Birthdays, on the whole, in the face of much sadness, brought him also much that was agreeable and delightful in remembrance. One old friend always gave him great pleasure by sending a huge basket of gilded wicker, in which were placed fruits of every variety from all quarters of the globe, and covered with rare flowers and ferns. In this way he visited the gardens of the Orient, and could see in his imagination the valleys of Napa and of Shiraz. On the occasion of a dinner given him at the Brunswick Hotel, on his seventieth birthday, he wrote: "I missed my friend. In the midst of so much congratulation, I do not forget his earlier appreciation and encouragement, and every kind word which assured and cheered me when the great public failed to recognize me. I dare not tell thee, for fear of seeming to exaggerate, how much his words have been to me."
Thus the long years and the long days passed on with scarcely perceptible diminution of interest in the affairs of this world. "I am sorry to find that the hard winter has destroyed some handsome spruces I planted eight years ago," he wrote one May day; "they had grown to be fine trees. Though rather late for me, I shall plant others in their places; for I remember the advice of the old Laird of Dumbiedikes to his son Jock: 'When ye hae naething better to do, ye can be aye sticking in a tree; it'll aye be growin' when ye are sleeping.' There is an ash-tree growing here that my mother planted with her own hands at threescore and ten. What agnostic folly to think that tree has outlived her who planted it!"
The lines of Whittier's life stretched "between heaven and home" during the long period of eighty-four years. A host of friends, friends of the spirit, were, as we have seen, forever clustering around him; and what a glorious company it was! Follen, Shipley, Chalkley, Lucy Hooper, Joseph Sturge, Channing, Lydia Maria Child, his sister Elizabeth--a shining cloud too numerous to mention; the inciters of his poems and the companions of his fireside. In the silence of his country home their memories clustered about him and filled his heart with joy.
"He loved the good and wise, but found His human heart to all akin
Who met him on the common ground Of suffering and of sin."