s when the young people met to husk the corn in
each neighborhood barn successively, until all was done. He helped at
the cider-making bees, and the apple parings, when the cider and apple
sauce were prepared for the year's need; and at the house raisings,
when men and boys raised the frame of a neighbor's house or barn. In
those times the farmers depended upon each other for such friendly
aid, and the community seemed like one great family.

On Sunday everyone went three times to meeting, listened to long
sermons, and sang out of the old Bay Psalm Book. If any unlucky child
fell asleep he was speedily waked up by the tithingman, who would
tickle his nose with a hare's-foot attached to a long pole. Once in a
while a boy might be restless or noisy, and then he was led out of
the meeting-house and punished with the tithingman's rod, a terrible
disgrace.

Throughout his childhood Bryant wrote verses upon every subject
discussed in the family, and in those days New England families
discussed all the great events of the time. The listening children
became public-spirited and patriotic without knowing it. At thirteen
Bryant wrote a most scathing satire upon the policy of Thomas
Jefferson, intended to make the President hang his head in shame. It
was quoted in all the newspapers opposed to Jefferson, and a second
edition of this pamphlet was called for in a few months. Bryant
here prophesies the evils in store for the country if the President
insisted on the embargo that was then laid upon American vessels, and
advises him to retire to the bogs of Louisiana and search for horned
frogs; advice which Jefferson did not feel called upon to follow. It
was Bryant's first introduction to the reading public, but it was not
that path in literature that he was destined to follow. Only one or
two of his earliest verses give any hint of the poet of nature,
though it was during this time that he absorbed those influences that
directed his whole life. It is from the retrospective poem, _Green
River_, that we really know the boy Bryant to whom the charm of sky
and wood and singing brook was so unconscious that it seemed a part of
life itself. In _Green River_, written after he became a man, we hear
the echoes of his young days, and we know that the boy's soul had
already entered into a close communion with nature.

But Bryant had not yet reached manhood when the true voice of his
heart was heard in the most celebrated poem that he ever wr