Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier

[96] many of his early supporters; while Whittier during his whole life rarely lost a friend. That was true of him in life which Mr. Wendell has keenly said of him since his death, that “though a lifelong and earnest reformer, he is the least irritating of reformers to those who chance not to agree with him.” ¹ Garrison, again, had the experience, almost unique among reformers, of triumphing, as it were, in spite of himself and by ways which ran precisely counter to his own immediate methods and even predictions. A non-resistant, he saw his ends effected by war; a disunionist, he lived to join in the chorus of triumph over the reestablishment of the American Union. Step by step, Whittier saw his own political opinions established; while Garrison lived to be content in seeing his specific counsels set aside and his aims accomplished by other methods than his own.

One of the most permanent qualities always to be relied upon in Whittier was his generosity in all matters of money, a thing peculiarly valuable in one who had learned in early life, by privation, to count his dollars very carefully. The following note to me, in regard to helping a young authoress, who had planned to go to her father, then in England, will well illustrate this. The note came undated, but was received in July, 1870.