RECREATIONS AND MISCELLANIES.

BY

JOHN G. WHITTIER,

66

AUTHOR OF MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL,"
"OLD PORTRAITS," ETC.

"There are those who would never have an author speak of things of which others
have spoken; and if he does, they accuse him of saying nothing new. But, if the
subjects are not new, the disposing of them may be; as in playing at tennis both play
with the same ball, but differently."- Blaise Pascal.

BOSTON:

TICKNOR AND FIELDS.

M DCCC LIV.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by

JOHN G. WHITTIER,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED AT THE

BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

PREFATORY NOTE.

MOST of the pieces which make up this volume were originally written for newspapers with which the author has been editorially or otherwise connected. Penned at widely different periods, in every variety of mood and circumstance, - alike under the depressing influences of illness and the stimulus of popular excitement, any thing like consecutive arrangement or unity has been out of the question. Indeed, their selection from a large amount of similar matter, destined, in all human probability, to that capacious wallet

"Which Time hath ever at his back,

Wherein he puts alms to oblivion,"

has been owing quite as much to the fact that they