The day after the funeral between seventeen and eighteen hundred people visited the grave. And, as in the case of Walt Whitman's grave, each one wanted a leaf or flower as a memento, so that it was necessary in both cases to have the place of sepulture guarded by special watchmen, in order that anything green be left. The funeral of the poet was conducted as he himself wished. For in his will he wrote, "It is my wish that my funeral may be conducted in the plain and quiet way of the Society of Friends, with which I am connected not only by birthright, but also by a settled conviction of the truth of its principles and the importance of its testimonies." Mr. Whittier, by the way, in his will requests all who have letters of his to refrain from publishing them unless with the consent of his literary executor, Mr. S. T. Pickard. So beautifully ended a most beautiful life--beautiful because just and heroic in the defense of justice. As says of him James Herbert Morse:-- "Such was the man--no more than simple man, Plain Quaker, with the Norman-Saxon glow; But seeing beauty so, and justice so, We love to think him the American." And as Lowell says:-- "Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake, The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's sake That lay in bonds thou blew'st a blast as bold As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake, Far heard through Pyrenean valleys cold!" The lines strong and resonant, of Stedman's "Ad Vatem," addressed to Whittier while living, might well have been uttered over his bier:-- "Whittier, the land that loves thee, she whose child Thou art, and whose uplifted hands thou long Hast staid with song availing like a prayer-- She feels a sudden pang who gave thee birth, And gave to thee the lineaments supreme Of her own freedom, that she could not make Thy tissues all immortal, or, if to change, To bloom through years coeval with her own; So that no touch of age nor frost of time Should wither thee, nor furrow thy dear face, Nor fleck thy hair with silver. Ay, she feels A double pang that thee, with each new year Glad youth may not revisit, like the spring That routs her northern winter and anew Melts off the hoar snow from her puissant hills." Many pleasant anecdotes of the Quaker poet appeared shortly after his death. Col. T. W. Higginson, writing of the Amesbury home, said of Whittier's mother:--