CHANGED CONDITIONS 179 
had a kindly star for him, because everything had 
fallen out just as he wished. Just the last day Whittier 
arrived in town; when I told him of it, he said that 
was the crowning pleasure, for he had had a special 
desire to see him and did not know how to manage 
it, asked me where he was staying, and said he should 
go and call, which he did the next day, though he 
was to leave in the afternoon, and one would have 
said you could not get a thread paper in between 
his engagements. You may remember that one of 
Whittier’s early poems is called Ama Perdita, a 
bird of the Amazonian woods, so called because 
it goes through the forest with a sad, wailing note, 
that has given it the name and connected with it 
the superstition that some ama perdita really goes 
wandering and lost in that wilderness of trees and 
water. It seems the Emperor translated this poem 
and sent the translation to Whittier with the veritable 
bird. So you see there was an old relation between 
them which made it very pleasant for them to meet. 
Well, I have just given you the skeleton; the many 
lovely things this good friend said to me of the 
past, of the memories and regrets, I have not told 
you — they are so difficult to tell. Now it is over 
I am glad it has been, and feel that it was a satis- 
faction though so full of sad associations. Parting 
from me he said, “I shall write to you, and you will 
answer me.” There is always a kind of simple force 
in his language. When we left him in Brazil, and I 
spoke of Agassiz’s never seeing him again (as indeed 
he never did), he answered quietly, “My affections 
