whose sight and smell
suggested to him always the generous bounty of nature. From early
spring, when the corn was planted in fields bordered by wild
rose-bushes, to late autumn, when the crop lay bound into glistening
sheaves, his life was one of steady toil, lightened sometimes by a
day's fishing in the mountain streams or by a berrying excursion up
among the hills.

In cold weather he went to school in the little school-house that he
celebrates in one of his poems, and very often, as he confessed, he
was found writing verses instead of doing sums on his slate.

This old phase of New-England life has now passed away, but he has
preserved its memory in three poems, which are in a special sense
biographical. These poems are, _The Barefoot Boy_, _My Schoolmaster_,
and _Snow-Bound_. The first two are simple, boyish memories, but
the last is a description not only of his early home, but of the
New-England farm life, and is a Puritan idyl.

All are full of the idealization of childhood, for the poet could
never break loose from the charm which had enthralled him as a boy.
The poetry of common life which lay over the meadow lands and fields
of grain, which gave a voice to the woodland brook, and glorified
the falling rain and snow, was felt by Whittier, when, as a child, he
paused from his work to listen to the robin's song among the wheat or
watch the flocks of clouds making their way across the summer sky.

When he was nineteen years of age the country-side mail-carrier one
day rode up to the farm and took from his saddle-bags the weekly
paper, which he tossed to the boy, who stood mending a fence. With
trembling eagerness Whittier opened it, and saw in the "Poet's Corner"
his first printed poem. He had sent it with little hope that it would
be accepted, and the sight of it filled him with joy, and determined
his literary career. A few months later the editor of the paper,
William Lloyd Garrison, drove out to the homestead to see the young
verse-maker. Whittier was called from the field where he was hoeing,
and in the interview that followed Garrison insisted that such talent
should not be thrown away, and urged the youth to take a course of
study at some academy. But, although the farm supplied the daily needs
of the family, money was scarce, and the sum required for board and
tuition was impossible to scrape together. A young farm assistant,
however, offered to teach Whittier the trade of shoemaking, and his
every m