XIII
The poet’s well-known fondness for young people was not more marked in later life than in his Amesbury days. There was a group of these young people whom he used to call his “boys and girls,” and in whose achievements and successes he felt the greatest interest. His influence over them was not due wholly to that in his character which commanded their admiration, or even to his fun and power of repartee. It came largely from his sympathy with them, his ability to see things from their point of view. And who so well as he brimming over with humor and wit, could enter into and direct their fun? One of this adopted family has recalled when several of them sat in the garden room, each merrily declaring what he or she would do with a fortune, if that would only befall.
“I should put thirty thousand dollars in the bank for John G. Whittier,” declared the poet promptly—thirty thousand dollars being at that time a much larger sum than it is today. “And I should buy M—— [the daughter of his married sister and very fond of pretty gowns] ten new dresses!” And he laughed with his listeners.
To a member of this same group, the one to whom he had given the lilies on the train, heone day made a prediction. She had told him she was going to Centre Harbor, then a famous resort.
“Are thee going alone?” he asked her. She was; but she was to meet a cousin there. “Thee’ll lose thy way,” he said. And when she asserted that she never did that, he persisted, “Thee’ll lose thy trunk at Dover.”
And she actually did!
It is to Whittier that Lucy Larcom refers in her poem about the child,
“Pouring out cups of invisible tea,” and says,“Yonder a poet sits chained at thy feet.”
“Pouring out cups of invisible tea,” and says,“Yonder a poet sits chained at thy feet.”
“Pouring out cups of invisible tea,” and says,“Yonder a poet sits chained at thy feet.”
“Pouring out cups of invisible tea,” and says,
“Yonder a poet sits chained at thy feet.”
This was literally true, for the writer coming that day into the garden room, found him seated on the floor with the baby daughter of a relative, entertaining his young visitor and being entertained while Miss Larcom looked on smiling.
To one of these young friends to whom he used to talk of many things in Heaven and on earth, he once said: “Thy conscience stands in thy way.”
“I don’t see what I can do,” she retorted. “I can’t get rid of it. I suppose I shall have to let it stand.”
To this he readily assented. His remark may have been a test.
To waken a dormant power, to teach an unfledged thought to take wing and fly boldly, to turn stray impulses into steady purpose for good, to stimulate youthful promise to become the worthy performance of maturity, to break the chains of ignorance and prejudice, as he had helped to break the iron chains of the slave, was not only delight to Whittier, it was one of the objects for which he lived. The men and women who knew him in their youth and who are still living have rich memories of words fitly spoken by which he opened their eyes to opportunities hitherto unseen, turned their thoughts into new channels and stimulated them to nobler performance.
“I like thy courage and perseverance,” he wrote to a young friend entering the path of literature, “and what thee say of sometime writing out thy heart as if nobody were to read and comment upon it. I suspect that is the true way; and there are passages in thy letter which are better than thee dare to print.”
One of his young friends in whose latent literary powers he had faith and whom stress of circumstances had brought into financialdifficulties, one day came to see him. Another visitor interrupted their conversation and Mr. Whittier did not get the opportunity to say to her what he would have liked to say.
The poet, however, was a man of resources. The way of speech being blocked, he took the path of suggestion. He made her a gift of some new pens—“to try.”
But the poet who gathered this circle of young people about him, holding them by the charm of his personality, who said that the way to keep young was to be with the young, who delighted in youth even to the last, giving evidence in himself that age is but the youth of immortality, was yet to youth, as he was to maturity, a leader—his judgment, not theirs, dominated.
This was the case one autumn day as he sat in the garden room smilingly listening to the pleadings of a bright and interesting member of that large family of his “boys and girls.”
She wanted the poet to put his autograph at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper, that something might be written over it. She most carefully specified what this was to be. There had been a joke about something that had taken place in the summer when both had been at the mountains, and, not herself, but some one else,was to write this page. But she vouched for exactly what it should be.
Mr. Whittier laughingly turned her from the point. Until at last she rose to leave. He accompanied her to the door. The writer seems still to see the girl standing on the doorstep and looking with a laugh, and yet a coaxing, into the face of the poet as she reiterated her plea—and to see him from the threshold gazing down upon her, enjoying the light in her clear brown eyes and the saucy tilt of her head, and answering with exceeding gravity of tone:
“My name is not worth anything, now that the Eastern Railroad stocks have gone so low.”
Then both laughed. And the visitor departed—without the autograph.
In Amesbury lived also the “Jettie” at whose challenge that he had never written a love poem, Whittier wrote “The Henchman.” It was of her the poet sang:
“To Jettie for her dancing nights,Slippers dropped from Northern lights.”
“To Jettie for her dancing nights,Slippers dropped from Northern lights.”
“To Jettie for her dancing nights,Slippers dropped from Northern lights.”
“To Jettie for her dancing nights,
Slippers dropped from Northern lights.”
Young friends in his own town, and some of them members of his party in summer places, with their merry young voices and laughter helped the poet to many a pleasant hour—althoughit is safe to say that he always did his share in securing these.
He questioned laughingly a young girl giving an account of a lecture upon “Chivalry” to which she had just been listening.
“How would thee like,” he said, “to have a knight roaming around the world doing exploits in thy name?”
She retorted that unless he went to serve his country she would prefer to have him stay at home. To this he responded at once:
“Thy father [in service of his fellow-men] is a better knight-errant than any in those days.”
A child of ten years whose home was on the beautiful Merrimac River, a mile from the poet’s house, one day shyly left her tribute of loving reverence for him at his door. To her came the following note:
“John G. Whittier is greatly indebted to his young friend, Grace M——, for her beautiful gift of flowers. It is doubly welcome at this inclement season and she has his thanks and best wishes. Amesbury, 3rd mo, 29, 1883.”