“No,” he would confess. “But they told me it was so.”
And he would join in her mirth.
To this never failing sense of humor Whittier owned somewhat of the clearness of his mental outlook, and much of his power of retort.
But there is something infinitely touching in this trying to make the best of things as he sat by his lonely fireside with the world applauding him.
In the winter of 1866-67, being detained in Boston by a very severe snow-storm, he wrote to this same housekeeper: “I’m waiting for proofs of ‘Tent on the Beach.’ Live sumptuously; patronize the butcher and baker; and take good care of Charlie [the parrot]; and I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
On his arrival a few days later he greeted her with: “Well, Margaret, I’ve been ‘snow bound.’”
“Yes,” she answered him. “I don’t know but you’ll have to write another ‘Snow Bound.’”
Thought carried him to that loved room where there looked down upon him from the walls the pictured faces of his mother and his sister with, to his imagination, somewhat of the gaze of the far-away reality. He answered her with a sadness in his tone that she never forgot. “There’d be only thee and Charlie and the cat to write about,” he said.