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Sometimes the poet did not see his friends and acquaintances upon the street, or he was too absorbed in a poem—or, alas it may have been with a headache—to give sign of recognition. Yet to a neighbor who one day laughingly accused him of “cutting” her, he spoke of the two persons whom he never failed to recognize, whatever his preoccupation—one an old cooper, the other an old lame man, both of whom through their poverty found many persons blind to them.
But, again, sometimes Whittier’s eyes served him well. One morning coming out of the post-office, he saw the doctor driving past and the two stopped to greet one another. Then, as the interview seemed finished and the doctor was about to drive on again, the poet said in an undertone:
“Don’t thee go yet. There’s So-and-So,” naming a bore, “waiting for me. Let him get by first.”
So the poet and the doctor’s carriage stood in the road until Mr. “So-and-So” grew tired of waiting and took himself off.
Occasionally, a visitor who happened to be in the garden room when the poet returnedfrom the post-office was treated to tidbits from his mail. One day he read aloud a letter from a woman of brilliant literary fame and brilliant personality. She announced that she was coming to visit him.
“She is one of the most easily entertained visitors I ever have,” he commented, “for I don’t have to answer her; I don’t get a chance!” And as he laughed, he knew well that, had the writer of the letter heard him, she would have had her retort ready. For when did Gail Hamilton ever fail of a good retort? “Now, what does she send that to an old fellow like me for?” he went on, holding out a snip of her new gown which for his edification she had inclosed in her letter.
She told him also where she was about to visit and added her request for a letter from him, or for a few words, or for merely his name, so that in a moment of abstraction she could draw the envelope from her pocket as by accident, and drop it back again with the remark, “Ah, a letter from Whittier!”
The poet in speaking to a friend about his comprehension of character, told how he sometimes regretted this ability. She responded that at times she also read people better than she liked.
“So do I, Mrs. S——,” he answered eagerly. “I read them too well.” His sensitive organization which vibrated to the least change in the winds of heaven, vibrated also to human emotions and passions in others.
And yet here his kindness did not fail him; nor when face to face with evil, did he rebuke the evil-doer with any consciousness of superior personal merit. Instead, he appealed from the evil in evidence to the good in reserve.
As when one morning in the garden room he listened to an amazing proposition, namely—that his visitor should write the poetry, which the poet was assured by the speaker the latter could do fluently, and that Whittier should put his name to it, which would make it sell, and that the two should share the profits!
The poet showed no anger at the suggestion of linking his name with doggerel, or contempt for the other’s stupendous conceit. It was the deceit which he attacked.
“Thee is a minister of the Gospel,” he answered the man. “Now, does thee think it would be right to do a thing like that?”