[Illustration: INTERIOR OF FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE
Whittier's usual seat marked, on left side, near "facing seats."]
Mr. Whittier had many wonderful stories illustrating the guidance of the spirit to which members of the Society of Friends submitted in the daily intercourse of life. One was of an aged Friend, who never failed to attend meeting on First Day. But one morning he told his wife that he was impelled to take a walk instead of going to meeting, and he knew not whither he should go. He went into the country some distance and came to a lane which led to a house. He was impressed to take this lane, and soon reached a house where a funeral service was in progress. At the close of the service he arose, and said that he knew nothing of the circumstances connected with the death of the young woman lying in the casket, but he was impelled to say that she had been accused of something of which she was not guilty, and the false accusation had hastened her death. Then he added that there was a person in the room who knew she was not guilty, and called upon this person, whoever it might be, to vindicate the character of the deceased. After a solemn pause, a woman arose and confessed she had slandered the dead girl. In telling such stories as this, Mr. Whittier did not usually express full and unreserved belief in their truth, but he maintained the attitude of readiness to believe anything of this kind which was well authenticated, and he approved of the methods of work adopted by the Society for Psychical Research in England and in this country.
The hills encircling the lovely valley of the short and busy Powow River, beginning with the southwestern extremity of the amphitheatre, are: Bailey's, on the declivity of which, overlooking the Merrimac, is the site of Goody Martin's cottage, the scene of the poem of "Mabel Martin;" next is the ridge on which is the Union Cemetery where Whittier is buried; then Whittier Hill, named not for the poet but for his first American ancestor who settled here, and locally called "Whitcher Hill"--showing the ancient pronunciation of the name; then, across the Powow, are Po, Mundy, Brown's, and Rocky hills. On a lower terrace of the Union Cemetery ridge, and near the cemetery, is the Macy house, built before 1654 by Thomas Macy, first town clerk of Amesbury (and ancestor of Edwin M. Stanton, the great war secretary), who was driven from the town for harboring a proscribed Quaker in 1659, as told in the poem "The Exiles;"[6] also, the birthplace of Josiah Bartlett, first signer of the Declaration of Independence after Hancock, whose statue, given by Jacob R. Huntington, a public-spirited citizen of Amesbury, stands in Huntington Square; and near by is "The Captain's Well," dug by Valentine Bagley in pursuance of a vow, as told in Whittier's poem; also the Home for Aged Women, for which Whittier left by his will nearly $10,000. It is to a view of Newburyport as seen from Whittier Hill, a distance of five miles, that the opening lines of "The Preacher" refer:--