His benefactions were ceaseless, and they were one of
the chief joys of his later life. The subject of what may be done for
this or that person or cause is continually recurring in his letters.
Once I find this plea in verse after the manner of Burns:--
"O well-paid author, fat-fed scholar,
Whose pockets jingle with the dollar,
No sheriff's hand upon your collar,
No duns to bother,
Think on 't, a tithe of what ye swallow
Would save your brother!"
And again and again there are passages in his letters like the
following: "I hope the Industrial Home may be saved, and wish I was a
rich man just long enough to help save it. As it is, if the
subscription needs $30 to fill it up, I shall be glad to give the
mite." "I have long followed Maurice," he says again, "in his work as
a religious and social reformer--a true apostle of the gospel of
humanity. He saw clearly, and in advance of his clerical brethren, the
necessity of wise and righteous dealing with the momentous and
appalling questions of labor and poverty."
He wrote one day: "If you go to Richmond, why don't you visit Hampton
and Old Point Comfort, where that Christian knight and latter-day
Galahad, General Armstrong, is making his holy experiment? I think it
would be worth your while."
General Armstrong and his brave work in founding and maintaining the
Hampton School for the education, at first, of the colored people
alone, and finally for the Indians also, was one of the near and
living interests of Whittier's life.
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