We felt that
"it was good for us to be there."
Speaking of his faith in the visions of others--though he did not have
these visions himself, and believed they were not vouchsafed to all--
he told us of a prophecy that was written down twenty-five years
before by an old man in Sandwich (a village among the hills, about
fifteen miles from Campton), predicting the terrible civil war which
had just been raging between the North and the South. This man was in
the fields at noonday, when a darkness fell upon his sight and covered
the earth. He beheld the divided nation and the freed people and the
final deliverance from the terrors of war. The whole series of events
were clearly detailed, and Whittier had stored them away in his
memory. He said that only one thing was wrong. He foretold foreign
intervention, from which we were happily spared. The daughter of this
prophet was living; he knew her well,--an excellent woman and a Friend
who was often impressed to speak in meeting. "She is good," said
Whittier, "and speaks from her experience, and for that reason I like
to hear her."
Spiritualism, as it is called in our day, was a subject which
earnestly and steadily held his attention. Having lived very near to
the Salem witchcraft experience in early times, the topic was one that
came more closely home to his mind than to almost any one else in our
century. There are many passages in his letters on this question which
state his own mental position very clearly.
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