“Mr. Whittier, we should be so glad to have you come to breakfast”—or dinner, or tea, as the case might be—“if you are able to come, if you are well; but do just as you feel about it.” Then would follow often the announcement that some other interesting guest was to be present. “Do just as you please, Mr. Whittier,” the messenger of the would-be hostess would always add anxiously; “but we shall be so glad to see you.”
The poet never promised. If he were tied, his headache would be sure to find him out; so, this method was taken as a charm to outwit the fiend. Quite often it was successful, and the poet would be on hand promptly. At other times the family having waited until it was believed that he was not coming, would sit down to table, when the doorbell would ring and Mr. Whittier appear. At such times he perhaps had a headache but had decided that it would be no worse there than at home. And having been free from obligation, and come because it was his own wish, he was delightful. To listen to him was an education—as to listen to him in the garden room when he talked in his deepest moods, and often then to one hearer, was an inspiration.
His unsolicited visits also made red-letter days. Sometimes on his way home from his customary walk to the post office in the morning, or in the evening, he would take the street leading past the house of some friend. Word would be tossed about from one to another, “There’s Mr. Whittier! Is he coming in?” And eager eyes would watch his movements. “Oh, he’s going by!” in accents of deep disappointment—“No, he’s coming in!” in jubilant tones.
And the visit would be one to be remembered.
It was upon some such occasion that the poet eagerly caught up a remark by his hostess, that people liked a good listener.
“Yes, that’s it, Mrs. S——,” he said, “a good listener.”
For the poet was quite able to talk, and he liked to do it.
It was Whittier’s habit to put on his hat when he chanced to answer the doorbell. This might have been on account of his neuralgia and the northwest wind which often swept freely down the street, or—what was worse to him—the east wind which swept up it and into the doorway. Or else, being uncertain who his visitor might be, he would possibly find it convenient to appear to be going out. But whatever had been his reason for donning the hat, upon most occasions it was promptly laid aside and the visitor was cordially invited to enter. This visitor was perhaps a neighbor, or friend, or both in one—or a stranger who thus spending an hour with the poet, forever afterward cherished a happy memory.