"A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense."
When a mere girl, she fell in love with a young gentleman of East Haverhill, but the parents of both families opposed the match, and were not to be moved by her honeyed words of persuasion or by her little gifts. The poet says she often visited at his father's home, "and had at one time an idea of becoming a member of the Society of Friends; but an unlucky outburst of rage, resulting in a blow, at a Friend's house in Amesbury, did not encourage us to seek her membership." She embraced the Methodist Perfectionist doctrine, and one day strenuously maintained that she was incapable of sinning. But a few minutes afterward she burst out into a violent passion about something or other. Her opponent could only say to her, "Christian, thou hast lost thy roll." She became an itinerant preacher, and spoke in the meetings of various sects in different parts of the country. She made three voyages to Jerusalem. Says one: "At one time we find her in Egypt, giving our late consul, Mr. Thayer, a world of trouble from her peculiar notions. At another we see her amid the gray olive slopes of Jerusalem, demanding, not begging, money for the Great King [God]. And once when an American, fresh from home, during the late rebellion, offered her a handful of greenbacks, she threw them away with disdain, saying, 'The Great King will only have gold.' She once climbed the sides of Mt. Libanus, and visited Lady Stanhope,—that eccentric sister of the younger Pitt, who married a sheik of the mountains,—and thus had a fine opportunity of securing the finest steeds of the Orient. Going to the stable one day, Lady Hester pointed out to Harriet Livermore two very fine horses, with peculiar marks, but differing in color. 'That one,' said Lady Hester, 'the Great King when he comes will ride, and the other I will ride in company with him.' Thereupon Miss Livermore gave a most emphatic 'no!' declaring with foreknowledge and aplomb that 'the Great King will ride this horse, and it is I, as his bride, who will ride upon the other at his second coming.' It is said she carried her point with Lady Hester, overpowering her with her fluency and assertion."
To pass now to the boy-poet himself. An old friend and schoolmate of his, in Haverhill, told the author that Whittier, instead of doing sums on his slate at school, was always writing verses, even when a little lad. His first schoolmaster was Joshua Coffin, afterward the historian of Newbury. Another master of his was named Emerson. To Coffin, Whittier has written a poetical epistle, in which he says:—
"I, the urchin unto whom,
In that smoked and dingy room,
Where the district gave thee rule
O'er its ragged winter school,
Thou didst teach the mysteries
Of those weary A, B, C's, Where,
to fill the every pause
Of thy wise and learned saws,
Through the cracked and crazy wall
Came the cradle-rock and squall,
And the goodman's voice, at strife
With his shrill and tipsy wife,—
Luring us by stories old,
With a comic unction told,
More than by the eloquence
Of terse birchen arguments
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
With complacence on a book!—
I,—the man of middle years,
In whose sable locks appears
Many a warning fleck of gray,—
Looking back to that far day,
And thy primal lessons, feel
Grateful smiles my lips unseal," etc.
