JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER'

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By GRACE E. SELLON

EAR the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the old homestead of his father's family, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17, 1807. Like all the other children who generation after generation had come to live in this Quaker dwelling, he was brought up in simple, useful ways, and was early given his full share of the duties about the farm. No matter how sharply the cold of the harsh New England winter pierced his homespun clothes, the snow must be shoveled from the paths, firewood must be brought, the stalls in the barn must be littered, and, worst task of all for him, seven cows must be milked. Yet there was plenty of fun to be had, too. When the snow fell so heavily that it blocked all the roads and closed in tightly about the house, the two Whittier boys found it exciting work to dig their way to the outside world.

When the early twilight fell and passed into night, the boys with their sisters joined the group gathered about the great hearth, and there listened to stories of Indians, witches and Christian martyrs, and to many another weird or adventurous tale told by the older members of the family. While they were being thus entertained, the blaze of the red logs went roaring up the chimney,

1. The poetical quotations given in this article are from SnowBound.

"The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October's wood."

All too soon this pleasant time came to an end, and the boys must go to their bare, unheated room upstairs. There, the poet has written,

"Within our beds awhile we heard

The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the lightsifted snowflakes fall;
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,

And lapsing waves on quiet shores."

In the warm season, though there was much to do in helping plant and harvest the crops, there were good times to be had in climbing to the top of Job's hill, next to the house, where the friendly oxen were pastured, or in gathering berries or nuts, or in watching the birds, bees and squirrels as they worked or played about their homes. It was these delights of his childhood that the poet was calling

to remembrance when he wrote The Barefoot Boy, which may be found elsewhere in these volumes.

Probably there are few country lads to-day who know so little as did the Whittier boys of the common sights and pleasures of city life. The strict Quaker belief regarding children's amusement barred them from most of the enjoyment familiar to the young people in the great world that lay beyond their home. So little were they acquainted with the forbidden attractions at the circus that one time when President Monroe visited Haverhill, Greenleaf (as the poet was known in his home), looking next day for traces of the presence of the great man, whom he had not been allowed to see, came upon the tracks of an elephant that had been in town with a traveling menagerie, and in his ignorance believed that these were the footsteps of the famous visitor. The theater, so the children were taught, was to be shunned as a place of wickedness. Once when Greenleaf was visiting in Boston he was asked to go to a play by a lady whom he met in the home where he was staying. When he found that the lady was an actress, he became so much afraid of being led into sinful ways that, not daring to remain longer, he started off at once for home.

Though young Whittier was a wide-awake boy and eager to learn, there was only the district school, held for a few weeks each winter, for him to attend. Yet an opportunity was not lacking for bringing to light his poetic gift. One of his schoolmasters, who lived for part of the term in the Whittier home, used to read to the family from various interesting books, and one night chose for