WHITTIER-LAND

SAMUEL T. PICKARD

WHITTIER-LAND

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
From an ambrotype taken about 1857

WHITTIER-LAND

CONTAINING MANY ANECDOTES OF AND POEMS
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
NEVER BEFORE COLLECTED

BY

SAMUEL T. PICKARD

Author of "Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier"
ILLUSTRATED WITH MAP AND ENGRAVINGS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT 1904 BY SAMUEL T. PICKARD

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published April 1904

EIGHTH IMPRESSION

PREFACE

This volume is designed to meet a call from tourists who are visiting the Whittier shrines at Haverhill and Amesbury in numbers that are increasing year by year. Besides describing the ancestral homestead and its surroundings, and the home at Amesbury, an attempt is made to answer such questions as naturally arise in regard to the localities mentioned by Whittier in his ballads of the region. Many anecdotes of the poet and several poems by him are now first published. It is with some hesitancy that I have ventured to add a chapter upon a phase of his character that has never been adequately presented: I refer to his keen sense of humor. It will be understood that none of the impromptu verses I have given to illustrate his playful moods were intended by him to be seen outside a small circle of friends and neighbors. This playfulness, however, was so much a part of his character from boyhood to old age that I think it deserves some record such as is here given.

For those who are interested to inquire to whom refer passages in such poems as "Memories," "My Playmate," and "A Sea Dream," I now feel at liberty to give such information as could not properly be given at the time when I undertook the biography of the poet.

If any profit shall be derived from the sale of this book, it will be devoted to the preservation and care of the homes here described, which will ever be open to such visitors as love the memory of Whittier.

S. T. P.

Whittier Home, Amesbury, Mass.,
March, 1904.

CONTENTS

•   PAGE

1. Haverhill 1
2. Amesbury 53
3. Whittier's Sense of Humor 105
4. Whittier's Uncollected Poems 127
5. Footnotes 154
6. Index 155

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

• John Greenleaf Whittier Frontispiece
• From an Ambrotype taken about 1857.
• Map of Whittier-Land xii
• Whittier's Birthplace 2
• From a photograph by Alfred A. Ordway.
• River Path, near Haverhill 5
• From a photograph by Ordway.
• Haverhill Academy 6
• From a photograph by G. W. W. Bartlett.
• Main Street, Haverhill 8
• From a photograph by Ordway.
• Birthplace in Winter 9
• From a photograph by Ordway.
• Kenoza Lake 10
• From a photograph by Ordway.
• Fernside Brook, the Stepping-Stones