WHITTIER-LAND
SAMUEL T. PICKARD
By Samuel T. Pickard
WHITTIER-LAND. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.00net. Postage 9 cents.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN GREENLEAFWHITTIER. With Portraits andother Illustrations. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilttop, $4.00.
One-Volume Edition. Illustrated. Crown8vo, $2.50.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York
WHITTIER-LAND
WHITTIER-LAND
A Handbook of North Essex
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 whoare visiting the Whittier shrines at Haverhill and Amesburyin numbers that are increasing year by year. Besidesdescribing the ancestral homestead and its surroundings,and the home at Amesbury, an attempt is made to answersuch questions as naturally arise in regard to the localitiesmentioned by Whittier in his ballads of the region. Manyanecdotes of the poet and several poems by him are nowfirst published. It is with some hesitancy that I have venturedto add a chapter upon a phase of his character thathas never been adequately presented: I refer to his keensense of humor. It will be understood that none of theimpromptu verses I have given to illustrate his playfulmoods were intended by him to be seen outside a smallcircle of friends and neighbors. This playfulness, however,was so much a part of his character from boyhood to oldage that I think it deserves some record such as is heregiven.
For those who are interested to inquire to whom referpassages in such poems as "Memories," "My Playmate,"and "A Sea Dre