r, and our fathers did not dress so warmly as do we. He
was so stiffened by cold on some of these drives to Amesbury that he
told me "his teeth could not chatter until thawed out." Winter had its
compensations, as he has so well shown in "Snow-Bound." But it is
noticeable that he does not refer in that poem to the winter drives to
meeting. On one occasion he improved the absence of his parents on a
First Day to go nutting. He climbed a tall walnut, and had a fall of
about twenty feet which came near being fatal. The Friends did not
theoretically hold one day more sacred than another, and yet theirs was
the habit of the Puritan community, to abstain from all play as well as
from work on the Sabbath, and this fall gave a smart fillip to the
young poet's conscience.

[Illustration: SCENE OF "IN SCHOOL DAYS"]

This story illustrating Whittier's popularity when a child I did not
get from him, but is a legend of the neighborhood. One of their nearest
neighbors, a Miss Chase, had a cherry-tree she guarded with the utmost
jealousy. No bird could alight on it in cherry time, and no boy
approach it, without bringing her to the rescue with a promptness that
frightened them. One day she saw a boy in the branches of this precious
tree, and issued upon the scene with dire threats. She caught sight of
the culprit's face, and instantly changed her tone: "Oh, is it you,
Greenleaf? Take all the cherries you want!"

The old homestead was an object of interest as far back as 1842, as is
shown by a letter before me, written by Elizabeth Nicholson of
Philadelphia, who asks her friend, Elizabeth Whittier, for a picture of
it: "When thee come to Philadelphia if thee will bring ever so rough a
sketch of the house where Greenleaf was born, for Elizabeth Lloyd to
copy for my book, why--we'll be glad to see thee! I hope for the sake
of the picturesque it is a ruin--indeed it must be, for Griswold says
it has been in the family a hundred years!" It had then been in the
family for over one hundred and fifty years. The book referred to by
Miss Nicholson was a manuscript collection of all the verses, published
and unpublished, that Whittier had written at that time--a notable
collection, now in existence. She had obtained from the poet a preface
in verse for this album, which as it has autobiographical material,
refers to the scenery of his birthplace, and was never in print, is
here given in a version he prepared for another similar album. For
thi