" The second event was the appearance in print of some of his
verses, which his sister had, unknown to him, sent to a Newburyport paper
edited by William Lloyd Garrison. The great abolitionist thought enough of
the poetry to ride out to Whittier's home and urge him to get an education.
This event made an indelible impression on the lad's memory.
Realizing that his health would not allow him to make his living on a farm,
he tried teaching school, but, like Thoreau, found that occupation
distasteful. Through Garrison's influence, Whittier at the age of
twenty-one procured an editorial position in Boston. At various times he
served as editor on more than half a dozen different papers, until his own
health or his father's brought him back to the farm. Such occupation taught
him how to write prose, of which he had produced enough at the time of his
death to fill three good-sized volumes, but his prose did not secure the
attention given to his verse. While in Hartford, editing _The New England
Review_, he fell in love with Miss Cornelia Russ, and a few days before he
finally left the city, he wrote a proposal to her in three hundred words of
wandering prose.
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