CHAPTER XII

THE END OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE

Before closing this short biography we must refer briefly to one or two interesting anecdotes and circumstances. Whittier was color-blind, at least as to red and green. He could see no difference between the color of ripe strawberries and the leaves of the vine. Yellow he thought the finest color in the world, and perhaps for this reason he preferred the golden-rod.

When the Peace Jubilee was to be celebrated after the Civil War, Patrick S. Gilmore, the famous bandmaster, asked Whittier to write an ode for the occasion. He declined, and then Gilmore offered a prize to the poet who would contribute the best one. Whittier thought he would write one and send it anonymously. No notice was taken of it. Some people will point a moral to this tale by saying, “See what a reputation is!”

Whittier was very fond of pets. Once he had a gray parrot. It was trained on shipboard and would swear occasionally; but it soon fell into the quiet ways of its home. One Sunday morning, however, it got on top of the chimney while the church bells were ringing, and began to dance and scream and swear, while the poor Quakers inside the house came out and looked helplessly up at him, wondering how they would get him down. After that he fell down the chimney and remained in the soot two days. When he was discovered and taken out he was nearly starved, and died not long after.

Whittier also had a little bantam rooster which he trained to crow when he placed it at the door of his niece’s room in the morning. Every morning Whittier would push open her door and put the rooster on top of it; and the little fowl would crow lustily until his young mistress was quite awake.

One day not long after the war the Whittiers received a small box, and on opening it they were astonished to see little spikes sticking out all over. Whittier’s niece at once guessed it must be an infernal machine, and took it out and buried it in the garden. A few days after there came a letter saying a paperweight, made out of the bullets from a famous battlefield, had been sent. Then they knew it must be the thing they thought an infernal machine, and went and dug it up; and after that it always stood on the poet’s desk.

During the time of the war, Gail Hamilton, a friend of Whittier’s, embroidered a pair of slippers for him. They were in Quaker gray, but on them was pictured a fierce eagle, with a bunch of thunderbolts in one claw. He was looking knowingly around, as much as to say that if he got a good chance when nobody was looking, he would hurl those thunderbolts. This was intended as a joke on Whittier, who was a Quaker and opposed to war, but still had a good deal of the warlike spirit in him ready to break out at any moment. Whittier used to say, referring to the slippers, that Gail Hamilton was as sharp with her needle as with her tongue.

On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Whittier was given a great dinner at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston. Nearly all the famous writers of the day were present. When it came the poet’s turn to respond to the address of congratulation, he said Longfellow would read a short poem he had written. He handed a paper to that poet, who read the response.

After that, his birthdays were celebrated more or less regularly, and often Whittier had to make great efforts to escape the “pilgrims” who came to Amesbury to see him. Once a party of boys from Exeter Academy started over to visit him and get his autograph. By accident they were delayed, and when they reached his house it was the dead of night and the poet was in bed. He got up, however, and gave them hospitality, writing in all their books. Before he had finished, one of the boys said, “You have written only John in my book.”

“I am afraid some of you haven’t even got as much as that,” said he drily, and took up the candle and went off to bed.

He died on the 7th of September, 1892, at the house of some friends in New Hampshire, with whom he was staying.

We cannot close this account of the life of the dearest and sweetest of poets better than by quoting his own words about himself:

And while my words are read, Let this at least be said: “Whate’er his life’s defeatures, He loved his fellow-creatures.

...

“To all who humbly suffered, His tongue and end he offered; His life was not his own, Nor lived for self alone.

“Hater of din and riot, He lived in days unquiet; And, lover of all beauty, Trod the hard ways of duty.

“He meant no wrong to any, He sought the good of many, Yet knew both sin and folly,— May God forgive him wholly!”

Also these lines from “My Soul and I”:

I have wrestled stoutly with the wrong, And borne the right From beneath the footfall of the throng To life and light.

Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, God speed, quoth I; To Error amidst her shouting train I gave the lie.

NOTE.—The thanks of the publishers are due Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for their kind permission to use selections from the copyrighted works of Whittier.

THE STORY OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

[Illustration: _OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES_]

HOLMES