JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER John Greenleaf Whittier was born on a farm in Haverhill (pronounced Hav'er il), Massachusetts. The house was in a nest among the hills. The largest room was the kitchen, which was warmed 5 by a fireplace that took up nearly the whole of one side. When Whittier was small he went barefoot in summer time, fed the cows and the oxen, and did other work on the farm. He loved the beautiful hills. He knew all about the birds 10 and the wild-flowers, and the places where the nuts and the wild grapes ripened first. He knew where the muskrats lived and he hunted woodchuck holes. In those days the country schools lasted for only 15 about three months every year, so that Whittier had little education in schools. But he read all the books he could get and read the Bible over and over. Always he kept reading good books, especially poetry, and soon he was writing both 20 prose and poetry himself. Whittier was a Quaker, and in his talk and letters used thee and thy instead of you and your. When he was twenty-nine he left the old farm, and with his mother and sister Elizabeth settled 5 down in the pleasant village of Amesbury, not far away. This was his home for the rest of his life. He was never strong. He lived an extremely quiet life. His best friend was his younger sister, Elizabeth, who resembled him in 10 many ways. We think of Whittier as the poet of the country life in New England. In "Snow Bound" he tells us how, when he was a boy, a great storm piled the drifts so high that he and his brother had to 15 dig a tunnel to open the way to the barn. "The Barefoot Boy," on page 119, tells about Whittier's out-of-door pleasures when he was young, and a poem called "In School Days" is about a country school. In In a beautiful poem named "Telling the 20 Bees," he described the beehives on his father's farm, and in another, called "The River Path," he shows his love for the hills. Whittier died in 1892, in his eighty-fifth year. Blessings on thee, little man, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace: O, for boyhood's painless play, Hand in hand with her he walks, O for boyhood's time of June, |