it was a peddler or some vagabond begging for food, which was seldom
refused. Once a foreigner came and asked for lodgings for the night--a
dark, repulsive man, whose appearance was so much against him that Mrs.
Whittier was afraid to admit him. No sooner had she sent him away,
however, than she repented. "What if a son of mine was in a strange
land?" she thought. The young poet (who was not yet recognized as such)
offered to go out in search of him, and presently returned with him,
having found him standing in the roadway just as he had been turned away
from another house.

[Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER]

"He took his seat with us at the supper-table," says Whittier in one of
his prose sketches, "and when we were all gathered around the hearth
that cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words and partly by
gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with
descriptions of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny
clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts,
and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark sallow face lighted
up, and his fierce eyes moistened with grateful emotion as in his own
silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his thanks, we marveled at the fears
which had so nearly closed our doors against him, and as he departed we
all felt that he had left with us the blessing of the poor."

Another guest came to the house one day. It was a vagrant old Scotchman,
who, when he had been treated to bread and cheese and cider, sang some
of the songs of Robert Burns, which Whittier then heard for the first
time, and which he never forgot. Coming to him thus as songs reached the
people before printing was invented, through gleemen and minstrels,
their sweetness lingered in his ears, and he soon found himself singing