the older
poet. From that hour, whether he was at home or at school, he found
great pleasure in writing verses, which he often showed to his young
friends. Thus it was that his older sister Mary was able, all unknown to
him, to send off one of his poems to the Newburyport _Free Press_. When
the paper containing the verses came, the young poet read the lines over
and over again, almost too dazed to recognize them as his own. This
contribution was followed by another made to the same paper. By this
time the editor's interest had been so much aroused that, learning from
the postman of the author's whereabouts, he traveled to Haverhill to
visit him. This editor was no other than William Lloyd Garrison, who
later became famous as a leader of the cause of abolition. He urged
strongly that the boy's education be continued. Perhaps his words would
have counted for nothing, however, had it not been that somewhat later
the editor of the Haverhill _Gazette_, in which some of young Whittier's
verses had been published, entreated the boy's parents to send him to
the new Haverhill Academy. His father's consent having been gained,
Greenleaf learned from a man who worked on the farm how to make
slippers, and thus he became able to pay his own expenses during a term
at the Academy. By teaching school in the winter, and by helping to keep
the books of a Haverhill merchant, he was able to provide for a second
term. Thus was completed his regular schooling.

In the meanwhile his friend Garrison had kept an eye on him, and at the
close of 1825 secured for him the editorship of _The American
Manufacturer_, a weekly magazine published in Boston. Young Whittier
entered with great interest into the work, contributing articles on
politics and temperance as well as numerous poems. Though he received
only nine dollars a week, he was able, when called back to Haverhill in
1829, by his father's illness, to give about one half of what he had
earned to help remove the mortgage on the farm.

He remained at home until his father's death in 1830, editing for a time
the Haverhill _Gazette_ and sending to the _New England Review_, of
Hartford, Connecticut, various poems and articles. So much favor did
these find with the editor, George D. Prentice, that he invited the
young writer to fill his position during a temporary absence. The offer
was highly complimentary, for the _Review_ was the principal political
journal in Connecticut supporting Henry Clay.