ittier;
and to afford all persons, at such suitable times and under such proper
restrictions as said trustees may prescribe, the right and privilege of
access to the same, that thereby the memory and love for the poet and
the man may be cherished and perpetuated." Mr. Ordway was made
president of the board, and in his hands the office has been no
sinecure. His unflagging zeal and his unerring good taste have resulted
not only in putting the ancient house into the perfect order of the
olden time, but in fertilizing the wornout fields, and preserving for
future ages one of the finest specimens in the country of the colonial
farmhouse of New England. Mr. Whittier's niece, to whom he left his
house in Amesbury, returned to the birthplace many of the household
treasures that were carried from there in 1836. The articles in the
house purporting to be Whittier heirlooms may be depended on as
genuine.

I do not think that Whittier was ever aware that Harriet Livermore, the
"not unfeared, half-welcome guest," of whom he gave such a vivid
portrait in "Snow-Bound," returned to America from her travels in the
Holy Land at about the time that poem was published, and died the next
year, 1867. I have from good authority this curious story of her first
reading of those lines which meant so much in a peculiar way to the
immortality of her name. She was ill, and called with a prescription at
a drugstore in Burlington, N. J. It happened that the druggist was a
personal friend of Whittier's--Mr. Allinson, father of the lad for whom
the poem "My Namesake" was written. This was in March, 1866, and
Whittier had just sent his friend an early copy of his now famous poem.
He had not had time to open the book when the prescription was handed
him. As it would take considerable time to compound the medicine, he
asked the aged lady to take a seat, and handed her the book he had just
received to read while waiting. When he gave her the medicine and she
returned the book, he noticed she was much perturbed, and was mystified
by her exclamation: "This book tells a pack of lies about me!" He
naturally supposed she was crazy, both from her remark and from her
appearance. It was not until some time later that he learned that his
customer was Harriet Livermore herself!

In another New Jersey town was living at the same time another of the
"Snow-Bound" characters,--the teacher of the district school, whose
name even the poet had forgotten when this sketch