It was Whittier's sad experience to be deprived of the companionship
of all those most dear to him, and for over twenty years to live
without that intimate household communion for the loss of which the
world holds no recompense. For several years, before and after his
sister Elizabeth's death, Whittier wore the look of one who was very
ill. His large dark eyes burned with peculiar fire, and contrasted
with his pale brow and attenuated figure. He had a sorrowful, stricken
look, and found it hard enough to reconstruct his life, missing the
companionship and care of his sister, and her great sympathy with his
own literary work. There was a likeness between the two; the same
speaking eyes marked the line from which they sprang, and their
kinship and inheritance. Old New England people were quick to
recognize "the Bachiler eyes," not only in the Whittiers, but in
Daniel Webster, Caleb Cushing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William
Bachiler Greene, a man less widely known than these distinguished
compatriots. Mr. Greene was, however, a man of mark in his own time, a
daring thinker, and one who was possessed of much brave originality,
whose own deep thoughtfulness was always planting seeds of thought in
others, and who can certainly never be forgotten by those who were
fortunate enough to be his friends.
These men of the grand eyes were all descended from a gifted old
preacher of great fame in early colonial days, a man of true
distinction and devoted service, in spite of the dishonor with which
he let his name be shadowed in his latest years.
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