In a letter
written in 1866, he says:--
"If my health allowed me to write I could make money easily now, as my
anti-slavery reputation does not injure me in the least, at the present
time. For twenty years I was shut out from the favor of booksellers and
magazine editors, but I was enabled by rigid economy to live in spite of
them."
[Illustration: KITCHEN FIREPLACE IN WHITTIER'S HOME, EAST HAVERHILL, MASS.]
His fixed home for almost all of his life was in the valley of the Merrimac
River, at East Haverhill, until 1836, and then at Amesbury, only a few
miles east of his birthplace. He died in 1892 and was buried in the
Amesbury cemetery.
POETRY.--Although Whittier wrote much forcible anti-slavery verse, most of
this has already been forgotten, because it was directly fashioned to
appeal to the interests of the time. One of the strongest of these poems is
_Ichabod_ (1850), a bitter arraignment of Daniel Webster, because Whittier
thought that the great orator's _Seventh of March Speech_ of that year
advised a compromise with slavery. Webster writhed under Whittier's
criticism more than under that of any other man.
"... from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies
The man is dead!"
Thirty years later, Whittier, feeling that perhaps Webster merely intended
to try to save the Union and do away with slavery without a conflict, wrote
_The Lost Occasion_, in which he lamented the too early death of the great
orator:--
"Some die too late and some too soon,
At early morning, heat of noon,
Or the chill evening twilight.
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