The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[220] meritorious in them to treat one like her as a sinner beyond forgiveness. Elder Staples and Deacon Warner were her fast friends. The Deacon's daughters—the tall, blue-eyed, brown-locked girls you noticed in meeting the other day—set the example among the young people of treating her as their equal and companion. The dear good girls! They reminded me of the maidens of Naxos cheering and comforting the unhappy Ariadne.

One midwinter evening I took Julia with me to a poor sick patient of mine, who was suffering for lack of attendance. The house where she lived was in a lonely and desolate place, some two or three miles below us, on a sandy level, just elevated above the great salt marshes, stretching far away to the sea. The night set in dark and stormy; a fierce northeasterly wind swept over the level waste, driving thick snow-clouds before it, shaking the doors and windows of the old house, and roaring in its vast chimney. The woman was dying when we arrived, and her drunken husband was sitting in stupid unconcern in the corner of the fireplace. A little after midnight she breathed her last.

In the mean time the storm had grown more violent; there was a blinding snow-fall in the air; and we could feel the jar of the great waves as they broke upon the beach.

“It is a terrible night for sailors on the coast,” I said, breaking our long silence with the dead. “God grant them sea-room!”

Julia shuddered as I spoke, and by the dim-flashing firelight I saw she was weeping. Her