“I go to Amesbury this week,” wrote the poet from Oak Knoll in one of his later years, “to attend our Quarterly Meeting there [the Quarterly Meeting of the Friends]. “I have not been very well this spring; but the east winds must be nearly over and I hope I shall feel better.”
“I suppose we all need to feel our weakness and dependence upon our Father,” he added, in answer to his correspondent, “and that it is well for us to find ourselves walking the Valley of Humiliation; but I like the hills and the sunshine, after all.” And the hills and the sunshine of joy were what he liked to lead others to when he could.
With his invincible diffidence as to his own work, he spoke of “My poem in the ‘Atlantic,’” deprecating its merit but referring to it as a sad revelation of “the old time.”
He had written before in the same strain of another of his poems there.
One day there came to him at Oak Knoll a person who had known him long and well but had recently done something thoughtlessly with which she afterward perceived that he had reason to be offended. She had come to him resolved to tell him of it, and believing that, since he was so kind, this would not be hard to do.
But it was hard; and as after the greeting she sat listening and saying little, the sense of her own mistake grew upon her. How could she bear it if he should lose confidence, even in her judgment?
“There is something I have done in regard to you, Mr. Whittier,” she began at last——“and I’m afraid you’ll be angry with me,” she added with a new fearfulness.
Instantly, he turned his face from the fire into which he had been gazing and looked at her. He read all her fears. His whole face softened. His flashing eyes met hers.
“I shall not be angry long,” he answered; and was silent, waiting.