USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Haverhill > Some memories of old Haverhill in Massachusetts > Part 5
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The second preceptress of the Academy, Miss Mary Cranch Norton of Sharon, has left in her correspondence some bright and delightful glimpses of the Academy. She describes the meeting of the young ladies and young gentlemen for morning worship :-
" After the young ladies were seated, oh, how I shrunk with- in myself when the sound as of a mighty rushing wind an- nounced the approach of the cavalcade, and they all entered to the number of thirty-three, and Mr. Carleton (the Preceptor) brought up the rear. To complete the tragedy he ascendca my throne where two large arm chairs are placed, one of
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which I occupied, and seated himself at my right hand, and there we sat in that conspicuous situation facing the whole assembly."
In the important place that she was called to fill Miss Norton felt the weight of the responsibilities, and her letters betray a diffidence and shrinking that were due alone to her inexperience. Her sweet presence, sprightliness of wit and tender womanli- ness won the love and loyalty of all her pupils. She became in 1830 the wife of Col. Jacob How, and lived thenceforth in the old Atwood house in Cres- cent Place which was torn down in 1872 to make place for the High School building then erected.
XXI
The Academy became a free High School in 1841, but it was not established as such without the op- position of those who deprecated the expense. When Mr. Train was advocating in one of the town meetings a liberal appropriation for its support, one of the prominent citizens rose to move "as an economical measure that the town appropriate a sufficient sum to remove Mr. Train from the town." The statue of The Thinker that stands before the new High School is the tribute of a pupil, Mrs. Emma Gale Harris, to the memory of a long time
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master of the school, Joseph A. Shores. From 1856 until 1872 he governed the destinies of the school by ideals that sought high character, scholarship and manly development. Back of his modesty there was much firmness, and when necessity arose he could use the rod. A rash and daring but brilliant pupil who was in the later years of his too short life the mayor of the city and its most popular citizen, once in the midst of a long morning prayer by Mr. Shores drew a pistol from his pocket and fired it. The prayer did not halt, the master's tone was even and reverent, but his eyes opened for a brief moment to note the criminal. But when the morning services had been concluded the master drew a stout ferrule from his desk and flogged into the future head of the city a feeling sense of his offence. "So much of a man as I am," said the victim in later years, "that whipping made me,"-and between master and pupil there was ever afterwards mutual love and respect.
When I was a pupil in this school it was part of the discipline of the boys that each should declaim once every fortnight in the presence of a roomful of scholars. The most of us would rather have faced a band of Modocs than the unsympathetic, grin- ning host who formed our audience. At least three gestures were required, one with the right hand,
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one with the left, and a full sweeping gesture with both hands. I have always envied the assurance of the youth who dumbly made the required ges- tures immediately after his bow, and then, the demanded gymnastics having been completed, re- cited the declamation that he had memorized. A long-limbed boy who was also a wit, said that it was unfair to the legs to give all action to the arms. So he prepared a declamation with appropriate action as follows :-
" He looked to the right, " a kick with the right foot;
" He looked to the left, "
a kick with the left foot;
" And he saw Phin Davis pursuing; "
a rush with both feet to his seat.
How odd it is, though years have sped, To feel the same old shivery dread As when in halcyon schooldays past My turn for public speaking came. I hear the master call my name; The long aisle stretching out before, Up which my fettered feet must go, Seems endless; and the billowy floor Shows threatening dangers, as of yore. With face that, like an oriflamme,
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A flag of dread and terror flies, I make my bow and raise my eyes; I've reached the platform,-here I am; No less reluctant than before, When I the schoolboy's burden bore, And told in stammering, sing-song way, How Bingen's soldier dying lay;
Or, fired with the dramatic story, Declaimed Bozzaris' deed of glory; Or took a more triumphant tone : In Warren's " Stand, the ground's your own!" -And, having thus announced my text, Failed to recall what lines came next.
For the dedication of the Haverhill Academy, April 30, 1827, Whittier wrote an ode that was sung to the air, Pillar of Glory. When I wrote the history of this school I was desirous of including this poem. As it was not then to be found in any of the volumes of his verse I asked him if he would furnish me a copy. With a smile he replied, "No, and I hope thee'll not be able to find it, either." He told, however, the story of the event. "I had written some verses," he said, "which had been printed in the newspapers, and the committee who had direction of the occasion invited me to write an original poem for the dedication of the Academy. They also invited the "Rustic Bard," Robert Dins- more, an old Scotch farmer living in Windham, to read some verses . On the day of the dedication [88]
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a procession was formed to march through the streets of the town to the new building, and the honor of leading it was given to the two poets. The old Scotchman was very short and red-faced, with long white hair, and a very uncertain gait due to a very generous draught of Scotch Whiskey be- fore we started. I was a tall and slender Quaker lad, in a Quaker hat and a Quaker coat,-and frightened out of half my wits. A grotesque pair we must have been, but we delivered our verses all right. It was at this time, I think, that the name of "Quaker Poet" was given me."
XXII
It is characteristic of men as they grow older to become eulogists of the past-the twilight gives a golden glow-, but, with all due respect to the present, I remember with gratitude and delight the plain living and high thinking that characterized the Haverhill of my boyhood and early manhood. The purity of character, the culture and refinement of the pupils who were my schoolmates in the old high school, the high aim of the teachers and the faithful supervision of the scholarly and dignified members of the school board, are to me full com- pensation for what may have been lacking of mo-
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dern equipment, laboratory method and special- ization in teaching. The compliment paid to Haverhill by Matthew Arnold more than twenty years ago, when he characterized it as one of the two most cultured places that he had visited in the United States, was not undeserved. The traditions of Haverhill recall a succession of men of worth and women of high breeding who gave to the town and maintained for it the foundations and the reputat- tion of a scholarly and refined community. Its first high school bears now the name of that one of its pupils, Whittier, who gave the consecration of the poet's dream to the familiar scenes, river and lake and woodland stretch, to legend and story and the simple home life. The second building rose where once had stood the home of Harriet Atwood Newell, the missionary; in whose rooms the first Sunday school was organized, and the first charit- able society formed; where Arethusa Hall resided, and Mary Cranch Norton lived her too brief life. The third building covers historie ground, and no pupil who enters its doors should be ignorant of the holy and scholarly story of the place of its location. Not alone by the blood of the minister Rolfe is that ground sanctified, not alone by the devotion and scholarship of his successors, but by the in- spiring life of that aunt of President John Quincy
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Adams who dwelt there, of whom her nephew said: "If the Protestant Church tolerated canonization, she would have deserved to stand among the fore- most in the calendar." That a future President of the United States was fitted for the senior class in Harvard College in the old house removed to make place for this latest high school building, should be an inspiration to the boys, but in the character, scholarship and influence of the aunt in whose family he studied may be found an example and model for pupils and teachers alike. "Elizabeth Smith, sister of Mrs. Abigail Adams and wife of the Reverend John Shaw, was a very superior being. Cultured and refined, she did not neglect the at- tractions of dress, and her whole appearance was attractive. Of great beauty, dignity and stateli- ness, wearing an elaborate and queenly headdress, the most accomplished woman of the little world wherein she lived, she yet was faithful to the common duties and the requirements of a poor clergyman's wife. She aided her solitary maid in her work, attended to the clothing and mended the steckings and minded the appearance of the little boys in the family, and, far from being above work, gave to it that dignity and fidelity that 'makes drudgery divine.'" She made frequent visits to Boston, meet- ing there the best society, and bringing back to the
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rural town the news, the culture and refinement of the city, and its latest fashions as well. Over the students in her family she tenderly and carefully watched. They idolized her. Everything con- nected with her lifted them up to something purer and better, and even when they left her immediate care she followed them by her correspondence, giv- ing them needed advice, precious from such a source. She always turned the conversation at table and elsewhere to instructive themes, and, familiar with the best in literature, with Shake- speare and Addison and Pope, she drew by her conversation her household to the very fountains of the best English thought and expression.
It was the custom of her time to hold protracted meetings in aid of spiritual revival for three or four successive days, and at these all the ministers of the surrounding towns were gathered, their families with them. As few events but death caused a change of pastorate, the clergymen and their fami- lies became intimate with one another, and so rare a woman as Mrs. Shaw was held in high esteem by all. When her husband died in 1791, she had many suitors. Among these was the Reverend Stephen Peabody of Atkinson. As a widower he had consulted Mrs. Shaw about a new wife. "What kind of a woman do you want?" she asked.
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"Oh, one just like yourself," was the gallant and sincere reply. Soon afterwards Mr. Peabody mounted his horse and was riding to visit the woman recommended, when he heard of the death of Mrs. Shaw's husband. He immediately turned his horse and went home. Other suitors were his rivals, the most energetic being the Reverend Isaac Smith, a cousin of Mrs. Shaw's, and the pre- ceptor of Byfield Academy. On one very rainy night each of these suitors, supposing that the storm would keep his rival at home, rode to call on Mrs. Shaw to lay at her feet himself and all his prospects. But Mr. Smith had to ride fifteen miles while Mr. Peabody had to ride only six, and so when the more remote suitor reached her door he was met by her quaint servant with the greeting, "You are too late, sir. Parson Peabody has long ago dried his coat by the kitchen fire, and has been sitting with Mrs. Shaw a whole hour in the parlor." And Parson Smith rode back the fifteen hopeless miles, and thereafter to the day of his death lived single and never smiling.
XXIII
The young John Quincy Adams came to the scholarly atmosphere of Parson Shaw's home from 1
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a most unusual training. Born in July, 1767, he was not eleven years old when he accompanied his father, the first President Adams, on a state mission to France. In the seven years following he re- ceived not alone the instruction of the best Euro- pean schools but the education and culture that came from association with the best minds in France, Holland and Russia, and with such men, much older than himself, as Franklin and Jefferson. When the duties of his father carried him to Eng- land it was the son's choice that brought him home to enter the household of his aunt and prepare for the senior class of Harvard College. Here he came in the spring of 1785 and remained until March, 1786, when he entered the Harvard class of 1787. ] Immediately after graduation he went to Newburyport to study law in the office of Theo- philus Parsons, later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and in the two years' stay there his visits to Haverhill were frequent. His diary kept in those years has been published under the title Life in a New England Town, 1787, 1788, and in this are many entries relating to Haverhill. He was a welcome and frequent guest in the houses of Judge Sargeant and Sheriff Bartlett and "Mar- chant" White, and his classmate, Leonard White, the son of "Marchant" White and the brother of
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Mrs. Bartlett, was his intimate friend. His moth- er's cousin, John Thaxter, who had been the private secretary of his father in Europe and his own tutor, was practicing law in Haverhill, and young Adams enjoyed his companionship. It is to this Mr. Thax- ter that the following entry in his diary refers. Mr. Thaxter was then a bachelor, but married a few weeks later Elizabeth Duncan .---
" (Oct. ) 22d ( 1787 ). At twelve we went to Mr. Thaxter's lodgings, and found fifty or sixty people heartily at work, in which we very readily joined them. At about two there were eighteen or twenty left, who sat down to a table covered with 'big-bellied bottles.' For two hours or more Bacchus and Momus joined hands to increase the festivity of the company; but the former of these deities then of a sudden took a fancy to divert himself and fell to tripping up their heels. Momus laughed on, and kept singing until he grew hoarse and drowsy; and Morpheus, to close the scene, sprinkled a few poppies over their heads, and set them to snoring in concert. By five o'clock they were all under the table except those who had been peculiarlycautious and two or three stout topers. I had been very moderate, yet felt it necessary to walk and take the air. I rambled with Leonard White over the fields and through the street till near seven o'clock. Then I went home with him and,after passing a couple of hours in chat, retired quite early to bed. "
Mr. Adams in this diary pays high tribute to his friend Leonard White, who was a Member of Congress, 1811-1813, and for twenty-five years cashier of the Merrimack Bank.
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XXIV
To one son of Haverhill the mother town has given many proofs of her love and abiding remem- brance. The old farmhouse where John Greenleaf Whittier was born and where he lived through his boyhood and early manhood, is kept as a shrine to his memory; the old academy building where he at- tended school bears his name; his portrait hangs in the Public Library and in every schoolhouse; the "Whittier Collection" of his works, first editions and the literature about him, is one of the treasures of the Library, also; a Whittier Club twice yearly holds meetings in his memory, one meeting being at the scene of Snow-Bound in the month of June, the other observing the day of his birth.
When I was a high school boy of fourteen or fifteen, I remember going one day into Smiley's bookstore and seeing a tall, spare man bending over the counter of books; and the friendly owner of the store called me to him, and said, "Do you know Mr. Whittier, the poet? and have you seen this new poem of his?"-and he opened before me Snow-Bound. I went home not feeling the earth. I had seen a poet; I had felt the clasp of the hand that wrote the poems that I was de- claiming, Barbara Frietchic, Ein Feste Burg ist
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Unser Gott, and the triumphant Laus Deo. And my mother told me then in what an enchante land I was living; that to the river which daily I saw sparkling beyond the apple orchards, to the hills which bounded my horizon, to the old legends and stories of familiar places he had given
" The light that never was on sea or land; The consecration and the poet's dream."
In the plain old farmhouse that now enshrines the memory of the poet and the old New England life depicted in Snow-Bound there had lived, be- fore the birth of the poet, four generations of his ancestors of the simple confidence, the plain life and the pure spirituality of the Quaker faith, be- ginning with Thomas Whittier who came from Eng- land in the good ship Confidence, and built this house fifty years later. The family seems to have originated in an old town eighteen miles from Shrewsbury, England, where an ancient white lime- stone church gave its name to the hamlet, White- church, and also to its most prominent family. Then by mutations and changes in spelling the family name became first Whitehur in pronuncia- tion and later Whittier in spelling.
I like best to approach this old house by the way described in "Telling the Bees,-
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" Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the stone wall still,
And the stepping stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the bechives ranged in the sun ;- "
through the gap in the old stone wall, across the little brook by the stepping stones, along the path leading from the brookside through the old-fash- ioned garden where still in season bloom the old- time flowers, hollyhock, London pride, sweet rocket, bluebells, low-growing pansies and lavender and mint, --
" And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings as in years ago. "
XXV
Mr. Alfred Ordway, whose artistic pictures of Whittier's home gave great delight to the poet, in showing me a picture of the west door of the house which we reach by the garden path, illustrating the lines from The Barefoot Boy, --
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" Oh for festal dainties spread Like my bowl of milk and bread; Pewter spoon and bowl of wood On the doorstep, gray and rude, "-
said that he should have colored the boy's blouse red if he had not known that Quakers object to this vivid color. But Whittier, being color-blind, would not have been disturbed by this brightness. When he was a boy his mother sent him into the neighboring fields to pick wild strawberries, but he was unable to distinguish the ripe berries from the green leaves.
It was to the farmer's boy, physically delicate, fond of reading but with few volumes to gratify his taste in this old home, that his first school-master, Joshua Coffin, brought a volume of Burns' poems, -a magic gift that broke through the stern envi- ronment and reached the fountains of song within him. It was Bonnie Doon and The Cottar's Saturday Night and A Man's a Man for 1' That and Mary Morrison and To Mary in Heaven that reached and touched him. The tribute, prompted by the gift of a sprig of heather from the land of Burns, which Whittier paid to the Scotch poet is one of his tenderest poems, the tribute of the heart to one to whom he owed much, to whom he gave gratitude and love, and for whose frailties he
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implored-as did the blessed Master for all man- kind-charity and forgiveness.
"Let those who never erred forget His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen, Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous ehime Eternal echoes render; The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, And Milton's starry splendor!
But who his human heart has laid To Nature's bosom nearer? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid To love a tribute dearer?
Through all his tuneful art how strong The human feeling gushes! The very moonlight of his song Is warm with smiles and blushes!"
"How do things come to thee?" asked Whittier one day of a friend who was a writer of stories;
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"Do they come in pictures?" And when she said that they did, "So they come to me," he remarked. Whittier told his friend Rantoul of the embarass- ments that grew out of his limited vocabulary. He said that in the white heat of literary production words failed him to such an extent that he was sometimes in terror lest the vision that he saw so completely should vanish before it could be fixed on paper. His conception seemed to come to him on fire with impatience, like some evangel which he must perforce deliver to mankind, but his supply of words was meagre and inadequate, and his fear lest the impassioned thought escape him unrecorded was at times most painful. Much of his work was composed fragmentarily on the backs of letters, leaves torn from some old account book, stray pieces of vagrant paper,-unfinished stanzas, parts of lines, bits of composition, to be wrought into a complete whole after many attempts and with unceasing pains.
Often as Whittier walked the familiar ways he was so absorbed in his pictures that he did not, or would not, break the line of thought to speak to ac- quaintances. An acquaintance once jestingly ac- cused him of "cutting" her on the street, and with his sweet smile he replied, "Thee is right. There are only two people here that I never fail to sec,"-
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and he mentioned two old men, both poor and one a cripple. The anonymous tribute of an Amesbury friend expresses the love and pride in which he was held by his neighbors :-
" I say it softly to myself, I whisper it to the swaying flowers, When he goes by ring all your bells Of perfume, ring, for he is ours.
Ours is the resolute, firm step, Ours the dark lightning of the eye, The rare, sweet smile, and all the joy Of ownership, when he goes by.
I know above our simple spheres His fame has flown, his genius towers; These are for glory and the world, But he himself is only ours. "
XXVI
There comes to me the remembrance of a cold, clear day in December, 1891, his last birthday on earth, when a little company of friends went to call on him at the home of his cousin, Mrs. Cartland, in Newburyport. He came into the room to greet them with that modesty that made Holmes call him "the wood thrush of Essex," and with a dignity and serenity that touched us all into silence. The face was like alabaster through which an inward light
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shone, the eyes like a benediction, the voice like music from the Isles of Peace. Amid the gifts from near and far, the messages of remembrance and love from the honored and the great, his heart turned to his own, the friends from his native town, and he spoke with deep feeling: "It is said that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in his own house, but I have been signally honored by my dear townspeople."
When, a year later, the snows lay over his grave and the people of Haverhill assembled in their pub- lic hall to do his memory honor, there came an unexpected guest whose presence demanded a place in the programme for which no provision had been made. It was soon arranged that this bardic guest, the last of the Hutchinsons, be allowed to choose his own part. When he was introduced he rose in all the majesty of his old age, with long white beard and flowing locks and flashing eyes, and sang as an old bard might have done that trumpet cry of the poet's that takes as its title the words of Luther's hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. It brought back the Whittier of the flashing eye and the warring spirit, whose verse was mighty and eloquent in denouncing evil, and whose pen was the weapon with which he smote Wrong.
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XXVII
At the celebration of the two-hundred-and- fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Haverhill, in 1890, I had the honor of reading the poem, Haverhill, which Whittier had written for the occasion. As he was too feeble to attend the exer- cises he invited me to come to Oak Knoll and read the poem to him. On that delightful visit he spoke particularly of the rhythm, "We poets," said he, "might as well write prose if the melody of our lines is not kept." Although he was very deaf he was a most delightful listener to my reading of this poem and of some others that he desired me to read, and he rewarded me by a very pleasant compliment, naively adding, "The lines sound very well; doesn't thee think so."
Of those who took part in the formal literary ex- ercises of that anniversary-though it seems but as yesterday-I alone am living. If I read the dear lines well it was because there was love in my heart for the old town, a love that gave full mean- ing and earnestness to the prayer of the poet :-
" Adrift on Time's returnless tide As waves that follow waves, we glide. God grant we leave upon the shore Some waif of good it lacked before.
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Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth, Some added beauty to the earth; Some larger hope, some thought to make The sad world happier for its sake.
As tenants of uncertain stay, So may we live our little day That only grateful hearts shall fill The homes we leave in Haverhill.
The singer of a farewell rhyme, Upon whose outmost verge of time The shades of night are falling down, I pray, God bless the good old town!
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