In another letter, written at about the same time to the same correspondent, he says: "As for tears, I have not shed anything of the kind since my last flogging under the birchen despotism of the Nadir Shah of our village school. I have sometimes wished I could shed tears—especially when angry with myself or with the world. There is an iron fixedness about my heart on such occasions which I would gladly melt away."
From the birthplace to the Amesbury home is a distance of nine miles, traversed by electric cars in less than an hour. Midway is the thriving village of Merrimac, formerly known as West Amesbury. It was at Birchy Meadow in this vicinity that Whittier taught his first and only term of district school, in the winter of 1827-28. The road is at considerable distance from the Merrimac River, and at several points it surmounts hills which afford remarkably fine views of the wide and fertile river valley, with occasional glimpses of the river itself. At Pond Hills, near the village of Amesbury, the landscape presented to view is one of the widest and loveliest in all this region. It is a panorama of the beautifully rounded hills peculiar to this section, with a tidal river winding among them with many a graceful curve. The electric road we have taken is about two miles from the left bank of the river, across which we look to the Newbury hills, cultivated to their tops, with here and there a church spire indicating the location of the distant villages. Every part of this lovely valley has been commemorated in Whittier's writings, prose and verse.
THE SYCAMORES
If, instead of the trolley, we take the carriage road from Haverhill along the bank of the river, we soon come to what are left of "the sycamores," planted in 1739 by Hugh Tallant, in front of the Saltonstall mansion. This mansion is now occupied by the Haverhill Historical Society, and most of the famous row of "Occidental plane-trees" were cut down many years ago, a sacrifice to street improvement. Three of the ancient trees still stand, and will probably round out the second century of their existence. They are about eighty feet in height, and measure nearly twenty feet around their trunks. Under these trees Washington "drew rein," and Whittier repeats the legend that he said:—
"I have seen no prospect fairer
In this goodly Eastern land."
About a mile below on the northeasterly side of Millvale, a hill picturesquely crowned with pines attracts attention. This is the Ramoth Hill immortalized in the lovely poem "My Playmate:"—