ushed to the piano, and poured out his anguish in an
improvisation of wailing and mysterious strains, which held the
assembly spell-bound and in tears. In a few days a letter reached
him, announcing that his sister had died at that very hour. On
receiving the tidings, he uttered a shriek, and the shock was so
great as to burst a blood-vessel in his brain. Life had no charm
potent enough to stanch and heal the cruel laceration left in his
already failing frame by this sundering blow. The web of torn fibrils
bled invisibly. He soon faded away, and followed his sister to a
world of finer melody, fitted for natures like theirs.

One of the noblest and wisest of the American poets the pure, brave,
and devout Whittier had a sister who was to him very much what
Dorothy was to Wordsworth. Several of her poems are printed with his.
They always lived together; they studied together, rambled together,
had a large share of their whole consciousness together. After her
death, sitting alone in his wintry cottage, he said to a friend who
was visiting him, that, since she was gone, to whose faithful taste
and judgment he had been wont to submit all he wrote, he could hardly
tell of a new production whether it were good or poor. He also said
that the sad measure of his love for her was the vacancy which her
departure had left. He has paid her, in his "Snow-Bound," this
tribute, which will draw readers as long as loving hearts are left in
his land:

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Gainst the household bosom lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed within the fadeless green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh! looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: The chill
weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where'er I went,
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,