if he were well
wrapped in a blanket he would not be harmed, and the experiment proved
quite successful, thanks to her abundant care in bundling him in many
folds. He happily escaped one other peril in his infancy. His parents
took him with them on a winter drive to Kingston, N. H. To protect him
from the cold, he was wrapped too closely in his blankets, and he came
so near asphyxiation that for a time he was thought to be dead. He was
taken into a farmhouse they were passing when the discovery was made,
and after a long and anxious treatment they were delighted to find he
was living.

The rooms in the upper part of the house injured by the recent fire
have been perfectly restored to their original condition. At Whittier's
last visit here he went into every room, and told stories of the
happenings of his youth in each. At the head of the back stairs is a
little doorless press, which he pointed out as a favorite play-place of
his and his brother's. Here they found room for their few toys, as
perhaps three generations of Whittier children had done before them.
And it is not unlikely that some of their toys had amused the youth of
their grandfather. One of his earliest memories is connected with this
little closet, for here he had his first severe twinge of conscience.
He had told a lie--no doubt a white one, for it did not trouble him at
first--and soon after was watching the rising of a thunder-cloud that
was grumbling over the great trees on the western hill near at hand. A
bolt descended among the oaks, and the deafening explosion was
instantaneous. He saw in it an exhibition of divine wrath over his sin,
and obeyed the primal instinct to hide himself. His mother, searching
for him some time after the storm had passed, found her repentant
little boy almost smothered under a quilt in this closet, and as he
confessed his sin, he was tenderly shrived. Here in the open chamber
the brothers often slept when visitors claimed the little western
chamber they usually occupied. They would sometimes find, sifted
through cracks in the old walls, a little snowdrift on their quilt. The
small western room the boys called theirs was the scene of the story
Trowbridge has so neatly versified. The elder proposed that as they
could lift each other, by lifting in turn they could rise to the
ceiling, and there was no knowing how much further if they were out of
doors! The prudent lads, to make it easy in case of failure, stood upon
the be