As a coincidence that was at the time considered singular, the superstition in regard to the matter of thirteen at table was recalled when Whittier dined for the last time with his friends. During the summer he had lodged at the house of Miss Gove, taking his meals with others of his party in a house adjoining. One evening all had taken their places at the table except Mr. Whittier. His niece noticed there were twelve seated, and without comment took her plate to a small table in a corner of the room. When her uncle came in, he said in a cheery way, "Why, Lizzie, what has thee been doing, that they put thee in the corner?" Some evasive reply was made, but probably Mr. Whittier guessed the reason, for he was well versed in such superstitions, and sometimes laughingly heeded them. In a few minutes, Mr. Wakeman, the Baptist clergyman of the village, just returned from his summer vacation, came in unexpectedly, and took the thirteenth seat that had just been vacated. Whittier's grandnephew, to again break the omen, took his plate over to the table in the corner with his mother. It was all done in a playful way, but the matter was recalled while we were at breakfast next morning. The news then came of the paralysis which had affected Mr. Whittier while dressing to join us. He never again came to the dining room. Another incident of the same evening was more impressive, and remains to this day inexplicable. After sitting for a while in the parlor conversing with friends, he took his candle to retire, and as he said "Goodnight" to his friends, and passed out of the door, an old clock (the clock over the desk) struck once! It had not been wound up for years, and as no one present had ever before heard it strike, it excited surprise—the more so as the hands were not in position for striking. It was an incident that had a marked effect upon a party little inclined to heed omens; and in many ways, without success, we tried to get the clock to strike once more.
AMESBURY PUBLIC LIBRARY
A beautiful little lake in the northern part of Amesbury, formerly known as Kimball's Pond, is the scene of "The Maids of Attitash." Its present name was conferred by Whittier because huckleberries abound in this region, and Attitash is the Indian name for this berry. His poem pictures the maidens with "baskets berry-filled," watching
... "in idle mood
The gleam and shade of lake and wood."
In a letter to the editor of "The Atlantic" inclosing this ballad, he says of Attitash: "It is as pretty as St. Mary's Lake which Wordsworth sings, in fact a great deal prettier. The glimpse of the Pawtuckaway range of mountains in Nottingham seen across it is very fine, and it has noble groves of pines and maples and ash trees." A trolley line from Amesbury to Haverhill passes this lake; but this is not the line which passes the Whittier birthplace.
Annually, in the month of May, the Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends is held at Amesbury, and during the fifty-six years of Mr. Whittier's residence in the village, this was an occasion on which he kept open house, and wherever he happened to be, he came home to enjoy the company of friends, giving up all other engagements. He could not be detained in Boston or Danvers, or wherever else he might be, when the time for this meeting approached. It was an annual event in which his mother and sister took much interest, and after they passed away, the custom was maintained with the same spirit of hospitality with which they had invested it, to the last year of his life.
Among Mr. Whittier's neighbors was an aged pair, a brother and sister, whose simple, old-fashioned ways and quaint conversation he much enjoyed. He thought they worked harder than they had need to do, as the infirmities of age fell upon them, for they had accumulated a competency, and on one occasion he suggested that they leave for younger hands some of the labor to which they had been accustomed. But the sister said, "We must lay by something for our last sickness, and have enough left to bury us." Whittier replied, "Mary, did thee ever know any one in his last sickness to stick by the way for want of funds?" The beautiful public library of Amesbury was built with the money of this aged pair, whose will was made at the suggestion of Whittier. Part of the money Whittier left to hospitals and schools would have been given to this library, had he not known that it was provided for by his generous neighbors.