affectionate
messages by me to Mr. Whittier. The latter expressed great curiosity
to see Holmes's short _Life of Emerson_ which, in fact, was published
five or six days later.... Mr. Whittier greatly surprised me by
confessing that he was quite color-blind. He exemplified his condition
by saying that if I came to Amesbury I should be scandalized by one of
his carpets. It appeared that he was never permitted, by the guardian
goddess of his hearth, to go 'shopping' for himself, but that once,
being in Boston, and needing a carpet, he had ventured to go to a
store and buy what he thought to be a very nice, quiet article,
precisely suited to adorn a Quaker home. When it arrived at Amesbury
there was a universal shout of horror, for what had struck Mr.
Whittier as a particularly soft combination of browns and grays
proved, to normal eyes, to be a loud pattern of bright red roses on a
field of the crudest cabbage-green."

LXII

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF WHITTIER

In the _New England Magazine_ Charlotte Forten Grimke writes
entertainingly of Whittier. From this article we are permitted to
quote the following extracts:

"And so it happened that, one lovely summer day, my friend and I found
ourselves on the train, rapidly whirling eastward, through the
pleasant old town of Newburyport, across the 'shining Merrimac,' on
our way to the poet's home in Amesbury. Arriving at the station, we
found Mr. Whittier awaiting us, and a walk of a few minutes brought us
to his house on Friend Street. Amesbury, a busy manufacturing town,
pleasantly situated on the Merrimac, impressed me at first as hardly
retired enough for a poet's home; for fresh in my recollection were
Longfellow's historic house, guarded by stately poplars, standing back
from the quiet Cambridge street, and Lowell's old mansion, completely
buried in its noble elms; and each of these had quite realized my
ideal of the home of a poet. But the little house looked very quiet
and homelike; and when we entered it and received the warm welcome of
the poet's sister, we felt, as all felt who entered that hospitable
door, the very spirit of peace descending upon us. The house was
then white (it was afterwards painted a pale yellow), with green
blinds, and a little vine-wreathed piazza on one side, upon which
opened the glass door of 'the garden room,' the poet's favorite
sitting-room and study. The windows of this room looked out upon a
pleasant, old-fashioned garden. T