d in this little room. Trowbridge says:--

"Kind Nature smiled on that wise child,
Nor could her love deny him
The large fulfilment of his plan;
Since he who lifts his brother man
In turn is lifted by him."

Boys were boys in those days, and Whittier told us of trying to annoy
his younger sister by pretending to hang her cat on this railing to the
attic stairs. And girls were girls too; for he told of Elizabeth's
frightening two hired men who were occupying the open chamber. They had
been telling each other ghost stories after they went to bed; but both
asserted that they could not be frightened by such things. From over
the door of her room Elizabeth began throwing pins, one at a time, so
that they would strike on the floor near the brave men. They were so
frightened they would not stay there another night. In the open attic
bunches of dried herbs hung from the rafters, and traces of corn
selected for seed. On the floor the boys spread their store of nuts
"from brown October's wood." Originally the northern side of the roof
sloped down to the first story, as was the fashion in the days of the
Stuarts. But some years before Whittier's birth this side of the roof
was raised, giving much additional chamber room.

Not far from the house, at the foot of the western hill, is the small
lot inclosed by a stone wall, to which reference has been made, that
from the earliest settlement was the burying-place of the family. Here
lie the remains of Thomas Whittier and those of his descendants who
were the ancestors of the poet. A plain granite shaft in the centre of
the lot is inscribed with the names of Thomas Whittier and of Ruth
Green, his wife; Joseph Whittier and Mary Peaslee, his wife; Joseph
Whittier, 2d, and Sarah Greenleaf, his wife. No headstones mark the
several graves. Others of the family were buried here, including Mary
Whittier, an aunt of the poet. His father and uncle Moses, originally
buried here, were removed to the Amesbury cemetery, when his mother
died, in 1857.

[Illustration: THE WHITTIER ELM]

Across the road from the house of the nearest neighbors, the Ayers, in
a field of the Whittier farm, is an old, immense, and symmetrical tree,
labeled "The Whittier Elm," which the poet's schoolmate, Edmund Ayer,
saved from the woodman's axe by paying an annual tribute, at a time
when the farm had gone out of the possession of the Whittiers, and
while the new proprietors were intent upon