It should be understood that the state of society which produced such superstitions and legends as the foregoing lingers now only in secluded corners of New England. The railroad, the newspaper, and the influx of foreign population, have combined to frighten away ghost, conjurer, and witch, or to drive them up into the mountainous districts. There are still plenty of quaint and picturesque old Puritan farmers; and their mythology is antique and rusty enough, to be sure. But the folk-lore of the early days,—where is it? Let the shriek of the steam-demon answer, or that powerful magician, the "Spirit of the Age," who, ten thousand times divided, and slyly hidden in plethoric leathern mail bags, daily rushes into the remotest nooks and corners of the land, there to enter into the nooks and corners of the mind of man. The "Spirit of the Age" has exorcised the spirits of the ingle and the forest.

CHAPTER III.

BOYHOOD.

The birthplace and early home of Whittier is a lonely farm-house situated at a distance of three miles northeast of the city of Haverhill, Mass. The winding road leading to it is the one described in "Snow-Bound." A drive or a walk of one mile brings you to sweet Kenoza Lake, with the castellated stone residence of Dr. J. R. Nichols crowning the summit of the high hill that overlooks it. From the hill the eye sweeps the horizon in every direction to a distance of fifty or a hundred miles. Far to the northwest rise bluely the three peaks of Monadnock. Nearer at hand, in the same direction, the towns of Atkinson and Strafford whiten the hillsides, while southward, through a clove in the hills, one catches a glimpse of the smoky city of Lawrence.