So beautifully ended a most beautiful life—beautiful because just and heroic in the defense of justice. As says of him James Herbert Morse:—
"Such was the man—no more than simple man,
Plain Quaker, with the Norman-Saxon glow;
But seeing beauty so, and justice so,
We love to think him the American."
And as Lowell says:—
"Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake,
The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold
Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's sake
That lay in bonds thou blew'st a blast as bold
As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake,
Far heard through Pyrenean valleys cold!"
The lines strong and resonant, of Stedman's "Ad Vatem," addressed to Whittier while living, might well have been uttered over his bier:—
"Whittier, the land that loves thee, she whose child
Thou art, and whose uplifted hands thou long
Hast staid with song availing like a prayer—
She feels a sudden pang who gave thee birth,
And gave to thee the lineaments supreme
Of her own freedom, that she could not make
Thy tissues all immortal, or, if to change,
To bloom through years coeval with her own;
So that no touch of age nor frost of time
Should wither thee, nor furrow thy dear face,
Nor fleck thy hair with silver. Ay, she feels
A double pang that thee, with each new year
Glad youth may not revisit, like the spring
That routs her northern winter and anew
Melts off the hoar snow from her puissant hills."
Many pleasant anecdotes of the Quaker poet appeared shortly after his death. Col. T. W. Higginson, writing of the Amesbury home, said of Whittier's mother:—
"On one point only this blameless soul seemed to have a shadow of solicitude, this being the new wonder of Spiritualism just dawning on the world. I never went to the house that there did not come from the gentle lady very soon a placid inquiry from behind her knitting needles, 'Has thee any further information to give in regard to the spiritual communications, as they call them?' But if I attempted to treat seriously a matter which then, as now, puzzled most inquirers by its perplexing details, there would come some keen thrust from Elizabeth Whittier which would throw all serious solution further off than ever.
"She was indeed a brilliant person, unsurpassed in my memory for the light cavalry charges of wit; as unlike her mother and brother as if she had been born into a different race. Instead of his regular features, she had a wild, bird-like look, with prominent nose and large liquid dark eyes, whose expression vibrated every instant between melting softness and impetuous wit. There was nothing about her that was not sweet and kindly, but you were constantly taxed to keep up with her sallies and hold your own; while her graver brother listened with delighted admiration and rubbed his hands over bits of merry sarcasm which were utterly alien to his own vein. His manifold visitors were touched off in living colors; two plump and rosy Western girls among them, who had lately descended upon the household beaming with eagerness to see the poet.
"They had announced themselves as the Cary sisters, who had lately sent him their joint poems—verses, it will be remembered, crowded with deaths and melodious dirges that seemed ludicrously inconsistent with the blooming faces at the door. Mrs. Whittier met them rather guardedly and explained that her son was out. 'But we will come in and wait for him,' they smilingly replied. 'But he is in Boston, and may not be home for a week,' said the prudent mother. 'No matter,' they said, in the true spirit of Western hospitality; 'we can stay till he returns.' There was no resource but to admit them; and happily the poet came back next day, and there ensued a life-long friendship, in which the mother fully shared."
And another reminiscence appeared in the press, touching the poet's residence in Boston.
When Mrs. Celia Thaxter was boarding at the little English-like inn on the sunny slope of Beacon Hill called Hotel Winthrop, Mr. Whittier went there one day to see her. Mrs. Thaxter liked the quiet place, with its ivied window and its glimpse of the strong, short, green-draped tower of St. John the Evangelist's, and she praised it to her old friend. That was some time in 1881, and in November of that year he joined his Oak Knoll cousins, Mrs. Woodman and her daughter and the Misses Johnson, at the Winthrop. The ladies of the family came in September, but Mr. Whittier did not join them until November. He said that he did not want to lose his vote in Amesbury.