Occasionally, a visitor who happened to be in the garden room when the poet returned from the post-office was treated to tidbits from his mail. One day he read aloud a letter from a woman of brilliant literary fame and brilliant personality. She announced that she was coming to visit him. “She is one of the most easily entertained visitors I ever have,” he commented, “for I don’t have to answer her; I don’t get a chance!” And as he laughed, he knew well that, had the writer of the letter heard him, she would have had her retort ready. For when did Gail Hamilton ever fail of a good retort? “Now, what does she send that to an old fellow like me for?” he went on, holding out a snip of her new gown which for his edification she had inclosed in her letter. She told him also where she was about to visit and added her request for a letter from him, or for a few words, or for merely his name, so that in a moment of abstraction she could draw the envelope from her pocket as by accident, and drop it back again with the remark, “Ah, a letter from Whittier!” * * * * * The poet in speaking to a friend about his comprehension of character, told how he sometimes regretted this ability. She responded that at times she also read people better than she liked. “So do I, Mrs. S----,” he answered eagerly. “I read them too well.” His sensitive organization which vibrated to the least change in the winds of heaven, vibrated also to human emotions and passions in others. And yet here his kindness did not fail him; nor when face to face with evil, did he rebuke the evil-doer with any consciousness of superior personal merit. Instead, he appealed from the evil in evidence to the good in reserve. As when one morning in the garden room he listened to an amazing proposition, namely--that his visitor should write the poetry, which the poet was assured by the speaker the latter could do fluently, and that Whittier should put his name to it, which would make it sell, and that the two should share the profits! The poet showed no anger at the suggestion of linking his name with doggerel, or contempt for the other’s stupendous conceit. It was the deceit which he attacked. “Thee is a minister of the Gospel,” he answered the man. “Now, does thee think it would be right to do a thing like that?” XI Whittier was not one of the philanthropists whose affections are all for the world in general with home left out in the cold. On the contrary, his home affections were very strong; and his thought of his sister Elizabeth in her invalidism was constant, his care and anxiety for her unremitting. Whatever suited Elizabeth best was what he desired; wherever she would be most benefitted was where he wished to go. Although he preferred the mountains, yet for his sister’s sake he would go to the seaside; as for his sake she would choose the mountains when the ocean breezes suited her better.