[Boston—Sunday, 2 June 1872]
Sunday morning. I had just come into the library when I saw a carriage stop and who should jump out but Mr. Whittier. He seems perfectly well, deeply interested of course about the election: thinks it most unhappy for Grant that he did not withdraw and better perhaps for the country that Greeley should take his place though Greeley is about the last man we should have chosen for such a position. He is about printing a new volume Pastorius & other poems which he would like Jamie to revise. He went to Quaker meeting afterward in order to advise them he said to meet in another hall. He thought the room of the Young Men’s Christian Union which they made their sanctuary (I observed he used this word) at present was not so well fitted for them as Wesleyan Hall would be. They could hear the fulminations of Mr. Fulton where they were & he feared they might hear the Methodist hymns where they were going, which would be bad for Quakers he added with a sly look. But Brother Fulton with that Christian spirit for which he is known has ordered the heat of the furnace in excessively cold weather to be turned awry from the Quakers. Proximity to such a character is of course uncomfortable and quite reason enough for making a change.
We talked about the mountains. We hope to meet there shortly.
Heard a good sermon about the true childhood by brother Bartol in which he lashed well the parents who allow 2 year olders to rule the roost. It was a lovely tribute to an old lady lately dead in the parish. This was odd enough. But intellectually he is a kind of grasshopper and always stands topsy turvy or presents the wrong side first if it happens to come so, or twists it in some way from a kind of native horror of allowing any statement to be quite natural & simple. He feels it loses thereby, whereas I am cut off from sympathy with this kind of work because my intellect demands simple statements, and if the grandeur be not found in such it cannot exist for me.
