However, it is
only one of those set-backs which all reforms must have--temporary,
but rather discouraging.
"I worked hard in our town, and we made a gain of nearly one hundred
votes over last year."
"I am happy," he says later, "in the result of the election--thankful
that the State has sat down heavily on ----. I never thought of taking
an active interest in politics this year, but I could not help it when
the fight began."
And still later in life: "I am glad of the grand overturn in Boston,
and the courage of the women voters. How did it seem to elbow thy way
to the polls through throngs of men folk?"
Whittier never relinquished his house at Amesbury, where his kind
friends, Judge Cate and his wife, always made him feel at home. As the
end of his life drew near, it was easy to see that the village home
where his mother and his sister lived and died was the place he
chiefly loved; but he was more inaccessible to his friends in
Amesbury, and the interruptions of a fast-growing factory town were
sometimes less agreeable to him than the country life at Oak Knoll. He
was a great disbeliever in too much solitude, however, and used to
say, "The necessary solitude of the human soul is enough; it is
surprising how great that is."
Once only he expresses this preference for the dear old village home
in his letters. "I have been at Amesbury for a fortnight. Somehow I
seem nearer to my mother and sister; the very walls of the rooms seem
to have become sensitive to the photographs of unseen presences.
Pages:
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286