One day there came to visit him at Oak Knoll a widely traveled man. Whittier talked with him concerning the many nations and races his guest had seen; for his last experiences had been among the Asiatics. The poet with deepest interest questioned him of the aim and character in its broadest lines of those he had known. As the two talked, one broadened by travel and personal intercourse with many peoples, the other by power of intellect and especially by love of God and of men, differences of race and creed and nationality fell away from the eyes of both, like the calyx from the opening flower. They saw that in the hearts of all men bloomed deathless humanity, making the men of the East at one in all essentials with men in Massachusetts, or anywhere else—that invincible humanity oversweeping all minor differences.
As Whittier relating the conversation to the writer, repeated this testimony, he gave it great weight, as another evidence of the oneness of all human beings, and of that brotherhood which one day is to be realized by us.
He was deeply interested in the poem which he sent Dr. Bowditch, that Eastern poem of Edwin Arnold’s, beginning,
“He who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all his friends,”
to comfort them with the voice of one who having passed beyond this life, finds himself still dwelling in life—not in death.
“When I come to Amesbury,” said Whittier in one of his letters, “I shall bring some books for the Library” [the Amesbury Public Library].
He added: “I got a mayflower over three weeks ago from Pennsylvania. I don’t suppose the Folly-Mill flowers will bloom for a month or more.” The mayflowers in “the woods of Folly-Mill,” a few miles from the poet’s home, were very abundant and beautiful.