Here—one of these guests, as speaker at the Midsummer Meeting of the Association—came Calvin Coolidge, the summer before his election as Governor of Massachusetts, and bore testimony to his appreciation of Whittier as poet and man.
Here pilgrims from all parts of the country and from all lands are welcomed. From here they depart with new knowledge of the poet in his own home and greater appreciation of the man whose life of self-sacrificing service prepared him for the utterance of that last message of his—“Love to the world.”
In Amesbury also “The Elizabeth H. Whittier Club” keeps alive memory and thoughts of Whittier and of that dear sister of his, his cherished companion, and, like him, a poet.
It is fitting that this club should be also “The Woman’s Club” of Amesbury. For Elizabeth Whittier in spite of all her retiring gentleness was quick to exhibit at need that devotion to the right and that courage of her convictions which must be the guiding influence of the womanhood, the inspirer and companion of manhood in his best achievements.
XXV
Shortly before the marriage of his niece Lizzie to Mr. Pickard in the April of 1876, Whittier in a letter to Mrs. F——, expressing pleasure at hearing from her and sending her the requested autographs, announced:
“I am not going to give up my residence in Amesbury. But I expect to spend some time with my cousins at their delightful home, Oak Knoll, in Danvers. Lizzie sends love. She is busy with her preparations for a change of base.”
Soon after her marriage he said in a letter from Oak Knoll to his old friend, M—— C——:
“I have felt rather lonesome since, but am pretty sure it is all for the best.... I went to Boston to the Convention to choose delegates to Cincinnati a week ago yesterday. We elected the men I wanted. The next day I came out here, and found violets and anemones and bloodroot in bloom and the lawn green with grass. Day before yesterday I spent with the Sewalls at Melrose to meet Mrs. Pitman and Mrs. Childs. I had a delightful time. I am now suffering with a cold brought on by the bitter east wind. I long for the south-east ones. M—— P—— A letter from Whittier to the writer in the April of 1881—an extract from which Mr. Pickard published in his biography of the poet—says: