but summoning resolution to read it, I was equally surprised and gratified to find it above mediocrity, and so gave it a place in my journal....

As I was anxious to find out the writer, my post-rider, one day, divulged the secret, stating that he had dropped the letter in the manner described, and that it was written by a Quaker lad, named Whittier, who was daily at work on the shoemaker's bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East Haverhill.

Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like a maiden.

Giving him some words of encouragement, I addressed myself more particularly to his parents, and urged them with great earnestness to grant him every possible facility for the development of his remarkable genius." Garrison had not only found a true poet, but a true friend as well, in the Quaker lad, John Greenleaf Whittier.

The friendship which sprang up between the two was to last during the lifetime of the former.