He flashed his glance about the station; then with the young woman in tow, hurried to the telegraph office, seized a pen, dashed off his autograph, walked swiftly to his train, and in another moment was being whirled onward.
That must have been one of the occasions when his hand smote his knee in keen appreciation of the episode.
Although Whittier never perpetrated matrimony, he was far from being like the melancholy Jacques, and much enjoyed looking at happiness through other men’s eyes—and through women’s too.
He was vastly amused at the man who complained to him because a certain young relative of the poet would persist in quitting the room by one door at the moment he entered it by another.
“The woman ought to do her part!” quoted the poet with great gusto from the plaint of the complainer who was too dense to read the significant scorn of the lady’s conduct to him.
A mother boasted to him that she had never done anything to have her daughters married.
“But thee ought,” retorted the poet.
When one day a young man had come with a span of fine horses and carried off one of his nieces to drive, Whittier commented on the event in his most humorous vein. He didn’t think she cared for the young man in the least, he said. The span was the attraction. As for what her uncle thought of her going, she cared nothing at all. He didn’t know what he could do about it—except find a young man with three horses!