"Did we dare,

In our agony of prayer,

Ask for more than He has done?

When was ever His right hand

Over any time or land

Stretched as now beneath the sun?"

Whittier's interest in practical politics largely subsided as soon as slavery was abolished, and the negro had been granted the right of suffrage. But never, to the end of his days, was he an indifferent spectator of what was being done in the great councils of the nation. His policy was always for conciliation and reconciliation. The mistakes of political friends he would have forgiven. The inflamed animosities of political opponents he would have forgotten. To the impoverished people of the South he wished the North to show the practical sympathy of fellow-citizens and brothers. To the conquered leaders of the South he wished the nation to grant an amnesty so generous that it would effect complete political regeneration. The broken and wounded commonwealth he would heal and bind together again so effectually that it would be more united than ever. But he exercised his influence toward these beneficent ends indirectly rather than directly. It was by means of counsels given to those who were actively engaged in the work of reconstructing the nation, and not by poems and editorials, as formerly, that he now made his power felt in the settlement of the questions he was interested in. His literary work became almost wholly poetical, and his poems ceased to be poems of a cause," but became concerned

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with those domestic or legendary themes that his genius was so well fitted to utilise and adorn. But the great object of his earliest sympathies retained his interest to the last. The extension of liberty was the passion of his soul. The cause of the black man, all the world over, was especially dear to his heart. He had a warm, even an affectionate, regard for the Emperor Dom Pedro, because of his part in the emancipation of the slaves of Brazil. He had an outspoken admiration for that heroic soldier, General Gordon (who lost his life at Khartoum), because of his efforts to put down slavery in the Soudan. For the freedmen of the South he had, indeed, an interest almost paternal; and he devised and took part in many schemes for their education and social amelioration. Toward the end of his life, also, he began to take an active interest in the amelioration of the social condition of Indians.

Whittier was a member of the Society of Friends, or, as is most commonly said, a " Quaker." His Quakerism was a vital and controlling fact of his life. He spoke the plain language; he wore the plain clothes; he abode by the restraining rules of conduct which the custom of his sect prescribed. He never laid aside his Quaker habits, even for an instant. To outsiders his Quaker speech lent a piquancy to his conversation that was sometimes amusing. When Emerson once confessed to him with some feeling that "he, too," prayed, Whittier asked: “Does thee? Then what does thee pray for, Friend Emerson?" The plain directness of this question must have upset Emerson's gravity, for he laughingly replied: "Oh, when

I pray I thank God I live so near Boston." Once, when Mrs. Claflin (wife of General Claflin), at whose house Whittier often visited, was contriving a little gathering of friends to meet him, and doing so very secretly in the belief that if the shy poet became aware of her intention he would escape her, he, discovering that something out of the ordinary course was going on, surprised his hostess by suddenly asking: "What is thee going to do? I think thee is going to do something." And when questioned why he thought so, he answered, naïvely: "Oh, I know thee is going to have some kind of a fandango." The form of speech recorded in these illustrations was, however, the language used only in the company of familiar friends. In company less familiar a form a little nearer in its likeness to that of ordinary usage was assumed; as, for example, in a letter to Celia Thaxter, where he says: "I am glad thee are making thyself happy by making others so. Probably there is no other way." In still less familiar usage the "plain language" and the ordinary forms of speech were oddly combined; as, for example, in the following closing words of a letter to Bayard Taylor: "God bless thee and keep thee and thine during your European sojourn, and bring you safe back again." But, occasionally, in times of deep emotion, especially when addressing persons whose elevated and dignified character seemed to make it appropriate to do so, he assumed the true grammatical form of our language to denote the person spoken to, which is exceedingly rarely used, except by Quakers, and even by them rarely, also; as, for example, in his noble letter of con

gratulation to Charles Sumner: "I rejoice that, unpledged, free, and without a single concession or compromise, thou art enabled to take thy place in the United States Senate." But the usual everyday language of Whittier, even when in the company of the learned, the refined, the elegant, the dignified, was the "plain" speech that had been used by his mother and father. The speech," he used to say, " that has been used by my family for over two hundred years is good enough for me."

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John Greenleaf Whittier was born in East Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. The house in which he was born, and to which he has given an undying interest, because of his description of it and its inmates in his poem, "Snow-Bound," had been built almost one hundred and twenty years before his birth by a paternal ancestor named Thomas Whittier, who had come from England and settled in Massachusetts in 1638. Between the poet and this Thomas Whittier there were only three generations, so that the Whittier stock enjoyed a wellfounded reputation for longevity. The poet himself, despite his ill health, lived till he had nearly completed his eighty-fifth year. On his mother's side Whittier was descended from ancestry equally well planted on New England soil. She was a Hussey, and the earliest New England Husseys and the earliest New England Whittiers were contemporaries. One of her ancestors was a clergyman named Bachiler; and through him Whittier could claim kinship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Daniel Webster. These three distinguished New Englanders were all remarkable for one physical character