Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-fashioned room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."
Young Whittier was a faithful worker on the farm. One day, when he was nineteen years old, William Lloyd Garrison, the young editor of a Newburyport newspaper, to which Whittier had contributed a poem, found him assisting in repairing a stone wall. The visitor urged the father of the young poet to send him to school. As a result of this visit Whittier entered the Academy in Haverhill, with the understanding that he was to earn his way.
At intervals during the succeeding ten years the poet returned to the old farm, but when he was thirty years old the place was sold, the family went to Amesbury, and he left soon afterward for Philadelphia, where he was to edit an anti-slavery paper.
All through life Whittier dreamed of buying back the homestead. When he received a check for $1,000 as the first proceeds from "Snow-Bound," he set the sum aside as the beginning of a redemption fund.
But the citizens of Haverhill, led by Alfred A. Ordway, asked the privilege of buying the property themselves, and making it a memorial to the poet. Whittier died before the purchase was completed, but soon afterward Fernside Farm, as the poet called it, was taken over by Mr. Ordway. It is now in the hands of an association that has restored it and keeps it open to visitors whose hearts have been stirred by the work of the Quaker poet.
