19 



from the bucket in the well on the fateful morning of 

 the 19th of April, 1775. The child looking from the 

 windows saw upon the return from Lexington a sad 

 sight for youthful eyes and for the mourners, though 

 liberty on that day was born. The child saw the gray- 

 stockinged forms cold in death as the rumbling wagons 

 bore their sacred burdens back to wailing families. That 

 child never forgot the scene, and in old age used to tell 

 the story to j'ounger people, and he who heard it from 

 her lips was himself an old man when he related it to 

 me. 



Scenes an hundred years prior to Lexington have these 

 old houses seen. Upon the bank of the North River, in 

 the midst of the sloping fields, where to-day the Septem- 

 ber sun is ripening farmer Jacobs' crops, stands the sub- 

 stantial house with the surroundings practically as they 

 were when its master, George Jacobs — Saint George of 

 old Northfields as we call him now— was led away for 

 shameful death in the dark days of the witchcraft troub- 

 les in 1692. 



Here in Haverhill your late public spirited fellow 

 citizen, James H. Carleton, did a characteristic and 

 noble deed when, in his life time — not making it an after 

 death benefaction — he secured the preservation of the birth- 

 place of the sweet poet whose rhymed lines are in closest 

 touch with the finest expression of New England life. 

 Whittier is the immortal flower of rural New England. 

 Mr. Carleton has made this plain farm house the jNIecca 

 towards which throngs of lovers of the poet will be drawn 

 and, say with him 



