John Greenleaf Whittier

“ Every way a man noteworthy and remarkable, there are many who will love to recall the rare phenomena of his words and life.
He has passed the gates of the Great Mystery; and to-day, while the earth is closing over all that was mortal, I seem to hear him, as in one of our latest conversations, repeat the words of Jesus to Martha "I am the Resurrection and the Life; whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die." ”

“ The outward world was phantasmal and unreal—he was utterly beyond its common temptations, and looked with simple wonder upon the struggle for wealth and place—the strifes and ambitions of sects and parties about him. To art—if we except a love of music—he was indifferent. ”

“ Quiet, unassuming, and simple in all his habits, an unlettered workingman, he gave no outward evidence, beyond the reticent gravity of his manner, of the profound intellectual abstraction, the depth of philosophic meditation which made up his real life. ”