Excerpt from Whittier-Land: A Handbook of North Essex This volume is designed to meet a call from tourists who are visiting the Whittier shrines at Haverhill and Ames bury in numbers that are increasing year by year. Besides describing the ancestral homestead and its surroundings, and the home at Amesbury, an attempt is made to answer such questions as naturally arise in regard to the localities mentioned by Whittier in his ballads Of the region. Many anecdotes of the poet and several poems by him are now first published. It is with some hesitancy that I have ven tured to add a chapter upon a phase of his character that has never been adequately presented: I refer to his keen sense of humor. It will be understood that none of the impromptu verses I have given to illustrate his playful moods were intended by him to be seen outside a small circle Of friends and neighbors. This playfulness, however, was so much a part Of his character from boyhood to Old age that I think it deserves some record such as is here given. For those who are interested to inquire to whom refer passages in such poems as Memories, My Playmate, and A Sea Dream, I now feel at liberty to give such information as could not properly be given at the time when I undertook the biography Of the poet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.