. 
 " Bridal of Pennacook," 310. 
 Bright, John, 203. 
 Brown, John, 135, 240, 252. 
 " Brown of Ossawatomie," 240, 252. 
 
326 INDEX. 
 
 " Brown Dwarf of Riigen," 276. 
 Browning, 115. 
 " Burial of Barber," 116. 
 Burleigh, Wm. A., 71 (note). 
 Burns, Robert, 41. 
 
 " Calef in Boston, 1692," 293. 
 
 Carriage Builders Association, 190. 
 
 " Cassandra Southwick," 287. 
 
 Chalkley, Thos., 103. 
 
 " Changeling, The," 304, 305. 
 
 Child, Lydia Maria, 70, 74, 133, 136. 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 77, 119 (note). 
 
 Clarke, Willis Gaylord, 56. 
 
 Coffin, Joshua, 39, 88. 
 
 " Conductor Bradley," 311. 
 
 Concord, N. H., mob, 91-96; poem on, 97. 
 
 Collyer, Robert, 41, 43, 171. 
 
 " Cry of a Lost Soul," 269. 
 
 Cushing, Caleb, 145. 
 
 Dzctamnus, 9. 
 
 Dom Pedro, 204, 269. 
 
 " Double-headed Snake," 301. 
 
 Downing, Hon. Geo. P., 83. 
 
 Egypt Exploration Fund, 190. 
 Emery, Mrs. Sarah, Reminiscences, 14. 
 Emerson, R. W., 201. 
 Emerson, Moses E., 49. 
 Everett, Edward, 99, 102. 
 " Exiles, The," 289. 
 
 Fields, Jas. T., 208. 
 Folsom, Abigail, 71 (note). 
 Foster, Stephen, 70. 
 Fullerton, Wm. M., 186 (note). 
 
INDEX. 327 
 
 Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 45-48, 62, 63, 67-69, 80; mobbed, 90; 
 
 in, 147-169, 207. 
 
 Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 128 (note). 
 " Garrison of Cape Ann," 297. 
 Garrison house, 36. 
 Goody Martin, 305, 306. 
 Goody Cole, 305, 306. 
 " Golden Wedding of Longwood," 311. 
 Grimke sisters, 104. 
 
 Hale, Edward Everett, 128. 
 Hall, Arethusa, 54, 55. 
 Haverhill Academy reunion, 196. 
 Hawthorne, 137, 202. 
 Hazard, Rowland G., 78. 
 Higginson, T. W., 1 10, 171. 
 Howitt, Mary, 23, 203. 
 Holmes, Dr. O. W., 201. 
 Hurd, Chas. E., 296. 
 Hutchinson family, 129, 130. 
 " Hymn of the Dunkers," 306. 
 
 " Ichabod," 113. 
 
 " In the Old South, " 291. 
 
 Ireson, Skipper, 226. 
 
 " John Underhill," 296. 
 
 " Justice and Expediency," 63-65. 
 
 " Kansas Emigrants" Song, 8, 127, 128. 
 
 Kallundborg Church, 274. 
 
 Kennedy, Wm. Sloane, Sr., 76 (note), 79. 
 
 Kelley, Abby, 70. 
 
 Kent, George, 93. 
 
 " King s Missive," 262. 
 
 " King Volmer and Elsie," 271. 
 
 Korner, 58. 
 
328 INDEX. 
 
 " Laus Deo," 134. 
 Liberty Party, 146-169. 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 130133. 
 Livermore, Rev. S. T., 29. 
 Livermore, Harriet, 29-36. 
 Longfellow, 73, 144, 200, 201. 
 Lord, Wm. W., 115. 
 Lowell, Jas. R. t 201, 205. 
 Lucknow, 254. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 70, 90. 
 
 McDuffie, poem to, 121, 123. 
 
 Mercy, Aunt, 22, 25, 26. 
 
 Mobs, 89-109. 
 
 " Mogg Megone," 62. 
 
 Moll Pitcher, 277. 
 
 Morse, Aunt, 15. 
 
 Mott, Lucretia, 88, 108, 159, 178. 
 
 " My Playmate," 296. 
 
 " National Era," 147. 
 
 Negroes, 80-84 ; burning of, 78 (note) ; blackballed, 81, 
 
 Oak Knoll, 176,179-186. 
 
 Palatine, 243. 
 
 Parrot, Whittier s, 192. 
 
 Pennsylvania Hall burned, 102-108. 
 
 Piatt, Gen. J. J., 134. 
 
 Pillsbury, Parker, 72. 
 
 " Pipes at Lucknow," 254. 
 
 Prang, Louis, 194. 
 
 " Prophecy of Samuel Sewall," 311. 
 
 "Quakers Are Out," 168. 
 Quakers in the War, 138, 139. 
 Quincy, Edmund, 162. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 " Rantoul," 119. 
 Rogers, N. P., 154. 
 Ronge, Jean, 120, 121. 
 
 Scotch dialect, poem in, by Whittier, 50. 
 
 Shaw, Col., 136. 
 
 " Song of the Vermonters," 140. 
 
 Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 12, 202 
 
 Stedman, E. C, 7. 
 
 Stanhope, Lady Hester, 31-35. 
 
 " Stanzas for the Times," 124-126. 
 
 Street, Hon. Jackson B., 52. 
 
 " Swan Song of Parson Avery," 298. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, 7, 204. 
 Thaxter, Celia, 12. 
 " Tent on the Beach," 7, 304. 
 " Telling the Bees," 220. 
 Thayer, Prof. J. B., no. 
 Thayer, Eli, 127, 128. 
 Thompson, George, 92, 96. 
 Turner, Bishop H. M., 82. 
 
 Underhill, John, 296. 
 
 Valdemar IV., 273. 
 
 " Vermonters, Song of The," 140. 
 
 Volmer, King, 273. 
 
 Walker, Capt. Jonathan, 117. 
 
 War, Whittier s attitude toward, 134-143. 
 
 Washington, George, 99-101. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 15, 18, 19, 56, 113-115. 
 
 Weld, Angelina, 104. 
 
 Weld, Theodore, 104. 
 
 Whipple, Edwin P., 7, 206. 
 
 White, George M., 16 (note), 173, 187. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 179, 199, 220, 244, 251. 
 
 329 
 
330 INDEX. 
 
 Whittier Club, 195. 
 
 Whittier, Elizabeth, 27, 28. 
 
 Whittier, John (the father), 24. 
 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, first school, 39; first loves, 40, 190, 
 191 ; Burns, 41-43 ; first poems, 44, 45, 46 ; as shoemaker, 
 48-50; at Haverhill Academy, 50-56 ; as editor, 59-62 ; at 
 tends anti-slavery convention of 33, 84-89 ; mobbed, 89-97, 
 102-108; poems of freedom, 109-133; songs by, sung in 
 Union armies, 8, 128-130 ; W. and war, 134-143 ; as lobbyist 
 and attender of conventions, 143-145; helps organize the 
 Free-Soil party, 146 ; political differences with Garrison, 
 146-169; London Convention, 1 55-162 plove of children, 
 191-193; bores, 193, 194; friends, chapter iv. ; correspond 
 ence destroyed, 208, 209; as Quaker, 210-214; religion, 
 214-217; on woman suffrage, 218. 
 
 Whittier, Mary, 26. 
 
 Whittier, Matthew Franklin, 24, 25. 
 
 Whittier, Mrs., 23, 
 
 Whittier, Uncle Moses, 26, 27. 
 
 Winther, Christian, 274. 
 
 Wingate, Rev. Chas., 53. 
 
 Woman suffrage, 218. 
 
 " Wreck of the Palatine," 243. 
 
 " Wreck of Rivermouth," 304. 
 
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