“I have been here for three or four weeks, much of the time ill with cold and rheumatism. I have been close indoors most of the time, though I went one day to Boston to see my brother who was troubled with his old enemy, inflammatory rheumatism.... I shall hope to see you when I return to Amesbury sometime this month. Have you seen the Cartlands yet?... Tell thy mother I will send her by the Cartlands who are reading it, the ‘Life of Dr. Norman McLeod’ which I know she will like. It is one of the pleasantest books I have read for years.” * * * * * A letter to M-- C-- in the May of 1889 records the loss of other friends: “I have been in Amesbury for a week or ten days,” he says. “The great Methodist Conference met here last week with one hundred and fifty ministers and a bishop. Of course, I had callers all the week. I suppose thee have seen in the papers that my sister’s and my old friend, Mrs. Harriet W. Sewall, was killed on the railroad crossing at Wellesley.” And he adds: “Yesterday I had the sad news of the death of my old friend of sixty years, President Barnard of Columbia College. So they all drop away! The spring weather with its sudden changes is rather hard for me and I am not feeling quite as strong as usual. I think the neighbors here are pretty well.... I hope thee will be home by the time of our quarterly meeting which takes place on the fourth Thursday of this month.” * * * * * After the celebration of his seventieth birthday: “I am very glad thy golden silence has become silvern,” he says in a letter to this old friend. “I was just on the point of writing thee.... What a queer fuss has been made because I have grown old and got the rheumatism! I trust it is about over here, but I am now getting letters from England. I have had hundreds and many of them I was obliged to answer. It is all so strange and unexpected. Of course I am very grateful for the words of kindness which have reached me. I only wish I deserved them better. If thee see M---- G---- again, give her my love, and to Dr. Furness also, he is a nobleman.... I have just returned from Amesbury and shall go to Boston next week. I have had a rather hard time with headache and other aches but feel better now. The weather has been below zero yesterday, but today is springlike again--the winter wears away very comfortably even here, and it will soon be spring by the almanac; but I suppose winter will linger in its lap until May.” “I had more than one thousand letters on my birthday!” he wrote to another friend, “and callers without number. I have not been able to answer a quarter part of my letters. I begin to dread to touch a pen.” XVIII “Hail to the coming singers! Hail to the brave light-bringers! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare.” Whittier delighted in the achievements of others. It was no idle word of his: