We next visited the scene of "In School Days," and found some traces of the schoolhouse that have since been obliterated, although a tablet now marks its site. The door-stone over which the scholars "went storming out to playing" was still there, and some of the foundation stones were in place. "Around it still the sumachs" were growing, and blackberry vines were creeping. Mr. Whittier gathered a handful of the red sumach, and took it to Amesbury with him. It remained many days in a vase in his "garden room." Speaking of his boyhood, he said he was always glad when it came his turn to stay at home on First Day. The chaise, driven to Amesbury—nine miles—every First and Fifth Day, fortunately was not of a capacity to take the whole family at once. This gave him an occasional opportunity, much enjoyed, to spend the day musing by the brook, or in the shade of the oaks and hemlocks on the breezy hilltops, which commanded a view unsurpassed for beauty. These hills, which so closely encompass the ancient homestead at the west and south, are among the highest in the county. From them one gets glimpses of the ocean in Ipswich Bay, the undulating hills of Newbury, cultivated to their tops, on the further side of the Merrimac, the southern ranges of the New Hampshire mountains, and the heights of Wachusett and Monadnock in Massachusetts. Po Hill, in Amesbury, under which stands the Quaker meeting-house where his parents worshiped, shows its great round dome in the east. He never tired of these views, and celebrated them in many of his poems. He especially dreaded the winter drives to meeting. Buffalo robes were not so plenty in those days as they became a few years later, and our fathers did not dress so warmly as do we. He was so stiffened by cold on some of these drives to Amesbury that he told me "his teeth could not chatter until thawed out." Winter had its compensations, as he has so well shown in "Snow-Bound." But it is noticeable that he does not refer in that poem to the winter drives to meeting. On one occasion he improved the absence of his parents on a First Day to go nutting. He climbed a tall walnut, and had a fall of about twenty feet which came near being fatal. The Friends did not theoretically hold one day more sacred than another, and yet theirs was the habit of the Puritan community, to abstain from all play as well as from work on the Sabbath, and this fall gave a smart fillip to the young poet's conscience.
SCENE OF "IN SCHOOL DAYS"
This story illustrating Whittier's popularity when a child I did not get from him, but is a legend of the neighborhood. One of their nearest neighbors, a Miss Chase, had a cherry-tree she guarded with the utmost jealousy. No bird could alight on it in cherry time, and no boy approach it, without bringing her to the rescue with a promptness that frightened them. One day she saw a boy in the branches of this precious tree, and issued upon the scene with dire threats. She caught sight of the culprit's face, and instantly changed her tone: "Oh, is it you, Greenleaf? Take all the cherries you want!"
The old homestead was an object of interest as far back as 1842, as is shown by a letter before me, written by Elizabeth Nicholson of Philadelphia, who asks her friend, Elizabeth Whittier, for a picture of it: "When thee come to Philadelphia if thee will bring ever so rough a sketch of the house where Greenleaf was born, for Elizabeth Lloyd to copy for my book, why—we'll be glad to see thee! I hope for the sake of the picturesque it is a ruin—indeed it must be, for Griswold says it has been in the family a hundred years!" It had then been in the family for over one hundred and fifty years. The book referred to by Miss Nicholson was a manuscript collection of all the verses, published and unpublished, that Whittier had written at that time—a notable collection, now in existence. She had obtained from the poet a preface in verse for this album, which as it has autobiographical material, refers to the scenery of his birthplace, and was never in print, is here given in a version he prepared for another similar album. For this version I am indebted to the collection made by Mary Pillsbury of Newbury, which contains other original poems of Whittier never published:—
A RETROSPECT
O visions of my boyhood! shades of rhymes!
Vain dreams and longings of my early times!
The work of intervals, a ploughboy's lore,
Oft conned by hearthlight when day's toil was o'er;
Or when through roof-cracks could at night behold
Bright stars in circle with pattens of gold;
Or stretched at noon while oaken branches cast
A restful shade, where rippling waters passed;
The ox unconscious panted at my side,
The good dog fondly his young master eyed,
And on the boughs above the forest bird
Alone rude snatches of the measure heard;
The measure that had sounded to me long,
And vain I sought to weave it in a song,
Or trace it, when the world's enchantment first
To longing eye, as kindling dawn's light, burst.
Then flattery's voice, in woman's gentlest tone,
Woke thoughts and feelings heretofore unknown,
And homes of wealth and beauty, wit and mirth,
By taste refined, by eloquence and worth,
Taught and diffused the intellect's high joy,
And gladly welcomed e'en a rustic boy;
Or when ambition's lip of flame and fear
Burned like the tempter's to my listening ear,
And a proud spirit, hidden deep and long,
Rose up for strife, stern, resolute, and strong,
Eager for toil, and proudly looking up
To higher levels for the world, with hope.
In these lines Whittier has told in brief the whole story of his life, from his early dreaming by this brookside and at this hearthstone, to the waking of his political ambitions, and later to his earnest strife to bring up the world "to higher levels."
It happened that the day on which Whittier visited his birthplace for the last time was toward the close of a spirited political campaign in which Whittier took much interest, as General Butler was a candidate he was opposing. Speaking of Butler reminded him of the pet ox of his boyhood, which had the odd name of "Old Butler," between whose horns he would sit as the animal chewed his cud under the hillside oaks. This was the same ox that, in rushing down one of these steep hills for salt, could not stop because of his momentum, but saved his young master's life by leaping over his head. No doubt this ox was in mind when he wrote the line just quoted, "The ox unconscious panted at my side." One story reminded him of another, and he said this ox was named for another that had its day in a former generation on a neighboring farm.