unflinching sense of duty; and in all the members of the
household the love of nature was so genuine that meadow, wood, and
river yielded them all the pleasure they needed, and they scarcely
missed the refinements of art.

Surely there could not be a pleasanter or more homelike picture than
that which the poet has given us of the family on the night of the great
storm when the old house was snowbound:

"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
And ever when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.
The house-dog on his paws outspread,
Laid to the fire his drowsy head;
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall,
And for the winter fireside meet
Between the andiron's straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood."

For a picture of the poet himself we must turn to the verses in "The
Barefoot Boy," in which he says:

"O for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden-wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches, too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!"[1]

[Illustration: THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE, HAVERHILL, MASS.]

I doubt if any boy ever rose to intellectual eminence who had fewer
opportunities for education than Whittier. He had no such pasturage to
browse on as is open to every reader who, by simply reaching them out,
can lay his hands on the treasures of English literature. He had to
borrow books wherever they could