uch. A deep, quiet
friendship grew up between us two. I wrote some verses for her when we
parted, and she sent me one cordial, charmingly-written letter. In a
few weeks I answered it; but the response was from another person, a
near relative. She was dead. But she still remains a real person to me;
I often recall her features and the tone of her voice. It was as if a
beautiful spirit from an invisible world had slipped in among us, and
quickly gone back again.

It was an event to me, and to my immediate friends among the
mill-girls, when the poet Whittier came to Lowell to stay awhile. I had
not supposed that it would be my good fortune to meet him; but one
evening when we assembled at the "Improvement Circle," he was there.
The "Offering" editor, Miss Harriet Farley, had lived in the same town
with him, and they were old acquaintances. It was a warm, summer
evening. I recall the circumstance that a number of us wore white
dresses; also that I shrank back into myself, and felt much abashed
when some verses of mine were read by the editor,--with others so much
better, however, that mine received little attention. I felt relieved;
for I was not fond of having my productions spoken of, for good or ill.
He commended quite highly a poem by another member of the Circle, on
"Pentucket," the Indian name of his native place, Haverhill. My
subject was "Sabbath Bells." As the Friends do not believe in
"steeple-houses," I was at liberty to imagine that it was my theme, and
not my verses, that failed to interest him.

Various other papers were read,--stories, sketches, etc., and after the
reading there was a little conversation, when he came and spoke to me.
I let the friend who had accompanied me do my part of the talking for I
was too much overawed by the presence of one whose poetry I had so long
admired, to say a great deal. But from that evening we knew each other
as friends; and, of course, the day has a white mark among memories of
my Lowell life.

Mr. Whittier's visit to Lowell had some political bearing upon the
antislavery cause. It is strange now to think that a cause like that
should not always have been our country's cause,--our country,--our own
free nation! But antislavery sentiments were then regarded by many as
traitorous heresies; and those who held them did not expect to win
popularity. If the vote of the mill-girls had been taken, it would
doubtless have been unanimous on the antislavery side. But those were