“Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way, Cool shadows on the greensward lay, Flowers swung upon the bending spray. “In vain!--nor dream, nor rest, nor pause Remain for him who round him draws The battered mail of Freedom’s cause. “With soul and strength, with heart and hand, I turned to Freedom’s struggling band,-- To the sad Helots of our land.” Here was that self-denial, that experience of longings unfulfilled--through the fulfillment of higher longings--which gave him his depth and power of sympathy in every loss and suffering of others, and courage in the sufferings of his own life, and which ripened and sweetened his nature. Whittier’s prominence in the anti-slavery conflict is, of course, matter of history. His influence in politics was great; for he had the keenness of insight, the broad vision of the statesman, and the politician’s skill in manipulation which never deteriorated into political trickery in a heart that loved his fellowmen and a soul that abhorred self-seeking. One day in a package of books that went from his home to the doctor’s house, there was slipped in by accident a bit of paper on which were the two following lines in the poet’s handwriting, but unsigned: “That lowest form of worship known Which incense burns to self alone.” The identical lines are not found in any of his poems and were probably altered. But their spirit is ever with him. Mrs. Claflin in her interesting sketch of the poet says: “Mr. Whittier was a keen observer of all public affairs and the trusted adviser of many of the most eminent men of the Old Bay State. He seemed to have prophetic vision and was one of the most sagacious counselors in the State then famous for its able men.” V In the January of 1864 Whittier wrote to M---- C----, a dear Amesbury friend, who was spending a few weeks at Norfolk under the protection of the Union army and doing some work for the soldiers there. “Thy letter from Norfolk,” he says, “has just reached us, and we [his sister Elizabeth and himself] enjoyed its graphic description of your present locality and prospects.... The weather here is cold again.... Elizabeth is much as usual, unable to write much, so I hold the pen for her. We had a pleasant visit from Bayard Taylor last week. Night before last he sent us a picture he painted in 1857 on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. It is a view of the little church of Vadso, the northernmost Russian settlement.... Who knows but that thee may enter Richmond with the victorious army! Stranger things have happened.” A penciled line from Elizabeth on the same sheet says: