and from the
school together, and their interest in each other was noticeable.

If the Quaker lad harboured thoughts of marriage, and even gave
expression to them, it would not be strange. But the traditions of
Whittier's sect included disapproval of music, and Evelina's father had
given her a piano, and she was fascinated with the study of the art
proscribed by the Quakers. Then, too, Whittier was poor, and his gift of
versification, which had already given him quite a reputation, was not
considered in those days of much consequence as a means of livelihood.
If they did not at first realise, both of them, the hopelessness of
their love, they found it out after Miss Bray's return to her home.

About this time Mr. Whittier accompanied his mother to a quarterly
meeting of the Society of Friends at Salem, and one morning before
breakfast took a walk of a few miles to the quaint old town of
Marblehead, where he paid a visit to the home of his schoolmate. She
could not invite him in, but instead suggested a stroll along the
picturesque, rocky shore of the bay.

This was in the spring or early summer of 1828, and the poet was twenty
years old, a farmer's boy, with high ambitions, but with no outlook as
yet toward any profession. It may be imagined that the young couple,
after a discussion of the situation, saw the hopelessness of securing
the needed consent of their parents, and returned from their morning's
walk with saddened hearts. Whatever dreams they may have cherished were
from that hour abandoned, and they parted with this understanding.

In the next fifty years they met but once again, four or five years
after the morning walk, and this once was at Marblehead, along the
shore. Miss Bray had in the meantime been teaching in a seminary in
Mississippi, and Whittier had been editing papers in Boston and
Hartford, and had published his first book, a copy of which he had sent
her. There was no renewal at this time of their lover-like relations,
and they parted in friendship.

I have said that they met but once in the half-century after that
morning's walk; the truth is they were once again close together, but
Whittier was not conscious of it. This was while he was editing the
_Pennsylvania Freeman_, at Philadelphia. Miss Bray was then associated
with a Miss Catherine Beecher, in an educational movement of
considerable importance, and was visiting Philadelphia. Just at this
time a noted Massachusetts divine, Reverend Do