There never came to him an episode more rich in the humor in which his soul delighted than came through an invitation which he once received.
Sitting on the sofa in the garden room where so many in distinguished walks of life had paid honor to the poet, a young man from a neighboring town, a self-made man—so far as his creation had progressed, and, as the saying is, proud of his maker—discoursed with insistence concerning a Republican Convention to be held in the West, and urged the poet to accompany him there. In vain Whittier opposed his want of strength to meet such a strain, and gave other reasons also. As if the poet had not spoken, the other reiterated his arguments, and wound up with this climax:
“I know, Mr. Whittier,” urged this self-making young person to the man who as one of the founders of the Republican party was held by its leaders in especial honor, “that you are a very shy man and shrink from meeting strangers. But I shall be there to introduce you.”
As the poet told of this episode, his eyes shone with fun and his tone had an unction which he would not allow his words to express.
Whittier’s delight in fun was to him the sunshine of his many dreary winter days. It is told of him that, in his thirties, he one day walked into the old Rocky Hill school house at Salisbury Point while the school was in session, and to the astonishment of the children and the amusement of the teacher who afterward explained to them that this was John Greenleaf Whittier, he sat himself down on the little low seat in front—the dunce’s seat, or the rogue’s seat as it was then called—a bench which in his boyhood he could never have occupied.
Who knows that the poem, “In School Days,” which he wrote so long afterward did not come into his heart at that time?
IX
When after Whittier’s morning writing at the desk by the French window in the garden room, the desk on which were written “Snow-Bound,” “The Tent on the Beach,” and other well-loved poems, the poet rested, did he go to the woods, to the fields, to the streams he loved so well? Undoubtedly, he did sometimes. But his walks afield were more frequently afternoon strolls. He lived before the days of the postman. His morning mail was waiting for him at the office, and although sometimes he sent for it, he more frequently went himself, and rested from his poems by neighborly chats. On poetry? Hardly—in the post office, or the grocery store!