John Greenleaf Whittier

“ Our farmhouse was situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light of the kitchen fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses, and robbers, when we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. ”

“ I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her yashmak; (3) schoolboys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders ”

“ I very much fear that my friend Mary Russell Mitford,—sweetest of England's rural painters,—who has a poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp-fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield. ”

“ No love-sick youth could drown himself, no deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country seclusion, as Autolycus to the clown in "Winter's Tale," (1) we listened with infinite satisfaction to his reading of his own verses, or to his ready improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his auditors. ”

“ See in Miss Mitford's Our Village.
"The proper study of mankind is man;" and, according to my view, no phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation. Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and returning, once for all, their numerous visits. ”

“ One we recollect, a lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving rather as a walking-staff than as a protection from the rain. ”

“ That comfortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth—that poetic agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all—is the real life of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:—
"Other hands may grasp the field and forest, Proud proprietors in pomp may shine, . ”

“ They have the same settled aversion to labor and the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold water." ”

“ One, a black-eyed, wild-haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat ”

“ After experimenting upon himself and his neighbors he took up the profession of hydropathy and established baths at his native place, Grafenberg in Silesia, in 1829. He died in 1851. (5) Dr. Samuel Thomson, a New Hampshire physician, advocated the use of the steam bath as a restorer of system when diseased. He died in 1843 and left behind an autobiography (Life and Medical Discoveries) which contains a record of the persecutions he underwent.
Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the keyhole ”

“ The original like Whittier's was a sly old fellow, as an English phrase would translate the Scottish. The Gaberlunzie Man is given in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry and in Child's English and Scottish Ballads, viii. 98. (2) William R. Dempster, a Scottish vocalist who had recently sung in America, and whose music to Burns's song "A man 's a man for a' that" was very popular. (3) The whole of this song may be found in Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, ii. 172.
That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse, and was never after heard of. ”