“I am a Quaker because my family before me—those whom I loved—were Quakers,” he said one day to his guest who had accompanied him to the Friends’ meeting and on returning sat in the garden room listening to his comments. “And also I am one because the faith pleases me,” he continued. “I believe in it.”
In the May of 1886, only six years before his death, the poet wrote:
“I hope thee are able to enjoy this beautiful springtime better than I can. I have been laid up with a cold for the last fortnight, and I have reached an age when I cannot afford to take cold at all. I hope to be able to go to Amesbury in season for Quarterly Meeting which I have never missed.”
He had never missed the Quarterly Meeting of the Friends—he at almost forescore and having always been so delicate in health!
It was wonderful that Whittier with his delicate health, his many illnesses, his extreme sensitiveness, even to the winds of heaven when they did not blow from the right quarter, should have fought through and helped to win a great battle for the freedom of millions of human beings.
Still more wonderful was it that he should have lived for almost a generation after this was won, to enjoy the fruits of his victory and of his genius. In 1883 he said in a letter:
“Many years ago a Boston doctor of eminence told me that I had disease of the heart. But if that had been so, I should not have been alive now.”
More than the absence of positive disease, however, upheld his strength. It was that constant renewal of vital force which comes from living in the Spirit, united with that same wise judgment in the management of his frail body that marked his course in all matters.