OME, AMESBURY]

While repairs were making in this part of the house in the summer of
1903, a package of old letters was found in the wall, bearing the date
of 1847, the year when the enlargement was made. One of them reveals
the source of the money required for the improvement. It was from Lewis
Tappan of New York, the financial backbone of the anti-slavery society,
inclosing a check for arrears of salary due Whittier for editorial
work. Mr. Tappan writes: "I will ask the executive committee to raise
the compensation. I wish we could pay you according to the real value
of your productions, rather than according to their length.... Inclosed
is a check for one hundred dollars. Mr. Sturge authorizes me to draw on
him for one thousand dollars at any time when you and I should think it
could be judiciously invested in real estate for your family. I can
procure the money in a week by drawing on him. When you have made up
your mind as to the investment, please let me know."

At this time the poet was feeling the pinch of real poverty and was
living in a little one-story cottage that gave him no room for a study,
and no suitable chamber for a guest. It was at this time that he
received the letter which contained not only a check for overdue
salary, but a promise of a gift of one thousand dollars from his
generous English friend, Joseph Sturge. The result of this beneficence
was the building of the "garden room," to which thousands of visitors
come from all parts of this and other countries, because in it were
written "Snow-Bound," "The Eternal Goodness," and most of the poems of
Whittier's middle life and old age. Mr. Sturge had sent Whittier six
years earlier a draft for one thousand dollars, intending it should be
used by him in traveling for his health. But Whittier had given most of
this toward the support of an anti-slavery paper in New York. Two years
later the same generous friend offered to pay all his expenses if he
would come to England as his guest, an offer he was obliged to decline.
A portrait of Sturge is appropriately placed in this room. Tappan's
letter was written April 21, 1847, and the addition to the cottage was
built in the summer of that year. The whole expense of the improvement
was no doubt covered by Sturge's gift. Other interesting letters of the
same period were included in the package in the wall.

[Illustration: JOSEPH STURGE, THE ENGLISH PHILANTHROPIST

"The very gentlest of all human nature