PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF AMERICA'S

SEVEN GREAT POETS.

PART III.

I. SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF WHITTIER, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS, BY REV.

CHRISTOPHER COFFIN HUSSEY.

There are friendships which do not depend upon length of acquaintance or frequency of meeting. Such was that which existed between the poet Whittier and myself. Being, like him, a member by birth of the Society of Friends, and admiring him through his poems, yet we had no per-. sonal intercourse prior to the summer of 1859, when we were both in attendance at the Friends' yearly meeting at Newport.

The condition of the Society at that time created unusual interest, and acquaintance would ripen rapidly between a thinker like Whittier and a minister in the Society, especially if the two were in sympathy on the questions in agitation. The Friends had never been a theological people; personal righteousness and obedience to the divine light had from the first been the cardinal points of belief and preaching. About the year 1825, under the leadership of an influential minister, this doctrine of the inner light was given increased prominence. This led to a division of the body in America. As is the result of all separations, the divided bodies grew apart. What proved to be the somewhat smaller party were called Hicksites; the other body became gradually known as the Orthodox. In New England the latter were so largely in preponderance that virtually no separation took place, and so all who were members there found themselves, whatever their personal sympathies, allied with Orthodox Friends.

Such were the conditions at the time of my first meeting with Whittier, and partly because of this our friendship commenced, as it continued, on the religious side of life mostly. The Orthodox leaning was on the increase in New England, and there were in attendance at this yearly meeting prominent ministers who brought out extreme forms of Calvinistic doctrine, which were extremely trying to Whittier as to many others.

On the last evening of the meeting's sitting he and I talked long, and he gave a full expression of dissent from the prevailing tendencies.

I said that I saw no way as a minister but to leave the Society.

He quickly replied, "No, thee must not; this is not legitimate Quakerism; it will pass over."

"I fear not," I replied.

It was near midnight when we parted.

Years after, alluding to this conversation he said, "Thy fears were a truer prophecy than my hopes."

After several years, during which we knew comparatively little of each other, I was driving with my family to Hampton, and took Amesbury as our stopping-place for the night. After tea, accompanied by my daughter, I called on my old friend. In becoming the regular incumbent of a pulpit, I had put myself in a position heretical to an old-time Quaker. I said to the servant, "I will not send my name; say, an old friend." As Whittier came into the study, I remembered my change from the dress in which he had always seen me, and as he paused an instant, I said, "Does thee know me, John?" "To be sure, I know thee"; and in his own hearty way, and with loving words of welcome, he caused all fears of what years of change might have wrought to vanish, and we were one again in spirit launched on a delightful talk. As we rose to leave, my daughter drew from its concealment her autograph album, saying, "I have so often heard my father speak of thee, and have so loved thy poems, that I have a favor to ask of thee." "I know what it is, pass it along"; and stepping to his desk, he wrote:

Faith shares the future's promise. Love's
Self offering is a triumph won;

And each good thought or action moves
The dark world nearer to the sun.

After this we met as frequently as circumstances allowed. On one occasion, accompanied by a valued friend who had much desired to meet Whittier, I went to the old family house of "Snow-Bound" fame. It was an ideal day for such a visit.

All day the gusty north wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before,

Low circling round its southern zone

The sun through dazzling snow mist shone.

*Friends do not use the term Mr. and Mrs. in addressing one another, but either use the first name or say friend, a custom that Mr. Whittier and myself always retained.

We saw the chamber where the poet tells of his sleeping

in boyhood.

Within our beds awhile we heard

The wind that round the gables roared
With now and then a ruder shock
Which made our very bedsteads rock;
But sleep stole on as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new.

We stood by the great fireplace where,

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat

The frost line back with tropic heat.

On our return to Whittier's study, I asked him if the group of which the poem speaks were all real characters, and if any were left now. "Yes, they were real characters, but I, alone, am left"; adding, with pathos, "And that is the penalty of living to be old." Encouraged by questions, he talked on of several of the group.

Our mother while she turned the wheel,
Or run the new-knit stocking heel,
Told how the Indian horde came down,
At midnight on Cocheco town.

Of the sister whose early loss he deeply felt,

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean.
Upon the motley braided mat

Our youngest and our dearest sat,

Lifting her large sweet asking eyes,

Now bathed within the fadeless green

And holy peace of paradise.

Next, the dear Aunt, whose smile of cheer

And voice in dream I see and hear,

The sweetest woman ever fate

Perverse denied a household mate,

Who lonely, homeless, not the less

Found peace in love's unselfishness.

And so we talked on. At length the afternoon, all too short, was spent. As we were about to leave, our friend was called from the room a moment. In his absence my companion said, "I much want Mr. Whittier's autograph, but I hesitate about asking for it." I said, "I will open the way." The response was hearty. Stepping to the desk, the

following sentiment was written and is cherished as a precious memento.

For whatsoever here is wrong, I crave
Forgiveness; and if aught be found

of flower or healing leaf where weeds abound,
Let me not rudely claim

As mine the gifts the Heavenly Father gave,
Nor, without guilty shame,

From undeservèd blessings frame

A heathen altar for the idol Fame!

The next meeting with my poet friend that is prominent in memory was on a summer Sabbath day. I was stopping with my family near Amesbury and proposed to attend meeting there, learning that Whittier was at home. As we drew near the meeting house, we overtook him, and stepping from my carriage I took his arm and we went into meeting together. After a little time of silence-once the prevailing habit of Friends, and always beautiful--there was speaking. I took part in it, quoting, as I closed, from one of Whittier's poems. I saw he was moved, and when he and I were walking to his house, he said, "Surely the Lord sent thee to us to-day." I quote this because of the significance of his way of putting it; it was in accordance with the Friends' idea that the spring of all true ministry is not in the preacher himself, but in the power of the divine Spirit. The most I ever heard in my boyhood of comment on preaching was, "Friend B was favored to-day."

Years have passed since that summer's day, but the fragrance of the hour of quiet worship, of the walk to the poet's study, of the few moments passed there, and of the impressive parting can never be lost.

There was the secret sense

Of all things sweet and fair,
And beauty's gracious providence
Refreshed us unaware.

It is the case sometimes that we most reveal ourselves without the use of words. An instance of this occurred with my friend, the significance of which caused it to be remembered. We were attending a Friends' quarterly meeting, when a minister who was an extremist in the modern Quaker evangelical tendencies said: "Friends, it is not by obedience to an inward light, as so many amongst us have been saying, but by faith in the atoning blood of Christ shed on Calvary, that we are to be saved." The utterance was so at variance with the accepted belief of Friends, and so shocked my