Mary Baker Eddy was a lifelong admirer of the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). An avid scrapbooker, she clipped his poems out of literary magazines and later quoted his words in her own published writings.
In 1868 Eddy was living in Amesbury, Massachusetts, with her student Sarah Bagley, who was a family friend of Whittier. That July the two women paid him a visit. He was suffering from a variety of ailments, as he had throughout most of his life. In previous months he had written frequently to friends, complaining of his precarious health. According to Eddy, Bagley had proposed the visit with the warning that Whittier might not live much longer.
She and Bagley arrived at his home to find Whittier in a frail state, coughing constantly and shivering, despite the fact that it was midsummer and he was in front of a roaring fire.
