The boy's
frail health was early broken by the severe labor. He had to milk seven
cows, plow with a yoke of oxen, and keep busy from dawn until dark.
Unlike the other members of the New England group of authors, Whittier
never went to college. He received only the scantiest education in the
schools near his home. The family was so poor that he had to work as a
cobbler, making slippers at eight cents a pair, in order to attend the
Haverhill academy for six months. He calculated his expenses so exactly
that he had just twenty-five cents left at the end of the term.
Two events in his youth had strong influence on his future vocation. When
he was fourteen, his school-teacher read aloud to the family from the poems
of Robert Burns. The boy was entranced, and, learning that Burns had been
merely a plowman, felt that there was hope for himself. He borrowed the
volume of poems and read them again and again. Of this experience, he says:
"This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of the
Bible, of which I had been a close student) and it had a lasting influence
upon me. I began to make rhymes myself and to imagine stories and
adventures.
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