Whispering at the garden wall, Mine, on bending orchard trees, There was scanty time for play, however; that perpetual interest was eating up the meagre products of the farm; boys had to put their hands to the plough. "At an early age," he says, "I was set at work on the farm and doing errands for my mother, who, in addition to her ordinary house duties, was busy in spinning and weaving the linen and woollen cloth needed for the family." In addition The family was large, consisting, says Whittier, of "my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt, both unmarried." there was the district school-master, who boarded with them. For graphic pen-pictures of this group, one must go to "Snow-Bound." There we shall see Uncle Moses, with whom the boys delighted to go fishing in the dancing brook. His aunt, Miss Hussey, had the reputation of making the best squash pies that were ever baked. The influence of pie in developing character must not be overlooked. What oatmeal was to Carlyle, what the haggis was to Burns, the pie was to the true New Englander. It will not be forgotten how fond Emerson was of pie. Indigestion and poetry have a certain strange alliance; did not Byron purposely exacerbate his stomach in order to coin "Don Juan" into guineas? "Snow. Each member of that delightful household stands forth in living lines. Bound" now needs no praise. It has been accepted as the typical idyl of a New England winter, the sweetest flower of New England home life. It is greater than "The Cotter's Saturday Night" because it was written more from the heart. It stands with "The Cotter's Saturday Night" and, though, quite unlike, may have been inspired by Burns's immortal poem. To Burns, Whittier owed his first inspiration, and he himself tells how he learned first to know the Scotch poet. A wandering Scotchman came one day to the Whittier farmhouse. "After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider, he gave us 'Bonnie Doon,’‘Highland Mary,' and 'Auld Lang Syne.' He had a full rich voice and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics." When he was fourteen, Joshua Coffin brought a volume of Burns's poems, and read some of them, greatly to his delight. Says Whittier: "I begged him to leave the book with me, and set myself at once to the task of mastering the glossary of the Scottish dialect to its close. This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had been a close student), and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventure." When pen and ink failed him, he resorted to chalk or charcoal, and he hid away his effusions with the care with which a cat hides hex young kittens. It is interesting to know that recently one or two of Whittier's first attempts in rhyme, in Scotch dialect and in the manner of Burns, have been discovered. When Whittier was in his eighteenth year, that is, in 1825, he wrote several poems which found their way the following year to the Newburyport Free Press, then just established by William Lloyd Garrison. The Whittiers subscribed for it, and in the "Poets' Corner" appeared in print the first of the young man's published verses, entitled "The Exile's Departure," written in the metre of "The Old Oaken Bucket." It is noticeable that the Exile sings: Farewell, shores of Erin, green land of my fathers, Once more and forever, a mournful adieu. It would seem that Thomas Moore's Irish melodies must have fallen into his hands. The trace of Whittier's reading is often to be found in his poems. "Mogg Megone" also shows the insidious influence of "Lalla Rookh." "The Bridal of Pennacook" is Wordsworth, pure and simple, the praise of whom betrays its origin; but not as yet, and not until long afterwards, did he succeed in attaining felicity in epithet. It was also the day of the Scott and of the Byron fever, and Whittier did not escape it. It is said that Whittier was mending fences when the carrier brought the paper that contained his first printed lines and the editorial notice: "If W. at Haverhill will continue to favor us with pieces beautiful as the one inserted in our poetical department of to-day, we shall esteem it a favor." Whittier could hardly believe his eyes. He accepted the invitation. The second of his Free Press poems was in blank verse and entitled "Deity." He confided the secret to his sister. She informed Garrison that it was her brother who wrote them. One day when the young poet was hoeing in the cornfield, clad only in shirt, trousers, and straw hat, he was summoned into the house to see a visitor. It proved to be Garrison, who had driven over from Newburyport to make the acquaintance of his contributor. He insisted that Whittier showed such talent that he ought to have further education. Whittier's father remonstrated against putting notions into the lad's head. Sir," he said, "poetry will not give him bread." Besides, there was no money and no prospect of money. Suddenly a way opened. A young hired man knew how to make ladies' shoes and slippers. He offered to teach the art to his employer's son. Mr. Moses Emerson, one of Whittier's early teachers, used to relate how Whittier worked at his shoemaking in a little shop which stood in the yard, and how he sat on a bench amid tanned hides, pincers, bristles, paste pots, and rosin, stitching for dear life. 66 During the following winter he earned by it enough money to buy a suit of clothes and pay for six months' schooling at the new Academy in Haverhill. Whittier wrote the ode that was sung at the dedication of the new building. He boarded at the house of Mr. A. W. Thayer, editor and publisher of the Haverhill Gazette. Naturally the young poet contributed also to this paper some of his verses. He was now nineteen, and was long remembered as " a very handsome, distinguished-looking young man " with remarkably handsome eyes; tall, slight, and very erect, bashful but never awkward. Whittier used to like to relate the story of his first visit to Boston. He was dressed in a new suit of homespun, which for the first time were adorned with "boughten buttons." He expected to spend a week with the Greenes, who were family connections. Shortly after his arrival he sallied forth to see the sights. He described how he wandered up and down the streets, but somehow found it different from what he expected. The crowd was worse on Washington Street, and he soon got tired of being jostled and thought he would step aside into an alley-way and wait till "the folks" got by. But there was no cessation of the "terrible stream of people," some of whom stared at him with curious or mocking eyes. He stayed there a long time and began to be "lonesome." At last, however, he mustered courage to leave his "coign of vantage," and safely reached Mrs. Greene's in time for tea. She had guests, among them a gay young woman whose beauty and vivacity especially interested him. But she began to talk about the theatre, and finally asked him to be present that evening. She was the leading lady! Whittier had promised his mother that he would never enter a playhouse. He was terribly shocked at the danger which he had run. He could not sleep that night, and next morning he took the early stage-coach for his country home. In after years he told this story with great zest, but he never broke the promise which he made to his mother. At the close of the term, Whittier taught the district school at West Amesbury, thus enabling him to return for another six months at the Academy. Garrison had meantime gone to Boston, and through his influence Whittier secured a place there at a salary of nine dollars a week on the American Manufacturer. But this engagement was of short duration. In 1830 he was editing the Haverhill Gazette. He was beginning to be widely known as a poet. Next he became editor of the New England Weekly Review of Hartford, Conn., to which he also contributed upwards of forty poems, besides sketches and tales in prose. He boarded at the Exchange Coffee House, and lived a solitary, sedentary life. His health even then was delicate. At this time, if ever, occurred the hinted romance of his life. Writing of a visit to his home, he said: "I can say that I have clasped more than one fair hand, and read my welcome in more than one bright eye." More than one love-poem dated from this time. Long afterwards he touched upon these episodes in "Memories" and in "A Sea-dream." But Whittier never married. He published his first volume in 1831,—“Legends of New England,” a collection of his prose and verse. This was afterwards suppressed, as well as his first narrative poem, "Moll Pitcher," published the following year. So far, with much promise, he had as yet shown little originality. He bade fair to be simply a poet. But two years later he took part in an event which was destined to change the face of all things, not for him alone, but for his country. In 1833 he helped to organize the American Anti-slavery Society. Henceforth, during a whole generation, his life was to be a warfare: Side by side with William Lloyd Garrison stood Whittier. The manifesto of the one was the inspiration of the other: "I will be harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard!" Whittier in the same spirit sang: If we have whispered truth, whisper no longer; Startling the haughty South with the deep murmur; Truce with oppression, never, oh, never! Nor would he allow the charms of mere literature to beguile him into pleasant paths. Putting aside melancholy, sentimental yearnings, he resisted the temptation, as he pathetically sings in the poem entitled "Ego." The question of slavery began to be borne in upon him even before he settled in Hartford. On his return home he made a thorough study of the subject and wrote a twenty-three page pamphlet entitled "Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery Considered with a View to its Rightful and Effectual Remedy,- Abolition." It was printed at Haverhill at his own expense. Its argument was never answered. It concluded with this eloquent peroration:· "And when the stain on our own escutcheon shall be seen no more; when the Declaration of Independence and the practice of our people shall agree; when Truth shall be exalted among us; when Love shall take the place of Wrong; when all the baneful pride and prejudice of caste and color shall fall forever; when under one common sun of political Liberty the slave-holding portions of our Republic shall no longer sit like Egyptians of old, themselves mantled in thick darkness while all around them is glowing with the blessed light of freedom and equality—then and not till then shall it GO WELL FOR AMERICA." This preceded and led to his appointment as one of the delegates of the great Anti-slavery Convention at Philadelphia. Next to Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Principles then formulated, and signed by Whittier, is a document of which the generations unborn will be most proud. A copy of it framed in wood from Pennsylvania Hall, destroyed by a pro-slavery mob, was one of Whittier's most precious possessions. In spite of his stand on an unpopular side, Whittier's character was appreciated by his fellow-citizens. He was elected a member of the Massachusetts State legislature in 1835. He held only one other public office-that of presidential elector. But the people of his own communion looked askance upon his political, reformatory, and literary achievements. He was even brought into danger of discipline, and it is said that in his later days he used to remark jokingly that not until he was old would the Quakers of his society show any willingness to put upon him the little dignities from which his position as a reformer had in his youth excluded him. The very year that he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature, he had his first experience of a mob. George Thompson, the famous English abolitionist and member of Parliament, came to this country to preach abolition. It was noised abroad that he was brought over to disseminate dissension between North and South, so as to destroy American trade, to the advantage of British. This noble reformer had narrowly escaped a mob in Salem. Whittier invited him to his East Haverhill home, that he might have perfect rest and quiet. The two men enjoyed making hay together and were entirely unmolested. At last they started to drive to Plymouth, N. H., to visit a prominent abolitionist there. On their way they stopped at Concord, where Thompson was invited to speak on reform. After the lecture they found it impossible to leave the hall, which was surrounded by a mob of several hundred persons. On their way back, they were assailed with stones. Whittier declared that he understood how St. Paul felt when the Jews attacked him. Fortunately, their heads were not broken, but they were severely lamed. The mob surrounded the house and demanded that the Quaker and his guest should be handed over to them. His host opened the door and exclaimed: "Whoever comes in here must come in over my dead body." Decoyed away, the rabble returned with muskets and a cannon. Their lives were in danger. They managed to harness a horse, and then, when the gate was suddenly opened, they drove off at a furious gallop and escaped from the hooting mob, which one of themselves afterwards declared was like a throng of demons. At Plymouth they narrowly escaped another mobbing. Not long after, when Whittier was attending an extra session of the legislature, the female anti-slavery society meeting was broken up by a mob. The police rescued Garrison, just as they were going to hang him to a lamppost. Whittier's sister was one of the delegates, and the two were stopping at the |