magazine:

"Doubtless in leafy season Oak Knoll may have its charms, but it was
distinctly sinister that December morning. We rang, and after a long
pause the front door opened slightly, and a very unprepossessing dog
emerged, and shut the door (if I may say so) behind him. We were face
to face with this animal, which presented none of the features
identified in one's mind with the idea of Mr. Whittier. It sniffed
unpleasantly, but we spoke to it most blandly and it became assured
that we were not tramps. The dog sat down, and looked at us; we had
nowhere to sit down, but we looked at the dog. Then, after many
blandishments, but feeling very uncomfortable, I ventured to hold the
dog in conversation while I rang again. After another pause the door
was slightly opened, and a voice of no agreeable timbre asked what we
wanted. We explained, across the dog, that we had come by appointment
to see Mr. Whittier. The door was closed a second time, and, if our
carriage had still been waiting, we should certainly have driven back
to Danvers. But at length a hard-featured woman grudgingly admitted
us, and showed us, growling as she did it, into a parlor.

"Our troubles were then over, for Mr. Whittier, himself appeared, with
all that report had ever told of a gentle sweetness and dignified
cordial courtesy. He was then seventy-seven years old, and, although
he spoke of age and feebleness, he showed few signs of either; he was,
in fact, to live eight years more. Perhaps because the room was low,
he seemed surprisingly tall; he must, in fact, have been a little less
than six feet high. The peculiarity of his face rested in the
extraordinary large and luminous black eyes, set in black eyebrows,
and fringed with thick black eye-lashes curiously curved inward....

"His generosity to those much younger and less gifted than himself is
well known, and I shall not dwell on the good-natured things which he
proceeded to say to his English visitor. He made no profession, at any
time, of being a critic, and his formula was that such and such verse
or prose had given him pleasure--'I am grateful to thee for all that
enjoyment' was his charming way of being kind.... He spoke with great
emotion of Emerson--'the noblest human being I have known,' and of
Longfellow, 'perhaps the sweetest. But you will see Holmes,' he added.
I said that it was my great privilege to be seeing Dr. Holmes every
day, and that the night before he had sent all sorts of