Yet when in pursuance of his object, the success of the anti-slavery movement, or helping to plan and organize that party to which slavery owed its downfall, no one could navigate the troubled waters of politics and tack to fill the sails or avoid the flaws with more skill than Whittier. The power to manipulate men he had to a degree that would have made him dangerous but for his high principle. For with him honor was always first.
He never lost interest in politics in its highest sense, nor failed in his part as freeman and patriot. In 1883 he wrote:
“I have been ill almost ever since the first of September. I managed to go to the Convention at Boston and staid only long enough to vote for Robinson, after which I was ill and sleepless for four days and nights——more than one hundred and twenty hours in all. I am now somewhat better and shall go to Amesbury this week.”
XVI
In the long winter evenings when the poet’s niece was away at boarding school and storm or some other cause for dearth of visitors had left him and his housekeeper alone together, and his eyes would not permit him to read, or, perhaps when he strove to banish care and pain and the memory of his loss, he would sometimes entertain himself and this Scotswoman with stories.
The more absurd these were, the better for him. On occasions they were witch stories, the most horrible New England legends that memory could recall from his extensive reading and his imagination color with new vividness. In the telling of them, manner, tone, words—all would combine to make her flesh creep and her hair stand on end.
At last she would laugh.
Then he would turn upon her with assumed severity. “Margaret, don’t thee believe it?”
“Did you see it, Mr. Whittier?” she would demand, concerning some marvellous vision of the unknown upon which he had been dilating.