that were run at night by ghostly
millers and witches riding on broom-sticks by the light of the full
moon, and descending unguarded chimneys to lay their spells upon
cream-pot and yeast-bowl.

After such an evening's entertainment the boy needed courage to leave
the bright kitchen fire and climb up the narrow stairs to the loft
where he slept, and where the sound of the night-wind crept through
the frosty rafters, and the voice of the screech-owl came dismally
from the trees outside.

Haverhill boasted at that time its village conjurer, who could remove
the spells of those wicked spirits, and whose gaunt form could be seen
any day along the meadows and streams gathering herbs to be stewed
and brewed into love-potions, cures for melancholy, spells against
witchcraft, and other remedies for human ills. He was held in great
respect by the inhabitants, and feared almost as much as the witches
themselves.

An ever-welcome guest at the Whittiers was the school-master, whose
head was full of the local legends, and whose tales of Indian raids
and of revolutionary struggles were regarded as authentic history.
This Yankee pedagogue, moreover, could, with infinite spirit and zest,
retell the classic stories of the Greek and Latin poets.

Twice a year came to the little homestead the Yankee pedler, with his
supply of pins, needles, thread, razors, soaps, and scissors for the
elders, and jack-knives for the boys who had been saving their pennies
to purchase those treasures. He had gay ribbons for worldly minded
maids, but these were never bought for Quaker Whittier's daughters.
But to Poet John's thinking the pedler's choicest wares were the songs
of his own composing, printed with wood-cuts, which he sold at an
astonishingly low price, or even, upon occasions, gave away. These
songs celebrated earthquakes, fires, shipwrecks, hangings, marriages,
deaths, and funerals. Often they were improvised as the pedler sat
with the rest around the hearth fire. If a wedding had occurred during
his absence he was ready to versify it, and equally ready to lament
the loss of a favorite cow. To Whittier this gift of rhyming seemed
marvellous, and in after years he described this wandering minstrel as
encircled, to his young eyes, with the very nimbus of immortality.

Such was the home-life of this barefooted boy, who drove the cows
night and morning through the dewy meadows, and followed the oxen,
breaking the earth into rich brown furrows,