He suffered from ill health all his life, yet he never gave up the cause. He suffered from poverty; having a mother and sisters dependent upon him, he was too poor ever to marry. He continued to edit papers, he wrote and spoke against slavery, and composed verses which were taken up and recopied by constantly increasing numbers of newspapers. Many of these verses are now found in his collected works, and one who reads them is surprised by their uniformly high quality, not merely the fervor and energy, but the beauty of expression and the treasures of imagination which this self-taught country boy poured into his propaganda. You recall Browning’s rebuke to the old poet Wordsworth, “The Lost Leader.” Here is Whittier’s “Ichabod,” rebuking Daniel Webster for his apostasy to the cause of freedom-- All else is gone, from those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Whittier was not among the fanatics of the movement; on the contrary, he was a shrewd politician, interested in moving the minds of his fellows and in getting something done. He helped in the forming of the Abolition party, which later became the Free Soil party, and then the Republican party of Lincoln. As a Quaker he could not support the war, yet he managed to write verses about it--for example, when Stonewall Jackson was unwilling to kill old Barbara Frietchie for hanging out the Stars and Stripes in Frederick. It is probable that this incident never happened, but it made a very popular poem. Whittier never went to college, he never traveled in Europe to acquire a foreign tone; he remained an American peasant. He voiced their thoughts in their own language, and they have cherished him, and will some day force the critics to give him his due place. If you are looking for ballads made out of native material, read the story of old Skipper Ireson, who roused the fury of his villagers by sailing away from a ship in distress: Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead. If you are looking for American sentiment, for simple, untouched democracy, read “Maud Muller.” Above all, if you want the inner essence of New England farm life, the mingled harshness and beauty of its body, and the mingled sternness and charm of its spirit, read “Snow-Bound” CHAPTER LXXVIII PURITANISM IN DECAY The Puritans of Massachusetts, having killed the Indians and fenced the farms and built the towns, settled into the routine of getting one another’s money. The more enterprising ones moved West, where there was more money; the others sunk into slow decay. Puritanism came to mean, not aggressive virtue, but negative avoidance. Before it passed away entirely, it produced a man of genius who was of it enough to know it thoroughly, yet sufficiently out of it to be able to embody it in art.