ads ached and our throats were sore; and
when we had finished we began again. I remember being surprised at his
quick, almost boyish, sense of fun, and at the ease with which he rose
from it into the atmosphere of the gravest, even the most solemn,
discussion. He was a delightful converser, amusing, restful,
stimulating, and inspiring at once." The winter of 1882-83 he spent at
the Winthrop Hotel, on Bowdoin Street, where the Commonwealth Hotel now
stands.

[Illustration: WHITEFIELD'S CHURCH AND BIRTHPLACE OF GARRISON]

A visit to Whittier-Land is incomplete if Old Newbury and Newburyport
(originally one town) are left out of the itinerary. At the celebration
of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of
Newbury, in 1885, a letter from Whittier was read in which he recites
some of the reasons for his interest in the town. He says: "Although I
can hardly call myself a son of the ancient town, my grandmother, Sarah
Greenleaf of blessed memory, was its daughter, and I may therefore
claim to be its grandson. Its genial and learned historian, Joshua
Coffin, was my first school-teacher, and all my life I have lived in
sight of its green hills, and in hearing of its Sabbath bells. Its
history and legends are familiar to me.... The town took no part in the
witchcraft horror, and got none of its old women and town charges
hanged for witches. 'Goody' Morse had the spirit rappings in her house
two hundred years earlier than the Fox girls did, and somewhat later a
Newbury minister in wig and knee-buckles rode, Bible in hand, over to
Hampton to lay a ghost who had materialized himself and was stamping up
and down stairs in his military boots.... Whitefield set the example
since followed by the Salvation Army, of preaching in its streets, and
now lies buried under one of the churches with almost the honor of
sainthood. William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newbury. The town must be
regarded as the Alpha and Omega of the anti-slavery agitation."

The grandmother to whom he refers was born in that part of the town
nearest to his own birthplace. The outlet to Country Brook is nearly
opposite the Greenleaf place, and Whittier's poem "The Home-Coming of
the Bride" describes the crossing of the river and the bridal
procession up the valley of the lesser stream, a part of which is known
as Millvale because of the mills alluded to in the poem.

The house in which Garrison was born is on School Street next to the
Old South