Whittier’s Indian poems, except “Mogg Megone” and “Pentucket,” breathe that note of sadness for the defeated and sorrowing which he always felt and which his spirit will feel until such defeat and sorrow are wiped out of the world--the very spirit of his writings and of his life. “Still thy love, O Christ arisen, Yearns to reach these souls in prison.” To his faith the message of the Spirit is sent everywhere and its “... tongues of fire On dusty tribes and twilight centuries sit.” Mrs. Spofford in a delightful sketch of the poet tells how in the stirring events of the early days of the seventeenth century, in the midst of the bitter strife between the red man and the white, the Whittiers lived in the calm and safety of their own peaceful Quaker faith. They were as was William Penn to the red man. Indian attacks, Indian massacres, white women and children fleeing to the fort for their lives, white men with the rifles mowing down red savages--as the red savages whenever they could find or make opportunity tomahawked and scalped in hate the white intruders--the Whittier household had no part in these horrors; these were crimes they neither perpetrated nor suffered from. Their door was always on the latch; no gun was ever behind it, or in the hands of its men. The Indians entered and departed at will, always to meet with kindness and never to return this by injury, quick to distinguish between friend and foe, and ready to return kindness with confidence. For that household there were no wild terrors, no midnight massacres. This fact, while it gives to the character the courage and faith in God and man shown by the Whittier ancestry as Friends, also, it should be remembered, speaks significantly for the appreciation of these traits by the “noble red man.” Many times the Indian has shown that he was capable of response to confidence in him and the appeal to his sense of honor. * * * * * At one time the poet was applied to for a fitting name for a house recently built in the region of Kenoza Lake on the outskirts of Haverhill. He answered the friends who forwarded the request: “I have looked over Roger Williams’ ‘Key to the Indian Language,’ and find nothing that seems quite to answer Mr. S----’s purpose. ‘Yokomish--I lodge here. Nowekin--I dwell here. Wotomuck--At Home. Washowanan--Hawk or Hawk’s Place. Wussokat--Walnut Trees.’