BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH WHITTIER John Greenleaf Whittier, the son of John and Abigail (Hussey) Whittier, was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. On his father's side he was descended from Thomas Whittier, who left England for Boston, Massachusetts, in 1638, and after his marriage to Ruth Green, settled in Salisbury, on the north shore of the Merrimac River. In 1648, he removed to Haverhill, and among his fellow-townsmen was Christopher Hussey, an ancestor of the poet on his mother's side. ers. Whittier's parents were both members of the Society of Friends, or QuakFrom the earliest times to the present most of those of the name of Whittier have been known as Quakers, although several are mentioned in the history of Haverhill as bearing military titles. The poet's father was a farmer in only moderate circumstances. He was kind and just, but a man of few words. The mother was a very tender-hearted woman, and most hospitable, and the home was seldom without visitors. The Whittier home was situated in a lonely place, half hidden in the woods. The house was built before the year 1694, and although it has been somewhat changed externally, within it is much the same as in the boyhood of Whittier. At one end of the kitchen was a bedroom known as the mother's room, but it was in the west front room that John Greenleaf Whittier first saw the light. The small chamber overhead is the one he occupied when a boy. A flight of worn steps leads up to it from the kitchen. Besides the father and mother the family consisted of four children two sons and two daughters. A maiden aunt, Mercy Hussey, and a lively, adventurous bachelor uncle, Moses Whittier, completed the family circle. No better description of the Whittier home and its members can be had than that given by the poet himself in Snow-Bound. Many other poems also give delightful glimpses of his home. Whittier scribbled verses on his slate when he was a little boy at school, where he was sent at about the age of seven. His first teacher, Joshua Coffin, was much interested in the future poet, and was of great service to him in various ways. They became life-long friends, and it is this teacher who is commemorated in Whittier's poem, To My Schoolmaster. But the lad's school training was of the most limited kind, and his opportunities for reading were few. During his early years the bulk of his reading was in the Bible. In a brief autobiography the poet says that he was fond of reading at an early age, and that when he heard, now and then, of a book of biography or travel, he would walk miles to borrow it. The boyhood of Whittier was simple and uneventful. When not at school he was kept constantly employed by his father. He tells us that at an early age he was set to work on the farm and doing errands for his mother, who, in addition to her ordinary house duties, was busy spinning and weaving the linen and woollen cloth needed for the family. One day an old Scotchman visited the Whittier home, and after eating a lunch of bread and cheese and drinking a mug of cider, he began to sing Bonnie Doon and Highland Mary. The boy was so pleased with the words that he never forgot them. Some time after this, when he was about fourteen, the district school teacher, a Dartmouth College student, spent the evening with the Whittiers, a thing which he frequently did. He brought with him a copy of Burns' poems and read aloud to the family. Young Whittier listened spellbound. His teacher noticed his interest, and kindly left the book with him; thus was kindled the poetic fire which flamed for seventy years. In 1826, William Lloyd Garrison established the Free Press in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The Whittier family subscribed for the paper, and were much pleased with the tone of its articles. Mary Whittier, the sister who had encouraged our poet, sent one of his poems to this paper. But he knew nothing of this until one day, when in the field working with his father, the mail carrier rode by and threw him the paper. When he saw his poem in print, he became dazed, and had to be called several times before he could return to everyday affairs. Garrison was so pleased with the verses that when he learned who the author was, he drove out to the farm, and found Whittier hoeing in the cornfield. They had a long talk, the editor advising him to take a course of study as a training for a literary future. When the matter was first discussed with the father, he was very much against the idea of “notions being put into his son's head." But Garrison succeeded in convincing him of his son's ability as a writer, and he withdrew his objection to a literary career for the young man. But The greatest obstacle to present itself was the lack of money. Whittier soon solved this problem by learning to make shoes. With the money thus earned he was enabled to pay for six months' board and tuition in the Haverhill Academy, beginning April, 1827. At the close of the term he taught the district school at West Amesbury, and thereby earned the necessary funds with which to complete a full year of study. In the autumn of 1828, Garrison, who had remained his firm friend, secured him a place as a writer for the American Manufacturer, a paper advocating protection to home industry. He remained in this position for a year and a half, when he went back to the farm to relieve his father, whose health was rapidly failing. This was in June, 1829. The death of his father, a year later, made it necessary for him to assume the care of the family. In 1836, the Haverhill farm was sold and the family moved to Amesbury, a few miles farther down on the Merrimac. The house they occupied was a plain, old-fashioned one, and here Snow-Bound and many others of Whittier's best poems were written. Amesbury continued to be the legal residence of the poet, although much of the latter part of his life was spent at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, Massachusetts. In appearance Whittier was tall, measuring six feet or more, of slender build, straight as an arrow; a fine-looking man, with high forehead, piercing dark eyes, a quiet smile, and hair once black, but in age thinned and gray. He dressed in black, cut Quaker fashion, and his speech was true Quaker. He never married. His death occurred at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7, 1892, in his eighty-fifth year. At the close of a beautiful autumn day he slipped quietly away from this life. His last words were, "Love to the world." Funeral services were held on Saturday, September 10, in the garden of the Amesbury home. Eulogies were delivered by E. C. Stedman and others and in the deep silence a Quaker friend repeated one of his last poems. The body was borne to the cemetery, half a mile away, and laid to rest on the hill overlooking the beautiful valley of Powow and the Merrimac River which he loved. A simple slab of pure white marble, bearing the date of his birth and death on one side, and on the other the closing tribute of Oliver Wendell Holmes' beautiful address, "Here Whittier lies," marks the grave. NOTE Snow-Bound, written in 1865 and published the following year, was the most successful of Whittier's writings. It is a beautiful idyl of New England country life, depicting scenes in the boyhood home of the poet in such a masterly way that it has been favorably compared with the great poem of Burns whom he so admired - The Cotter's Saturday Night. While entirely free from any reference to himself, yet the poem expresses clearly Whittier's personal experience and faith. Woodberry says of Snow-Bound: "It is perfect in its conception and complete in its execution; it is the New England home entire, with its characteristic scenes, its incidents of household life, its Christian virtues. It is, in a peculiar sense, the one poem of New England - so completely indigenous that the soil has fairly created it, so genuine as to be better than history." SNOW-BOUND A WINTER IDYL TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES This Poem is Dedicated by the Author "As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common VVood Fire; and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits so also this our Fire of VVood doth the same." n IO - Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I., ch. v.* "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, The sun that brief December day Of homespun stuff could quite shut out. A hard, dull bitterness of cold, * Cor. Agrippa, etc. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the author of the book from which this quotation is taken, was born at Cologne, Prussia, September 14, 1486, and died at Grenoble, France, February, 18 1535. A copy of the book, bearing the date 1651, once owned by a reputed sorcerer, known as Bantam, who lived on the banks of the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire, afterward came into the possession of Whittier. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy; by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor, of both Laws, Counsellor to Cæsar's Sacred Majesty, and Judge of the Prerogative Court. † Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American poet and essayist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803, and died at Concord, Massachusetts, April 27, 1882. The quotation here given is from The Snowstorm. That checked, mid-vein, the circling race And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Meanwhile we did our nightly chores Unwarmed by any sunset light Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow: The white drift piled the window-frame, |