[Boston—Friday, 26 January 1872]
Friday morning. Mr. Whittier came at 8 o’clock to breakfast. Lucy Larcom had arrived the night before. I found her here on my return from a chamber concert of wonderful beauty where Leonard, Eichberg and others had given us Beethoven, Schumann and Bach till our souls were filled with it. Sat with L.D. Hunt and drove home with her afterward. She is full of Celia, H.H. and a wild whirl of people & things. Hunt is still away in New York. I fear he cannot stay at home—something has gone wrong with them. In the meantime her beautiful but strange children peep out into the cold world as best they may with her erratic help. She looked in as we sat at breakfast, Whittier, L.L., J. and I. They all saw the trouble in her face—the wild rush and endeavor. She has been a dear loving friend to Celia!
Whittier was well. He feels unusually at home with us now. He poked the fire and abused our “round” logs, talked literature and politics and nonsense, told stories and listened to them until the clock struck 12. Jamie having a bad cold in his lungs was glad to stay & be talked to & to talk. He told of his late lecture experiences, how the lawyer in Maine told him of a witness who when asked to repeat some point in his evidence said “he could not reverberate.”
The presence of Whittier is ennobling. The high unselfish simple devout aspect of his mind helps even the meanest of us. He talked much of Robert Dale Owen’s new book. He had seen Appleton’s notice of it in “Old and New” and had read the book itself. Owen is honest in his faith he said and I can’t help believing that some folks see these things. I often wish I could but I can’t. The doings of the old witch days certainly have never been explained and as we are to be soon transferred to another state how natural it appears that some of us should have glimpses of it here. We all feel the help we received from the Divine Spirit, why deny then that some men have it more directly and more visibly than others.
His mind loves to turn to this subject—the mystery in which it is involved affects his poetic brain. I am sure many hours must be filled with contemplative musings on the unseen as perceived by mortals in these special developments.
Went to Friday school at Vt. Str., sat at home in the evening with L.L. Jamie still wretchedly with a cold on his lungs. Saturday.
