'wonder, and my uncle had to call me several times 'to my work before I could recover myself.'

Other poems were offered and accepted. Curious to see his contributor, Garrison drove over from Newburyport to the Whittier farm. The bashful country boy could with difficulty be persuaded to meet his guest. Then began a lifelong friendship not uncheckered by differences without which friendship itself lacks zest.

Garrison urged on Whittier's parents the importance of giving the youth an education. Backed up by the influence of A. W. Thayer, editor of the Haverhill 'Gazette,' who offered to take the lad into his own home, Whittier got his father's consent to his attending the newly established Haverhill Academy. He paid for one term of six months by making slippers, an art he learned from one of the farm hands, and for another term by teaching school, which seemed to him a less enviable mode of life than cobbling.

The favor accorded his verse stimulated invention. During 1827-28 he published, under assumed names, nearly a hundred poems in the Haverhill Gazette' alone. A plan for bringing out a collection of these fugitive pieces under the title of Poems of Adrian came, however, to nothing.

Garrison, who had been doing editorial work in Boston for the Colliers, publishers of The Phil'anthropist' and 'The American Manufacturer,' advised their getting Whittier to take his place.

WHITTIER'S LIFE

Whittier edited the Manufacturer' from January to August, 1829, when he was summoned home by the illness of his father. But he had had a taste of journalism and politics, and relished both. From January to July, 1830, he edited the Haverhill 'Gazette.' His newspaper work made him acquainted with George Prentice of 'The New England Review,' published in Hartford. When Prentice left Connecticut for Kentucky, where he was to spend six months and write a campaign life of Henry Clay, he urged the owners of the 'Re'view' to engage Whittier as his substitute. Whittier was responsible for the conduct of the paper for a year and a half (July, 1830, to January, 1832). In spite of many drawbacks, his father's death, his own illness, a disappointment in love, the period of his Hartford residence was the happiest and the most stimulating he had yet known. He printed his first volume, Legends of New England, a medley of prose and verse, edited The Literary Remains of John G. C. Brainard (the sketch of Brainard's life prefixed to the volume throws much light on Whittier's reading), and brought out the narrative poem Moll Pitcher, a story of the once famous Lynn Pythoness.'

On his return to Haverhill he played his part in local politics and was talked of for Congress. Somewhat later he was drawn into the anti-slavery movement and for the next twenty-seven years this was his life. He was a member of the legisla

ture in 1835, and was reëlected the next year; but in general terms it may be said that in publishing Justice and Expediency, and in uniting himself with the small, unpopular, and exasperating party of Abolitionists, he sacrificed hope of political advancement. He gave to the cause time, health, reputation, and when he had it to give, money. In company with Abolitionist leaders and orators he encountered mobs and speculated philosophically on the chance of losing his life.

In 1837 he acted as a secretary to the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York. From 1838 to 1840 he edited The Pennsylvania Freeman,' published in Philadelphia. During an Abolitionist convention, Pennsylvania Hall, in which were the offices of the Freeman,' was sacked and burned by a pro-slavery mob. Whittier, disguised in a wig and a long overcoat, mingled with the rioters and contrived to save a few of his papers. It was a more dangerous rabble than that he encountered during the George Thomson riot at Concord, New Hampshire, three years earlier. Whittier once remarked that he never really feared for his life, but that he had no mind to a coat of tar and feathers.

A true son of Essex, he soon wearied of city life. I would rather live an obscure New Eng'land farmer,' he said. 'I would rather see the 'sunset light streaming through the valley of the 'Merrimac than to look out for many months

WHITTIER'S LIFE

' upon brick walls, and Sam Weller's "werry beau'tiful landscape of chimney-pots.""

He really had no choice in the matter, having been warned to give up editorial work if he would keep his precarious hold on life. He obeyed the warning. But with Whittier journalism was a disease. He had a relapse in 1844, when he took charge of the Middlesex Standard' of Lowell, and again, in 1845-46, when he was virtual editor of the Essex Transcript' in Amesbury.

No restriction was placed on his doing work at home. He wrote unceasingly, prose and verse, reaching his literary audience through the 'De'mocratic Review' and his audience of reformers through Bailey's paper, 'The National Era,' both published in Washington. Whittier was corresponding editor of the Era' from 1847 to 1850, and printed in its columns, besides political articles, such now famous poems as 'Maud Muller,' 'Ichabod,' 'Tauler,' and 'The Chapel of the 'Hermits.'

The list of Whittier's chief publications up to the year 1857 contains seventeen titles: Legends of New England, 1831; Moll Pitcher, 1832 (revised edition 1840); Justice and Expediency, 1833; Mogg Megone, 1836; Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition Question, etc., 1837 (unauthorized issue); Poems, 1838; Lays of my Home and Other Poems, 1843; The Stranger in Lowell, 1845; Voices of Freedom, 1846; The Su

pernaturalism of New England, 1847; Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, 1849; Poems, 1849; ' Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, 1850; Songs of Labor and Other Poems, 1850; The Chapel of the Hermits and Other Poems, 1853; Literary Recreations and Miscellanies, 1854; The Panorama and Other Poems, 1856.

The founding of the 'Atlantic Monthly' (1857) gave Whittier a more assured place. His work was sought and the pay was generous. He became an overseer of Harvard College in 1858. In 1860 the college made him a Master of Arts, and in 1866 a Doctor of Laws.

His home for many years was in Amesbury, the farm at East Haverhill having been sold in 1836. After the death of his mother and younger sister he passed much of his time with kinsfolk at the house known as 'Oak Knoll,' in Danvers. For all his admiration of women, Whittier never married. He enjoyed allusions to a supposititious Mrs. Whittier. Writing to his niece, Mrs. Pickard, about some friend who was unhappy over political defeat, Whittier said: 'I told him I had 'been in the same predicament. . . and got abused 'worse than he did, for I was charged with ill'treating my wife!'

Whittier was a birthright member of the Society of Friends and influential in their councils. His advice was much sought and freely given I The first collected edition made with Whittier's consent.