LITERARY

PILGRIMAGES //

NEW ENGLAND

BHBBBBHfaiBBBMBBHBBHNIBBBBIHH

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

OF THE
UNIVERSITY

SCENE OF THE LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES

NEW ENGLAND

TO THE HOMES OF FAMOUS MAKERS OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE AND AMONG

THEIR HAUNTS AND THE SCENES

OF THEIR WRITINGS

EDWIN M. BACON

AUTHOR OF "HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES IN NEW ENGLAND," " BACON*!

DICTIONARY OF BOSTON," "WALKS AND RIDES IN THE

COUNTRY ROUND ABOUT BOSTON," ETC.

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO

f/3

B/z?

COPYBIGHT, 1902, BY
SlLVEB, BUBDETT AND COMPANY,

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. PAaE

The Scheme 1

CHAPTER II.
On Andover Hill . 4

A serene old Academic Town. Beginnings of the Andover Academies
and the Theological Seminary. Some famous academy boys.
Where "America" was written. The Phillips Family. Notable
Andover professors : Leonard Woods, Eliphalet Pearson, Edwards A.
Park, Moses Stuart, Austin Phelps. Elizabeth Stuart and Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps (Ward). Story of "The Gates Ajar." Harriet
Beecher Stowe and her "Old Stone Cabin." Her life and work
there. Her grave.

CHAPTER III.
At the Home of Anne Bradstreet ........ 22

The ancient Bradstreet homestead. Where the first American woman-
poet wrote. Her volume of verses and its reception. Her family.
Colonel Dudley Bradstreet and the witchcraft delusion. After-
history of the old house. Simeon Putnam's boarding-school.
Story of Anne Bradstreet's life. The old Phillips manse.

CHAPTER IV.
In Whittier's Country ........... . 35

Along the poet's beloved Merrimac. Points about Haverhill celebrated
in his poems. The old homestead where he was born. Scenes
made memorable by him. Pictures from "Snow Bound": the
family group about the great fireplace. Life on the farm. Early
poems under the influence of Burns. The first poem in print. First
meeting of Whittier and Garrison at the homestead. The poet's
earlier editorial work.

2L0599

Vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER V. PAGE

At Whittier's Amesbury Home 56

The " Garden Boom." Work in verse and prose done here. Later
editorial labors. The Atlantic poems. The poet's first published
volume. Productions of his riper years. The Old Quaker Meeting-
house. The poet's pew, where "LausDeo" was thought out at a
" Fifth Day " meeting. The poet's grave on the hilltop overlooking
familiar scenes of his verse.

CHAPTER VI.
Round about Newburyport 65

"Whittier's picture of "the old and quiet town." By the "Swinging
chain-bridge." Deer Island. Harriet Prescott Spofford and her
work. Scene of "The Tent on the Beach." Workplace of a gal-
axy of writers : Richard Hildreth, Theophilus Parsons, Cornelius C.
Felton, Lucy Hooper, Caleb Gushing, George Lunt, John Pierpont,
James Parton, T. W. Higginson. Whittier's schoolmaster. The
old " Church of Federal Street " and Whitefield's tomb. The Parson-
age where the " Marvellous Preacher" died. Birthplace of William
Lloyd Garrison. His work in Newburyport and afterward. The
Lowell family. Home of Hannah Flagg Gould. The Longfellow
homestead in old Newbury.

CHAPTER VII.

The " Old Town by the Sea " 89

Birthplaces of T. B. Aldrich, James T. Fields, Celia Thaxter, " Mrs.
Partington." Scenes of various classics. On the old Pier. The
"Earl of Halifax " taverns. Scene of the opening picture of " Lady
Wentworth." Aldrich in Portsmouth, and afterward. The old
Athenaeum. James T. Fields's career. Benjamin P. Shillaber and
the development of "Mrs. Partington"; His Carpet Bag. Some
Portsmouth mansions. Daniel Webster's home. The Wentworth
"Great House " at Little Harbor. On Kittery side.

CHAPTER VIII.
Among the Isles of Shoals 110

Their situation in the Open Sea. History and traditions. Haw-
thorne's note on their weird shapes. Celia Thaxter's sketch.
Lowell's " Pictures from Appledore." Legends of the Isles. The
Old White Island lighthouse. Celia Thaxter's girlhood there. Her
marriage and literary development. Her later cottage home on
Appledore. Resort of literary folk. Her island grave

CONTENTS. Vii

CHAPTER IX. PAGE

In the Forest City '.'......... 128

Along the way from Portsmouth. South Berwick, home of Sarah Orne
Jewett. Story of her work. "The Falls of Saco." Portland's
Longfellow landmarks. The poet's birthplace. The mansion home
of his boyhood. His life here and at the country homes of his grand-
fathers. His first poem in* the local newspaper. Its unconscious
critic. Scenes of later poems. The Portland band of writers :
Nathaniel Deering, John Neal, Seba Smith, Isaac M'Lellan, Gren-
ville Mellen, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Anna S. W. Stephens, Elijah
Kellogg. Story of Nathaniel P. Willis.

CHAPTER X.

In Maine's Chief College Town . 155

College days of Longfellow and Hawthorne. Where "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" was written. Story of the execution. Mrs. Stowe's
"vision." Longfellow's first professorship. Poems written in
Brunswick. Longfellow's last visit to his Alma Mater. " Morituri
Salutamus." The farewell gathering of the surviving classmates.
Footprints of Hawthorne. The Abbott brothers, Jacob, John S. C.
and Gorham D. Story of the " Rollo Books" and their com-
panions. Birthplace of " Artemus Ward." His career recalled.

CHAPTER XI.
The Heart of Essex 173

Ipswich landmarks. Homes of Colonial writers and scholars. John
Winthrop, jun. Anne Bradstreet's earlier home. Nathaniel Ward,
" The Simple Cobler of Aggawam. " Hubbard, the early historian.
John Norton. Thomas Cobbett. Nathaniel Rogers. The progeni-
tors of Ralph Waldo Emerson. " Gail Hamilton's " home in
Hamilton. Scene of "The Witch of Wenham." "Peter's Pulpit."

CHAPTER XII.
Massachusetts Bay Side ............. 185

Old Beverly landmarks. Birthplace of Lucy Larcom. Her early lit-
erary efforts when a cotton mill-hand. Her later career. " Hannah
Binding Shoes." Songs of the sea. Birthplace of Wilson Flagg.
His contributions to the literature of nature. Birthplace of George
E. Woodberry. His " North Shore Watch," and " My Country."
Beverly Farms. Oliver Wendell Holmes at " Beverly -by -th e-I)epot. "
Manchester-by-the-Sea, Summer home of Dana, Bartol, and Fields.

Vlll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIII.

Hawthorne's Salem 200

Beverly Bridge and "The Toll-Gatherer's Day." Birthplaces of
Charles T. Brooks and William W. Story. Hawthorne's house on
Mall Street. His study "high from all noise." Story of "The
Scarlet Letter." The romancer's previous work and its slow recogni-
tion. The Union Street and Herbert Street houses. The Peabody
house and "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." The old bury ing-ground
as pictured by Hawthorne. Nathaniel Mather, "an aged man at
nineteen years." The so-called "Seven Gables house." Other
Hawthorne homes. Historic house of Abner C. Goodell. Birthplace
of Prescott. Jones Very. Nahant.

CHAPTER XIV.
A Day in Boston 219

The Athenaeum and the Anthology Club of a century ago. The
Monthly Anthology and the North American Review. Homes of a
group of historians : Ticknor, Motley, Prescott, and Parkman.
Story of their lives and work. Glimpses of their literary work-
shops. Birthplace of Wendell Phillips. Thomas Gold Appleton.
The crossed swords in Prescott' s library.

CHAPTER XV.
Over Beacon Hill 247

Home of Richard H. Dana, the poet. Story of his publication of Bry-
ant's "Thanatopsis." The younger Dana. Arlo Bates. Henry
Child Merwin. Cyrus A. Bartol. Charles Francis Adams, senior.
T. B. Aldrich's hill homes. William Ellery Channing and his
work. Margaret Deland. William D. Howells. The Alcotts.
Pinckney Street. Origin of " The Hanging of the Crane." Homes
of George S. Hillard, Edwin P. Whipple, Edwin D. Mead, Louise
Imogen Guiney. The poet Parsons.

CHAPTER XVI.
In Newer Boston 276

Charles-Street homes of Aldrich, Fields, and Holmes. A side note
about Ponkapog. The library in the Fields house. Holmes's work
in his Charles-Street house. As a lecturing professor. His career
reviewed. His earlier home on Montgomery Place. Where the
"Autocrat" papers were written. Stories of notable poems.
Holmes's last home on Beacon Street, water side. His closing years
and gentle death. Home of Julia Ward Howe. Story of the "Bat-
tle Hymn of the Republic." Other " Back Bay " literary homes.
Edward Everett Hale. Edwin Lassetter Bynner. Brook Farm.
Lindsay Swift.

CONTENTS. ix

CHAPTER XVII. PAQE

Cambridge Revisited 295

Home of the poet-painter, Washington Allston. Lowell's picture of
him. Birthplace of Margaret Puller Ossoli. Story of her career.
- The " Dial." Home of Louis Agassiz. His Cambridge life and
work. Latter home of Jared Sparks. Where he wrote his his-
tories. Old "Professors' Row." Home and study of Francis J.

Child. His classic. Charles Eliot Norton at " Shady Hill." The

Palfrey Place. Palfrey's public and literary life. Birthplace of
T. W. Higginson. His literary and reform work. Site of Holmes's
Birthplace. The " Cambrel-roofed house" and its memories. In
the old church yard. John Holmes.

CHAPTER XVIII.

From " Craigie House" to "Elmwood" 321

The approach along Brattle Street. Scene of "The Village Black-
smith." Homes of John Fiske. His notable work. In the library
of " Craigie house." Longfellow's Cambridge life. His lirst rooms
on Professors' Row. The " Five of Clubs." First coming to the
Craigie house. Madam Craigie. The upper and lower studies and
the work done in them. The tragedy of the poet's life. Neighbor-
ing homes of Horace E. Scudder and T. W. Higginson. Lowell at
" Elmwood.". The attic study. Story of the " Biglow " papers.
Lowell's closing years at the beloved home. John T. Trowbridge at
Arlington. Story of "Neighbor Jackwood."

CHAPTER XIX.
Sudbury and Concord 362

The Wayside Inn. Longfellow's Picture in the "Tales." Story of
the poem. The Wadsworth Monument. Homes of "the Concord
Group." Thoreau and his haunts. The poet Chanuing. "Aunt
Mary Emerson" and Thoreau's mother. The Hut at Walden.
Frank B. Sanborn and his work. The Concord Library. Birth-
place of the brothers Hoar. Emerson in Concord. The Alcotts and
their homes. Story of a remarkable family. Bronson Alcott's
unique career. Louisa Alcott's achievements. The Concord School
of Philosophy. Hawthorne at "The Wayside." Scenes of his
later romances. His " Walk " on the Ridge. His earlier life at the
Old Manse.

CHAPTER XX.

In the Connecticut Valley 415

Along the way from Boston to Springfield. Landmarks on connecting
lines. Birthplace of Hannah Adams. Story of the first native

X CONTENTS.

American woman to make books. Kate Sanborn and her "Aban-
doned Farm." Birthplace and early life of George Bancroft. Long-
fellow's poem on "The Arsenal at Springfield." Landmarks of
Dr. Josiah G. Holland. His "Timothy Titcomb " Letters and his
popular poems. Samuel Bowles, the early independent editor.
Edward Bellamy's home at Chicopee Falls. His "Looking Back-
ward" and later works. Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan metaphy-
sician. Timothy Dwight and the Dwight family. Smith College
for Women. The Round Hill School of Bancroft and Cogswell.
Bancroft's Northampton and later life. George W. Cable at " Tarry-
awhile."

CHAPTER XXI.

Among the Berkshire Hills . ^446

Pittsfield. Birthplace of William Allen, maker of the first American
biographical dictionary. The former Gold mansion, scene of "The
Old Clock on the Stairs." Holmes's ancestral country seat.
Scenes of ' " Elsie Venner." " The Plowman." The original
"One Hoss Shay." "Broadhall." The two Majors Melville.
Herman Melville and Hawthorne. Melville's sea stories.
Lenox. Catherine M. Sedgwick's stories. Mrs. Charles Sedg-
wick's school and some of her pupils. Maria Cummings, author of
"The Lamplighter." Frances Anne Kemble. Hawthorne in
"The little red cottage." Stockbridge. " Edwards Hall."
Jonathan Edwards's life here. The Sedgwick mansion and the
Sedgwick family. The famous brothers Field. Birthplace of
Mark Hopkins. Great Barrington. Scenes of Bryant's favorite
poems. The poet's earlier life in Cummington. A glance at
Sheffield.

CHAPTER XXII.
Hartford and New Haven 472

Writers identified with the " Charter Oak City." From the " Hartford
Wits" to the modern set. The grouped homes of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and "Mark Twain." Clemens's
unique apprenticeship to literature. Warner's earlier home of " My
Summer in a Garden." Mrs. Sigourney. Catherine Beecher's
celebrated Academy. Emma Willard. The trio of Hartford lit-
erary editors : Brainard, Prentice, and Whittier. Productions of
the "Hartford Wits." The "City of Elms." Literary men as
Yale students. The Trumbull Gallery. Distinguished graves in
the Old Burying Ground. The poets Hillhouse and Percival.
Theodore Winthrop. Donald G. Mitchell at "Edge wood."

LIST OF ILLUSTRATION'S.

PAGE

Ma P Frontispiece

Old Judge Phillips's Mansion

House, Andover, Mass 6

Portrait of Edwards A. Park ... 9
Old Andover Home of Elizabeth

Stuart Phelps (Ward) .... 11
Portrait of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 15
Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe 18
Old Bradstreet House, North An-
dover, Mass 24

Facsimile of Anne Bradstreet's

Handwriting 28

Ancient Burying Ground at North

Andover, Mass 33

Whittier's Birthplace, Haverhill,

Mass 37

Kitchen, Whittier Homestead . . 42
Portrait of John G. Whittier at

Thirty 52

A Bit of the Parlor in Whittier's

Amesbury Home 57

Whittier Homestead, Amesbury,

Portrait of Whittier in Late Life . 60
Friends' Meeting-house, Amesbury,

Mass 61

Amesbury from Powow Hill, the

View in " Miriam " 63

Chain-Bridge by Deer Island, Merri-

mac River 66

Home of Harriet Prescott Spofford,

Deer Island 67

Portrait of Harriet Prescott Spof-
ford 68

Home of James Par ton, Newbury-

port, Mass 74

The "Old Church of Federal

Street," Newburyport, Mass. . . 76
Parsonage where Whitefield Died,

Newburyport, Mass 77

PAGE

Birthplace of William Lloyd Garri-
son, Newburyport, Mass. ... 78

Portrait of William Lloyd Garri-
son .. go

Facsimile of the Title of " The Libe-
rator" f , 82

Lowell House, Newburyport, Mass. 84

Home of Hannah Flagg Gould,
Newburyport, Mass 85

Old Longfellow Homestead, New-
bury, Mass 87

Portrait of Thomas Bailey Aldrich
in Boyhood 90

Birthplace of Thomas Bailey
Aldrich, Portsmouth, N.H. . . 93

Portrait of Benjamin P. Shillaber 101

Daniel Webster House, Ports-
mouth, N.H 103

The Wentworth Great House,
Little Harbor, Portsmouth, N.H. 107

Celia Thaxter in her Garden, Isles
of Shoals Ill

White Island Light, Isles of Shoals 115

Celia Thaxter's Grave on Apple-
dore Island 118

Portrait of Sarah Orne Jewett . . 129

Home of Sarah Orne Jewett, South
Berwick, Maine 130

Corner in Miss Jewett's Study . . 131

Birthplace of Longfellow, Portland,
Maine 133

Longfellow Mansion House, Port-
land, Maine 135

Portrait of Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow 137

Portrait of Elizabeth Oakes Smith 143

Portrait of Nathaniel Parker Willis 146

Bowdoin College in 1825, where
Longfellow and Hawthorne were
Graduated . . 156

Xll

LIST Off ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

House in which " Uncle Tom's
Cabin" was Written, in Bruns-
wick, Maine 159

Jacob Abbott in his Parlor at
" Fewacres," Farmington, Maine 167

" Fewacres," Jacob Abbott's
Country Home 168

Portrait of "Artemus Ward"
(Charles F. Browne) 171

Portrait of John Winthrop, Son of
Governor John Winthrop of
Massachusetts 174

The Ancient Norton House, Ips-
wich, Mass 177

Portrait of "Gail Hamilton"
(Mary Abigail Dodge) . . . . . 182

Birthplace of Lucy Larcom,
Beverly, Mass 186

Portrait of Lucy Larcom .... 187

Facsimile of "Hannah Binding
Shoes" 188

Home of Mistress Hale, Beverly,
Mass 190

Home of Wilson Flagg, Beverly,
Mass 191

Portrait of Wilson Flagg .... 192

Portrait of Professor George E.
Woodberry 194

Facsimile of Woodberry's Manu-
script and Autograph 197

Birthplace of William Wetmore
Story, Salem, Mass 201

Hawthorne's Mall Street House,
Salem, Mass 203

The Peabody or " Dr. Grimshawe "
House, Salem, Mass 206

Hawthorne's Chestnut Street
House, Salem, Mass 212

Hawthorne's Dearborn Street
House, Salem, Mass 213

Portrait of Abner C. Goodell ... 214

Home of Jones Very, Salem, Mass. 216

The Boston Athenaeum 220

Portrait of George Ticknor ... 224

Portrait of John Loth rop Motley . 229

Home of William H. Prescott,
Boston, Mass. . . 234

Portrait of William H. Prescott . 238

Home of Francis Parkman, Boston,
Mass 240

Portrait of Francis Parkman . . 244

PAGE

Home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich,

Boston, Mass 255

Portrait of Thomas Bailey Aldrich 256
Facsimile of Thomas Bailey

Aldrich's Manuscript 257

Home of William Ellery Channing,

Boston, Mass 258

Portrait of Margaret Deland ... 262
Margaret Deland's Library, Boston,

Mass 263

Portrait of Edwin D. Mead ... 266
Edwin D. Mead's Literary Parlor,

Boston, Mass 267

Portrait of Edwin Percy Whipple . 272
Facsimile of E. P. Whipple's Man-
uscript 273

Portrait of James T. Fields ... 277
Library of James T. Fields, Boston,

Mass 278

Last Home of Dr. Oliver Wendell

Holmes, Boston, Mass 285

Portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes 286
Facsimile of Holmes's Manuscript . 287
Home of Edward Everett Hale,

Boston, Mass 291

Edward Everett Hale in his Study 292
Portrait of Edwin Lassetter Bynner 293
Portrait of Margaret Fuller (Mar-
chioness Ossoli) 299

Portrait of Professor Francis J.

Child 307

Study in Professor Child's House,

Cambridge, Mass 308

Professor Child in his Rose Garden 309
" Shady Hill," Home of Charles

Eliot Norton, Cambridge, Mass. . 310
Home of John G. Palfrey, Cam-
bridge, Mass 312

Bust of Dr. Palfrey in Memorial

Hall, Harvard University ... 313
Holmes's Birthplace, Cambridge,

Mass 315

Birthplace of Thomas Wentworth

Higginson, Cambridge, Mass. . . 317
Library of John Fiske, Cambridge,

Mass 322

Portrait of John Fiske 324

Longfellow's Study in the Old

Craigie House, Cambridge, Mass. 331
Horace E. Scudder in his Library,
Cambridge, Mass 337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Xlii

PAGE

Home of Thomas Wentworth Hig-

ginson, Cambridge, Mass. . . . 339
Colonel Higginson in his Study . . 340
Portrait of James Russell Lowell . 341
Lowell's Study, Elmwood, Cam-
bridge, Mass 343

Facsimile of Lowell's Manuscript . 355
Home of John Townsend Trow-

bridge, Arlington, Mass 357

Portrait of J. T. Trowbridge ... 360
The Wayside Inn, South Sudbury,

Mass 363

Old Dining-Room, Wayside Inn . . 364

Old Tap-room, Wayside Inn ... 365
Wadsworth Monument, Sudbury,

Mass 370

House of Frank B. Sanborn, Con-
cord, Mass 375

Portrait of F. B. Sanborn .... 377
Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

1845 380

Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

1858 . . 386

The " Alcotts' Orchard House," Con-
cord, Mass 387

Portrait of Louisa M. Alcott ... 390

Facsimile of Miss Alcott's Writing 393
Portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne

in Middle Life 402

Hawthorne's Walk on the Ridge,

Concord, Mass 404

Hawthorne's West Newton, M.ass.

Home 406

Entry to the Old Manse, Concord,

Mass 408

Hawthorne and his Publishers . . 410

Portrait of Ezra Ripley 412

Birthplace of Hannah Adams, Med-

field, Mass 416

Portrait of Hannah Adams . . . 418

The Abandoned Farm Beautified . 421

Portrait of Dr. Josiah G. Holland . 426

PAGE

Portrait of Samuel Bowles, the

independent Editor 428

Home of Edward Bellamy, Chicopee

Falls, Mass. . 430

Portrait of Edward Bellamy ... 431
The Old Jonathan Edwards House,

Northampton, Mass 432

Memorial Tablet to Jonathan Ed-
wards, Northampton, Mass. . . 434
The Edwards Elm, Northampton,

Mass 437

Facsimile of Jonathan Edwards's

Will 438

Portrait of Sophia Smith, Founder

of Smith College 440

A Glimpse of Smith College ... 442
Portrait of George W. Cable . . 444
Bryant Homestead, Cuinmington,

Mass 447

Portrait of Herman Melville . . . 452
Hawthorne's Desk, Used in the

"Red Cottage," Lenox, Mass. . 458
The Sedgwick Mansion House,

Stockbridge, Mass 460

Portrait of Catherine M. Sedgwick 462
Bryant's Home at Great Barring-
ton, Mass 464

Portrait of Bryant, at the Age of 40 469
Portrait of Bryant in Later Life . 470
The " Mark Twain House," Hart-
ford, Conn 474

Portrait of " Mark Twain "... 475
Mrs. Stowe's Earlier Hartford,

Conn., Home 477

Mrs. Stowe's Later Hartford Home 479
Later Home of Charles Dudley

Warner, Hartford, Conn. ... 480
Portrait of Charles Dudley Warner 483
Portrait of Theodore Winthrop . . 493
" Edge wood," Home of Donald G.

Mitchell, New Haven, Conn. . . 498
Portrait of Donald G. Mitchell . . 500

The portrait of " Gail Hamilton " at the age of thirty-three, on page 182, is from
" Gail Hamilton's Life in Letters," by permission of Messrs. Lee & Shepard.

The picture of Longfellow's Study, 011 page 331, is from "Final Memorials of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mimin & Co.

The pictures of Mrs. Stowe's earlier and later Hartford homes, on pages 447 and
449 respectively, are from the " Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by permission of
Messrs. Houghton, Mimin & Co.

or THE
UNIVERSITY

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

THE SCHEME.

ON TRAIN, June 1, 1902.

Arrive Boston late afternoon. Dine with me Parker's and talk it
over. PERCY DENISON.

THIS telegram was brought over to my old West End study
by a natty lad in blue and brass buttons, at the very moment
that I was engaged in " coaching " for the visit it announced.

I had been prepared for it by a letter previously received
from my young Western friend, in which he had expressed his
intention of coining East again for his summer vacation, and
his desire to devote a fortnight to further Pilgrimages, under
my guidance, similar to those that we had made together two
years or so before, this time to literary rather than historic
landmarks in New England. Ever since the receipt of this
letter, I had been hard at work brushing up my own scattered
knowledge of such landmarks, consulting authorities, and col-
lecting, digesting, and condensing a mass of material, that I
might, to some degree at least, meet his requirements. These
were, as he put them, the story of the beginnings and develop-
ment of American literature by New England writers, disclosed
through visits to their landmarks, the places where they
lived and wrote, and the places about which they wrote,
together with something about their literary lives, their meth-
ods of work, and the influence of the leading ones, upon the
literature of their day and time.

2 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

- In brief," wrote the charming fellow, as if his request
were the simplest thing in the world to fill, I want, through
these Pilgrimages, to get the history of American literature so
far as New Englanders have made it, from the beginning, as
I got the history of the beginnings and development of our
country through our Historic Pilgrimages."

It was a stupendous task which he thus jauntily outlined
for me, and accordingly I awaited his coming with appre-
hension mingled with pleasant anticipations of his delightful
companionship.

I met him at the appointed time, and was captivated by his
appearance. He had grown since I last saw him from a hand-
some lad into a manly youth, long limbed, straight as an arrow,
with an eager look in his bright eyes, a confident bearing, a
buoyant air a fine type of the high-bred American youth of
to-day, who looks the world squarely in the face and frankly
shows his liking for it, and his firm-fixed belief in his ability
successfully to cope with it. He had got beyond the high
school, he told me, and was now contemplating, with an easy
assurance, the "preliminaries" he was next to encounter for
his entrance to college.

We dined well, Percy proving an admirable host ; and, as
we dined, developed our scheme.

It was determined at the outset that it must spread over a
wider field than that of the Historic Pilgrimages, since the
landmarks which should be included were in widely separated
parts of New England, and in groups short journeys apart. It
should also embrace, so far as possible, the homes and haunts
of all New England writers who have made a distinct mark in
American literature since we have had a literature, if the story
were to be obtained with an approach to fullness. With these
general points settled, we speedily made up a schedule of routes
covering parts of Eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Maine, Western Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Since we should travel in all sorts of conveyances, by land

THE SCHEME.

and by water, should do a good deal of walking, and should
spend no more than a single night in any one place, we decided
to reduce our luggage to the smallest compass, and to burden
our hands with the fewest things. Percy, however, felt that
he must take along his kodak, sketch-book, and field-glass as
before ; while I concluded to carry my note-books in a handle-
less cloth bag which I could tuck under my arm.

With these preliminaries at length arranged, we parted, to
meet early the next morning, and make our start.

II.

ON ANDOVER HILL.

THE North Andover home of the pioneer woman-poet of
America, led our list of ancient literary landmarks, but our first
pilgrimage was to more modern landmarks in Andover proper.
This was because the latter is reached on the railroad line out
from Boston (the Boston and Maine system) before North
Andover, and because the charms of the old Massachusetts
academic town, with the literary flavor bestowed upon it by
the scholars and writers who have dwelt within its shades,
were of first interest to Percy, since he had heard of them in
his Western 'home. He had yet to make acquaintance with
gentle Anne Bradstreet's unique career of two and a half
centuries ago.

Alighting at the Andover station, after a pleasant railroad
journey of about twenty miles, we made our way direct to An-
dover Hill, a short mile walk, and here were at once in
a scholastic atmosphere.

On either side of the broad, elm-lined, green-fringed thor-
oughfare, each set within ample grounds, we saw the institu-
tions which have given Andover its wide fame, Phillips
(Andover) Academy, dating from the eighteenth century; Abbot

ON ANDOVER HILL. 5

Academy, opened in 1829, the first academy incorporated in
Massachusetts for the education of girls solely, as the earlier
Franklin Academy, instituted in 1800, was the first to admit
girls with boys ; and Andover Theological Seminary, estab-
lished in 1808, the first divinity school in the country, and
the first seminary of its kind in the world. And in close neigh-
borhood with these institutions stood fine, old-fashioned, roomy,
often stately, dwellings distinguished as the homes through
long years of grave and learned professors, and of men and
women of letters. As we strolled over the historic hill, Percy
admired the older more than the newer buildings of the sev-
eral educational groups, the sedate earlier architecture having,
as he sagely pronounced, a dignity and impressiveness which
the more ornate style of some, at least, of the later-day work
failed to attain.

We tarried awhile at each institution, -making a tour of the
buildings under courteous volunteer guides, whose friendliness
Percy won by his keen, fresh interest in everything pertaining
to these establishments, and his intelligent, if rapid, question-
ings as to their history.

Phillips (Andover) Academy, the oldest of them all, was
founded in 1778, and had its origin in a proposition which
Samuel Phillips 3d, made to his father, Samuel Phillips 2d,
and to his uncle, John Phillips, a founder of Phillips (Exeter)
Academy. They were both men of wealth, and he, their sole
heir, a young man "rising thirty," as Percy's informant
quaintly expressed it, was just entering public life. They
promptly took action upon his proposition to found a literary
institution here for the education of youth. The Seminary for
the training of ministers, founded thirty years later, Percy
learned was originally engrafted on the Academy. Earliest
among the Academy boys were two nephews of Washington,
and sons of Richard Henry Lee and Josiah Quincy ; with
those of later years were Nathaniel P. Willis, Isaac McLellan,
and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

6 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Percy also heard much about the Phillips family, one
of importance and distinction in its day, whose generous and
repeated benefactions made these institutions possible. They
started here in Andover," said the same informant, " with the
Rev. Samuel Phillips, a great grandson of the Puritan
George Phillips, first minister of Watertown, in 1630, who
came to the town in 1711 as the first minister of the South
Parish, which included the earliest settlement about this hill-
top. Samuel Phillips 2d and John Phillips, the founders of

OLD JUDGE PHILLIPS MANSION HOUSE.

the Academy, were his sons, and were both born here. Wil-
liam Phillips, another son, also born here, became a successful
merchant in Boston ; and his son was the rich William Phillips
who was lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1812 to
1823, the second of the family to occupy that station. Samuel
Phillips 2d became the Honorable Samuel, through his service
as a representative and senator in the Revolutionary period.
He married Elizabeth Barnard, a cousin to the minister of the
North Parish, which included the first settlement of Andover,
where Anne Bradstreet earlier lived. They had seven children.

ON ANDOVER HILL. 7

" Their son Samuel Phillips 3d, the proposer of the Academy,
also became prominent in public life. He was the first Lieut.-
Governor Phillips, serving in 1801- '02. Samuel Phillips 3d
married Phebe Foxcroft of Cambridge. She continued his
benefactions to the Academy after his death, and became one
of the founders of the Seminary, with her son, Colonel John
Phillips (born in 1776). They erected its first two buildings.
Colonel John Phillips married Lydia Gorham, a daughter of
Judge Nathaniel Gorham of Charlestown, a member of the Con-
tinental Congress, and president of the convention that framed
the Federal Constitution. Colonel John died suddenly in 1820,
at the early age of forty -four, leaving his widow, at thirty-six,
with thirteen children. One of their daughters, as the wife of
William Gray Brooks of Boston, became the mother of the
beloved Protestant Episcopal clergyman, the Bishop of Massa-
chusetts, Phillips Brooks, and his three minister-brothers."

The story of the founding of the Seminary " to provide for
the church a learned, orthodox, and pious ministry," was also
given Percy in interesting outline. He was told of the dif-
ficulties encountered in its establishment, resulting in part
from two distinct movements at the outset, to attain the
same end, one here, the other in Newburyport and Salem.
It was partly due, also, to differences in the shadings of
theological points between those who became concerned in
the undertaking. In the Andover movement, developed by
Eliphalet Pearson, the first preceptor of the Academy, were
the united forces of Samuel Abbot, a wealthy Andover mer-
chant ; Madam Phebe Phillips, the widow of the founder of
the Academy ; her son, Colonel John Phillips, and others.
The Newburyport and Salem movement was devised by two
zealous Orthodox ministers, the Kev. Dr. Samuel Spring
of Newburyport, and the Kev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins of Salem,
who were strenuous for the establishment of the institution in
Newburyport, and with them were enlisted some wealthy men
of those towns.

8 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

"While, however, the two parties differed as to details,
and as to location," the story-teller continued, " both were
agreed on the essential point, the immediate need of a
firmly rooted and thoroughly Orthodox training school for
Orthodox ministers. For it was a time of theological up-
heavals, when Unitarianism had swept through many of the
older Orthodox churches, and pervaded leading educational
institutions. Professor Pearson, the Andover leader, had been
professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Harvard for
twenty years, and was at one time acting president of the
college. He had lately resigned his position, upon the election
of the Unitarian Professor, Samuel Webber, to the presidency
of Harvard, which followed close upon the appointment of
another Unitarian, the Rev. Henry Ware, to the Hollis pro-
fessorship of divinity. At length, after much investigating
and some compromising, the two movements were brought
together harmoniously, and the institution was here planted.
As finally arranged, the Andover projectors were designated
' Founders, 7 and the Newburyport and Salem men (William
Bartlet and Moses Brown of Newburyport, and John Norris
of Salem), who founded professorships, ' Associate Founders.'

" The Seminary opened with thirty-six students. Since
that day thousands have been graduated and sent out over the
land, and to foreign parts, as missionaries, many attaining em-
inence in their fields. One of its graduates was Dr. Samuel
F. Smith (born in Boston, 1808, died, 1895), the author of
1 America.' He wrote the hymn at Andover, in February, 1832,
the last year of his student course, composing it in a short
half-hour on a scrap of paper which he caught up from his
table. It was written to fit some music which he found- in a
German music book, the same tune that the English adopted
for < God Save the King.' Dr. Lowell Mason then music
master of Boston had given him the book from which to
translate something for church choir or Sunday school singing.
i America ? was first publicly sung at a children's celebration

ON ANDOVER HILL.

of the Fourth of July, 1832, in the Park Street Church,
in Boston. Dr. Smith also wrote while here his widely sung
missionary hymn, ' The Morning Light is Breaking.' He
was in Harvard in the brilliant class of 1829, of which
Oliver Wendell Holmes was a member ; and Holmes thus
alludes to him in the famous lines on this class :

* And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith ;
Fate tried to crush him by naming him Smith.
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free
Just read on his medal, " My country, of thee." '

" The Kev. Dr. Leonard Woods (born 1774, died 1854),-
father of the Leonard Woods, also doctor of divinity, who was
the fourth president
of Bowdoin College in
Maine, was the first
head of the Seminary
as Abbot professor of
Christian Theology.
Dr. Woods held his
chair for thirty-eight
years, and in his old
age became professor
emeritus. He was
succeeded by Professor
Edwards A. Park (born
in Providence, K.I.,
1809, died in An-
dover, 1900), himself a
graduate of the Semi-
nary, and the first
professor of Sacred
Khetoric, who as its
uncompromising director for half a century gave great prom-
inence to the institution. Professor Pearson (born in Newbury,

EDWARDS A. PARK.

10 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Mass., 1752, died in Greenland, N.H., 1826), who was the
first professor of Natural Theology, or Sacred Literature, re-
tired in 1810, and was succeeded by Professor Moses Stuart
(born in "\Vilton, Conn., 1780, died in Andover, 1852).
Professor Stuart, whose services covered thirty-eight years,
attained especial distinction for Biblical learning, and as a
philologist. He was the author of that early Hebrew Grammar,
published in 1821, the second edition of which, appearing
ten years later, became the standard text-book for the study
of Hebrew. Professor Park was succeeded in the chair of
Sacred Ehetoric, when he took the leadership of the insti-
tution, by Professor Austin Phelps (born in West Brookfield,
1820, died at Bar Harbor, Me., 1890), whose notable service
extended over thirty -one years."

At this point I remarked that Professor Stuart was "the
grandfather, and Professor Phelps the father, of Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps Ward (born in Boston, 1844), some of whose later
stories I fancied Percy had read, to which he nodded assent.
Of her most talked-of story, " The Gates Ajar," he confessed
that he had never heard, although the book might be in the
library at home. Since we were in the near neighborhood of
the place where she did the work which made her known, I sug-
gested that we take this next in order. Percy acquiescing, we
crossed the campus and the thoroughfare, and came upon the
dwelling, a comfortable white mansion of old-time aspect, pleas-
antly set a little back from the street, in a sightly spot, from
the rear of which spread fine, distant views.

"This," I detailed, "was Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's home
through her girlhood, from the age of two years to mature life.
From her cultivated parents and grandparents, she inherited
the genuine literary spirit ; and from her mother came her
special talent for story-writing. It was as natural that she
should take to the pen, as that her brothers should follow the
profession which their forebears had honored. She was Pro-
fessor Phelps's eldest child, and the only daughter in a family

ON ANDOVER HILL.

3 >

12 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

of five children. Her mother was Elizabeth Stuart, the old-
est of Professor Moses Stuart's three daughters; all of whom
were talented. She was agreeably known to readers of New
England tales and juveniles in the forties and fifties, by her
pen name of ' H. Trusta/ an anagram of her maiden name.
She died in 1852, <at the first blossom of her very positive
and widely-promising success as a writer of simple home
stories which took such a hold upon the popular heart. Her
" Sunnyside " had reached already a circulation of an hun-
dred thousand copies, and she was following it fast too
fast by other books, for which the critics and the publishers
clamored. 7 Such is the loving testimony of her daughter, and
it is abundantly justified by the distinction which was accorded
her in the literary field of her day. Besides ' Sunnyside/
' The Angel Over the Eight Shoulder,' and a < Peep At Num-
ber Five/ l lived,' as her daughter has said, ' before women had
careers and public sympathy in them/ Professor Phelps next
married her sister, Mary Stuart, who lived but a short married
life, her death occurring in 1856. Subsequently he took a third
wife, Miss Mary Johnson, daughter of a Boston merchant.
The professor himself, though for years in delicate health,
lived to a good old age. His published works embrace ' The
Still Hour' (published in 1858), and his Andover lectures.
He was a profound scholar and a refined gentleman. After her
mother's death, Elizabeth was nearest to him ; and she has
thus engagingly borne witness to his learning and his kindly
nature. ' He was my climate. . . . As soon as I began to
think I began to reverence thought and study and the hard
work of a man devoted tc the high ends of a scholar's life.
. . . His appreciation of the uses and graces of language
very early descended like a mantle upon me. I learned
to read and to love reading, not because I was made to,
but because I could not help it. It was the atmosphere
I breathed. I>ay after day the watchful girl observed the life
^f a student ? its .scholarly tastes, its high ideals, its scorn

OAT ANDOVER HILL. 13

of worldliness and paltry aims or petty indulgences, and for-
ever its magnificent habits of work.' She recalls his constant
kindliness, his quiet direction of the studies of his children, the
development of character in them, his easy conversations with
them on great or profound subjects, such as 'time and eter-
nity, theology and science, literature and art, invention and
discovery.'

" Miss Phelps began to write when a girl, and she was but
thirteen when she first saw her work in print. It was a pious
little story, she calls it, published in the Youth's Companion.
Her first money was made a little later from a contribution to
( some extremely orthodox young people's periodical,' for which
she received two and a half dollars. Her first serious work,
from which she dates the real beginning of her literary career,
was a short war story, < A Sacrifice Consumed,' written when
she was about sixteen, and published in Harper's Monthly.
For this she received twenty-five dollars on acceptance. She
had kept the venture a profound secret. Even her father
knew nothing of it; and when she placed before his eyes the
editor's letter with the check, ' the pleasure on his expressive
face was only equalled by its frank and unqualified astonish-
ment.' After this she wrote pretty steadily. Her stories were
accepted by various magazines, and she did much * hack work,'
including a lot of Sunday school books, some of them in sets of
four volumes, written to order. Not a little of this work was
accomplished before she left school, which was close upon her
nineteenth birthday. Meanwhile hers had been a wholesome
girlhood. She was an ' out-of-door girl,' entering joyously into
the games of the seasons, in winter skating, and coasting
< standing up on the biggest sled in town, down the longest
hills, and on the fastest local record.'

"Then came 'The Gates Ajar,' remarkable for the time and
its source. This was begun when she was approaching twenty-
one, and was published in 1868, more than three years after-
ward. It brought her quick and widespread fame, together

14 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

with a storm of criticism from portions of the religious press
because of its heterodoxy. Its almost startling frankness and
freedom in attempting to describe the celestial life, its
picturing in much detail a material heaven and the inhabitants
thereof, led many to assume that its young author was moved by
a deep motive, a hope, perhaps, of establishing a new religion
or a new creed. But she herself, in after years, dispelled all
such theories. If she had any object at all in its conception,
she declared it was that she wished to say something that
would comfort some few of the women whose misery crowded
the land at the time she began the story, the closing period
of the Civil War. Quoting her own words (and I drew my
note-book from my cloth bag) : ' The country was dark with
sorrowing women. The regiments came home, but the
mourners went about the streets ... It came to me, as I
pondered these things in my own heart, that even the best and
kindest forms of our prevailing beliefs had nothing to say to
an afflicted woman that could help her much. ... At this
time ... I had no interest at all in any special movement for
the peculiar needs of women as a class. ... I was taught the
old ideas of womanhood in the old way, and had not to any
important extent begun to resent them.'

" According to her custom, she said nothing to relative or
friend about the work as it was progressing ; and unknown to
her father, she dedicated it to him, ' To my father, whose
life, like a perfume from beyond the Gates, penetrates every
life which nears it, the readers of this little book will owe
whatever pleasant things they may find within its pages.'

" Of the good man's reception of this dedication she relates
these incidents, which illustrate his gentle delicacy and sweetness
of disposition : In it ' there was a slip in good English ; or, at
least, in such English as the professor wrote and spoke. I had
used the word* " near " as a verb, instead of its proper synonym,
" approaches." He read the dedication quietly, thanked me
tenderly, and said "nothing. It was left for me to find out

ON ANDOVER HILL.

my blunder for myself, as I did in due time. [The word was
changed in subsequent editions of the book.] He had not the
heart to tell me of it then ; nor did he insinuate his conscious-
ness that the dedication might seem to involve him as it did
in certain citadels of stupidity in the views of the book/

"The story lay some time in her Boston publishers' hands;
indeed, for two years, hanging meanwhile 'upon a delicate

scale/ Then it ventured ____

forth between covers ;
and one morning, not
many weeks after, Miss
Phelps received a cor-
dial note from James T.
Fields, of the publish-
ing house, reporting that
the book was ' moving
grandly ; it has already
reached a sale of four
thousand copies/ and en-
closing a cheque for six
hundred dollars the
largest sum upon which
she had ' ever set. her
startled eyes.' Subse-
quently the American
circulation, approaching
one hundred thousand,
was outrun by that of
Great Britain, and trans-
lations appeared in French, German, and Dutch. Nearly
twenty years later < The Gates Between,' of similar nature, but
more mature, appeared. Her popular story, e Hedged In,' pub-
lished in 1870, was also written here in Andover ; and other
work was done which sustained her fame. Andover and this
old house remained her home until her marriage with Herbert

16 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

D. Ward, in 1888, when she removed first to Gloucester, by the
sea, and afterward to Newton, near Boston."

This long monologue began as 'we stood contemplating the
"white mansion," and continued while we afterward strolled
up and down the neighboring sidewalk under the elms to avoid
the suspicious observation of passers. It was drawn out by
Percy's ardent desire for every detail and his nattering atten-
tion to it all, which showed him to be a model listener. At its
finish he proposed that we make bold to call at the house, and,
frankly stating our interest in its literary associations, ask to
be permitted to look into the study where Miss Phelps and
perhaps her mother before her had written. But this was
not worth while, for there was no one special room where
either of them wrote. " Till after the publication of < The
Gates Ajar,' " I recalled, " Mrs. Ward has said that she had no
place by herself, except her little room at the back of the
house, with its one window over-looking the garden, unheated
in winter. Accordingly she was obliged to write where she
could. Sometimes she worked in the large dining-room while
the boys were at play there. Sometimes, to escape the noise
of the house, she stole up to the attic with pen and paper, or
into some unfrequented closet ; or, in summer time, to a hay-
mow in the barn. At last, after <The Gates Ajar ' appeared
and many orders came to her as a result of its popularity, she
secured a study in- a sunny room in the farmhouse of the
Seminary estate, then next to the < white mansion'; and in
later years she made her workshop in <a built-over summer
house under a big elm in the garden,' which her mother had
once used for a study."

Since it was nearing the luncheon hour we recrossed the
campus, and walked through the avenue of elms along the front
of the Seminary buildings, which many a theologue has paced
in deep meditation, wrestling with solemn problems. Our steps
were directed to the Mansion House on the west side of the
boundary road.

ON ANDOVER HILL. 17

While awaiting the mid-day meal we looked about the older
part of the hostelry. " For this," I observed, " is historic as the
home of Harriet Beecher Stowe (born 1811 died 1896) during
her husband's service in the Seminary as professor of Sacred
Literature, from 1852 to 1863. When the Stqwes took the house
it was known as the Old Stone Workshop, having been in earlier
days used by Seminary and Academy students in fashioning
packing boxes and wheelbarrows; and for a few years just
preceding their occupancy it had been utilized as the Seminary
gymnasium. They transformed it into a delightful home, and
it became famous as a literary center, where were graciously
entertained many persons of distinction abroad, as well as in
our own country. The Stowes gave it the name of ' The
Cabin.' "

At this Percy exclaimed with animation, " So it was here
that ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' was written."

"No. But the 'Key' to < Uncle Tom's Cabin,' giving the
original facts, documents, anecdotes, and other data 011 which the
celebrated book was based, was written here. So was ' Dred,'
the complement to ' Uncle Tom's ' in which Mrs. Stowe utilized
material collected for the ' Key.' This story was suggested by
a negro insurrection in Virginia, in 1831, led by one ' Nat '
Turner, one of the principals being named ' Dred.' Here, too,
were written ' The Minister's Wooing,' and, ' The Pearl of Orr's
Island.' And that story of Italy, ' Agnes of Sorrento,' begun
in Florence, was completed here. ' Uncle Tom's ' was com-
posed, for the most part, in Brunswick, Maine, where the
Stowes were living previous to their coming to Andover, while
Professor Stowe occupied a chair in Bowdoin College. We
shall find some of its ' landmarks ' upon our pilgrimage to that
pleasant college town later on."

We had to imagine what the old stone house was in the
Stowes' day, for the changes in the interior have been radical.
Mrs. Ward's slight description of it as it appeared in her girl-
hood helped us to picture it to the mind's eye with its " long par-

LI TERA R Y PIL GRIM A GES.

lor running the full width of the house, whose deep embrasured
window-seats seemed to me only less wonderful than the soft
and brightly -colored, rather worldly-looking pillows with which
these attractive nooks were generously filled. There were flow-
ers always, and a bower of ivy made summer of the eternal
Andover winters in the stone house ; and there were merry
boys and girls, Mrs. Stowe was the most unselfish and loving

of mothers, and
there were always
dogs, big and
little, curly and
straight. ... It
was an open, hos-
pitable house, hu-
man and hearty
and happy."

With the sur-
roundings here
Mrs. Stowe was
charmed. During
her first summer
(in 1852), she
wrote her hus-
band, who was
still in Bruns-
wick, and part of
the season in Cin-
cinnati : "What a
beautiful place it
is ! ... Yesterday I was out all the forenoon sketching elms.
There is no end to the beauty of these trees. I shall fill my
book with them before I get through."

"The Stowes," I went on to relate, "came to Andover
flushed with the phenomenal success, financial and literary, of
' Uncle Tom's Cabin/ which had first appeared in book form

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
(From portrait at Phillips (Andover) Academy.)

O.V AN DOVER HILL. 19

the preceding spring, after its run through the National Em,
in Washington, as a serial. Within four months from the day
of its issue, it had paid the author ten thousand dollars in
royalties, lifting her suddenly from comparative poverty and
hardships to something quite resembling affluence, while her
fame was spreading over the world. Within its first year one
hundred and twenty editions of the book, or over three hundred
thousand copies, had been issued and sold in this country ; while
in Great Britain and the colonies over one and a half million
copies were circulated in the same period. Numerous cheap
London editions were published; and, though there was no
international copyright then, some honorable publishers offered
the author interests in their sales. Translations were also issued
in nineteen different languages Armenian, Bohemian, Danish,
Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Hungarian, Illyrian,
Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romaic or Modern Greek, Russian,
Servian, Spanish, Wallachian, and Welsh. Nothing like the
success of this book in so wide a field had been chronicled in
the history of modern literature.

" From this house Mrs. Stowe started for her first visit to
Europe, in 1853, that triumphal journey through Scotland and
England, during which she, her husband, and her brother, the
Rev. Charles Beecher, were guests of friends of the cause of
emancipation in the United Kingdom. A second trip abroad
was made after the completion of ' Dred ' in the summer of
1856, this time begun with quite a family party, including
her husband, as before, her two eldest daughters, her oldest
son, Henry, and her sister, Mrs. Mary Beecher Perkins. Dur-
ing this visit courtesies more marked even than on the first
one were extended to her. In England she was received by
the Queen, and formed acquaintance with divers of her lords
and ladies.' She was the guest of the Duke of Argyll at Inver-
ary Castle in the Highlands ; spent some days at Dunrobin
Castle, where ' everything was like a fairy story ; ' received
distinguished attentions in Edinburgh and other parts; back

20 LITERARY .PILGRIMAGES.

in England was entertained at numerous lovely country seats,
and visited the family of Charles Kingsley and other literary
lights. Meanwhile ' Dred ' was proving a quick financial suc-
cess there, one hundred thousand copies having sold in four
weeks ; while, as Mrs. Stowe wrote home, the critical journals,
and the newspapers, pretty generally, were attacking it, both
from a literary and a religious point of view.

" In the late autumn Mrs. Stowe with her party crossed
the Channel, and settled for the winter in Paris, for the express
purpose of studying French. Professor Stowe had some time
previously returned to his professional duties, followed later
by their son Henry, who went back to enter Dartmouth College.
Afterward the party made leisurely journeys into Italy, tarry-
ing for some time at Rome, Naples, and Venice, and finally
returned home to Andover, after an absence of a year.

"Almost immediately after her return, with a heart full,
and her mind crowded with pleasant memories, Mrs. Stowe re-
ceived a crushing blow in the death of the son Henry, drowned
while bathing in the Connecticut Biver at Hanover, N.H., at
the close of his Freshman year in Dartmouth. This sorrowful
event inspired her touching poem, ( Only a Year/ The young
man's grave was made here in Andover in the Seminary bury-
ing ground, in the lot which became the Stowes' family lot and
the burial place forty years after of his gifted mother.

"In the summer of 1859 Mrs. Stowe left this Andover
home for her third and last European tour, accompanied by her
husband and all her children, except the youngest, Charles.
The early winter following was spent in Italy ; and while in
Home she formed a warm friendship with the Brownings. It
was Curing this visit that she wrote out, in Florence, the rough
sketch of ' Agnes of Sorrento/ finished and published four
years later, in 1863, the last year of the life in this < Stone
Cabin/ From here the family moved to Hartford, Conn.,
where Mrs. Stowe's remaining years were spent/'

" Dinner " was called before I had finished this long narra-

ON ANDOVER RILL. 21

tion. Afterward we crossed over to the Seminary burying-
ground near by and Percy copied the brief inscription on the
modest monument over Mrs. Stowe's grave, close to the marble
cross marking that of her beloved son Henry.

Completing with this our round of old Andover literary
landmarks, we returned to the main thoroughfare, and taking
an open trolley car which soon came down the way, decor-
ously, as befitted these serene, scholastic parts, we began our
little journey to North Andover, the home of Anne Bradstreet.

III.

AT THE HOME OF ANNE BRADSTREET.

IT was an agreeable short hour's ride through Andover
village and into more rural parts, finishing a short distance
beyond the North Andover railway station. At this point
the old Boston and Haverhill road makes a sharp turn, dis-
closing the ancient Bradstreet place on the left, and just
above, on the opposite side, the more stately Phillips manse, in
later years the summer home of Phillips Brooks. As we left
the car by the Bradstreet house, which presented a side to the
road, Percy's eye took in the pleasing prospect round about it,
a spread of fair fields over a rolling country and distant wood-
lands.

From a swing-gate in the old-fashioned fence we followed
the short path to the front door, which opened to our ring, and
gave us hospitable entrance ; for we were happily accompanied
by a friend of its occupants, themselves lineal descendants of
one of the old Andover families, in whose possession the
estate has been for a long period.

We were received into the comfortable "keeping-room,"
which opened at the right from the narrow entry, with its
small windows on the front and side, its deep fireplace in the
massive, strongly-buttressed chimney running up through the
middle of the house, and its old style furnishings harmonizing

AT THE HOME OF ANNE BRADSTREET. 23

with the ancient frame. And as we sat in this rare room, dat-
ing back to early colonial times, Percy was told the story of
the house, our kind hosts embellishing, from their store of
family traditions, the record drawn largely from the " Histori-
cal Sketches of Andover," by Sarah Loring Bailey, whose birth-
place this homestead was.

Thus ran the tale. The house was built presumably about
1667, in place of the original house which Simon, Anne Brad-
street's husband, erected on the same site twenty and more
years before, when his family moved here from Ipswich. That
house was burned to the ground on a July night of 1666, with
most of its contents, furniture brought out from England,
family portraits and heirlooms, and a library of eight hundred
volumes, a rare thing in the early Puritan homes. The lament-
able event moved Mistress Anne Bradstreet to some " Verses
Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666," of which
the following are samples :

" In silent night when rest I took
For sorrow neer I did not look,
I waken' d was with thundring nois
And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice.
That fearfull sound of fire and fire
Let no man know is my Desire.

I starting up, the light did spye,
/ And to my God my heart did cry

To strengthen me in my Distresse
And not to leave me succourlesse.
Then coming out beheld a space,
The flaine consume my dwelling place.

Then streight I 'gin my heart to chide,
And did thy wealth on earth abide ?
Did'st fix thy hope on mouldring dust,
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust ?
Raise up thy thoughts above the skye '
That dunghill mists away may flie.

LITEEAET PIL GEUfA GE ,<?.

Thou hast an house on high erect,
Framed by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent tho : this bee fled.
It's purchased, and paid for too
By him who hath enough to doe.

Anne Bradstreet (born in England, 1612 13 ) lived in this house
only about five years, for she died in the autumn of 1672, at

OLD BRADSTREET HOUSE.

the age of sixty. A year afterward Simon Bradstreet removed
to Salem, probably relinquishing the homestead to their third
son, Dudley, who had just married. He was the only son then
remaining in Andover.

Dudley Bradstreet became a leading man of affairs. He
served successively as a selectman of the town ; a representa-

AT THE HOME OF ANNE BRADtiTREET. 25

tive in the General Court; a colonel of militia; one of the
Council of Safety between 1689 and 1692, when his father was
governor; and a magistrate. During the witchcraft delusion
of 1692, after granting a number of warrants for the apprehen-
sion of proclaimed " witches/' he checked the frenzy. He
drew up and headed a plea for a number of Andover women,
who had been terrorized into confession of witchcraft, asserting
his belief in their innocence. Then he himself was accused of
having practiced witchcraft, and had to fly from this home and
hide till the delusion was dispelled. His wife was also
" named" as a suspected " witch."

In March of 1698, when the Indians fell upon Andover,
this house was attacked by a band of forty, and its inmates
were " dragged out into the wintry air to See their neighbors'
houses in flames, and the snow stained with the blood of their
townspeople." A remembered act of kindness by the magis-
trate, some years before, to one Indian of the band, happily
saved the family from slaughter; and after being carried off about
fifty rods to a secluded spot, they were released unharmed.

Colonel Dudley died in 1702 ; and a few years afterward
the old house was purchased for the Rev. Thomas Barnard,
minister of the First Parish, the parsonage having been burned
down in 1707. Thereafter it was the home of First Parish
ministers till into the nineteenth century. Its last ministerial
occupant .in direct line was the Rev. Dr. William Synimes, the
fifth minister, a great grandson of Zachariah Symmes, first
minister of Charlestown, who came out with Winthrop's com-
pany in 1630. After Dr. Symmes's death it became the sum-
mer home of John Norris of Salem, one of the Associate
Founders of the Andover Seminary.

A little later a boarding-school was kept here by Simeon
Putnam, a famous schoolmaster of his day ; and the neighbors
used to tell of the grass " worn smooth by the roadside, where
he kept the idlers and dunces sitting to con their tasks, a
spectacle to passers by." The room in which we were sitting

26 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

was the schoolroom ; and one of its windows long bore this
rhyme cut upon it by one of the boys :

" Stranger, these tainted walls depart,
Within are fetters to a freeman's heart!"

Cut on the glass, also, were formerly the autographs of two
boys who afterward took creditable rank, the one in business,
the other in professional life, Amos A. Lawrence, who be-
came an eminent Boston merchant, and Chandler Bobbins,
tenth minister of the Second Church of Boston, succeeding
Ralph Waldo Emerson in the pulpit of Increase, Cotton, and
Samuel Mather of Puritan days.

The old place has had its day as a " haunted " house, and
it is related that its " ghost " once made " a frightful clatter-
ing " in the chamber of a young negro servant.

Now the treasured volume from which the verses on the
burning of the first house had been quoted was again produced ;
and Percy was given Mistress Anne Bradstreet's story, with
further samples of her work.

She was the eldest daughter, and second child, of Thomas
Dudley, the first deputy governor, and afterward governor of
the Massachusetts Colony. When a girl of sixteen she was
married to Simon Bradstreet, nine years her elder; and she
was but eighteen when she came out from England to the new
country with her father, mother, and husband, to begin the hard
life of a colonist. Her young girlhood had been spent amid
gentle surroundings, and with exceptional advantages, at the
Earl of Lincoln's castle of Sempspringham, her father having
become steward of the earl's estate when she was about six
years old. She early displayed literary tastes, which she culti-
vated, as is evident from her poems, through poetical and
historical studies pursued with unusual diligence for one of her
age and her sex in those days of unlearned womanhood.

Bradstreet was also in the Earl of Lincoln's family and
under Dudley's care, having been taken into the household

AT THE HOME OF ANNE BRADSTREET. 27

when he was sixteen or seventeen years old, two or three years
after the death of his iather, who was a Nonconformist min-
ister of Lincolnshire. The girl and the youth were thus
" brought up " together. For a while Bradstreet served as
steward during Dudley's absence in Boston, Lincolnshire,
where the latter became acquainted with the minister of St.
Botolph's church, John Cotton, afterward the honored minister
of Boston in New England. When Bradstreet married Anne
Dudley, however, he was steward of the Countess of Warwick.

The Dudleys and Bradstreets all came out to America
presumably on the Arbella, the " flag-ship " of Governor Win-
throp's " fleet," with the other principal folk, for Dudley had
been elected deputy governor, and Bradstreet was of the
" Court of Assistants," before the sailing from England. The
two were of the leaders who began the settlement at Newe
Towne, which became Cambridge, and each built a substantial
house there. In 1635 they were among the settlers at Ipswich.
In 1639 Dudley moved to Roxbury, where he lived during the
remainder of his life. Two or three years later, sometime
before 1644, Bradstreet moved to the plantation about the
Cochichewick Kiver, which became Andover, and of which his
family were among the first settlers. It was about this time,
it is conjectured, that the first Bradstreet house here was
built.

Anne Bradstreet wrote at first for her own pleasure and
that of her family and friends, with no thought of publishing.
As the Rev. John Woodbridge said in the preface to the first
edition of her poems, they were " the fruit of but some few
houres curtailed from her sleep and other refreshment," and
they were at that time brought to public view without her
knowledge and contrary to her expectation. Woodbridge
described her as " a woman honoured, and esteemed where she
lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious
conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in
her place, and discreet managing of her family occasions,"

LITERARY PILGRIM A GES.

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ri^l-H s .r&^ s^

! $ ?^"^^ 1^ S C^^ 5-|

*r^ TS** *f^ >vH^ ^ o ^i <2 >^^ . *>

sT 5 ^ ^^ c sJ4^^-^

C ^ i , 7^>rf l? ' - v -^4a_2-^r i r~\ *<s!!!: '

AT THE HOME OF ANNE BRADSTREET. 29

1 5 ut while she was accorded all these virtues, her neighbors,
or some of them, evidently criticised her literary proclivities,
for she wrote in " The Prologue " :

"I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A Poets pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on Female wits :
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'l say it's stoln, or else it was by chance."

John Woodbridge was the first ordained minister of the
Andover church ; and he was closely connected with the Brad-
streets, having married Anne's sister, Mercy Dudley, in 1639.
Going back to England for a visit in 1647, it is assumed
that he took his sister-in-law's manuscript poems with him
and there arranged for their publication ; for the first edition,
a volume in small 16mo, appeared in 1650 while he was in
London. The prefatory address " To the Reader," and the
introductory poetical address " To my dear Sister the Author
of these Poems," are both evidently from his pen.

Poetical tributes to tne author were also printed in the
introductory pages. Among them were words from the Rev.
Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, author of the unique " Simple
Cobler of Aggawam," who was Mrs. Bradstreet's minister and
neighbor when she was living in Ipswich ; and from the
Rev. Benjamin Woodbridge, brother of the Rev. John, like
him a first settler of Andover, whose name stands first on the
list of Harvard graduates. Later fulsome praise was given
her work by learned leaders. John Rogers, president of
Harvard from 1682 to 1684, and earlier a minister of Ipswich,
whose wife was a niece of Mistress Anne, wrote that " twice
drinking of the nectar of her lines " left him < weltering in
delight." Cotton Mather in his "Magnalia" referred to her
poems, " divers times printed," as having " afforded a grateful
entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her
memory beyond the stateliest marbles."

30 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

The second edition, like the first a 16mo, contained the
author's revisions and some later productions, as the title-page
states. It was brought out in Boston six years after her
death, by John Foster, who had issued the first book ever
printed in Boston.

Another edition appeared also in Boston, in 1758, but
without a publisher's name. This was a reprint of the second
edition in large form. A century later, in 1867, all of her ex-
tant writings were brought together by John Harvard Ellis,
and published under the title of " The Works of Anne Brad-
street in Prose and Verse," Mr. Ellis supplying a valuable
historical introduction. The volume is a handsome quarto,
bearing the imprint of Abram E. Cutter, Charlestown ; and
the edition was limited to two hundred and fifty numbered
copies. The prose section is arranged under the titles of
" Religious Experiences and Occasional Pieces " and " Medita-
tions Divine and Moral," the latter in seventy -seven paragraphs.
The poems were reproduced from the second edition ; and the
miscellaneous prose writings printed from a precious relic pre-
served by Mrs. Bradstreet's descendants, a small manuscript
book which belonged to her. This contains the " Meditations "
in her own handwriting, some verses on. two sides of a leaf also
in her handwriting, and several pages in her son Simon's hand-
writing, being a copy of another manuscript book of hers. The
book includes, also, a Latin translation of the first few " Medi-
tations," and their dedication, by a great-grandson, the Rev.
Simon Bradstreet, minister in Marblehead for a goodly period
from 1738. Mr. Ellis gives a facsimile of Mistress Brad-
street's handwriting, which Percy was shown. He was able
to decipher it in parts, when he had mastered the odd spell-
ing and had overcome the confusion of the old style ss with
the/s.

This piece was written, as the date indicates, in the Andover
home. But most Of the poems which were printed in the first
London edition were written before the removal of the family

AT THE HOME OF ANNE BRADSTREET. 31

hither. The more extended poems were probably composed in
the Ipswich home, and the earliest writings, perhaps, were done
in the home in " Newe Town." Possibly a few of the " divers
pleasant and serious poems" were written here in Andover;
but this home is associated especially with the author's more
mature work.

Anne Bradstreet was a most devout woman, almost mor-
bidly conscientious, and her piety is reflected in her writings.
She was much an invalid ; and, as Mr. Ellis says, she " looked
upon her various maladies as tokens of divine displeasure at
her thoughtlessness and wrong-doing." In her little address to
her " dear children," which has been termed her autobiography,
she writes : " After some time I fell into a lingering sicknesse
like a consumption, together with a lamenesse, which correction
I saw the Lord sent to humble and try me and doe me Good :
and it was not altogether ineffectual." And again : " Among
all my experiences of God's gracious Dealings with me I have
constantly observed this, that he hath never suffered me long
to sitt loose from him, but by one affliction or other hath made
me look home and search what was amisse so usually thus
it hath been with me that I have expected correction from it,
which most commonly hath been upon my own person, in sick-
nesse, weakness, paines "... and so on.

Her pleasantest verses, disclosing the most poetic feeling,
were on domestic subjects, and on nature and the rural scenes
about her Andover home, or by the banks of the Merrimac.
This, for example, from her " Contemplations " :

"Then on a stately Oak I cast mine eye,
Whose russling top the Clouds seem'd to aspire ;
How long since thou wast in thine Infancy ?
Thy strength and stature, more thy years admire,
Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born?
Or thousand since thou brakest thy shell of horn,
If so, all these are nought, eternity doth scorn.

32 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,

The black clad Cricket, bear a second part,

They kept one tune, and plaid on the same string,

Seeming to glory in their little Art.

Shall creatures abject, thus their voices raise ?

And in their kind resound their maker's praise:

While I as mute, can warble forth no higher layes.

Under the cooling shadow of a stately elm

Close sat I by a goodly Rivers side,

Where gliding streams the Rocks did overwhelm ;

A lovely place, with pleasures dignified.

I once that lov'd the shady woods so well,

Now thought the rivers did the trees excel,

And if the sun would ever shine, there would 1 dwell."

Mistress Bradstreet was the mother of eight children, three
of whom were born in Andover. Among her descendants were
the celebrated preacher William Ellery Channing, the poet
Richard Henry Dana, the elder, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and
W T endell Phillips.

Four years after her death, Simon Bradstreet took a second
wife, Anne Downing Gardner of Salem, a widow of six months
only. Her first husband, Captain Joseph Gardner, had been
killed in the Great Swamp Fight with the Narragansett Indians
in December, 1675 : this second marriage occurred in June
1676. Bradstreet then established his home in the house built
years before by his new wife's father, Emanuel Downing, Gov-
ernor Winthrop's brother-in-law. This building long remaining
a landmark, came to be known as the old Salem Bradstreet
house, and it stood on the lot now owned by the Salem Athe-
naeum. Simon Bradstreet lived twenty-one years longer, serv-
ing as deputy governor, and as governor, thirteen years in all,
and died in his Salem home full of honors, at the age of
ninety-four.

" Ah, yes," Percy here spoke up, " these interesting facts
came out during our historic pilgrimage to Salem." And he

AT THE HOME Of AXNE

34 LITERARY PlLGlftMAGES.

recalled that the widow Gardner was the sister of that George
Downing, a member of the first class graduating at Harvard
College, who went to England, engaged in politics there, mar-
ried well, became Sir George Downing, Bart., and, serving
successfully two masters, held the post of ambassador to The
Hague under Cromwell first and Charles II. afterward. Percy
further recalled that the Downing farm in Brooksby, now Pea-
body, became the farm of John Procter, one of the most prom-
inent of the martyrs to the witchcraft delusion.

Our talk finished, we were shown other rooms of the stout
old house, and' its various quaint features ; and then we reluc-
tantly took our departure, heartily thanking our new friends
for the rich treat they had afforded us. We next strolled across
the fields to the ancient bury ing-ground near by the site of the
first meeting-house, where vague traditiqii intimates that Anne
Bradstreet's grave was made. But if it were here, no sign of it
remains. In fact, the best authorities agree that her burial-place
is absolutely unknown.

Coming back along the old road, we stopped and admired the
still handsome gam br el-roofed Phillips manse, which Judge
Samuel Phillips built in 1735. Here his distinguished great-
grandson, Phillips Brooks, spent much of his boyhood ; and
in later years, as we know, it became the bishop's summer
home. In the south-east parlor, so Percy was told, Wash-
ington was once received by Madam Phebe Phillips and her
friends. It was this good lady, he was reminded, who so gen-
erously continued the family benefactions to the Academy on
Andover Hill, r and was herself a founder of the Seminary. In
the words of contemporaries, she " was graced with every social
accomplishment," and her " style of conversation surpassed
that of any one, male or female, in this country."

A ten-minute walk brought us to the railway station, and
after a short wait we took the train for Haverhill.

IV.

IN WHITTIER'S COUNTRY.

Along the poet's beloved Merrimac. Points about Haverhill celebrated in
his poems. The old homestead where he was born. Scenes made
memorable by him. Pictures from "Snow Bound" : the family
group about the great fireplace. Life on the farm. Early poems
under the influence of Burns. The first poem in print. First meet-
ing of Whittier and Garrison at the homestead. The poet's earlier
editorial work.

AT Haverhill we were in Whittier' s country. Alongside
the little hill-city winds the beloved Merrimac which the poet
has made classic, the scene of " The Bridal of Pennacook,"
The Exiles," The Norseman," and other favorite poems ;
the river of which he sang :

" Home of my fathers ! I have stood
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood :
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
Along his frowning Palisade;
Looked down the Appalachian peak
On Juniata's silver streak;
Have seen along his valley gleam
The Mohawk's softly winding stream ;
The level light of sunset shine
Through broad Potomac's hem of pine;
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna ;
Yet whereso'er his step might be,
Thy wandering child looked back to thee ! "

The city itself was the frontier village called by the Indians
Pentucket, the scene of the midnight massacre of 1708 por-
trayed in his poem of " Pentucket."

36 LI TEE ART PILGRIMAGES.

Where now is the thickening town, stood Hugh Tallant's

" Sycamores,"

" In the outskirts of the village
On the river's winding shores,"

those " Occidental plane-trees " which " the rustic Irish glee-
man/' the first Irishman in Haverhill, planted early in the
seventeenth century, in front of his master's mansion.

In the town center was the Haverhill Academy where the
poet got his "higher education," in two short terms of six
months each in 1827 and 1828, paying his own way through
the first term by his earnings from making slippers, hence
his sometime sobriquet of " the shoemaker poet," and through
the second term by wages earned in school-teaching and in
keeping books for a Haverhill storekeeper. So closely did
he calculate every item of expense at the outset, his biog-
rapher, Mr. Pickard says, " that he knew before the begin-
ning of the term that he would have twenty-five cents to spare
at its close, and he actually had this sum of money in his
pocket when his half year of study was over." For the dedi-
catory exercises of the Academy, of which he was among the
first pupils, he contributed an ode which gave him " a certain
social and literary distinction at the start ; " while already,
though under twenty, he had a local reputation as a rising
poet.

In East Haverhill lies Kenoza Lake, the " Great Pond" of
the poet's boyhood, upon which he bestowed the Indian name
which signifies pickerel, in his poem of " Kenoza Lake," dedi-
cating its shores to public park uses.

And beyond, farther out in East Haverhill, the original
East Parish, still in rural parts, is the Whittier homestead, the
poet's birthplace.

We could take a trolley-car at the railway station direct for
this shrine ; but Percy wished, first, to stroll a little about the
city, and see some of the spots commemorated by the poet, as I
had been describing.

IN WHITTIEKS COUNTRY. 37

The walk finished, we boarded our car in Washington Square.
It was a three-mile ride out ; and the route carried us through a
pleasant residential section of the city, and into the open
country. At length, after a succession of turns in the leafy
road, it was the old Haverhill and Amesbury highway, the
conductor called our " station " " Whittier house ; " and

WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE, HAVERHILL.

to the left, a few rods back from the highway, the ancient home-
stead appeared in picturesque setting, while by the road-side
loomed up a massive granite guidepost, or tablet, marking the
place.

As we approached it by the crossroad on the east side, Percy
expressed surprise at its well-preserved appearance, having heard
that it was more than two centuries old. I related with much
satisfaction how the homestead had been saved, its surround-
ings restored as near as possible to their original condition, and

38 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

opened to the public " that thereby the memory .of and love
for the poet and the man may be , cherished and perpetuated."
" This was accomplished," I related, " through the worthy act
of a citizen of Haverhill, the late; Hon. James H. Carleton, in
purchasing, the estate soon after Whittier's death in 1892, and
transferring it .by deed of gift to the Haverhill Whittier Club,
which has carried out his wishes as expressed therein. It was
Mr. Carleton's desire that the natural features of the landscape
should be preserved, and this has been done so far as possible.
But nature has effected certain changes, as you will see when
we compare the present setting with that of Whittier's boyhood
and youth, as described by the poet himself, and by his biogra-
pher." And we stopped in the road, Percy's eye roaming over
the scene spread about him, while I read these descriptions from
my notebook. First, the poet's, given in one of his early prose
sketches, The Fish I Didn't Catch : "

"The house was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the
south-east, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green
meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland.
Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and
laughed down its rocky falls by our garden-side, wound silently and scarcely
visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook
in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack
of which we could hear in still days across the intervening woodlands,
found its way to the great river, and the river took it up and bore it
down to the great sea."

Then the biographer's filling in of the picture :

"Job's Hill, named for an Indian chief of the neighborhood,
its great dome now almost bare of trees, in Whittier's youth well covered
with giant oaks, rises so steeply from the right bank at the foot of the gar-
den that it is difficult for many rods to get a foothold. . . . From the left
bank of the noisy brook the garden lot sloped gently upward toward the
front of the house, till it met a terrace upon which were the flower garden
and the well with its ancient sweep. . . . Between the brook and the house
[which faces south-east] was a row of butternuts, walnuts, and maples,
and at the gateway stood picturesque Lombardy poplars. . . . Ontheoppo-

IN WHITTIER* S COUNTRY. 39

site side of the road [this crossroad] were the barn, a granary, and an an-
cient shop once supplied with a forge. The barn was built . . . when
the poet was thirteen years of age. The old barn, on the same side of the
road with the house [and behind it], stood for some years after the erec-
tion of the new one. Mr. Whittier once told the writer that the old barn
had no doors, and the winter winds whistled through it, and snow drifted
upon its floors, for more than a century. The horses and cattle were but
slightly protected in their stalls and 'tie up.' This was the early practice
throughout New England. . . . The pioneers and their descendants for
four or five generations adopted the policy of "toughening 1 ' themselves
by exposure to cold, and they saw no reason for making their cattle more
comfortable than themselves. . . . Almost two centuries passed away be-
fore barns were made comfortable, arid flannels and overcoats ceased to be
regarded as extravagances: . . . The 'new barn' . . was built with
most of our modern conveniences. [It has since been doubled in length,
but the end toward the road is practically unchanged.]"

Of the features that are still preserved Percy found most
charming the brook, wandering through the grounds and
gliding beneath the bridge on our crossroad. The stone wall
between the brook and the gateway attracted him particularly
when he learned that the boy Whittier had helped to build it,
and that it was the " garden wall " of " The Barefoot Boy "

"Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall."

And it was the same garden wall that is alluded to in
"Telling the Bees/' the scene, in detail, of the homestead.
The beehives were on the terrace near the now restored well-
sweep,

" ranged in the sun;

And down by the brink

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'errun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

The tall poplars by the house have disappeared, but some of
the other trees yet remain.

40 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Then we passed through the gateway, noting at its left the
stone " bridle-post " mentioned in "Snow Bound," when the
old familiar sights about the farm took marvelous shapes from
the snow

"The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose flung coat and high cocked hat"

and stepping up to the corner porch, we entered the house.

The porch gave directly upon the great kitchen of generous
width, and extending almost the entire length of the house,
thirty-six feet. Here the restoration to its condition and fit-
tings of eighty years ago appeared to be quite complete, and
Percy's first sweeping glance over " the old rude-furnished
room " filled him with delight. Here in the massive chimney,
around which the house is built after the fashion of the ancient
Bradstreet house in North Andover, was the huge fireplace,
eight feet wide, with the old crane and its trammels swinging
at one side ; the oven at the back on the other side, and the
Turk's head andirons, where

" We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,
The oaken log, green, huge and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick ;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam >
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."

Against the opposite wall was the cupboard, alluded to in
" Yankee Gypsies," in the " Literary Recreations." Close by
stood the stout old kitchen table, upon which " the mother "
and " the girls " prepared the bakings for the oven. Scattered
about were the furniture and the family heirlooms restored to

IN WHITTIER'S COUNTRY. 41

their old places. Off from the porch entrance by the eastern
window, where it had stood an hundred years before Whittier's
day, was the ancient desk of the great grandfather, the first
Joseph Whittier, at which the poet wrote his earliest verses,
his momentous pamphlet on slavery, "Justice and Expedi-
ency," and many of his earlier sketches.

At the farther northwest corner, a step or two above the
kitchen floor, opened the " mother's room," furnished, we sup-
posed, as in the time of this sweet woman. In the southwest
corner, and at the front of the house, opened the " spare room,"
sometimes used as a parlor, Mr. Pickard tells us, and some-
times as a bedroom, in which on December 17, 1807, our poet
was born. In the southeast corner, and at the front, opened
the family sitting room, i Both these rooms, as we afterward
saw, opened also into .the little front entry, from which the
steep front stairs, turning against the back of the chimney, as
in the Bradstreet house, ascend to the second story. A
straight flight of back stairs, almost as steep as a ladder, reach
up from the western porch. In the second story was the
" boys' chamber," where

"Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost ;
And on ns, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new."

On this floor are four other chambers, roughly or partially
finished, these, and the " boys' chamber," all grouped around a
larger and unfinished one. Above is the attic, with its rafters
studded with nails and pegs, from which, as Mr. Pickard pleas-
antly pictures it, " five generations of careful Quakers have

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

suspended braids of seedcorn, bunches of medicinal herbs, and
all the articles to which the ancient New England attic is con-
secrate, and on the floors of which the boys of two centuries
have spread butternuts, walnuts and acorns around the great
chimney."

Sitting in the old kitchen, with a copy of " Snow Bound "
before us, and my note-book of extracts and memoranda for

KITCHEN, WHITTIER HOMESTEAD.

ready reference, we pictured the family group of Whittier's
youth, gathered about the great fireplace, and recalled the
family history, our talk running in this wise :

" The father,

' A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted ' . . .

He was John Whittier, fourth in line of the household heads
from Thomas Whittier, the sturdy pioneer who built the house,
with the help of his sons hewing its stout oaken beams on the
brook bank. The successive heads were in this order : Thomas,

IN WHITTIER'S COUNTRY. 43

from about 1688, presumed to be the date of the homestead, to
his death in 1696 at seventy-six; Joseph, Thomas's youngest
son, from 1710 (after the death of Thomas's widow) till his
death in 1739, aged seventy ; Joseph 2d, Joseph's youngest
child, till his death in 1796, at eighty ; then this John,
Joseph 2d's youngest son, from his father's death. John died
in 1830, at seventy.

" Each was a notable man in his day. Thomas, the pioneer,
came over from England in 1638, when he was eighteen years
old. With him were two uncles, John and Henry Kolfe, and
a lass bearing the winsome name of Ruth Green, a distant rel-
ative, whom, he married a few months after his arrival. He
settled first in Salisbury on land now within the limits of
Amesbury on the Powow River ; the ' swift Powow ' of Whit-
tier's verse a tributary of the Merrimac, the neighborhood of
which we are to visit in the next stage of this Pilgrimage.
Thence he removed to Newbury, and thence came to Haverhill,
settling on the banks of Country Brook, then called East
Meadow Brook. There, at a point about half a mile southeast
of this homestead, he built a log house in which he lived with
his large family for forty years. In this rude home were born
all of his ten children, save the eldest. Five of them were
sons, each six feet tall, and each stalwart like the father Mr.
Pickard quotes family tradition that he was of gigantic strength,
making the astonishing statement that he weighed more than
three hundred pounds before he was twenty-one.

" When living in Salisbury Thomas was a representative in
the General Court, and in the Haverhill settlement he was
steadily a leading man. He was interested in the Quaker doc-
trines, and suffered for advocating clemency toward Quakers,
but it does not appear that he ever joined the Society of
Friends. The family were living in the log cabin and in this
homestead through the long continued Indian troubles in which
Haverhill so grievously suffered. Occasionally, says Mr. Pick-
ard, the Indians in their war paint passed up Country Brook,

44 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

and the evening firelight in this big kitchen ' would reveal a
savage face at the window.' But the Whittier household was
never harmed, and their freedom from molestation may be
accounted for by the respect of the savages which Thomas
Whittier had won by his fearless and just dealings with them.

" From Joseph Whittier, Thomas's successor in the home-
stead mastership, our poet was in direct line. Joseph's wife,
the poet's great grandmother, was Mary Peasley, grand-
daughter of Joseph Peasley, in his time the leading Quaker of
Haverhill. Joseph Whittier became a Quaker of prominence
in the community, and thereafter nearly all of his descendants
for four generations were Quakers. The Peasleys also lived
in this East Parish, not so very far from the Whittiers ; and
the Peasley homestead was used as a garrison house, a place of
refuge for the settlers on occasion of attack, during the French
and Indian wars. Joseph and Mary Whittier had nine chil-
dren.

"Joseph 2d, the third head of the homestead, married
Sarah Greenleaf, of West Newbury, on the opposite side of the
river, of a family early settled there, and of Huguenot descent.
They had eleven children, six of whom lived to maturity ; and
only three of these married Joseph, Obadiah, and John.
The poet was named for his father, and for his grandmother
Greenleaf's family.

" John Whittier was of stalwart frame, strong of muscle
and of character, beyond middle life, in his forty-eighth year,
when the poet was born. Before his marriage he had journeyed
through the wilderness of .New Hampshire into Canada, and
engaged in barter among the Indians and trappers ; and tales
of his adventures with Indians, and of his sojourn in the
French villages, were recounted in the circle gathered about
this generous fire-place.

" The mother. She was of heroic Quaker lineage, and born
in 'the Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New Hamp-
shire, between Dover and Portsmouth,' a woman of rare good-

IN WHIT TIER' 8 COUNTRY. 45

ness and benignity, her kind face ' full and fair, her eye dark
and expressive : '

1 Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight .on Cocheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days,
She made us welcome to her home ;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room.'

" She was Abigail Hussey Whittier, twenty-one years her
husband's junior. Her father, Samuel Hussey of New Hamp-
shire, was a descendant of Christopher Hussey, who was a con-
temporary of Thomas Whittier in Haverhill, and was associ-
ated with him in standing out for the persecuted Quakers.
Christopher Hussey, before he came out from old Boston in
England, married Theodate Bachelor, daughter of the Rev.
Stephen Bacheler, a most remarkable man, who, after long
preaching as a Nonconformist minister in English pulpits, came
to New England at the age of seventy-one. For the twenty-
two years that he remained here, he was in pretty constant con-
flict with the Puritan authorities because of his independent
ways. At the age of seventy-eight, in 1639, the vigorous old
man went down the eastern coast from Lynn, with Christopher
Hussey, and planted the ocean-side town of Hampton, New
Hampshire, where he was made the first settled minister. At
the venerable age of eighty-nine he took to himself a third
wife. Not long after, he separated from her, and returned to
England. He was then ninety-two, and he died in his hun-
dredth year. A daughter of one of his sons was the grand-
mother of Daniel Webster, and so the statesman and the poet

46 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

were kinsmen. His was the ' Bacheler eye,' dark, deep set, and
lustrous, which was so marked a peculiarity of both Webster
and Whittier.

" Next < Aunt Mercy/ She was the mother's youngest sis-
ter, Mercy Evans Hussey, and she had had her romance :

' The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness.
And welcome wheresoe'er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income,
And womanly atmosphere of home.'

" Then l Uncle Moses.' He was the father's bachelor
brother, Moses Whittier, who owned the farm with him, and
spent all his life at the homestead ; who delighted in hunting,
fishing, and story-telling ; who was the companion of the boys
in their country rambles ; a man of blameless, simple life :

' Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.

A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began ;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified.'

" Then the poet's elder sister, Mary :

* A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.'

IN WIIITTIER'S COUNTRY. 17

" The other sister, Elizabeth. She was ' the pet and pride
of the household, one of the rarest of women/ the poet's sym-
pathetic supporter and co-worker in the unpopular reforms he
advocated, herself gifted with the poetic spirit :

' As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat;,
Lifting her, large, sweet, asking eyes.'

" The only brother, Matthew Franklin. He was five years
younger than the poet ; and they two alone of the family circle
were living when ' Snow Bound ' was written, in 1865 :

* Ah, brother, only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now,
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.'

" Matthew married Amy, a daughter of Joseph Rochemont
de Poyen, cousin of Count Vipart. The count's first wife,
Mary Ingalls of Haverhill, was the heroine of Whittier's ' The
Countess.' Matthew became an earnest anti-slavery man, and
in middle life, while living in.Portland, published a series of
satirical letters directed at the pro-slavery politicians, over the
signature of ' Ethan Spike of Hornby/ For the last twelve
years of his life he was in the Boston Custom House. He died
in 1883, at seventy-one.

" Last the poet himself : < tall, slight, and very erect, a bash-
ful youth, but never awkward/ thus a contemporary has de-
scribed him at the age of nineteen. Another at this period re-
calls the l liveliness of his temper, his ready wit, his perfect
courtesy, and infallible sense of justice/ In him were mani-
fest the influence of his Quaker bringing up, and the refinement
of this country home though isolated, enjoying the best social
privileges of the town, drawing around it < a circle of more

48 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

than usual cultivation/ its hospitality proverbial. He was
quiet and thoughtful from childhood, with a head full of fan-
cies and day-dreams. He began to make verses when a school-
boy, at school and in the evening at home after the chores
were done, filling his slate with rhymes instead of l sums.'
He was none the less a thorough going, wholesome farmer boy.
Though never robust, he performed his full share of farm work,
milking the seven cows, driving the oxen, caring for the sheep ;
but the swinging of the flail by which the grain was threshed
in the barn was beyond his strength, so this task fell to his
hardier brother.

"This family group was broken first when Whittier was
seventeen, by the death of ' Uncle Moses,' who was killed by
a falling tree that he was cutting down. A few years later,
Mary married and went to town to live. Then the father died.
" Six months after the father's death, the farm was sold and
the family life in the homestead closed, to be taken up in the
cottage in Amesbury which was then purchased. That was in
1836, when Whittier was twenty-nine, already the author of
more than a hundred published poems, with a reputation as
an editor, a politician, and as an anti-slavery leader."

" It seems odd," Percy observed, " that in this secluded
country home, with an education limited to two short terms in
an academy, and with no literary companionship, he should
have accomplished so much and such varied work, and won
renown at so early an age."

" The same thought has impressed others who have traced
the beginnings of his career. Underwood, in his biographical
and critical sketch of the poet, declares his quick acquirement
with his poor outfit, of the mastery of verse, to be one of the
mysteries of genius. With only a brief time given ,to study,
he seems to have got at the core of knowledge/ His first
acquaintance with poetry was limited to the 'songs of one man
written in an obscure dialect, yet that one guide had led him
into the land of immortal day-dreams.'

IN WHITTIER'S COUNTRY. 49

" This man was Robert Burns, and Whittier has given us
the story of his introduction to his songs. It came through a
wandering old Scotchman who chanced at the farm, and
received the entertainment of the kitchen, as wanderers and
peddlers were wont to do in those unsuspicious times when the
tramp as we know him was unknown. ' After eating his bread
and cheese, and drinking his mug of cider, he gave us Bonnie
Doon, Highland Mary and Auld Lang Syne. He had a full,
rich voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics.
I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of
Dempster (than whom the Scottish bard had had no sweeter or
truer interpreter) : but the skillful performance of the artist
lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old
farm-house kitchen.' Then the poet's reminiscence continues,
< When I was fourteen years old, my first schoolmaster, Joshua
Coffin . . . brought with him to our house a volume of
Burns's poems, from which he read, greatly to my delight. I
begged him to leave the book with me, and set myself at once
to the task of mastering the glossary of the Scottish dialect at
its close. This was about the first poetry I had ever read
(with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had been a
close student), and it had a lasting influence upon me. I be-
gan to m&ke rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and
adventures/ )

" Meanwhile, Whittier had absorbed his father's little library,
composed mostly of journals and disquisitions of the pioneers
of the Friends' Society, with one dreary poem, 'The Davideis,'
by Thomas Ellwood, an English Quaker and friend of Milton.
And other books had come in his way. Whenever he heard of
a book of biography or of travel in a friendly hand, he would
walk miles to borrow it. When he went to the academy, or
perhaps before, he had access to the small but well chosen
library of Dr. Elias Weld, the 'wise old doctor' of 'Snow
Bound,' to whom the poem of ' The Countess ' was inscribed.
At this period the circulating library of the village book-

50 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

seller was t the opening of a new world of enjoyment ' to him ;
and it was his good fortune to board through the week-days in
the cultivated family of Abijah W. Thayer, then the editor of
the Haverhill Gazette, who became one of his most valuable
friends and advisers.

" Whittier's first poem in print appeared when he was
eighteen. It was published in the Newburyport Free Press,
much to his astonishment, for it had been sent to the editor
without his knowledge. This editor was William Lloyd
Garrison, and the Free Press had been recently started by him
to advance humanitarian reforms. It came regularly into the
Whittier homestead, the father having become an early sub-
scriber. Confident that her brother's compositions were equal
in merit to those she saw there, the sister, Mary, was moved to
venture this poem for its < Poet's Corner.' Selecting it from a
mass of verses which the youth had already written, covering
several foolscap pages, she forwarded it by the postman with-
out intimating to the editor its source or authorship, simply
signing the initial < W.'

" When the paper containing it came to the farm, Greenleaf
was at work with his father mending a stone wall by the road
side. The postman, passing on horseback, tossed the paper to
him, and opening it, he turned mechanically to the ' Poet's
Corner.' ' His heart stood still a moment when he saw his own
verses. Such delight as his comes only once in a lifetime of
any aspirant to literary fame. His father at last called to him
to put up the paper, and keep at work.. But he could not resist
the temptation to take it again and again from his pocket to
stare at his lines in print. He has said he was sure that
he did not read a word of the poem all the time he looked
at it/

" This poem was entitled l The Exile's Departure,' and was
written just a year before its publication, or in June, 1825.

"The following week another poem from the lot, written
the previous year, was ventured. This was ' The Deity/ an

IX WIIITTIER'S COUNTRY. 51

amplification of the passage from Scripture in the nineteenth
chapter of 1st Kings, eleventh and twelfth verses, wherein the
prophet relates the appearance of the Lord. It also was
promptly published, and, furthermore, was distinguished with
an introductory note by the editor, who had meantime ascer-
tained from the postman whence these poems came. This note
remarked the youth of the author, and commended his poetry,
as bearing the stamp of 'true poetic genius, which, if carefiilly
cultivated, the editor added prophetically, would ' rank him
among the bards of his country/

" Then following close upon this flattering publication, the
family at the farm were surprised by a call from young Garri-
son, who had driven over from Newburyport to make the ac-
quaintance of his promising contributor. Whittierwas at work
in a field, barefooted, and clad only in shirt, trousers, and
rough straw hat, for the day was warm, when he was sum-
moned to the house by the astonishing message that a stranger
had come in a carriage to see him. Slipping in by the back
door, the shy youth learned who his caller was, and strove to
be excused. But Mary persuaded him to ' tidy up ' and receive
his visitor. Thus first met these two remarkable men who
were destined to work together for years not always in har-
mony as to methods, but always in friendship, for an unpopu-
lar cause, the triumph of which both lived to celebrate with
thanksgiving."

" So it was Garrison who discovered Whittier. That is in-
teresting. Their meeting in this old homestead would make
a fine subject for an historical painting, I should say," Percy
ventured.

" So it would. Garrison was only two years older than
Whittier ; but his position as an editor, and his larger knowl-
edge of the world, gave him far greater weight than his years
to the country youth. Accordingly his evidently sincere praise
of the poet's work, and expression of belief in his capacity for
greater achievement, must have been inspiring. His earnest

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

advice that the youth should develop his talents by broad edu-
cation must have struck a responsive chord. But the father,
when appealed to and urged to give his son a better training
than the district school afforded, told Garrison that ( he did not
wish him to put such notions in the boy's head.' It wasn't
that the good man discouraged his boy's literary tendencies, as
some have held ; it was only that money was very scarce on

New England farms in those
days. We have Whittier's
own testimony on this point :
<My father did not oppose
me; he was proud of my
pieces, but as he was in
straitened circumstances, la.6
could do nothing to aid me.
He was a man in advance of
his times, remarkable for the
soundness of his judgment,
and freedom from popular
errors of thinking.' The op-
portunity for higher school-
ing came, however, the next
year, when Whittier himself
met the expense, as we have
seen ; and the broader educa-
tion was acquired through
his studies in a wide field pursued without a master.

After the first publications in Garrison's paper, the young
author's poems appeared with growing frequency. In one year,
that of his first term at the academy, more than forty were
published in the Haverhill Gazette ; the next year nearly fifty.
They were also seen in other papers, notably the National
Philanthropist of Boston, which Garrison was then editing.
Prose sketches, too, and political articles began to appear from
his pen.

JOHN G. WHITTIER AT THIRTY.

IN WIHTTIER'S COUNTRY. 53

" Soon after his graduation from the academy, he left the
farm, and made his first venture as an editor, going up to
Boston to edit the American Manufacturer, a weekly political
journal devoted to Henry Clay. There he wrote spirited arti-
cles in advocacy of a protective tariff, and on other political
questions of the time ; occasional sketches, and a poem for
almost every issue. This editorship continued for about a
year ; and he received a salary of nine dollars a week, half of
which he saved, and applied to the reduction of the mortgage
on the homestead. The failing health of his father called him
home, for he was needed to take care of the farm. While
conducting it, he edited the Haverhill Gazette for several
months, doing his editorial work at home.

" Meanwhile he continued his studies, and also contributed
political essays and poems to the New England Review of
Hartford, at that time the leading Whig journal of Connecti-
cut. This brought him into friendly relations with the brilliant
George D. Prentice, then its editor, who afterward founded the
Louisville Journal, now the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ken-
tucky. Subsequently, upon Mr. Prentice's removal to Ken-
tucky, Whittier was called to the editorship of the Review, and
he thereupon established himself in Hartford. For this work
his salary was ten dollars a week ; and part of these earnings
he used to clear the little mortgage from the home farm. For
his published poems he had thus far received no compensation,
nor did he earn anything from these productions for some years
to come ; for poetry in those days was not a marketable com-
modity. To the Review, during his editorship, he contributed
numerous poems, besides political leaders, legends, and tales.

" While he was in Hartford, his first book appeared, ' Le-
gends of New England in Prose and Verse/ That was in 1831,
when more than one hundred poems from his pen had been
published in periodicals. It is a notable fact that of these,
only twenty were deemed by him worthy of reproduction
1 between covers ; ' and that moreover, in later years every copy

54 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

of this first book which he could obtain, he destroyed, some-
times paying a high premium for possession. Such Avas the
severity of his estimate upon this earlier, or developing, work,
which yet had won for him a recognized place among his liter-
ary contemporaries.

" He retained his Hartford editorship for about a year and
a half ; and during the last nine months edited the paper at
long range from the farm to which he was obliged to return.
He was then compelled to resign his position on account of the
delicate state of his health, which all through his long life was
a check upon his efforts. Still he continued to accomplish a
vast amount of varied work. While managing the farm, writing
sketches, and composing poems at his great-grandfather's desk
in the kitchen corner, he took a directing hand in politics. He
helped Caleb Gushing to his election to Congress ; concerned
himself in state affairs, and in the advancement of national
issues, and he was becoming active as an anti-slavery leader.

"Then he came to the cross-roads where he must decide
between that which led to political preferment, and that which
led away from his cherished ambitions. For though we are
mostly accustomed to think of Whittier as the retiring man of
letters, the bard of New England, his chief desire at this period
of his life was to become a prominent politician. In a letter
to Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, the poet, then at Hartford, in
1832, he wrote : '* I love poetry with a love as warm, as fervent,
as .sincere as any of the more gifted worshipers at the temple
of the Muses. . . . But I feel and know that

* To other chords than mine belong
The breathing of immortal song,'

and in consequence, I have been compelled to trust to other
and less pleasant pursuits for distinction and profit. Politics
is the only field now open for me ; and there is something
inconsistent in the character of a poet and modern politician.'
"Before taking the step which carried him irrevocably

IN WHITTIER' S COUNTRY. 55

into the anti-slavery struggle, he counted the cost, as his biog-
rapher says, with Quaker coolness of judgment. Having once
decided, he threw himself with ardor into it, and never faltered
to the end. Before the removal from this homestead, he had
written and published his * Justice and Expediency,' as we have
seen ; had signed the Anti-Slavery ' Declaration of Sentiments '
adopted by the Philadelphia Convention of 1833, of which he
was a foremost member ; had published in Garrison's Liberator,
the famous Lines, ' Expostulation ; ' and had been mobbed when
speaking on public platforms with George Thompson, the Eng-
lish agitator. He had also served a term in the Massachusetts
Legislature, and had been proposed for Congress."

We were now out of doors again, and were loitering over
the neighboring fields, while Percy, as our talk went on,
absorbed the yet pastoral scenes about us. A little way up the
old road by the homestead side, we came upon the venerable
" Whittier Elm." In its neighborhood stood

. . . "the schoolhouse by the road
A ragged beggar sleeping,"

scene of the dainty gem " In School Days."

Then retracing our steps, we took a look once more at the
old part of the " new barn " which the boys on that December
day of " Snow Bound " " reached with merry din,"

"And roused the prisoned brutes within:"
when

"The old horse thrust his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The cock his lusty greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led ;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked ;
The horned patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt's Arnun roused from sleep.
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot : "

Back on the main road, we took a trolley-car for the other
Whittier shrine, in Amesbury, eight miles away.

AT WHITTIER'S AMESBURY HOME.

The "Garden Room." Work in verse and prose done here. Later
editorial labors. The Atlantic poems. The poet's lirst published
volume. Productions of his riper years. The Old Quaker Meeting-
house. The poet's pew, where "Laus Deo" was thought out at a
"Fifth Day " meeting. The poet's grave on the hilltop overlooking
familiar scenes of his verse.

HAPPILY the Whittier house in Amesbury is preserved with
the same pious care as the poet's birthplace, and Percy was
privileged to see it quite as the poet left it; for the poet's
niece, Mrs. Pickard, established it as a memorial of his life of
more than half a century here. The house grew, Percy learned,
as Whittier slowly prospered, expanding from the original little
cottage of a few small rooms to its present pleasant propor-
tions. For the first eighteen years of his occupancy of it no
change was made. Then, as Mr. Pickard states, the eastern
end was raised to two stories, and an addition of the same
height was built at the southeast corner. Thirty years later
the western end was raised a second story. The little parlor
at the northwest corner, with its genial open fireplace and the
portraits of the poet's mother and sister Elizabeth on the walls,
is the original parlor of the cottage.

When the addition at the southeastern corner was made,
the lower room was fitted up as a study. This is " the garden
room," so frequently and lovingly described. In this family
sitting-room Whittier did his work among the home circle ; for
he " loved domesticity, and could read and write without dis-
turbance in the midst of household affairs." Here also he
received his friends. From the first the bookshelves occupied

AT WHITTIER'S AMESBURY HOME. 57

the recess on one side of the chimney, before which was the
Franklin stove that warmed the room in winter; and in the
recess on the other side was the poet's desk. The north win-
dow next the desk fits in a door communicating with the little
veranda, or porch, on the garden side, and gives a view of the
street, with the slope of Po Hill overlooking the house, as

A BIT OF THE PARLOR IN WHITTIER'S AMESBURY HOME.
(Mrs. Whittier's picture over mantel.)

Job's Hill overlooks the Haverhill homestead. The room
above the garden room was the sister Elizabeth's chamber until
her death in 1864, and thereafter Whittier's. The garden was
rich in flowers and fruits, especially pears and apples, and
vegetables were grown in a secluded part in the poet's time.
This house and the garden room, identified with the ripened
fame of Whittier, awakened in my impressionable friend the
liveliest emotions. Here, he was reminded, were written most

58. LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

of the anti-slavery poems, those " bursts of passionate verse "
which came at white heat from the poet's pen as the struggle
went on ; the best of his prose works, " Old Portraits," " Lit-
erary Recreations," and that unique sketch, or historical novel,
" Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal " ; his noble poems,
" In War Time " ; his religious poems and hymns j the sweet
lyrics of his mature years ; the legendary poems ; and the idyls

WHITTIER HOMESTEAD. AMESBURY.

which so endeared him to the people. True, the anti-slavery
work in which he was actively engaged during the first twenty
or twenty-five years of the family life here, and his editorial
labors in connection with various journals, took him at inter-
vals out into the world, but ill health or the ties of home re-
peatedly drew him back to the serene homestead ; so that this
was throughout his most constant working place.

Sitting in the garden room, where Percy occupied the seat
of honor by the poet's desk, we took up the thread dropped at

AT WHITTIER^ S AMESBURY HOME. 59

the farm, and traced further the development of Whittier's
genius.

" His purely literary work was practically suspended through
the most of the anti-slavery contest, was it not ? " Percy asked.

" Not at all. Though his anti-slavery writings dominated,
some of his most popular literary productions were of that
period. In the journals which he edited, or to which he con-
tributed, during that time, he published not a little of what
has been called his foundation work, that is, the work which
laid the basis of his fame. Between the years 1837 and 1847
he contributed to the Democratic Journal, a partisan paper
antagonistic to the abolition cause, published at Washington,
an important series of poems which did not treat of slavery.
These were, ( Pentucket/ ' The Familist's Hymn,' ' Cassandra
Southwick,' < Hampton Beach/ < The New Wife and the Old,'
* The Bridal of Pennacook,' and ' The Norseman's Bide.' At
the same time he contributed various prose sketches.

" A still more important series appeared in the National
Era, also of Washington, of which he was corresponding editor,
so called, for thirteen years from 1847, doing his editorial work
in Amesbury. This list included ' Randolph of Roanoke,'
< Barclay of Ury,' ' The Drovers,' 'The Huskers,' 'Calef in
Boston/ < The Hill Top/ < Tauler/ < Burns/ < Maud Miiller/ < A
Lady of Old Time/ 'The Last Walk in Autumn/ and 'The
Pipes of Lucknow ' ; together with his prose sketches, ' Old
Portraits/ several of the papers in his ' Literary Recreations/
and l Margaret Smith's Journal.' The Era was the anti-slavery
organ edited by the intrepid Gamaliel Bailey, in which first
appeared ' Uncle Tom's Cabin/ you will recall. Hawthorne's
' The Great Stone Face ' was also first published in this jour-
nal, after the manuscript had been submitted to Whittier.
Other frequent contributors were Grace Greenwood, Alice and
Phoebe Cary, and Lucy Larcom.

" In 1838 and 1839 Whittier edited the aggressive Penn-
sylvania Freemen of Philadelphia, and he was in the Quaket

60 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

City when in May, 1838, the first Pennsylvania Hall, erected

as a forum for free discussion, was burned by a mob. At the

same time the office of that paper was sacked.

" It was, however, in the Atlantic Monthly, started in

November, 1857, with James Russell Lowell as editor, that

Whittier's choicest work
first appeared. The bril-
liant initial number con-
tained his legendary
poem, < The Gift of Tri-
temius.' Next appeared'
' Skipper Ireson's Ride/
begun, by the way,
nearly thirty years be-
fore under 'Hugh Tal-
lant's Sycamores,' in
Haverhill, its origin be-
ing a story told him by
a schoolmate at the
academy. Others fol-
lowed in fairly rapid
succession during the

WHITT,ER IN LATE L.FE. ^ few yQ ^ ^^

ing his war poems, <In War Time/ and < Barbara Frietchie.'
The Atlantic publications, too, were the most remunerative.

"But the poet's material prosperity grew very slowly.
Between 1831, when his first volume appeared, and 1857 his
fiftieth year when the first complete edition of his poems
was published by Ticknor and Fields, his returns were very
modest, although several volumes of verse and prose had been
issued during that period. When, at the opening of 1864, he
received the royalties on his volume, ' In War Time/ he wrote
to Fields : ' Thy favor with three hundred and forty dollars
received. It makes me as rich as Croesus.' The first sub-
stantial returns came from < Snow Bound/ brought out in 1865.

AT WHITTIER'S AMESBURY HOME.

His first profits on this idyl were ten thousand dollars, a great
surprise. It was a competence for him. Thereafter a good
income was assured, and the latter quarter century of his life
were days of comfort and tranquillity so far as financial matters
were concerned.' 7

A visit to the grave of the poet was to conclude this day's
pilgrimage. But first we strolled farther down Friend Street
to see the Friends' meetinghouse where the Whittiers wor-
shiped. We found it at a junction of roads, a short walk
from the homestead : a severely plain structure, resembling an
old-time country schoolhouse enlarged. The only ornamenta-
tion about the grounds was a row of beautiful roadside trees.

" One of the reasons for the removal of the Whittiers from
the farm to this village was their desire to be nearer the meet-
inghouse. This is not, however, the house which they first
attended," I replied to Percy's questions. " That stood nearly

FRIENDS' MEETINGHOUSE.
(Whittier's pew was the second from the front on the right.)

opposite the cottage, on the spot where its predecessors had
stood from the first setting up of a Quaker meetinghouse in
Amesbury, in the seventeenth century. But the present struc-
ture is to us especially interesting as the house built under

62 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Whittier's direction half a century ago. When the details of
its construction were left to him, his biographer relates, there
was some fear among the conservatives that, since he had at
that time mixed with the world's people more than with his
brethren, he would provide too many modern comforts in it,
perhaps even give it a steeple. But, to offset this feeling, he
shrewdly employed as builders three unquestioned Quaker car-
penters, one of them a Quaker minister, and the other two,
elders of the society, with the result, as we see, a thoroughly
Orthodox Quaker meetinghouse, within and without."

Percy was shown the sober interior, and sat in Whittier's
pew. We recalled that it was here, during the silent worship
of the regular "Fifth Day" meeting on the last day of Jan-
uary, 1865, as the village bells and the cannon were proclaim-
ing the passage of the Constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery, that Whittier thought out his " Laus Deo," begin-
ning

"It is done!

Clang of bell and roar of gun,
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel !
How the great guns peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town.

Ring, O bells!

Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.

Loud and long, that all may hear,

Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time ! "

And upon returning home he recited to the household, in the
garden room, a portion of the poem not then committed to
paper. Later he said in a note to Lucy Larcom, " It wrote
itself, or rather sang itself, while the bells rang."

It was a longer walk to the hillside burying-ground, where
are the graves of the Whittiers, in a more rural part of the
village. Following the directions of a village blacksmith,

AT WHITTIER' S AME8BUEY 1IOMK.

whose little gray shop stood at the foot of the hill, we caine
to this " God's acre," on a side road, just off the highway to
Newburyport. On the way up the foot-path to the hilltop, we
passed a boulder marked, " The first meeting house in Ames-
bury erected on this spot in 1665."

The Whittier lot was easily recognized from the description
given us : a long lot surrounded by a thick hedge of arbor
vitse. An opening at one side gave admittance to the grassy
enclosure. We stood before a line of plain, low marble head-
stones. The first, larger than the rest, marked the poet's

AMESBURY FROM POWOW HILL, THE VIEW IN "MIRIAM."

grave ; the others, the members of the family group portrayed
in " Snow Bound." " It was Whittier's request in his will," I
recalled, as Percy's eye glanced down the line, " that his grave-
stone should be of the same size as the others ; but it was
decided, notwithstanding, most fitting to distinguish his grave
by the slightly loftier mark."

Percy copied the simple inscriptions. The first bore on its
face only this :

John Greenleaf Whittier
1807-1892

64 LITERACY PILGRIMAGES.

and on the reverse,

" Here Whittier lies."

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

a phrase from Oliver Wendell Holmes' s tribute to Whittier
after his death, being the last words of the last verse :

" Lift from its quarried ledge a flawless stone ;

Smooth the green turf and bid the tablet rise,
And on its snow-white surface carve alone

These words, he needs no more, Here Whittier lies."

Two tall cedars, Percy noted, break the hedge line : one at
the foot of Whittier's grave, the other at the corner of the
brother Matthew's grave.

The June sun was dropping as we stood on the little emi-
nence and gazed upon the landscape .below and about us, the
valley of the Powow River, with Amesbury town, the winding
Merrimac, the distant hills of Newbury, all familiar scenes of
Whittier's verse. Then we returned to the main road and took
the trolley car for New bury port, where we were to spend the
night.

VI.

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT.

Whittier's picture of "the old and quiet town." By the "Swinging
chain-bridge." Deer Island. Harriet Prescott Spofford and her
work. Scene of "The Tent on the Beach." Workplace of a gal-
axy of writers : Richard Hildreth, Theophilus Parsons, Cornelius C.
Felton, Lucy Hooper, Caleb Gushing, George Lunt, John Pierpont,
James Parton, T. W. Higginson. Whittier's schoolmaster. The
old " Church of Federal street " and Whitefield'stomb. The Parson-
age where the " Marvellous Preacher " died. Birthplace of William
Lloyd Garrison. His work in Newburyport and afterward. The
Lowell family. Home of Hannah Flagg Gould. The Longfellow
homestead in old Newbury.

WE wished that we might have had our first sight of New-
buryport as Whittier and Lucy Larcom saw it, at sunset, look-
ing down from the summit of Whittier Hill :

. "Its windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town ;
The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of mystery ;
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded capes that run
Into the sea-mist north and south ;
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth ;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The foam-line of the harbor bar."

Still, our approach was a pleasant one, with glimpses and
broadening views of the Merrimac ; and it took us across the
little river island by the " swinging chain-bridge, " where
Harriet Prescott Spofford (born 1835 ) has her home:

66 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

u set like an eagle's nest

Among Deer Isiaod's immemorial pines,
Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks
Its last red arrow "

This was the romantic feature of the trip, and although it was
now early evening we could not resist the temptation to stop
and explore the lovely spot by the light of a young moon. So
we left the car, and spent the half hour before another one
was due, about the place where " Deer Island's mistress sings.' 7
Its great trees near by the traveled road, " old pine forest

CHAIN-BRIDGE BY DEER ISLAND.

kings," Whittier called them, shelter, they say, hawks and
crows, kingfishers and herons. The low, spreading, roomy
house set in a thick-grown orchard and garden of fruit trees,
old fashioned flowers, shrubs, and vines ; bushes of lilac and
sumac, and wild flowers growing out from the crevices of the
rugged rocks on the water's edge : all this, with the secluded
walks and the river summer-house made it an ideal home for
a poet and story-teller, so Percy thought. And the charm
seemed complete when within the house Percy saw the ram-
bling rooms opening from cheerful halls and entries, the

UNIVERSITY

ABOUT NEWBURYPORT.

(37

comfortable furnishings, the well-stocked library, the literary
work-room, and the windows looking out upon the river.

Our half hour up, the car appeared, and we resumed our
journey to the end of the route in the center of the town (or
city, we should say), two miles distant.

As we left the " enchanted island " (this was Percy's blithe
term for it), our talk turned naturally upon Mrs. Spofford's

HOME OF HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, DEER ISLAND.

career and work. She had not always lived on the island, as
Percy fancied.

"Nor was her fame altogether associated with it," I ex-
plained. " On the contrary, her place in literature was firmly
fixed before this became her home. But Newburyport is iden-
tified with all her literary work."

" It was her birthplace ? "

"No. She is of Maine birth, born in the picturesque little
town of Calais, on the St. Croix River, close to the Canadian
line. She is a kinswoman of Sir William Pepperell his great-

LI TERAB Y PIL GRIM A GES.

grandniece and of New England stock on both sides. Her
father was first a lumber merchant, then a lawyer ; and when,
in 1849, the California gold fever broke out, he went to the
Pacific coast. There he became one of the founders of Oregon
City, and served as mayor before returning east. Lingering
paralysis came upon him afterward, and he lived a painful
life for twenty years longer. Her mother was a woman of
fine mind. She attained a ripe old age, and died in this Deer
Island home.

" Harriet Prescott came to Newburyport when a girl of
fourteen, to an aunt's home. She disclosed her literary bent
as a Newburyport grammar school girl, by winning a prize for

an essay on * Hamlet.' This
attracted the attention of
Thomas Wentworth Higgin-
son, then minister of the
Newburyport Unitarian
Church ; and he became her
literary guide, encouraging
her in the cultivation of her
talent. She also wrote sev-
eral little plays for her mates
to perform at the school ex-
hibitions. Having finished
her schooling at Pinkerton
Academy in Derry, New
Hampshire, she set diligently
to work at story -writ ing, to
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. help support the family.
Her first story was published when she was eighteen, in
one of the < family story papers ' of the time. For this she
received five dollars and a request for more stories. During
the next three years she supplied the same paper with one
hundred stories. But the rate paid her grew smaller as the
volume of her work increased, although she was growing in

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT. 69

popularity. So she resolved to try a higher field. She sent
a story to the Atlantic Monthly, then in its promising first
years under the editorship of James Kussell Lowell. This was
the tale entitled ( In a Cellar,' the scene of which was laid in
Paris. Its local coloring was so exact, and its atmosphere so
unmistakably French, that Mr. Lowell wrote her asking if it
were not a translation. Assured of its originality, he accepted
it ; and in due time she was cheered by a cheque for one hun-
dred dollars, accompanied by an encouraging note urging her
to pursue the vein she had thus auspiciously opened. That
was in 1859. The tale was widely commended for its imagin-
ative strength, skillful characterization, and artistic setting.

<' Then followed a succession of good stories, l Sir Rohan's
Ghost,' < The Amber Gods,' < Azarian,' < The Thief in the Night,'
and ' New England Legends,' all published first in the Atlantic
during Lowell's and Field's editorship, and afterward in book
form. Thereafter, for a while her writings appeared in Harper's
and Scribner's the first Scribner > 8 t f-rom which developed the
Century magazine. These included t The Marquis of Carabas,'
* Hester Stanley at St. Mark's,' and some of her poems.

Her first book published was < Sir Eohan's Ghost,' in 1860.
Her first book of poems came more than twenty years after-
ward, in 1882, when her name as a writer of lyrics had been
established through magazine publications. Five years later
her < In Titian's Garden, and Other Poems ' was issued between
dainty covers. Her < Priscilla's Love Story ' came out in 1898.

" Her place as first among story writers of her class was
recognized under her maiden name of Harriet Elizabeth Pres-
cott. She married in 1865, after a long engagement, Richard
S. Spofford, a Newburyport lawyer, himself of the poetic tem-
perament. Upon his death Whittier wrote

* No fonder lover of all lovely things

Shall walk where once he walked, no smile more glad
Greet friends than his who friends in all men had
Whose pleasant memory to that Island clings.'

70 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" The island home was purchased and built up a few years
after their marriage."

We began our explorations of the next day in the cool of
early morning, with a trip to the neighboring Salisbury Beach,
the scene of the " Tent on the Beach " ; for in this region we
were yet in Whittier's country.

The poet has definitely indicated for us the locality of this
poem : a slope near the mouth of the Hampton River which
winds through the salt meadows of Hampton, lying at about
the southern extremity of the long line of sandy beach which
defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast.
Northward appears Great Boar's Head, and southward the
Merrimac, with Newburyport, "lifting its steeples above brown
roofs and green trees " on its banks. The mouth of the Hamp-
ton River also was the scene of the " Wreck of Rivermouth."

Percy was aware, having familiarized himself with the
poem, that the poet fancies himself camped out here with two
friends, to whom he reads his poems ; their comments furnish
the slender chain along which the verses are strung. And he
had read that the friends one " a lettered magnate lord-
ing an ever-widening realm of books," the other, a "free
cosmopolite," whose " Arab face was tanned by tropic sun and
boreal frost," - - were James T. Fields, the Boston publisher,
and Bayard Taylor, the traveled litterateur. Whittier long
outlived these two friends, I remarked by the way, though both
were younger and physically stronger than he.

I recalled the opening lines of the introduction to the poem,
by which the author gracefully recognized his fellow poet's
similarly fashioned " Tales of a Wayside Inn," which had
appeared four years earlier. The lines run thus :

"I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,

Too light, perhaps, for serious years, though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,

Against the pure ideal which has drawn
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam : "

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT. 71

Like Longfellow's work, too, I added, this included poems
previously published singly at intervals in the magazines,
mostly in the Atlantic but the new setting gave them new
interest ; and the work was as marked a success as Snow
Bound," twenty thousand copies being sold in less than a
month.

Back in Newburyport we rambled about the " breezy,
bowery," town the forenoon through, and after the old-fashioned
mid-day dinner, drove toward the older Newbuiy, covering in
all such a variety of landmarks of early and later literary
workers that Percy's interest never flagged. It struck him as a
most happy coincidence that within the region of the ancestral
home of Whittier the progenitors of Longfellow and of Lowell
should have planted themselves. And he heard with pleased
surprise of the galaxy of writers, men and women of various
epochs, who were born in these parts, or here began the work
which gave them place in our literature.

He found that Newburyport was the earliest working-place
of Richard Hildreth (born in Deerfield, Mass., 1807 ; died in
Florence, Italy, 1865), whose " History of the United States/'
he said, was in his father's library at home. It was the starting-
point of Theophilus Parsons (born in Byfield, Old Newbury,
1750 ; died 1813), chief justice of Massachusetts from 1806 till
his death, who was called the " giant of Greek criticism " from
his intimate knowledge of the structure of the Greek language
and its literature, the study of which he pursued as recreation
from his legal duties. In Judge Parsons's law office, as stu-
dents, were John Quincy Adams (born in Braintree, now Quincy,
Mass., 1767 ; died in the Capitol at Washington, 1848), and
Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (born in Taunton, Mass., 1773 ; died
in Boston, 1811). Mr. Adams, while here, wrote the town's^
address to Washington upon his New England visit in 1789 ;
and Robert Treat Paine, Jr., author of the famous song " Adams
and Liberty," wrote the eulogy on Washington for the town's
memorial service in 1800.

72 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

In old Newbury originated the Sewall family of American
judges, of whom not the least distinguished was Samuel Sewall
(born in Bishopstoke, Eng., 1652 ; died in Boston, 1730), the
" witchcraft judge," he of the famous Diary the Boston
Pepys. Old Newbury, too, was the birthplace of Cornelius C.
Felton (born 1807 ; died 1862), the eminent Greek scholar, and
president of Harvard College from 1860 till his death.

Newburyport was the almost life-long home of Caleb Gush-
ing (born in Salisbury, 1800'; died 1879), lawyer, statesman, and
diplomat, whose " Keminiscences of Spain," and scholarly con-
tributions to the then critical North American Review, gave
him a literary standing distinct from his political fame. Of
Newburyport birth were George Lunt (born 1803 ; died 1885),
poet and editor, whose novel of " Eastford " and the lyrics, son-
nets, and longer poems first scattered in magazines, then issued
in half a dozen small volumes at intervals between the thirties
and fifties, ranked him with his best contemporaries ; Lucy
Hooper (born 1816 ; died 1841), Whittier's friend, who, dying at
twenty -five, had won a fair name as a graceful poet and prose-
writer ; and Joshua Coffin (born 1792 ; died 1864), schoolmaster,
historian, antiquary, " of genial and kindly spirit and subtle
humor," as Mrs. Spofford has written. Whittier has celebrated
Joshua Coffin in " To My Schoolmaster : "

"Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down
Drop Time's snow-flakes on thy crown I

I the urchin unto whom
In that smoked and dingy room,
Where the district gave thee rule
O'er its ragged winter school,
Thou didst teach the mysteries
Of those weary A B C's

Luring us by stories old,
With a comic unction told,
More than by the eloquence
Of terse birchen arguments

HOUND ABOUT NEWBUBYPOBT. 73

(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
With complacence on a book !
Where the genial pedagogue
Half forgot his rogues to flog,
Citing tale or apologue,
Wise and merry in its drift
As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, '
Had the little rebels known it,
Risum et prudentiam monet!"

Others more or less identified with the old town were the
versatile Hannah Magg Gould (born in Lancaster, Vt., 1789 ;
died in Newburyport, 1865), who did her life-work here ; and
John Pierpont (born in Litchfield, Conn., 1785; died in Medford,
Mass., 1866), compiler of the " American First Class Book,"
our first national school reader, and author of many hymns,
and patriotic and political verses, who wrote his earlier, and
some of his best poems here. Then there was James Parton
(born in England, 1822; died in Kewburyport, 1891), who
passed his later years, and did his finer biographical work here ;
and his daughter, Ethel Parton, inheriting his genius, succeeded
to his desk. Thomas Went worth Higginson (born in Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1823), while minister of the Unitarian church
from 1847 to 1850, produced here some of the first fruits of
his keen and graceful pen. And William Lloyd Garrison was
born here.

After the first manner of most pilgrims to Newburyport,
we turned toward the Old South meetinghouse, where

" Under the church of Federal Street,
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet,
Walled about by its basement stones,
Lie the marvelous preacher's bones.
No saintly honors to them are shown,
No sign nor miracle have they known ;
But he who passes the ancient church
Stops in the shade of its belfry -porch,
And ponders the wonderful life of him
Who lies at rest in that charuel dim,"

74 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" This marvelous preacher," I related, for Percy had but a
vague idea of him, " was George Whitefieid, the evangelist,
son of an English inn-keeper, born in the Bell Inn, Gloucester,
in 1714, and a graduate of Oxford. He preached in England
and Scqtland in prisons, churches, and the open fields, to great
multitudes, and made extraordinary evangelizing tours in our
country beginning in 1738, when he was twenty-four years old.

HOME OF JAMES PARTON.
(From " Ould Newbury," by permission.)

It is recorded, as you will see, that he crossed the Atlantic thir-
teen times ; and in a ministry of thirty-eight years delivered
thirteen thousand sermons. He died here in Newburyport,
suddenly, in September, 1770, from asthma, which he had
contracted in speaking constantly in the open air. He was
buried at his own request beneath this church.

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT. 75

" As to his remarkable powers and persuasiveness we have
the testimony of our own Benjamin Franklin," - we were now
in " the shade of the belfry -porch " and from my note-book I
read these quaint extracts from the philosopher's autobiography :

"He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sen-
tences so perfectly, that he might be heard and understood at a great dis-
tance, especially as his auditors, however numerous, observ'd the most
exact silence. He preach'd one evening from the top of the Court-house
steps [in Philadelphia], which are in the middle of the Market-street,
and on the west side of Second-street, which crosses it at right angles.
Both streets were fill'd with his hearers to a considerable distance. Being
among the hindmost in Market-street, I had the curiosity to learn how
far he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the street towards
the river ; and I found his voice distinct till I came near Front-street,
when some noise in that street obscur'd it. Imagining then a semi-circle,
of which my distance should be the radius, and that it were fill'd with
auditors, to each of whom I allow' d two square feet, I computed that he
might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconcil'd me
to the newspaper accounts of his having preach'd to twenty-five thousand
people in the fields, and to the ancient histories of generals haranguing
whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.

I happened ... to attend one of his sermons in the course of which I
perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved
he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper
money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he pro-
ceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another
stroke of his oratory made me asham'd of that, and determined me to give
the silver ; and he finish'd so admirably, that I empty'd my pocket wholly
into the collector's dish, gold and all."

" Others said of him that he ' preached like a lion.' His
voice has been described as melodious as well as penetrative,
his countenance most expansive, his gestures incessant and
graceful."

The old church was courteously opened to us, and its treas-
ures were displayed by a Newburyport gentleman to whom we
had been referred as having the most intimate knowledge of
their history and associations. He proved the kindliest of

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

guides. Percy was shown, and permitted to hold in his hands,
the Bible which Whitefield had used. He stood before the cen-
otaph at one side of the pulpit erected " with affectionate ven-
eration " to Whitefield's memory, and copied the inscription on
its face, giving the facts already related, with high eulogy of
the preacher's work and worth. He scanned the various por-
traits of the preacher
on the wall back of
the cenotaph. And
then, piloted by our
good friend, he de-
scended into the
crypt under the pul-
pit where the honored
remains are depos-
ited. The clerical
trappings in which
Whitefield was bur-
ied, gown, cassock,
bands, and wig,
had disappeared
when the original
coffin was opened
fifty years after the
burial. On the coffin
Percy noticed a skull
which he was told
was a cast of White-
field's skull taken many years ago. By its side was a box con-
taining an arm bone ; and the gruesome story of its theft years
ago, its conveyance to England, and final return, when the
purloiner was dying and full of repentance, was related to him.
Two other coffins, across the feet of which Whitefield's lay,
contained the dust of the earlier ministers of the church, the
Rev. Jonathan Parsons, Whitefield's intimate friend, at whose

THE "OLD CHURCH OF FEDERAL STREET
NEWBURYPORT.

ROUND ABOUT NEWBUETPORT. 77

home he died, and the Rev. Joseph Prince. They died, re-
spectively, in 1776 and 1791. In the vestry Percy was shown
Mr. Parsons's quaint old desk upon which Whitefield wrote.

Back in the church the pew which Caleb Gushing occupied,
No. 53, at the end of the row on the right side of the pulpit,
was pointed out to him ; and that of Hannah Flagg Gould,
No. 44, the first next the pulpit, on the broad aisle. Lastly,
having been told of the whispering gallery of the church, he
tested this feature with most satisfactory result.

PARSONAGE WHERE WHITEFIELD DIED.

The parsonage where Whitefield died stands close by, on
School Street, upon which the church sides the second house
beyond, now a private dwelling adjoining an old-fashioned
garden. We next visited this house, while the story of the
preacher's last dramatic exhortation to the people was related
in this wise. He had come from Exeter, N.H., where he had
preached, after a week of incessant labors. His arrival at the
parsonage was at nightfall of Saturday. When the early
evening prayers were over, he sought his chamber exhausted.

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Meanwhile this narrojyv little street continued crowded with
people displaying the greatest anxiety to hear his voice. So,
halting on the stairway, candle in hand, he faced the open door
and exhorted them in his most impassioned and fervid manner,
with tearful eyes, till the candle had burned away and died out
in its socket. Then he ascended to his room, it was the
west corner chamber of the second story, and at six o'clock
the next morning he breathed his last. Upon the occasion of

BIRTHPLACE OF WM. LLOYD GARRISON (House on the Right)
School St., Newburyport.

his funeral in the old church, where he was to have preached
on the day of his death, a vast concourse assembled, harbor-
guns were fired, and all the village bells tolled.

As we returned to Federal Street Percy's attention was
directed to the first house next the church, on the same side of
School Street, which he had passed unnoticed in going to the
old parsonage. This, he was told, was William Lloyd Garri-
son's birthplace. Nearly opposite where the public school-

ROUND ABOUT NEWBUllYPOllT. 79

house now stands, was the " writing " or primary school where
he got the beginnings of his education. Percy wanted to look
inside the cottage; but he was assured that it really wasn't
worth while, for everything is changed since the Garrisons'
day. Furthermore, their life here covered but a short period.

" They were in humble circumstances when they came to
Newburyport," our talk ran on, " so they hired only a few
rooms in this little house, then the home of Captain and Mar-
tha Farnham, he being captain of a vessel in the coasting trade.
They came here from New Brunswick in the spring of the year
of William Lloyd's birth, which was on the 10th of December,
1805. The father, Abijah Garrison, was, like his friend Farn-
ham, a ship-master. Three years after the birth of William
Lloyd, and after making sundry little voyages, Captain Garri-
son disappeared and never returned. The mother with her
children was thus left destitute. Meanwhile, between her and
Martha Farnham a strong friendship had grown lip ; so the
little family was sheltered here till the mother could make
provision for its support. She found some employment as a
nurse ; and William Lloyd, when old enough, was sent out on
' 'lection ' and ' training ' days to peddle the i nice sticks of
molasses candy which she was an adept in making,' thus bring-
ing a few pennies to the scant family purse. At length, when
he was between seven and eight years old, the mother with the
other children moved to Lynn, there the better to follow her
calling, while he was left behind in a new home. This was
with Deacon Bartlett, deacon of the Baptist church which the
family had attended, who was living down near the river."

" Can we see that house ? "

" It has disappeared. Deacon Bartlett, too, was in humble
circumstances. To gain a living he sawed wood, sharpened
saws, and sold apples from a stand in front of his dwelling.
To him and his home the boy became much attached. His
schooling was confined to a grammar school on < the Mall,' in
the town center, and after three months there he was taken out

80 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

HOUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT. 81

to do chores for the deacon. He was fond of music, and sang
on Sundays in the Baptist choir, sometimes acting as chorister.
At nine he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Lynn to learn
the trade ; but this work soon proved too hard for his delicate
frame. At ten he went to Baltimore, Md., with his mother
and brother, to work for another Lynn shoemaker who was
moving his business there. That enterprise failing, he re-
turned to Deacon Bartlett's home, and shortly after was ap-
prenticed to a cabinet-maker in Haverhill. Becoming homesick,
he soon ran off and tried to get back to Deacon Bartlett ; but
on the way he was restored to his master. A little later, how-
ever, he was permitted to return to his old friend.

" At thirteen he became an apprentice, for a term of seven
years, in the office of the Newburyport Herald to learn the
printer's trade. This proved the vocation most to his liking,
and in it his progress was rapid. He read and studied much,
and early began contributing to the paper. His first contribu-
tions were made secretly, under the nom de plume of l An Old
Bachelor.' Early, too, he displayed an interest in politics, and
engaged in political writing for other journals. His appren-
ticeship ended in his twenty-first year, and he immediately
launched his own journal. This was the Free Press, in which
Whittier's first poems appeared. Then and there the young
editor and agitator began his uncompromising war against
slavery and his vehement advocacy of unpopular reforms.
After about two years of toil he sold out the Free Press as
an unprofitable venture, and went to Boston to seek new
employment.

" This closed Garrison's Newburyport life. In Boston he
became, first, editor of The National Philanthropist, the pioneer
total abstinence paper of the country. Thence, after a little
while, he went up to Bennington, Vermont, to become editor of
the Journal of the Times. In 1829- '30, he was in Baltimore
again, editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation. During
this editorship he spent forty-nine days in jail for non-payment

82 LI TEE ART PILGRIMAGES.

of a line of fifty dollars imposed upon him for libel in denoun-
cing in his paper a Newburyport ship-master, Francis Todd, as
being engaged in ' domestic piracy/ in shipping a cargo of slaves.
" Back again in Boston, on New Year's Day, 1831, he started
The Liberator, with his demand for unconditional emancipation,
and his opening declaration, ( I am in earnest ; I will not equiv-
ocate ; I will not retract a single inch, and I will be heard ! '
In this bold enterprise he had at the start but a single asso-
ciate, Isaac Knapp, a fellow townsman of Newburyport, and
a negro boy for assistant at the press. Garrison himself used
both pen and composing-stick. His office was an attic in a

VOL. 1.1 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON AND ISAAC KNAPP, PUBLISHERS. IttU.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.) OUR COUNTRY is THE WORLD OUR COUNTRYMEN ARE MANKIND. [SATURDAY, MAY 28, 183

FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE OF "THE LIBERATOR,"

dingy building, where he lived as well as worked. This was
the famous newspaper which continued through obloquy and
mobbing, peace and war, for thirty-five years, till the end for
which it had been instituted was accomplished.

" Throughout his life Garrison retained an affection for his
birthplace. On the fiftieth anniversary of the completion of
his apprenticeship with the Herald, he came down here to New-
buryport and celebrated the event in the old office, when he < set
up ' at the case a poem of Whittier's. And three years later,
shortly before his death, he again visited the old office and
1 set up ' one of his own sonnets. He died in May, 1879, after
his work was finished, and a ' chorus of affectionate congratu-

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPOET. 83

lations had marked his closing days.' His grave is in the Forest
Hills Cemetery of Boston."

Later in our ramble we saw the statue of Garrison, down-
town, in Brown Square. Percy had already seen Warner's
nobler statue in Boston.

A short walk brought us to the landmark of the Lowell fam-
ily. This was the old house on Temple Street off Federal Street,
under the shadow of the tall elm, where lived the grandfather
of James Russell Lowell. From here the poet took the painted
panel, originally set above the fireplace of the chief room, which
he placed against the wall of his own study at "Elmwood,"
in Cambridge. It presents a picture of a merry clerical party,
and beneath is the legend :

"Iii essentialibus unitas, in non-essentialibus
libertas, in omnibus charitas "

The legend was the motto of the poet's great-grandfather, the
Rev. John Lowell, who, true to its spirit, was the only preacher
to open his pulpit to Whitefield upon the evangelist's first
coming to Newburyport in 1740.

This John Lowell (born in Boston, 1702 ; died in Newbury-
port, 1767) was the first minister of the first church of New-
buryport, which in after time became the first Unitarian Church.
He served there for forty-three years, from his twenty-fourth
year to his death. He has been described as a man of excep-
tional culture and refinement, of scholarly attainments, and a
free and liberal user of his powers, giving tone to the commu-
nity in which he lived. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, his later
successor in the Unitarian pulpit, alludes to him as almost, if
not quite, the earliest of liberal preachers anywhere. He was
the direct descendant of the first John Lowell, in America, or
Lowle, as the ancestor spelt the name, one of the original set-
tlers of Newbury. His son, John Lowell, was eminent as a jurist
and was the author of the clause in the Massachusetts Bill of
Rights declaring that " all men are born free and equal." And

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES,

his three sons, John, the pamphleteer, Francis Cabot, the man-
ufacturer (for whom the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, was
named), and Charles, the minister, with their sons, ably sus-

LOWELL HOUSE.
(From " Ould Newbury," by permission.)

tained the Lowell name. James Russell, the minister Charles's
son, led the family in distinction as the man of letters.

On another cross-street near by, we saw Hannah Flagg
Gould's home, a broad, deep, brick house, of Colonial or pro-
vincial fashion, well set, with ample side yard. Hers was a

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT.

52. C

86 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

name unknown to Percy before this pilgrimage ; but this was
not at all surprising, for, although she was a favorite writer
in her day, that was a day long since passed. She was of a
family, he now learned, identified in later years with science as
well as with literature. Most distinguished of the family was
the late Benjamin Apthorp Gould, the astronomer; while it is
to-day represented in letters by Elizabeth Porter Gould.
Hannah was the daughter of a soldier of the Revolution, who
was at Lexington and served all through the war. He was
the hero of her little poem " The Veteran and the Child," once
a favorite piece for school declamation ; and the child was her
nephew, the astronomer. The scar of a bullet wound which
the veteran bore on his cheek inspired her verses entitled
" The Scar of Lexington."

She was born in Vermont, but was brought to Newburyport
when a child of eleven, in 1800, and here her life was spent.
Her writings were begun early, and continued until a few
years before her death. These consisted of poems collected
in book form in 1832, 1835, and 1847 ; prose sketches later
brought together under the title of " Gathered Leaves " ; and
many verses for children.

Our ride took us along High Street, past the delightful
Mall, the old Sewall place, and the Caleb Gushing place,
toward " Old Town " ; then past the vine-embowered home of
Whittier's schoolmaster the Joshua Coffin homestead, and,
just beyond, the Old Town church with the oldest bury ing-
ground opposite ; thence by a roundabout way over old New-
bury and the Byfield parish.

The Longfellow homestead was seen in Byfield, on a sightly
spot at the head of tide-water on the Parker River, in the midst
of a picturesque region. The ancient house remained standing
well into the poet's day. It is supposed to have been built
by William Longfellow? the family progenitor, who came from
Yorkshire and settled here about 1651, subsequently marrying
one of the Sewall girls Anne Sewall. I quoted a sketch of

ROUND ABOUT NEWBURYPORT.

s
- m

2. m

O CD

88 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the homestead given in a letter to Whittier's. biographer, by

one of the later generation who was born beneath its roof, as
were his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-
great-grandfather, son of William Longfellow. He described
the rear roof descending nearly to the ground ; a long kitchen
with low ceiling, wide fireplace, and a big brick oven in which
were baked the Thanksgiving pies and puddings ; a large
" best room," and winding stairs to upper rooms ; in the yard at
the end of the house, the well-curb with its long sweep, in
front the granite horse-block, and over all a large spreading
elm.

Then the Longfellow ancestry was recalled, beginning with
the emigrant William. He was an ensign in a Newbury com-
pany, which took part in the disastrous expedition of Sir
William Phips against Quebec in 1690. He was lost on the
return voyage of the fleet, when the vessel which contained
the Newbury company went ashore during a fierce storm on
a desolate island. He is said to have been a merchant. His
son Stephen was a blacksmith. Stephen's son, Stephen 2d,
was a teacher, graduating from Harvard in 1742. He was the
first of the Longfellows in Portland, Maine. His son, Stephen
3d, was a judge. His son, Stephen 4th, was a lawyer, and the
father of the poet, " whose birthplace and boyhood home," I
concluded, " we shall see on our pilgrimage into Maine."

VII.

THE "OLD TOWN BY THE SEA."

Birthplaces of T. B. Aldrich, James T. Fields, Celia Thaxter, " Mrs. Part-
ington." Scenes of various classics. On the old Pier. The
" Earl of Halifax " taverns. Scene of the opening picture of "Lady
Wentworth." Aldrich in Portsmouth, and afterward. The old
Athenaeum. James T. Fields's career. Benjamin P. Shillaber and
the development of "Mrs. Partington " ; His Carpet Bag. Some
Portsmouth mansions. Daniel Webster's home. The Wentworth
" Great House " at Little Harbor. On Kittery side.

WE went on to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by an evening
train, and spent that night at the Rockingham House.

Our interest in the drowsy " old town by these a " was, pri-
marily, as the birthplace of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, James T.
Fields, Celia Thaxter (the " poet of the Shoals "), her cousin,
Albert Laighton, and "Mrs. Partington" (Benjamin Penhal-
low Shillaber) ; and as the scene of various classics. But the
quaint town itself, with its picturesquely faded glories, its
rambling old streets, historic mansions, and stately houses of a
past type, these engaged our attention quite as fully as its
literary landmarks, for they constitute its especial charm.
Everywhere are relics of its grandeur in the sumptuous days
of the West India trade, when Portsmouth bade fair as a mari-
time port to outstrip both Boston and New York. We found
the town yet as Aldrich pictured it a dozen years ago in his
delightful sketch. It was still " the interesting widow of a
once lively commerce," enjoying now the comfort which comes
with sagacious traffic in " first mortgage bonds."

After breakfast at our fine inn we strolled first along the
older streets tending toward the river side. We lingered about

90 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the old "worm eaten wharves, some of them covered by a
sparse, unhealthy beard of grass " and gazed at the weather-

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH IN BOYHOOD.

(From "The Story of a Bad Boy," in the Riverside School Library. By permission of
Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.)

stained unoccupied warehouses " with their sarcastic cranes
projecting from the eaves " for hoisting cargoes which no longer
come ; and looked out-, over the now idle Piscataqua.

THE "OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 91

We strove to recall the scenes presented here in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when "at the
windows of these musty counting-rooms which overlook the
river used to stand portly merchants in knee breeches and silver
shoe-buckles, and plum colored coats with ruffles at the wrists,
waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows;" and when
" the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors at the wind
lass used to echo along the shore where all is silence now." We
tried to picture the busy scenes of shipbuilding days, when
" Portsmouth turned out the best ships as it did the ablest ship-
captains in the world." When she set a-sailing with their rov-
ing commissions, in the War of 1812, her fleet of privateers,
" the sauciest small craft on record." When she built those
famous California clippers of 1849 and ten years on-; and
those as famous clipper ships of the packet lines which plied
between Boston or New York and Liverpool, London, Havre,
and Antwerp. We tried, too, to recall the " gondolas," or " gon-
dalows " as the natives termed them, the freighters of earlier
days which sailed up and down the river, those queer, broad,
flat-bottomed scows, with huge lee-boards, one on each side, in
place of keel or center-board, and a great lateen sail set on a
short stump mast; and the passenger ships, rigged like the
freighters.

We lingered longest on the old pier at the foot of Court
Street, which, during the War of 1812, was "a noisy, busy
place crowded with sailors and soldiers ; " and we sat with
Aldrich's lounger in the shadow of the silent warehouses look-
ing out upon the lonely river as it went " murmuring past the
town." To us, as to him, it was " a slumberous, delightful,
lazy place." Now, as then, " the sunshine seems to be a foot
deep on the planks of the dusty wharf which yields up to the
warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, molasses, and
spice that used to be piled upon it. The river is as blue as the
inside of a harebell. The opposite shore stretches along like
the silvery coast of fairy land." Directly opposite us spread

92 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine, "with its neat officers'
quarters and workshops, and arsenals, and its vast shiphouses
in which the keel of many a famous frigate has been laid." At
our right lay a cluster of small islands, on the larger of which
are the fading remains of earthworks thrown up in the War of
1812. Between this island and another, opened the Narrows,
three miles off, to the sea.

Returning up Court Street we passed, in a tenement house
at the corner of Atkinson Street, the old frame of John
Stavers's " Earl of Halifax " tavern, changed in name, after
the Eoyalist Stavers's hard experience with the "liberty men"
at the outbreak of the Revolution, to the " William Pitt."
Here, it was related, Lafayette was received in state by officers
of the French fleet anchored in the harbor in 1782; hither
came John Hancock in his gaudy coach with his retinue of
servants ; here the portly General Hany Knox often stopped ;
here Washington was received by New Hampshire's governor
on his visit in 1789. This was the second " Earl of Halifax "
tavern. It was the first one, on another site, which was the
opening scene of Longfellow's " Lady Wentworth " :

" One hundred years ago, and something more,
lu Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door.
Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows,
Just as her cuckoo-clock was striking nine.
Above her head, resplendent on the sign,
The portrait of the Earl of Halifax,
In scarlet coat and periwig of flax,
Surveyed at leisure all her varied charms,
Her cap, her bodice, her white folded arms,
And half resolved, though he was past his prime,
And rather damaged by the lapse of time,
To fall down at her feet, and to declare
The passion that had driven him to despair/'

We would visit the " Great House " where Martha Hilton
seven years after reigned as Lady Wentworth, I promised, later

THE " OLD TOWN BY THE SEAS

in the day. In speaking of stage-coach times, I remarked that
Bartholomew Stavers, brother of the " Earl of Halifax " land-
lord, established the first stage between Portsmouth and Boston
beginning in 1761. It was announced as " a large stage chair,"
with two horses, " to perform once a week and carrying four
passengers." This was the first regular stage north of Boston.
Stavers's " Portsmouth Flying Stage-Coach," with from four to
six horses, running every Thursday, fare three dollars, was
got under way two years later. It was the aged skeleton of

BIRTHPLACE OF T. B. ALDRICH.

the last of these yellow mail coaches, abandoned when the
railroad came in, which the boys ran down the hill from
" Ezra Wingate's " tumble-down barn and landed in their
bonfire in the Square, with such dire results, on that memor-
able Fourth of July, as related in Aldrich's " Story of a
Bad Boy."

Farther along on Court Street we came to Aldrich's birth-
place (born 1836 ). This was the home of his grandfather, a
comfortable house with broad hall running through the middle,
cheerful rooms and old-time furnishings, noble trees in front

94 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

and garden behind : all so pleasingly pictured in the same
classic, " The Story of a Bad Boy," - - which I was glad
to find Percy knew well, and counted among his treasured
possessions.

" The best part of Aldrieh's boyhood," I chatted on, " was
passed here. Before he left the old town, in his teens to go to
work, he had tried his hand at verse-making, and so effec-
tively that, as the autobiographical story intimates, an uncle in
New York hastened him into a clerkship lest he should be-
come a poet ! He was a merchant's son, born the same year as
Celia Thaxter (born Laighton). When he was about a year and
a half old, his parents moved to New Orleans, and his home
was with them there till it was time for his education
to begin. Then he was brought back to attend the Ports-
mouth schools, under his grandfather's care. He was
through the high school and prepared for college when
his father died, and his mother returned to her old home
with small resources. So his hope of a course at Har-
vard had to be abandoned. Then the New York uncle made a
place in his own counting-room for him, and he tried hard to
learn the ways of business. But while he toiled faithfully at
the clerk's desk, he kept on writing, withal doing much reading
of good literature ; and at length, in spite of his good uncle's
efforts, he had actually become the dreaded thing a poet. The
appearance of his tender ballad of < Babie Bell' and its wide
republication in the newspapers, first brought him into the
bright light.

" You remember the often quoted opening lines ?

4 Have you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Babie Bell

Into this world of ours ?
The gates of heaven were left ajar ;
With folded hands and dreamy eyes,
Wandering out of Paradise,
She saw this planet, like a star,

THE "OLD TOWN BY THE S~EA." 95

Hung in the glistening depths of even,
Its bridges, running to and fro,
O'er which the white-winged angels go,

Bearing the holy dead to heaven.
She touched a bridge of flowers, those feet,
So light they did not bend the bells
Of the celestial asphodels !
They fell like dew upon the flowers,
Then all the air grew strangely sweet J
And thus came dainty Babie Bell

Into this world of ours.'

" He was at this time nineteen, at the end of about tnree
years in the counting-room, and was publishing both verse and
prose in the Putnam's and Knickerbocker magazines, and also
in the New York Evening Mirror, a paper in which was inter-
ested a group of poets, among them Fitz-Greene Halleck, whose
friendship he early won.

" Now Aldrich felt justified in abandoning the counting-room
for the literary workshop. He began as manuscript and proof-
reader for a New York publishing house on a slender salary,
and the next ten or twelve years were full of work with small
irregular returns. For a while he was a regular contributor to
the Evening Mirror. For three years, 1856-1859, he was on
the Home Journal, then edited by Nathaniel P. Willis. In the
early sixties he was associated with a clever band in the Satur-
day Press, an unconventional journal of a brief and eccentric
career.

" During this period he brought out half a dozen volumes
of verse and prose. These included, in 1854, his juvenile
verses gathered in < The Bells, a Collection of Chimes ' ; in
1856, the story of ' Daisy's Necklace, and \V r hat Came of It ' ;
in 1858, 'The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems,' and
' The Course of True Love Never did Run Smooth ' ; in 1861,
'Pampinea'; in 1862, the prose romance < Out of His Head';
in 1863, < Poems,' a new collection ; in 1865, the first complete
edition of his poems up to that time. After his marriage, in

96 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

1865, he removed to Boston, which has since been his home.
His ' Story of a Bad Boy ' appeared in 1869. Next came the
unique ' Marjorie Daw/ which has been translated into several
languages. Later, the tales and novels which increased his
fame < Prudence Palfrey '; A Rivermouth Romance/ laid
here in Portsmouth ; < The Queen of Sheba > ; ' The Still water
Tragedy ' ; with a pretty steady flow of lyrics and poems.

"In 1870 his first work as an editor began, in the con-
duct of Every Saturday, started that year as a journal of
extracts from foreign periodical literature, and subsequently
expanded into an illustrated newspaper after the fashion of the
London Graphic, its career covering about four years. His
next charge was the Atlantic Monthly, which he edited for ten
years, 1880-1890; giving to that high-bred periodical an especial
brilliancy. While in the Atlantic editorship his poetical drama
of * Mercedes ' appeared, and was performed in a New York
theater; also his sketches of travel under the happy title of
< From Poukapog to Pesth ' ; his ' Wyndham Towers/ and < The
Sister's Tragedy.' Of a later period are his * Unguarded Gates/
and ' Judith and Holofernes.' His collected works have been
published in England, France, and Germany, and his lyrics are
classed in English literature with the best in the language.
He wears with modesty the honorary degree of LL.D. which
Yale conferred upon him full thirty years ago.

" Of the thoroughness of Aldrich's workmanship," I ven-
tured, " not too much can be said in praise. He plans and fash-
ions his productions with the precision of the true artist, and
never tires of revision to bring them toward the perfection at
which he aims. As one critic has observed, he believes thor-
oughly in that long, patient search for the best word of which
the unthinking reader little dreams. And in this tireless
patience the critic discovers the secret of the distinction of
style which makes his prose writing <a model of directness,
and his flawless lyrics live in the memory like those of
Herrick, of Lovelace, and Carew.' "

THE " OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 97

We were by this time strolling along " The Parade," the
large open space upon which the Old North Church faces,
formed by the junction of four streets. Crossing the square,
we next visited the Athenaeum, the old library and museum,
instituted shortly after the war of 1812. The boy Aldrich
haunted this place ; and here years before, James T. Fields, in
his favorite corner in the broad window seat of the library
room, mastered the greater part of the collection of books.

While here I recalled the career of Fields (born 1816 ;
died 1881), as the literary publisher, the story running as
follows. He was born on the last day of December, the son
of a ship-master. The father was lost at sea soon after the
boy's birth, leaving the mother with scant means to bring up
his elder brother and himself. At fourteen, after graduating
from the high school, he left home and went to Boston, where
a family friend had found a place for him as boy in the shop
which became the familiar " Old Corner Bookstore." Within
a few weeks he was promoted from the boy's place to a
clerkship.

His quick absorption of book-lore was as marked as his
ready acquirement of the details of business. Every night he
would carry to his lodgings an armful of books, the contents of
which he would often absorb before returning to work the next
morning. He early joined the Mercantile Library Association,
then newly instituted ; and there began a friendship, which was
lifelong, with Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist. They were then
boys of eighteen or nineteen. Whipple has given this sketch
of their acquirements when they first met, which shows the fine
sort of self-culture practiced by the aspiring youth of that
period ; and I read these reminiscent passages transcribed in
my note-book :

" It happened that both of us were inflamed by a passionate love for
literature and by a cordial admiration of men of letters ; that we had
read of course, superficially most of the leading poets and prose writers
of Great Britain, and had a tolerably correct idea of their chronological

98 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

succession ; that both of us could write verse in various measures, and
each then thought that the ten-syllabled couplet of Dryden and Pope
was the perfection of poetic form ; and that Fields had made his reputa-
tion a few days before our acquaintance began as the first anniversary poet
of the association. Before a large audience he had read an original poem
which commanded general applause. . . .

One of the most notable facts in the lives of clerks with literary tastes
and moderate salaries is the mysterious way in which they contrive to col-
lect books. Among the members of the Mercantile Library Association,
Thomas R. Gould (now known as one of the most eminent of American
sculptors), Fields, and myself had what we called libraries ' before we were
twenty-one. Gould was a clerk in a dry goods jobbing house, Fields in a
bookstore, I in a broker's office. Fields's collection much exceeded Gould's
and mine, for he had in his room two or three hundred volumes, the nu-
cleus of a library which eventually became one of the choicest private collec-
tions of books, manuscripts, and autographs in the city. The puzzle of the
thing was that we could not decide how we had come into the possession
of such treasures. We had begun to collect before we were in our teens,
and as we had neither stolen nor begged we concluded that ' our libraries'
represented our sacrifices. In the evening, after the day's hard work was
over, Gould and I drifted by instinct to Fields's boarding-house ; and what
glorious hilarity we always found in his room ! He was never dull, never
morose, never desponding. Full of cheer himself, he radiated cheer to us. "

Fields became a publisher at twenty-three, in the shop
where he had begun as boy, with his promotion from clerk to
partner in the firm of Ticknor, Reed, & Fields. This firm after-
ward became successively Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood,
& Co., until Fields's retirement from business in 1870. He was
editor of the Atlantic through the last eight years of his busi-
ness life from 1862 to 1870.

From his retirement till shortly before his death, he devoted
himself chiefly to lecturing on literary subjects and personages,
in various cities of the Northern States. The publications of his
own works were during this period, after he had himself ceased
to be a publisher. His widely read "Yesterdays with Authors "
was the first of the series, appearing in 1871. Then followed,
six years later, his volume of sketches, " Underbrush " ; the
next year " The Family Library of British Poetry," compiled

THE "OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 1 99

in association with Whipple ; and in 1880 his " Ballads and
Other Verses."

The distinctive characteristic of Fields as a publisher was
his attitude toward literary workers. Whipple says that from
the start he had deliberately formed in his mind an ideal of a
publisher who might profit by men of letters, and at the same
time make men of letters profit by him. Dr. Holmes remarked
his value as a literary counselor and friend. Very rarely if
ever, he has said, has a publisher enjoyed the confidence and
friendship of so wide and various a circle of authors. Of
Fields's curtained corner in the old Boston bookstore, George
William Curtis once discoursed thus charmingly in his " Easy
Chair":

" Suddenly, from behind the green curtain, came a ripple of
laughter, then a burst, then a chorus ; gay voices of two or three or
more, but always of one the one who sat at the desk and whose place
was behind the curtain, the literary partner of the house, the friend of
the celebrated circle which has made the Boston of the middle of this
century as justly renowned as the Edinburgh of the close of the last
century, the Edinburgh that saw Burns, but did not know him. That
curtained corner in the Corner Bookstore is remembered by those who
knew it in its great days, as Beaumont recalled the revels at the immortal
tavern. . . . What merry peals ! What fun and chaff and story !
Not only the poet brought his poem there still glowing from his heart, but
the lecturer came from tjie train with his freshest touches of local humor.
It was the exchange of wit, the Rialto of current good things, the hub of
the hub. ... It was a very remarkable group of men indeed, it
was the first group of really great American authors which familiarly
frequented the corner as the guests of Fields. There had been Bryant
and Irving and Cooper, and Halleck and Paulding and Willis of New
York, but there had been nothing like the New England circle which
compelled the world to acknowledge that there was an American liter-
ature."

From Fields we turned to Shillaber (born 1814 ; died in
Chelsea, Mass., 1890), who was his schoolmate. " Shillaber,"
I related, " was one of the older boys, being two years Fields's
senior, a long period in boyhood. He left school at sixteen,

100 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

and became a journeyman printer in one of the local newspaper
offices. At eighteen he also went up to Boston by the old

* Flying Stage Coach/ to seek his fortune. There he was first
employed in a book-printing shop, where were printed the
popular 'Peter Parley ' (Samuel G. Goodrich) books, and
several periodicals of note. Among them were the Anti-
Slavery Annual and other publications of Lydia Maria Child
(born in Medford, Mass., 1802; died in Wayland, Mass.,
1880), then, as Shillaber has described her, < a charming
woman, short and plump, with a ruddy and very expressive
face, and eyes sharply comprehensive of everything they
rested on.'

" In this printing shop he became familiar with the ways of
pen-workers, but he did not try his own hand till many years
afterward. It was in the late forties, when connected with a
Boston paper, that he made his first venture in the i Sayings
of Mrs. Partington/ with no thought of attempting a new
line in humorous literature. How it came about, and how he
came to utilize Sydney Smith's Mrs. Partington as the vehicle
for his droll conceits and merry quips, he has told in his

* Experiences During Many Years/ his last publication.
' The heroic, yet futile act of Mrs, Partington, as per Sydney
Smith, when she endeavored to sweep back the ocean which
overflowed her kitchen at Sidmouth/ he said, was ever funny
to him, and her name was present in his mind when the first
( Saying' was conceived. He declared that f there was no
thought beyond that passing moment, no dream of subsequent
effort, nor the most remote idea of future fame: but the time
was favorable for something of the kind, the ambition of a
first success was excited, more was called for, and soon that
which was so singularly and unpretendingly begun became a
necessity of the author, grew famous in a small way, and at-
tained voluminous proportions.'

" The first l Saying ' was suggested by a remark made by
one of the printers in the office one night, when the news of an

THE " OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 101

advance in breadstuffs had come in by an English steamer.
The printer said that he ' didn't care, for he bought his flour by
the pound.' So in a little paragraph in the next morning's
paper ' Mrs. Partington ' was quoted as saying that * it made
no difference to her whether flour was dear or cheap, as she
always had to pay just as much for a half-dollar's worth.'
This was at once widely copied, and the author was encouraged
to try another ' Saying,' which he did with like success. Then

BENJAMIN P. SHILLABER ("Mrs. Partington").

more Sayings were set agoing till, ' like the whistle of the
schoolboy that whistles itself, Mrs. Partington, as she ex-
pressed it, had attained a "memento" she could not check.'
In a little while the genial old dame with her antique bonnet,
her ' ridicule,' and her < specs,' became a household delight
throughout the land where newspapers were read. * Ike,' her
mischievous grandson, was a subsequent creation, as a foil to
her. He was an ' imitation of the universal " human boy "
whose pranks served to point a moral.' When, in 1854, the

102 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

' Sayings ' were published in book form, under the title of e Life
and Sayings of Mrs. Partington,' fifty thousand copies were
quickly sold. 'Ike and his Friends 7 appeared twenty-five
years after.

"When the Partington conceits were at their height
Shillaber edited The Carpet Bag. This was one of
the earliest American funny papers/ started in 1851, and
one of the best. But it was the ' unfortunate offspring of
credulous hope,' and ' despite all the means applied for its
support, it died happy after its second year.' It had a re-
markable corps of contributors. Among them were Charles
G. Halpine (part of the time an assistant editor), the ' Miles
O'Reilly ' of the Civil War period ; John T. Trowbridge, then
making fame as a story writer under the nom de plume of
' Paul Crey ton ' ; < Artemus Ward ' (Charles G. Browne), just
beginning his career ; < Ethan Spike ' (Matthew F. Whittier,
the poet's brother) ; <M. Quad,' in later years of the Detroit
free Press ; Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., the prolific writer of sensa-
tional stories ; and Louise Chandler Moulton, then signing
sketches and poems as ' Ellen Louise.'

"Shillaber also wrote much light and humorous verse.
His cheery life closed at the mellow age of seventy-six."

Resuming our walk we next called at the Public Library,
which occupies an old academy building, dating from 1800, and
interesting as a design of Charles Bulfinch, the pioneer Boston
architect, who built the " Bulfinch Front " of the State House
there, the old part of the Capitol at Washington, and other
notable structures. Here we saw a portrait of James T. Fields
in young manhood, and a full-length portrait of Celia Thaxter
in her maturity.

We could here take a car on Middle Street, which would
help us along the way to Little Harbor, the seat of Governor
Benning Wentworth and the scene of the finish of Longfellow's
" Lady Wentworth " ; but first I suggested that we stroll
among some of the old mansions of the neighborhood which

TttE O7,i> TOWN BY THE SEA."

have figured in literature. So working around to Pleasant
Street we came upon the Governor Langdon house, standing
back from the street, shaded by great oaks and elms, and ap-
proached over a tesselated marble walk. Here, Aldrich relates
in his " Old Town by the Sea " from which we have quoted so
liberally, the governor resided from 1782 till the time of his
death in 1819. During this period many an illustrious man
passed between the two white pillars that support the little
balcony over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe
and his brothers, the Dues de Montpensier and Beaujolais,

DANIEL WEBSTER HOUSE, PORTSMOUTH, N.H.

and the Marquis de Chastellux, a major-general in the French
army under the Count de Rochambeau whom he accompanied
from France to the States in 1780. The marquis, in recount-
ing his visits about the town while the fleet was lying in the
harbor, described this house as " elegant and well furnished,
and the apartments admirably well wainscotted." Governor
Langdon he found " a handsome man and of noble carriage ; "
his wife, " young, fair and tolerably handsome ; " but, singu-
larly for a Frenchman, " he conversed less with her than with
her husband," for the soldierly reason, however, that he was
prejudiced in the husband's favor " from knowing that he had

104 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

displayed great courage and patriotism at the time of Bur-
goyne's expedition."

Farther along on Pleasant Street we saw the Governor
John Wentworth mansion. He was the last Governor Went-
worth, nephew of Governor Benning Wentworth, whom he
succeeded in 1767. He served till the, brink of the Revolution,
when he went to England. He was afterward governor of
Nova Scotia, from 1792 to 1800, and died in Halifax in 1820.
He was a joyalist of the " most florid complexion.' 7 In 1775,
he harbored and refused to surrender one John Fenton, an ex-
captain in the British army, who had offended the Sons of
Liberty. His house here was mobbed, and the attacking party
planted a small cannon before the doorstep. Then pressing
into the mansion, they did considerable damage, marks of
which are still shown in a broken marble chimney piece. The
family escaped by the back yard when the cannon was placed.
That it wasn't loaded did not signify, for this important fact
was unknown to the besieged at the time. The great deep
hall with its portraits, the old parlor and its adornments, long
retained as they appeared in the governor's time, have been
reproduced in story.

Among other century or more old mansions of similar inter-
est which grace the shaded streets is the Warner house, a
house of brick brought out from Holland, three stories high,
with gambrel roof and luthern windows, and interior rich in
paneling and carvings. We are told that a wealthy Scotch-
man built it in 1718, one Captain Archibald Macpheadris,
a member of the King's council. It was his daughter Mary,
granddaughter of the first Governor or Lieut.-Governor
John Wentworth (father of sixteen children), whom Jonathan
Warner married. Warner, in his turn, was a Provincial coun-
cilor and served till the Revolution.

But the house which most concerned Percy was a two-story
gambrel-roofed dwelling on Vaughan Street; for this was
Daniel Webster's first house in Portsmouth, to which in 1808,

THE " OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 105

he brought his bride to begin housekeeping. " She was Grace
Fletcher, the daughter of a minister of Hopkinton, Massachu-
setts," I remarked, "'whom Webster met and wooed during her
visits to a sister of hers in Salisbury, New Hampshire, his
birthplace. He was then twenty-six, of striking appearance,
at the opening of his remarkable career."

It is a cheerful house, its aspect changed little from Web-
ster's day. It has the same broad hall running through the
middle : the same easy stairway with fluted, twisted, and flask-
shaped banisters : the staircase window with the name " Sally "
cut on the glass, handiwork of Sally Reserve, a daughter
of George Reserve, the stamp distributer for New Hampshire
under the "odious Stamp Act" of 1765, who built the house:
the front chamber wainscoted to the top : the dining-room
below, enlarged by Webster to meet the demands of his gener-
ous hospitality. Webster lived in this house, Percy was told,
till his removal to the house on Pleasant Street, which was
burned down in the "great fire" of 1813. He lost then his
library and all the furniture, and the family barely escaped
with their lives. After that he took his third and last Ports-
mouth house, on High Street, and in 1816 he moved to Boston.

As we walked away we talked of Webster's ten years in
Portsmouth, of his speedy leadership in his profession, his pub-
lic service, his associations, his friendship especially with Jere-
miah Mason, the great exponent of the common law, often op-
posed to him in legal cases, but always with friendship unbroken.
" It was of them," I recalled, " that George S. Hillard in after
years said : < Mason was a great lawyer, but Webster was a great
man practicing law/ It was from Portsmouth that Webster
was first sent to Congress ; and it was in a Portsmouth paper
the Chronicle that his career as a political writer began."

And then our talk drifted to other legal lights of Ports-
mouth. To Levi Woodbury among them, with whom Franklin
Pierce, afterward President Pierce, was a law student; then to
that successful practitioner of an earlier time, Jonathan

106 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Mitchell Sewall, writer of stirring lyrics sung " in every camp
and by every patriotic fireside " during the Revolution. He it
was who wrote that couplet which long since passed into famil-
iar proverbial use :

"No pent up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours!"

This was the finish of an epilogue which he composed to Addi-
son's " Tragedy of Cato " when it was played in the old Bow
Street Theatre of Portsmouth, in 1778, the concluding lines
running :

" Rise, then, my countrymen ! For fight prepare,
Gird on your swords, and fearless rush to war !
For your grieved country nobly dare to die
And empty all your veins for liberty.
No pent up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours ! "

Now began our short journey to Little Harbor. We boarded
our car alongside the old Parade in the Square, and rode around
through handsome Middle Street and beyond to open country.
At the farther end of the great South Bury ing-ground, thick
with tablets and monuments, we left the car and took to
the road. This was the Little Harbor Road of historic interest
and present beauty. It was a charming, winding, shaded walk
of about a mile or so ending abruptly at the water-side. And
not till we had reached the end did we get a glimpse of the
Wentworth " Great House," which the thick foliage of the road-
side completely veiled from view. Then we saw it much as
pictured in " Lady Wentworth,"

... "a pleasant mansion, an abode
Near and yet hidden from the great high road,
Sequestered among trees, a noble pile,
Baronial and colonial in its style ;
Gables and dormer-windows everywhere,
And stacks of chimneys rising high in air,
Pandsean pipes, on which all winds that blew
Made mournful music the whole winter through."

THE "OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 107

To Percy's eye it was a queer confusion of architecture,
with its square, flat-roofed main part of two stories, lifted above
irregular wings which joined three sides of a square opening
upon the water. He was informed that it dates from the middle
of the eighteenth century, having been completed in 1750. It
was once somewhat larger than now, a portion containing seven
rooms having been removed many years ago, and set up as a sep-
arate house on the Newcastle side of the harbor. In the gov-
ernor's day it had fifty -two rooms. Chief among these was the
Council Chamber for the transaction of business of state, an

THE WENTWORTH GREAT HOUSE, LITTLE HARBOR.

apartment spacious and high-studded, impressive in furnishings.
At its entrance were stacks for the twelve muskets of the gov-
ernor's guard. There were ante-rooms for the entertainment of
the provincial worthies frequently assembled here, in which
many a rubber of whist was played. Elsewhere ;

"Within, unwonted splendors met the eye,
Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry ;
Carved chimney-pieces, where on brazen dogs
Reveled and roared the Christmas fires of logs;

108 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Doors opening into darkness unawares,

Mysterious passages, and flights of stairs ;

And on the walls, in heavy gilded frames,

The ancestral Wentworths with Old-Scripture names."

The great cellar beneath the main part, into which Percy
peeped, was originally arranged for the stabling of a troop of
thirty horse in times of danger.

To this pleasant mansion

u where the great man dwelt,

A widower and childless, "

Martha Hilton had come, and had lived to young womanhood,
as a maid of all work

"A servant who made service seem divine ! ' ?

"Here the romance culminated, with Martha Hilton's mar-
riage to the governor, on his sixtieth birthday, when

u ' He gave a splendid banquet, served on plate
Such as became the Governor of the State,
Who represented England and the King,
And was magnificent in everything.'

" She made him a good wife, albeit having a lively sense of
the dignity of her station, as witness this delicious tale of the
dropping of her ring upon the floor a few days after her mar-
riage. ' She languidly ordered her servant to pick it up, but the
servant, who appears to have had a fine sense of humor, grew
suddenly near-sighted, and was unable to find it until Lady
Wentworth stooped and placed her ladyship's finger upon it/

" When the gouty governor died, in 1770, he left her his
entire estate. She married again, after a decorous interval,
another Wentworth, but not of the Portsmouth branch of the
family. He was Michael Wentworth, a retired colonel of the

THE "OLD TOWN BY THE SEA." 109

British army. He lived a life of conviviality, that shortly
dissipated her fortune, and at length died in New York, by his
own hand. His last words were ' I have had my cake and ate
it,' which we must agree with Aldrich shows that within his
own modest limitations, he was a philosopher.

" Longfellow wrote his poem without seeing the mansion.
His first view of it was a few days after the completion of the
tale, as appears by this note in his diary :

'June 1 [1871]. Went with Fields to Portsmouth to see old houses.
. . . First, lunch ; then to Little Harbor to see the Wentworth house,
a quaint, irregular pile of buildings hidden from the road by rising
ground, though close upon it, with lilac hedges, and looking seaward ;
not unlike my description of it. We went all over the lower part of the
house, and saw the present owner, a sprightly old lady of ninety, and
her daughter.'

" He also wrote to a friend, after this visit, ' I found it necessary
to change only a single line [of the poem], which was lucky. '

" Subsequently the property fell into excellent hands, be-
coming the summer seat of John T. Coolidge, jr., son-in-law of
the historian Parkman. Here Parkman spent some time each
summer during his latter years. While here he wrote parts of
his < Montcalm and Wolfe, 7 and finished ' A Half Century of
Conflict.' "

Hailing a skipper cruising about the little harbor, we char-
tered him to take us across to the Newcastle side. And by
way of this quaint village we returned to town.

A trip to Kittery-side, by ferry across the Piscataqua, and
a visit there to the ancient Pepperell house with the tomb of
the knight in the orchard, which we reached by trolley-car, rush-
ing through a lovely winding rural road, completed our round
of Portsmouth landmarks.

Then preferring a yacht to the steamboat, we embarked on
a miniature clipper ship, and made an afternoon voyage to the
Isles of Shoals, nine miles out from Portsmouth Light.

VIII.

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

Their situation in the open sea. History and traditions. Hawthorne's
note on their weird shapes. Celia Thaxter's sketch. Lowell's
" Pictures from Appledore." Legends of the Isles. The Old White
Island lighthouse. Celia Thaxter's girlhood there. Her marriage
and literary development. Her later cottage home on Appledore. -,-
Resort of literary folk. Her island grave.

ON the sail over I regaled Percy with tales of the Shoals,
their history and traditions, which have come out through the
association of literary folk with them ; for they were favorite
summering places with poets, authors, and artists through the
half century from 1840 or thereabouts, especially during the
mature life of their own poet Celia Thaxter (born 1835 ;
died 1894).

First, as to their situation. I showed by a map how they
lie, a cluster of eight rocky elevations, in the open sea; six of
them Appledore, Haley's or " Smutty Nose," Malaga, Star,
Cedar, and Londoner's in a group forming a crescent nearly
a mile in width with Duck Island two miles off to the north-
east from Appledore, and White Island nearly a mile southwest
from Star. Haley's we saw lies closest to Appledore, the
largest of the group, the two almost united by a reef bare
at low tide ; while Cedar and Malaga are connected with
Haley's at low tide. Star is a quarter of a mile southeast from
Haley's. Duck, with its ledges thrust out on all sides be-
neath the water, one extending half a mile to the northwest,
is the most dangerous of all these isles. White is the most
picturesque.

110

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

Ill

" On Star Island, " I went on, " are seen the remnants of
the old town of the cluster, Gosport, now 7 supplanted by a
summer hotel ; a little century -old stone church perched on the
highest rock ; and on another, a monument to Captain John

CELIA THAXTER IN HER GARDEN.

Smith. For this picturesque explorer is the accredited dis-
coverer of the Isles in 1614; although De Monts saw them
nine years before, Pring probably sighted them two years
before De Mouts, while Christopher Leavitt first set foot

112 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

upon them, in 1623. On Appledore rises a more ancient
monument, a rude cairn, which tradition insists, as tradition
sometimes will in defiance of seeming fact, that Smith himself,
or his men, set up ; and here are the Laightons' hostelry,
the ' Appledore/ and the cottage with its blooming garden,
where Celia Laighton Thaxter lived. On White is the light-
house where her girlhood was spent. Appledore was earlier
called 'Hog,' because of its fancied resemblance to a huge
hog's back rising from the water.

" Haley's was dubbed ' Smutty-nose ' by passing sailors, from
its long, black rock-point upon which many a brave ship has
met death. It got its l regular name ' from Samuel Haley, who
lived upon it for many years, till his death in 1811, at eighty-
four. He was the progenitor of a sterKng family. The
epitaph over his island grave records that he was a man ' of
great ingenuity, industry, honor, and honesty, true to his
country, . . . who did a great public good in building a dock
and receiving into his enclosure many a poor distressed sea-
man and fisherman in distress of weather.' His ingenuity and
industry were displayed in various other ways. He erected
salt-works for making salt to cure fish ; he built a rope-walk ;
he set up windmills for grinding his own corn and wheat ; all
these to render himself as far as possible independent of the
mainland. Celia Thaxter has told of his custom every night
to place in his bedroom window, high up and facing the south-
east, a light which burned till daybreak, as a beacon for
sailors, before, probably, the lighthouse on White Island was
erected. And she thus tells the story of the wreck of the
great ship * Sagunto ' from Spain, on a tempestuous January
night, when the vessel crashed full upon the fatal southeast
point, in sight of the tiny spark that burned peacefully in that
quiet chamber :

Her costly timbers of mahogany and cedarwood were splintered on the
sharp teeth of those inexorable rocks ; her cargo of dried fruits and nuts
and bales of broadcloth and gold and silver, was tossed about the shore,

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 113

and part of her crew were thrown alive upon it. Some of them saw the
light, and crawled toward it benumbed with cold and spent with fatigue
and terror. The roaring of the storm bore away their faint cries of dis-
tress ; the old man slept on quietly, with his family about him, sheltered,
safe ; while a stone 5 s-throw from his door these sailors strove and agonized
to reach that friendly light. Two of them gained the stone-wall in front
of the house, but their ebbing strength would not allow them to climb
over ; they threw themselves upon it, and perished miserably, with safety,
warmth, and comfort so close at hand ! In the morning, when the tumult
was somewhat hushed, and underneath the sullen sky rolled the more sullen
sea in long, deliberate waves, the old man looked out into the early light
across the waste of snow, and on the wall lay something that broke the
familiar outline, though all was smooth with the pure, soft snow. He must
put on coat and cap, and go and find out what this strange thing might
be. Ah ! that was a sight for his pitying eyes under the cold and leaden
light of that unrelenting morning ! He summoned his sons and his men.
Quickly the alarm was given, and there was confusion and excitement as
the islanders, hurriedly gathering, tried if it were possible yet to save
some life amid the wreck. But it was too late ; every soul was lost.
Fourteen bodies were found at that time, strewn all the way between the
wall and that southeast point where the vessel had gone to pieces. The
following summer the skeleton of another was discovered among some
bushes near the shore. . . . Fourteen shallow graves were quarried for
the unknown in the iron earth, and there they lie, with him who buried
them a little above in the same grassy slope.

" This tragedy of the sea is the subject of Mrs. Thaxter's
familiar poem, < The Spaniards' Graves/ with its fine lines :

4 O Sailors, did sweet eyes look after you

The day you sailed away from sunny Spain ?
Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew,
Melting in tender rain ?

Did no one dream of that drear night to be,

Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow,

When on yon granite point that frets the sea,
The ship met her death-blow ?

Fifty long years ago these sailors died :

(None know how many sleep beneath the waves : )

Fourteen gray head-stones, rising side by side,
Point out their nameless graves,

114 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me,

And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry,

And sadder winds, and voices of the sea
That moans perpetually.

O Spanish women, over the far seas,
'Could I but show you where your dead repose,

Could I send tidings on this northern breeze
That strong and steady blows !

Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yet

These you have lost, but you can never know

One stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wet
With thinking of your woe ! '

" The Shoals lie in two states, the dividing line between New
Hampshire and Maine passing between them. Appledore/
Duck, and Haley's are on the Maine side ; the others belong
to New Hampshire. The cluster comprise in all something
over six hundred acres. Appledore is a mile long ; Star, three-
quarters of a mile ; and White, about the same extent. Cedar
is the smallest, including about an acre. They got their name
of the ( Isles of Shoals ' upon the dropping of that of Smith's
Islands, which they bore on Captain John's map, not from
their rugged reefs which run out beneath the water, but from
the shoaling, or schooling, of fish about them.

11 Of their weird shapes Hawthorne wrote in his journal
upon his first visit to them in 1852 (and I turned to my note-
book for the extract) :

' It is quite impossible to give an idea of these rocky shores, how con-
fusedly they are tossed together, lying in all directions ; what solid ledges,
what great fragments thrown out from the rest. Often the rocks are bro-
ken, square and angular, so as to form a kind of staircase ; though, for the
most part, such as would require a giant stride to ascend them. Sometimes
a black trap-rock runs through the bed of granite ; sometimes the sea has
eaten this way, leaving a long, irregular fissure. In some places, owing to
the same cause perhaps, there is a great hollow place excavated into the
ledge, and forming a harbor, into which the sea flows ; and while there is

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 115

foam and fury at the entrance, it is comparatively calm within. Some
parts of the crag are as much as fifty feet of perpendicular height, down
which you look over a bare and smooth descent, at the base of which is a
shaggy margin of sea-weed. But it is vain to try to express this confusion.
As much as anything else, it seems as if some of the massive materials of
the world remained superfluous after the Creator had finished, and were
carelessly thrown down here, where the millionth part of them emerge
from the sea, and in the course of thousands of years have become par-
tially bestrewn with a little soil.' :

" Celia Thaxter has thus pictured them with a poetic touch ;

* Swept by every wind that blows, and beaten by the bitter brine for
unknown ages, well may the Isles of Shoals be barren, bleak, and bare.
. . . The incessant influences of wind and sun, rain, snow, frost, and
spray, have so bleached the tips of the rocks that they look hoary as if
with age, though in the summer time a gracious greenness of vegetation
breaks here and there the stern outlines, and softens somewhat their
rugged aspect. Yet so forbidding are their shores it seems scarcely worth

WHITE ISLAND LIGHT. ,

while to land upon them mere heaps of tumbling granite in the wide
and lonely sea when all the smiling * sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of
the land ' lies ready to woo the voyager back again, and welcome his re-
turning prow with pleasant sights and sounds and scents that the wild
wastes of water never know. But to the human creature who has eyes
that will see and ears that will hear, nature appeals with such a novel
charm, that the luxurious beauty of the land is half forgotten before one
is aware. . . . The wonderful sound of the sea dulls the memory of all

116 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

past impressions and seems to fulfill and satisfy all present needs. . . .
Each island has its peculiar characteristics. . . . Each presents its bold-
est shore to the east, to breast the whole force of the Atlantic which every
year assails the iron cliffs and headlands with the same ponderous fury,
yet leaves upon them so little trace of its immense power. . . . Each
island, every isolated rock has its own peculiar rote, and ears made deli-
cate by listening in great and frequent peril, can distinguish the bearings
of each in a dense fog. The threatening speech of Duck Island's ledges,
the swing of the wave over Half- Way Rock, the touch of the ripple on the
beach at Londoner's, the long and lazy breaker that is forever rolling below
the lighthouse on White Island, all are familiar and distinct, and indi-
cate to the islander his whereabouts almost as clearly as if the sun shone
brightly and no shrouding mist were striving to mock and mislead him.'

"And Lowell, in his ' Pictures from Appledore' thus de-
scribes this isle, chiefest in interest to us because of its literary
associations :

' A heap of bare and splintery crags
Tumbled about by lightning and frost,
With rifts and chasms and storm-bleached jags,
That wait and growl for a ship to be lost ;

Ribs of rock that seaward jut,

Granite shoulders and boulders and snags,

Round which, though the winds in heaven be shut,

The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns,

Welters, and swashes, and tosses, and turns,

And the dreary black seaweed lolls and wags ;

Only rock from shore to shore,

Only a moan through the bleak clefts blown,

With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp shifts,

Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting,

And under all a deep, dull roar,

Dying and swelling, forevermore,

Rock and moan and roar alone,

And the dread of some nameless thing unknown,

These make Appledore.

These make Appledore by night.

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 117

All this you would scarcely comprehend,

Should you see the isle on a sunny day ;

Then it is simple enough in its way,

Two rocky bulges, one at each end,

With a smaller bulge and a hollow between ;

Patches of whortleberry and bay ;

Accidents of open green,

Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray,

Like graveyards for ages deserted ; a few

Unsocial thistles ; an elder or two,

Foamed over with blossoms white as spray ;

And on the whole island never a tree

Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee,

That crouch in hollows where they may,

(The cellars where once stood a village, men say,)

Huddling for warmth, and never grew

Tall enough for a peep at the sea;

A general dazzle of open blue ;

A breeze always blowing and playing rat-tat

With the bow of the ribbon round your hat ;

A medrick that makes you look overhead
With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey,
And, dropping straight and swift as lead,
Splits the water with sudden thud ;
This is Appledore by day/

" So early as 1623, the year that Leavitt landed, first of all
Europeans, upon them, only three years after the coming of
the Pilgrims to Plymouth, the Isles were occupied as a fishing
station ; and from that time to the Revolutionary period the
fisheries were pursued as an active industry. During the thriv-
ing days of piracy many a buccaneer frequented these isles,
and tales are told of immense treasure hidden in their rocky
depths. They are numbered among the countless hiding-places
of Kidd's wealth, and they harbor a pirate-ghost, ' Old Bab/
one of Kidd's men. His ghostship is of a < pale and very
dreadful ' countenance, clad in a < coarse, striped butcher's frock,
with a leather belt to which is attached a sheath containing a

118

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ghostly knife, sharp and glittering, which it is his delight to
brandish in the face of terrified humanity. 7 And there is a
sweeter ghost, a lovely woman * fair as a lily,' wrapped closely
in a dark sea-cloak, with a profusion of light hair falling loosely
over her shoulders, who stands on the cliffs fixing her large and
melancholy eyes on the limitless sea, as she moans, < He will
come back ! He will come back/ As the legend runs, the
sweet maid was left here by her pirate lover, a companion of
the notorious < Blackboard/ to guard his buried treasure while

CELIA THAXTER'S GRAVE.

he and ' Blackboard ' sailed after a strange ship for more plun-
der. She was made to swear ' with horrible rites that till his
return, if it were not till the day of judgment, she would guard
it from the search of all mortals.' Then off the islands a fight
ensued between the pirate ship and the strange sail, which
proved to be a cruiser in search of the freebooters. After a des-
perate battle the pirate ship was blown up and all of her gang
perished. But the maiden kept her oath.

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 119

" For more than a century before the Revolution the Shoals
were fairly populous, considering their size and distance from
the mainland, having from three hundred to six hundred inhab-
itants. Within the first half of the eighteenth century vessels
were annually loaded here with fish for Balboa, in Spain.
About the year 1660 there were on Appledore (then Hog Island)
thirty or forty families, who, says an old chronicler, were ' gen-
erally good livers.' In so prosperous a state were the islands
at that period, this same chronicler avers, that ' gentlemen from
some of the principal towns on the seacoast sent their sons here
for literary instruction.' This was evidently an embellishment
of the simpler record that children were sent here from the
mainland to school probably to the good island minister
John Brock, in order that they might be safe from the In-
dians then harassing the settlements. A little later the Hog
islanders moved over to Star, partly through fear of the Indians
who made Duck Island a rendezvous.

" Early in the Revolution when the Islands were at the
mercy of the enemy and affording it sustenance and recruits,
the Provincial government ordered the inhabitants to quit
them, which the greater part did. They scattered among
the seaport towns along the coast, and most of them never
returned. On Star Island in 1775 the royal Governor Went-
worth performed his last official act when he prorogued the
last assembly of the province of New Hampshire.

"The few among the islanders who did not join the exodus
were mostly the more debased, and the Isles speedily sank into
a deplorable condition. From the war period till between
1820 and 1830, their inhabitants mostly lived in a wretched
condition of ignorance and vice. We have Celia Thaxter's
word for it that in no place of the size of the group has there
been a greater absorption of ' rum ' since the world was made.
A young theological student there in 1822 on missionary work
intent, recorded in his journal numerous shocking instances
of what he termed the ( Heaven-daring impieties ' of the island-

120 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ers. But in time things slowly mended, mainly through the
efforts of ministers sent down by that zealous Puritan organiza-
tion with the ponderous name the " Society for Propagating
the Gospel Among Indians and Others in North America ; "
and through the work of courageous women who came over
from the mainland to live among the people, to teach their
school and reclaim their children.

"When the elder Laighton, Celia Thaxter's father, took
charge of the White Island lighthouse, and moved his family
from Portsmouth to the little stone cottage there, the islands
were yet sparsely settled, mostly by fishermen's families.
That was in 1839, when Celia was scarcely five years old. Of
the. home on this remote island she has given us a fascinating
picture:

4 ' ' It was at sunset in autumn that we were set ashore on that loneliest,
lovely rock, where the lighthouse looked down on us like some tall, black-
capped giant, and filled me with awe and wonder. At its base a few goats
were grouped on the rock, standing out dark against the red sky as I
looked up at them. The stars began to twinkle ; the wind blew cold,
charged with the sea's sweetness ; the sound of many waters half bewil-
dered me. Some one began to light the lamps in the tower. Rich red and
golden, they swung round in mid-air. Everything was strange and fas-
cinating and new. We entered the quaint little old stone cottage that was
for six years our home. How curious it seemed, with its low, white-
washed ceiling and deep window-seats, showing the great thickness of the
walls made to withstand the breakers, with whose force we soon grew
acquainted !

u ' A blissful home the little house became to the children who entered it
that quiet evening and slept for the first time lulled by the murmur of the
encircling sea. I do not think a happier triad ever existed than we were,
living in that profound isolation. It takes so little to make a healthy
child happy; and we never wearied of our resources. True, the winters
seemed as long as a whole year to our little minds, but they were pleasant,
nevertheless. Into the deep window-seats we climbed, and with pennies
(for which we had no other use) made round holes in the thick frost,
breathing on them till they were warm, and peeped out at the bright,
fierce, windy weather, watching the vessels scudding over the intensely
dark blue sea, all " featherwhite " where the short waves broke hissing in

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 121

the cold, and the seafowl soaring aloft or tossing on the water ; or, in
calmer days, we saw how the stealthy Star-Islander paddled among the
ledges, or lay for hours stretched on the wet sea-weed, with his gun,
watching for wild-fowl. Sometimes the round head of a seal moved
about among the kelp-covered rocks. . . . We were forced to lay in
stores of all sorts in the autumn, as if we were fitting out a ship for an
Arctic expedition. The lower story of the lighthouse was hung with
mutton and beef, and the store-room packed with provisions.

" ' In the long, covered walk that bridged the gorge between the light-
house and the house, we played in stormy days ; and every evening it was a
fresh excitement to watch the lighting of the lamps, and think how far the
lighthouse sent its rays, and how many hearts it gladdened with assurance
of safety. As I grew older I was allowed to kindle the lamps sometimes
myself. That was indeed a pleasure. . . . We hardly saw a human
face beside our own all winter ; but with the spring came manifold life to
our lonely dwelling, human life among ether forms. Our neighbors
from Star rowed across ; the pilot boat from Portsmouth steered over and
brought us letters, newspapers, magazines, and told us the news of
months.

** ' Once or twice every year came the black, lumbering old " oil-
schooner" that brought supplies for the lighthouse, and the inspector, who
gravely examined everything, to see if all was in order. He left stacks of
clear red and white glass chimneys for the lamps, and several doeskins for
polishing the great silver-lined copper reflectors, large bundles of wicks,
and various pairs of scissors for trimming them, heavy black casks of ill-
perfumed whale oil, and other things which were all stowed in the round,
dimly-lighted rooms of the tower. Very awe-struck, we children always
crept into corners, and whispered and watched the intruders till they em-
barked in their ancient, clumsy vessel, and, hoisting their dark, weather-
stained sails, bore slowly away again."

" Celia Thaxter has sung the old white lighthouse in t The
Wreck of the Pocahontas ' beginning :

'I lit the lamps in the lighthouse tower,

For the sun dropped down and the day was dead;
They shone like a glorious clustered flower,
Ten golden and five red.'

That lighthouse was removed many years ago and a brick
tower built in its place, and the ' ten golden and five red '

122 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

lamps were superseded by the Fresnel's triple burner enclosed
in its case of prisms, - less picturesque, but more powerful.

"Thomas Laighton's coming to the Shoals as lighthouse
keeper they say, was the result of political disappointment.
He was the son of a spar-maker in Portsmouth. His father's
trade was not congenial to him as a vocation, and he took to
journalism and politics. He wrote for the New Hampshire
Gazette, and was postmaster of Portsmouth under Jackson's
administration. Afterward came the disappointment in his
hope of a public career, and taking the island-lighthouse
appointment, he resolved never to return to the mainland.
Upon his retirement as light-keeper, in 1848, he moved across
to Appledore, and there engaged with a brother from Ports-
mouth in the fishing business. Meanwhile they had built a
comfortable i house of entertainment ' for the occasional visitors
who drifted over from the mainland ; and from this developed
the greater hotel of the Laighton family. Thomas Laighton
died in 1865, and was buried on his island. His wife, born
Eliza Byrnes, of Portsmouth, ' a woman of remarkable good
sense and a strong physique,' long survived him; and when
she died, in 1877, her grave was also made on the island.
Seventeen years later Celia's burial-place was by her side.

" The discoverer of the isles as a summering place and
health restorer, was the scholarly John Weiss, liberal minister
and litterateur, and the biographer of Theodore Parker. He
came first to the lighthouse with a companion, in 1846, and
made friends with the Laighton family. They found the
light-keeper < rough, but good humored ; ' the good wife genu-
inely pleased to see them ; Celia, a ' bright-looking, rosy-faced
girl ; ' and the two boys, Oscar and Cedric, with l their hair cut
straight across their foreheads to keep it out of their eyes.'

" When the family removed to Appledore, Celia was thir-
teen. Among the earlier summer guests of the Laightons'
' house of entertainment ' was Levi Thaxter, then of Water-
town, Massachusetts, a recent graduate from Harvard. He

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 123

was a young man of ' refined taste and intellectual endowment/
reserved and of a retiring nature, and was then studying the
English drama with an eye to becoming a dramatic reader and
possibly an actor. He was a cousin of Maria White who
became James Russell Lowell's first wife, and was intimate
with several rising men of letters. In later years he intro-
duced Robert Browning's poetry to American readers and
became somewhat widely known as its ' apostle.' This intel-
lectual young man fell in love with the < rosy -faced' Celia,. and
when she was sixteen they were married.

" Young Thaxter took his girl-bride to a home in a suburb
of Boston, and proceeded to direct her instruction, and her
literary training and development. This was her first intro-
duction to the world and it brought her exuberant joy. In
Boston ' lectures, operas, concerts, theatres, pictures, music
above all,' says her life-long friend, Mrs. James T. Fields,
'what were they not to her? Did artists ever before find
such an eye and such an ear ? She brought to them a spirit
prepared for harmony, but utterly ignorant of the science of
painting or music until the light of art suddenly broke upon
her womanhood.' Her genius quickly unfolded, and before
she was twenty she began to write and show her talent as a
word-painter. The cottage on the island, originally built for
Mr. and Mrs. Laighton, was long Celia Thaxter's home the
greater part of each year. And here was early established her
unique salon, to which were attracted literary folk, artists,
musicians, wits, and genuises of various sort, drawn to the
Isles from time to time in the open seasons."

As we sailed out from Portsmouth harbor and, were off
Newcastle, we had the Isles directly before us. First they
appeared, as Celia Thaxter has described, ill-defined and cloudy
shapes, faintly discernible in the distance ; then, as approached,

124 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

separating and showing each its peculiar characteristics. It
was a beautiful sail, Percy exclaimed repeatedly, all the
way from the start at the tumbling old wharf in Portsmouth-
town, down the " singing" Piscataqua between green shores,
through the Narrows with the picturesque islands on either
side, past old Fort Constitution and Whale Back with its twin
light-houses, along the open sea, to the finish at the pier at
Appledore where we disembarked.

j^.fter registering at the hotel, and then taking a hasty
sweep of the near and distant island and sea views from its
broad piazzas, we walked across to the Thaxter cottage. In
the front yard was still blooming, as in its mistress's day, the
wonderful garden which she created with infinite care and
devotion in the island's " iron soil," - the theme of her little
classic, "An Island Garden," and of one of her daintiest poems,
"My Garden." A "most happy little garden" indeed it
was, we agreed as we recalled her own descriptions of it in
prose and verse ; a space of " tangled bloom " displaying
through the seasons a wondrous variety of gay, brilliant-
tinted, old-fashioned flowers, snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils,
narcissus, hyacinths, scillas, English primroses, tulips, and
so on.

Within the cottage the " room of rooms " was the parlor
on the southeast side. " Hawthorne was among the earliest to
describe its hostess here," I remarked. " His first visit to the
Isles was in September, 1852, a favored guest, bearing an
introduction from Franklin Pierce, then a Presidential candi-
date, in addition to his own growing fame. He wrote in his
journal :

"'In the evening went with Mr. Titcomb to Mr. Thaxters to drink
apple-toddy. We found Mrs. Thaxter sitting in a neat little parlor, very
simply furnished, but in good taste. She is not now, I believe, more than
eighteen years old, very pretty, and with the manners of a lady, not
prim and precise, but with enough of freedom and ease. The books on
the table were "Fre-Raphaelitism," a tract on spiritual mediums, etc.

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 125

There were several shelves of books oil one side of the room, and engrav-
ings on the walls. . . . Anon . . . caine in the apple-toddy, a very rich
and spicy compound, after which we had some glees and negro melodies,
in which Mr. Thaxter sang a noble bass, and Mrs. Thaxter sang like a
bird, and Mr. [John] Weiss sang, I suppose, tenor, and a brother took
some other part ; and all were very mirthful, and jolly. At about ten
o'clock Mr. Titcomb and myself took leave, and emerging into the open
air, out of that room of song, and pretty youthf ulness of woman, and gay
young men, there was the sky, and the three-quarters waning moon, and
the old sea moaning all round about the island.'

" Whittier was a frequent visitor. He would sit hour after
hour, says Mrs. Fields, sometimes mending Celia's seolian harp
while they talked together, sometimes reading aloud to the
assembled company. William Morris Hunt, the Boston painter,
was another often here. Also Professor John K. Paine, the
composer. Even Ole Bull, 'that Norwegian waif and cele-
brated violinist/ says Frank Preston Stearns, sometimes
wandered in and entertained the gathering with < accounts of
sea-serpents standing on their tails in front of waterfalls, and
other marvels only visible in Norway, supposing,' appar-
ently, < that his hearers would believe anything that he told
them.' Artists here first showed their summer work ; musicians
performed their new compositions ; poets read their poems,
essayists their essays. Mrs. Thaxter, too, read her verses to
the friendly audiences drawn to her parlor.

" It was at the writing-table in the corner by the window
with its grand outlook, that most of her literary work was
composed. Here during a winter season she wrote her charm-
ful ' Among the Isles of Shoals.' But her first work to find
print was written elsewhere, away from the sea. This was her
poem, < Land-Locked.' It appeared in the Atlantic under
Lowell's editorship, sent to him, it is said, by a friend, and at
once accepted and published, to the young author's surprise
and gratification. Though one of her earliest productions it
has been classed with the most beautiful in form and thought
of her mature work. Her literary output was not great in

126 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

quantity, it is embraced within three or four small volumes,
- but it was often exquisite in quality. She was distinctly
our singer of the sea."

From the poet's cottage we wended our way to her grave
in the little family graveyard, where Percy copied the terse
inscriptions on the head stones as I read Mrs. Fields's descrip-
tion of the scene at her burial :

" The burial was at her island on a quiet afternoon in the late sum-
mer. Her parlor, in which the body lay, was again made radiant, after
her own custom, with the flowers from her garden, and a bed of sweet
bay was prepared by her friends Appleton Brown and Childe Hassam, on
which her form was laid. William Mason once more played the music
from Schumann which she chiefly loved, and an old friend, James De
Normandie, paid a deep tribute of affection, spoken for all those who sur-
rounded her. She was borne by her brothers and those nearest to her up
to the silent spot where her body was left. The day was still and soft,
and the veiled sun was declining as the solemn procession, bearing flowers,
followed to the sacred place. At a respectful distance above stood a wide
ring of interested observers, but only those who knew her and loved her
best drew near. After all was done, and the body was at rest upon the
fragrant bed prepared for it, the young flower-bearers brought their bur-
dens to cover her. The bright, tear-stained faces of those who held up
their arms full of flowers, to be heaped upon the spot until it became a
mound of blossoms, allied the scene, in beauty and simplicity, to the
solemn rites of antiquity."

After a late dinner we made an evening cruise among the
islands. On our return we sat late upon the hotel piazza and
listened to the sea, until at length we retired, and slept " with
all the waves of the Atlantic murmuring in our ears." We
woke to the freshness of such a summer morning as Celia
Thaxter describes on these isles : " the world like a new-blown
rose, ... in the heart of which " we stood, with " only the
caressing music of the water to break the utter silence, except,
perhaps, a song-sparrow " pouring out " its blissful warble like
an embodied joy ; the sea rosy, and the sky : the line of land

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 127

radiant ; the scattered sails " glowing " with the delicious
color that touches so tendeily the bare, bleak rocks."

Breakfast over, we set sail again in our yacht and returned
to Portsmouth, whence we started forthwith for our pilgrimage
to Portland and beyond.

IX.

IN THE FOREST CITY.

Along the way from Portsmouth. South Berwick, home of Sarah Orne
Jewett. Story of her work. "The Falls of Saco." Portland's
Longfellow landmarks. The poet's birthplace. The mansion home
of his boyhood. His life here and at the country homes of his grand-
fathers. His first poem in the local newspaper. Its unconscious
critic. Scenes of later poems. The Portland band of writers:
Nathaniel Deering, John Neal, Seba Smith, Isaac M'Lellan, Gren-
ville Mellen, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Anna 8. W. Stephens, Elijah
Kellogg. Story of Nathaniel P. Willis.

FROM Portsmouth to Portland was a long railway ride, for
our train was an " accommodation," making its way leisurely
through the shore towns and cities, with stops at all the sta-
tions. We took it because it was the first train of the schedule
for the day. The journey, however, was not tiresome. On
the contrary, Percy enjoyed it all, for the country was pleasant,
the people coming and going at the stations were interesting,
while the route was by or near places which favorite writers
have made familiar to the reading world.

Such a place was South Berwick, the ancestral home of
Sarah Orne Jewett (born 1849 ). We might have "stopped
over" at North Berwick, the nearest station on our line to this
" large old town," with its beautiful main street, and its man-
sions of former sea-kings, and made a by -trip to it. But we
decided to continue on, Percy being content with the picture I
gave him of the Jewett homestead and of the gentlewoman
whose delineations of New England life and character, the
leader of modern workers in this field, have so garnished our
literature.

" Imagine," I said, " an old colonial mansion, two-storied,

128

IN THE FOREST CITY. 129

high-roofed, liberally proportioned, high panelled hall with
wide, arch running through the middle, broad and easy stair-
way ascending to ample rooms above, old-time furnishings and
furniture and heirlooms j the mansion set among lofty trees
and blossoming shrubs j and you have this typical old
New England home.

" Miss Jewett, born in this favored mansion, was the daugh-
ter of a country doctor ; and being a delicate girl requiring the
open air, she early became the doctor's companion on his long

SARAH ORNE JEWETT.

drives over a wide territory to the homes of his patients.
Thus she acquired a peculiar intimacy with the life of the
people. While she attended the local academy, and was other-
wise well trained in < book learning,' she attributes to her
father's unobtrusive influence and guidance the development
of her talents in the direction her work has taken. In her
own gracious way she has said :

" ' My father had inherited from his father an amazing knowledge of
human nature, and from his mother's French ancestry that peculiar

130

LI TERA R Y PIL GRIM A GES.

French trait called gaiete de coeur. Through all the heavy responsibilities
and anxieties of his busy professional life, this kept him young at heart
and cheerful. His visits to his patients were often made delightful and
refreshing to them by his kind heart, and the charm of his personality.
... I used to follow him about silently like an undemanding little dog,
content to follow at his heels. I had no consciousness of watching or
listening, or indeed of any special interest in the country interiors. In

HOME OF SARAH O. JEWETT, SOUTH BERWICK, MAINE.

fact, when the time came that my own world of imagination was more
real to me than any other, I was sometimes perplexed at my father's
directing my attention to certain points of interest in the character or
surroundings of our acquaintances. I cannot help believing that he
recognized, long before I did myself, in what direction the current of pur-
pose in my life was setting. Now as I write my sketches of country life,
I remember again and again the wise things he said, and the sights he
made me see. He was only impatient with affectation and insincerity.'

IN THE FOREST CITY.

131

"It was his portrait which she -limned in her story of 'The
Country Doctor.' "

" Both of Miss Jewett's parents were of early New England
ancestry. Her mother, a woman of refined nature, was de-
scended from Edward Oilman, who came from Norfolk in Old

CORNER IN MISS JEWETT'S STUDY.

England, to Boston in New England, back in 1638, and thence
went to Exeter, New Hampshire, with its early settlers. In
the Revolution days the Gilinans were ardent patriots, while
the Jewetts were devoted loyalists.

" Miss Jewett began writing stories in her girlhood, and

182 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

when in her teens first saw her sketches published in Our
Young Folks and The Riverside, those juvenile magazines of
the sixties and seventies, than which no worthier have since
been established. She was but nineteen when she sent her
first sketch to the Atlantic, which promptly printed it. She
first published under the pen-name of ' Alice Eliot/ but after
1881 signed her own name. From the publication of her
initial volume, 'Deephaven/ in 1877, she has brought out a
book almost every year, published first in magazines ; and her
works now make a respectable shelf-full. Of her art, Harriet
Prescott Spofford, most competent as well as most sympathetic
of judges, has said : ( the secret of her success, outside of the
artistic perfection of her work, is the spirit of loving kindness
and tender mercy that pervades it.' "

Another place of especial interest to Percy was Saco, with
the Saco River, now "vexed in all its seaward course with
bridges, dams and mills " ; for once upon a time he had de-
claimed at school Whittier's " The Falls of the Saco," begin-
ning:

" Who stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone,

Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky
Where the spray of the cataract sparkles on high,

Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Magone?"

At length in Portland, we sought at once the Longfellow
landmarks. These are some distance from the station, up in the
business center and down by the wharves. So we took a
trolley car and rode up town. On the chief thoroughfare
Congress Street we passed the principal Longfellow house,
of which Percy got a glimpse ; but we kept on, to begin at the
beginning, with Longfellow's birthplace.

This we found after various turns, on old Fore Street, a
tenement house now. It is no longer the " old square wooden
house on the edge of the sea." The street no longer runs
along the shore with the beach on the opposite side. Years

IN THE FOREST CITY.

133

ago the region changed. Percy could see nothing to admire
in either house or neighborhood to-day. It was hard for him
to imagine that both were delightsome in Longfellow's child-
hood, But that both were so, we have the assurance of the
local historian. Then the mansion commanded a fine outlook
over the harbor ; and the neighborhood was within the " court-
end " of the town. Now, where the tide ebbed and flowed, is

BIRTHPLACE OF LONGFELLOW.

land, and over the beach where sometimes on Sundays the
rite of baptism was administered before throngs of spectators,
railroad trains run.

We tarried here only long enough to identify the house,
and recall its brief history so far as its association with the
poet was concerned.

11 It was the home of his father's brother-in-law, prosperous
Captain Samuel Stephenson," I related, " who built it, not long
before the poet's birth. His parents were temporarily living
here, with their little son Stephen, spending the winter with

134 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Aunt Stephenson, when Henry was born, on the 27th of
February, 1807. When he was a little more than a year old
the family went to live in the brick mansion on Congress
Street. Five or six yea.rs afterward, at the time of the
Embargo ' which left the ships rotting at the wharves,' Uncle
and Aunt Stephenson moved away to Gorham, upon a farni
adjoining Grandfather Longfellow's place there ; and this
' old square house by the sea ' knew no more of the
Longfellows."

We walked back to Congress Street and now inspected
the other house most closely identified with Longfellow, the
developing boy and youth. This also has changed in the
passing years, but only slightly, we saw, as compared with
the Fore Street house. Though crowded, by modern structures
on either side, it yet preserves its dignity, and retains traces
of the aspect it bore when it was among the stateliest mansions
of the town, and shaded by drooping elms in front.

"This mansion," I remarked as we stood off a decorous
distance, while Percy deftly took a snap-shot of it with his
kodak, " was erected by the poet's maternal grandfather, brave
General Peleg Wads worth, not long after the Eevolutionary
War, in which he took so effective a part in Rhode Island and
in the expedition to * The Eastward,' as Maine then was."

" Yes," said Percy, " the * schoolmaster-soldier of Kings-
ton,' of whose closing of his school in Plymouth and start
off with his minute-men after the Concord Fight, we heard
during our historic pilgrimages in those old Colony towns of
Massachusetts."

" Exactly. And after the war he acquired a great estate of
seven thousand acres of wild lands between Saco and the
Ossipee River, ' Wadsworth Grant ' it was sometimes des-
ignated on the map, and there, in his great house at Hiram,
which he established the year of the poet's birth, he passed
his declining years. He was a fine figure of a man with his
soldierly bearing, upright form, cocked hat, and buckled shoes.

IN THE FOREST CITY.

135

136 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

This Portland mansion of his was the first brick house in the
town. Two years were occupied in its building, 1784-86, for
it was constructed with that deliberation and thoroughness
which characterized those simple days. It was then amid
green fields. Here Zilpah Wadsworth passed her girlhood,
coming to the new house when she was a child of seven. Here
she was married to Stephen Longfellow. And here, after the
General's removal to Hiram, was their home for the remainder
of their lives. It was the poet's home till his establishment
at Bowdoin College in the professor's chair. During the
greater part of his life it was his custom to visit the old place
once a year ; and his was a familiar face seen by the parlor
window, or on the street on these occasions. The house
remained in the Longfellow family till it was acquired by the
Maine Historical Society, by deed of gift from the poet's
sister, Mrs. Anna Longfellow Pierce, whose death in 1900
closed her peaceful life here."

The door of the old house opened to us, and Percy enjoyed
the pleasant interior. The " boys' room " was on the upper
floor, he was told. In their day, as Samuel Longfellow, the
poet's brother, has described it, this room looked out over
the " Cove," and farms, and woodlands, toward Mount Wash-
ington in full view on the western horizon ; while the eastern
chambers commanded an unbroken view of the bay. Then in
the kitchen " hung the crane over the coals in the old broad
fireplace, upon whose iron back a fish forever baked in effigy."
In the family room was the father's small buir well-selected
library, embracing Shakspere, Milton, Pope, Dryden, Thomson,
Goldsmith, the Spectator, the Lives of the Poets, Rasselas,
and Plutarch's Lives, which Henry absorbed as he grew into
boyhood.

He had access, as well, to the Portland Library ; and
" sometimes of evenings he got permission to go down to
Johnson's bookstore to look over the new books arrived from
Boston." His school life began at three years of age, at a

IN THE FOREST CITY.

137

" dame's school," kept by " Ma'am Fellows." He remembered
being carried to school sometimes on horseback in front of the
colored man who worked for his father. At five he began
going to a public school ; then, soon after, to a private school ;
then, at six, to the Portland Academy. At fourteen he entered
Bowdoin, with his elder brother, Stephen.

We recalled the home life in the mansion-house. The father
was a lawyer foremost in his profession, holding high position
at the Cumberland Bar; a
man of " sound good sense
in affairs, high integrity, lib-
erality and public spirit, old-
time courtesy of manners,
and cordial hospitality." He
had graduated with honor at
Harvard, in the same class
with William Ellery Chan-
ning and Judge Story. He
was a representative in the
Legislature of Massachusetts
in 1814, and in Congress
in 1823-1825. The mother
was a refined and delicate
woman, fond of poetry and
music, and a lover of nature.
" She would sit by a window

during a thunder-storm enjoying the excitement of its splen-
dors." From her, his brother says, came the imaginative and
romantic side of Longfellow's nature. Another inmate of the
household was " Aunt Lucia," the mother's sister, who " was
like a second mother to her children." It was a gentle home,
well ordered and wholesome.

Long holidays were spent by the boys at the homes of
the grandfathers, Grandfather Longfellow's in Gorhain, and
Grandfather Wadsworth's in Hiram. Grandfather Longfellow,

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

138 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the judge, like General Wadsworth, was a man of marked
characteristics. He was " an erect, portly figure, rather tall ;
wearing almost to the close of his life the old-style dress,
long-skirted waistcoat, small-clothes, and white-topped boots,
his hair tied behind in a club, with black ribbon." Not far
from Grandfather Wadsworth's place was the scene of Long-
fellow's first published poem, " The Battle of LovelFs Pond,"
the lake in Fryeburg about which occurred "Lovwell's
Fight " with the Indians.

The story, as told, of the publication of this first poem
when Longfellow was but thirteen recalled somewhat that of
Whittier's first poem in print. With "trembling and misgiv-
ing of heart" the boy "ran down to Mr. Shirley's printing-
office " the office of the semi-weekly Portland Gazette,
"and cautiously slipped his manuscript into the letter-box."
The evening before the publication day he went again and stood
shivering in the November air, casting many a glance at the
windows through which he saw the printers at work, afraid to
venture in. Only his sister (who like Whittier's received his
literary confidences) had been let into the secret. At length
the paper appeared, the issue of Nov. 17, 1820, and in
its " Poet's Corner " his precious lines. Long after he said,
" I don't think any other literary success in my life has made
me quite so happy since."

But mark the denouement. That evening he went with his
father to call upon the father's friend, Judge Mellen, whose
son Fred was his own intimate. In the circle about the fire
the talk drifted upon poetry. During the conversation the
judge took up that day's Gazette, and his eye sought the
" Poet's Corner." Then said he, " Did you see this piece in
to-day's paper ? Very stiff ; remarkably stiff. Moreover, it is
also borrowed, every word of it ! " The secret author in his
corner flushed and paled, and flushed and paled again. His
heart shrank within him ; and that night hot tears wet his
pillow.

IN THE FOREST CITY. 139

Bidding adieu to the old mansion, we walked farther up
Congress Street, passing the site of the " Freemasons' Arms/'
the tavern of Thomas Motley, grandfather of the historian
John Lothrop Motley ; and coming to Longfellow Square we
saw the excellent bronze statue of Longfellow.

Then we extended our stroll to embrace picturesque parts
of the city " that is seated by the sea," and its natural beau-
ties which have been celebrated in prose and verse. Percy
especially desired to seek the points, if any still existed, re-
ferred to in Longfellow's idyl of " My Lost Youth," which he
said he had somewhere read pictured Portland in the poet's
boyhood. So we wandered up and down " the dear old town,"
Percy, where traces of these places could no longer be found,
imagining them, with the scenes described in the poem.

First, being in its vicinity, we turned toward the Bram-
hall's Hill region, the modern West End " of the city, with
its elm-shaded streets and detached houses, set by gardens and
lawns. We strolled along the Western Promenade skirting the
brow of the hill, and enjoyed the expanding views of country
and mountain. We looked off upon

"... the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering Woods: "

the Deering Woods ''fresh and fair" of the poet's memory,
now preserved as a public park.

Then we walked back to the easterly end of the city,
the older part, where is Munjoy's Hill with the Eastern
Promenade, overlooking the bay, its green isles, and the ocean
beyond. In this quarter were most of the places and scenes of
the poet's boyhood recollections : the bulwarks by the shore ;
the fort upon the hill, and its familiar sounds lingering in his

memory :

"The sunrise gun with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.

140 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

... the sea-fight far away

How it thundered o'er the tide ! "

The graves of the dead captains in the old burying-ground,

"... o'erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died."

And down by the water-side, long ago built over,

"... the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free ;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea."

As we strolled into this east end we caught

" . . . in sudden gleams

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams."

Ascending the hill we loitered about the old burying-ground
where lay in their graves, besides the " dead captains," brave
Commodore Preble, the poet's father, and other worthies long
passed on ; where also is the memorial to the gallant Lieuten-
ant Henry Wadsworth, the brother of the poet's mother, for
whom he was named.

Here, while Percy tarried by the monuments and copied
their inscriptions, we recalled the story of the " dead captains.' 7
They were the Yankee William Burroughs, of the United
States brig Enterprise, and the British Samuel Blythe, of His
Majesty's brig Boxer. Their sea-fight was one of the memor-
able encounters of the war of 1812. It occurred off this coast,
almost in sight of the town, on the 5th of September, 1813.
Both commanders were killed in the engagement, and after it
" both lay side by side in the same dark, low cabin." John
Xeal has told how the colors of the Boxer were nailed to the
mast ; how her decks were swept from her bow aft, over and

IN THE FOREST CITY. 141

over again ; how she was hulled several times with 18-pound
shot ; and how by one of these shot her valiant captain was
literally cut in two. Three days afterward, when they had
been brought ashore, the dead captains were given a public
funeral, and here interred side by side. Beside them, as we
saw, was laid Lieut. Kerwin Waters of the Enterprise, mortally
wounded in the same action.

Then we read the story of Lieut. Henry Wadsworth,
inscribed on the cenotaph erected by his father, General
Wadsworth : . . . Lieutenant in the United States Navy,"
who fell before the walls of Tripoli on the eve of the 4th
September, 1804, in the 20th year of his age, by an explosion
of a fire-ship, which he with others gallantly conducted against
the enemy. < An honor to his country and an example to all
excellent youth/ Extract from a Resolve of Congress upon
his act." He was attached to the schooner Scourge in Com-
modore Treble's squadron, led by the Constitution, and was a
volunteer for the daring service in which he met his death.

" Another brother of the poet's mother," I added, " was in
the navy, and conspicuously honored for gallant service. He
was Alexander Scannel Wads worth, born in the Congress-
Street mansion in 1790. He was second lieutenant on the
Constitution when she engaged the British frigate Giterriere
off Newfoundland, in August, 1812, and captured her after
shooting away her three masts and so cutting her up that she
had to be burned ; from which encounter, by the way, the
Constitution, issuing with comparatively slight bruises, got her
beloved nickname of ' Old Ironsides.' "

The scenes of other poems of Longfellow's laid in this old
quarter of the town, we could not trace, for they were oblit-
erated years ago. Time long since swept away " The Rope-
walk." And long ago disappeared the "blossoming hawthorn
tree " under the hill, beneath the branches of which the poet,
when a boy, watched the old potter at his work, going back
and forth, as described in " Keramos."

142 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Having heard that with Portland is identified, besides
Longfellow, a notable band of old-time writers who have had a
share in the making of American literature, Percy desired next
to see their "landmarks." But little or nothing of them is
now traceable ; so he had to be content with talk only of these
authors and their accomplishments.

We recalled, first, the Portland-born writers who were
coming forward promisingly when Longfellow was a boy.
Among these was the cultured Nathaniel Peering (born 1791
died 1881), living to ninety years, who wrote poems, tales of
" Down East " life, and " Carabasset, or the last of the Nor-
ridgewocks," and " Bozzaris," two five-act tragedies, produced
at the Portland Theatre in 1831, which brought him more than
local fame. Another was the exuberant John Neal (born
1793 died 1876), living to eighty-three, poet, editor, novelist,
magazine-writer, dramatist ; of a style " impetuous, indepen-
dent, with dash and audacity " ; whose most' lasting renown
came from, his " Battle of Niagara," published . in 1818.
Another was Seba Smith (born 1792 died 1868), whose birth-
place was a log house in the woods of Bucksfield ; editor, poet,
and author of the " Major Jack Downing " papers, a famous
series of political and humorous writings in the Yankee
dialect.

Then were considered Longfellow's earlier contemporaries :
Nathaniel Parker Willis (born 1807 died 1867), most bril-
liant star of .this galaxy, Longfellow's senior by a year ; Isaac
M'Lellan (born 1806 died 1899), " poet of the rod and gun,"
Willis's classmate at Phillips (Andover) Academy, Longfellow's
and Hawthorne's college-mate at Bowdoin, a life-long friend
of these three, and of Motley, Bryant, and Holmes : whose
honorable career closed at the age of ninety-three in his rural
home at Greenport, Long Island; Grenville Mellen (born
1799 died 1841), poet, essayist, writer of "Glad Tales and
Sad Tales," eldest son of that Judge Mellen (the first chief
justice of the Supreme Court of Maine, by the way) whose

IN THE FOREST CITY.

143

cutting criticism of Longfellow's first printed poem so dis-
tressed the boy.

Then writers of a later period : Elizabeth Oakes Smith
(born in North Yarmouth, Me., 1806 died in New York,
1893), wife of Seba Smith, poet, romancer, and the first woman
in America to appear as a public lecturer; Mrs. Ann S*
Winterbotham Stephens (born in Derby, Conn., 1813, died in
Newport, R. I., 1886), novelist, doing her earliest work in
Portland, writer of fifty
novels, one of them
" Fashion and Famine,"
reaching a circulation
second only to " Uncle
Tom's Cabin " ; the Rev.
Elijah Kellogg (born
1813 died 1901), pro-
lific producer of boys'
books through a long
life; Mrs. Abba Goold
Woolson (born 1838),
daughter of the historian
William Goold, essayist
and lecturer ; and Pro-
fessor Edward S. Morse
(from 1838), the emi-
nent naturalist.

Percy was most disappointed in not finding the house in
which N. P. Willis was born ; for once upon a time, he said,
when a boy in school, he declaimed a poem of Willis's which
his mother had selected for him from the " Household Book
of Poetry," a thick volume given her by his father for a
Christmas present. And he repeated the familiar lines of
" Saturday Afternoon," yet fresh in his mind, which stirred
memories of my own far distant boyhood, when a fond mother
was wont to quote them to her boys at play.

ELIZABETH. OAKES SMITH.

144 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

I comforted Percy with the reflection that the house in
which this debonair penman was born could have but slight
charm, for Willis passed only a part of his childhood in Port-
land. He was but six years old when the family was moved
to Boston, and Portland knew him no more except as a casual
visitor. He retained but little recollection of the home here,
and his birthplace was never the subject of his writings. " It
was his father," I explained, " who was the Willis most closely
connected with Portland, for he was an editor here for
nearly ten years. He was Deacon Nathaniel Willis, born in
Boston in 1780, and living to the age of ninety. He came to
Portland in 1803, and established the Eastern Argus news-
paper. Later, in Boston, he founded the Boston Recorder, said
to have been the first religious newspaper in the world ; and in
1827, he started the still rugged Youth's Companion, of which
he was editor for thirty years.

" Willis's grandfather, another Nathaniel Willis, was also an
editor, and a vigorous one. From 1776 through the Revolu-
tion he edited that staunch Whig paper, the Independent
Chronicle and Universal Advertiser of Boston, for which Sam
Adams wrote. Its office was in the selfsame building on Court,
earlier Queen Street, in which Benjamin Franklin worked as
an apprentice on his brother's paper, the New England Courant.
And Willis's father, when engaged at his father's press, worked
in the same place. Grandfather Willis, so tradition has it,
was one of the < Boston Tea Party.' At the close of the Revo-
lution he went south and west where he edited various papers,
lastly establishing in Chillicothe, Ohio, the first newspaper of
what was then the Northwestern Territory.

" Our Willis was fortunate in other ancestors of pronounced
character. His great grandmother Willis was a Belknap,
granddaughter to the Rev. John Bailey, the first minister of
Watertown, Massachusetts. His great-grandfather was an
active patriot. His mother, born Hannah Parker, was of an
excellent New England family. From her, Professor Henry

IN THE FOREST CITY. 145

A. Beers, Willis's biographer, says, he inherited the emotional,
impulsive part of his nature, his < quicksilver spirit.' ' :

As to the character of Willis's literary work and his place
among the makers of American literature, about which Percy
asked, I quoted from Lowell's " A Fable For Critics : "

"There is Willis, all natty and jaunty and gay,
Who says his best things in so foppish a way,
With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em,
That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em ;
Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,
Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose !
His prose has a natural grace of its own,
And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone ;
But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired,
And is forced to forgive where one might have admired;
Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced,
It runs like a stream with a musical waste,
And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep ;
'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep ?
In a country where scarcely a village is found
That has not its author sublime and profound,
For some one to be slightly shallow's a duty,
And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty.

His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't,

As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;

So his best things are done in the flush of the moment ;

If he wait, all is spoiled ; he may stir it and shake it,

But, the fixed air once gone, he can never remake it.

He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness,

If he would not sometimes leave the r out of sprightfulness ;

And he ought to let" Scripture alone 'tis self-slaughter,

For nobody likes inspiration-and-water."

"The characteristics which Lowell so deftly points out,
marked almost all of Willis's writings," I ventured. " What
he accomplished was gained only as in his youth he once
wrote, ' by ardor and not by patience/ His work was done
largely ' in the rush of the gay world, and the daily drudgery

146

LITERAR Y PIL G RIM A GES.

of the pen : in the toil of journalism, that most exacting of
mental occupations, which is forever giving forth and never
bringing in,' as Professor Beers has well said ; yet it had a
freshness, an air, a sparkle all its own, which made him for a
time the most popular magazine writer in the country. His
English, as Beers notes, was crisp, clean-cut, pointed, < nimble
on the turn/ As a poet he won a reputation before leaving
college, and as a writer of prose he gained an enviable name

before thirty. His best work
was done before forty. He
lived to sixty-one and wrote
steadily almost to the end, but
none of his later work was so
lasting as the earlier. He was
the forerunner of the gossip-
ing ' foreign correspondent,'
when the old world was more
distant, less known, than now,
and a type of which Bayard
Taylor was the later exemp-
lar. He was the pioneer of
what may be termed collo-
quial journalism ; and a coiner
of journalistic phrases and
' short-cuts,' some of which
long survived, like ' the upper ten,' or < the upper ten
thousand,' for the < exclusive' set. He was a 'tuft hunter/
but a joyously frank, not a vulgar one.

"His personality was engaging, and was no slight factor in
his popularity. He carried himself, says Beers, with an airy,
jaunty grace, and there was something particularly spirited and
vif about the poise and movement of his head, a something
which no portrait could reproduce.' Powell, in the ' Living
Authors of America,' published in 1850, describes him, in
person, tall and elegantly made ; with manners courteous, and

N. P. WILLIS.

IN THE FOREST CITY. 147

the polish of high breeding. Holmes recalled him, when in
the flush of young manhood, as 'very near being very hand-
some. His hair of light brown color waved in luxuriant
abundance, and his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted
to show behind the footlights, and he dressed with artistic
elegance.' Longfellow wrote of him, upon his return from
England in 1857, Willis looks very well: fresh, rosy, and
young ; the youngest looking man of fifty I ever saw : not a
gray hair even in his beard; and as slender and lithe as ever/
In dress he was a dandy, but a graceful one."

" So Willis was, like Longfellow, a < boy poet/ if, as you
say, his reputation was established before he left college,"
Percy observed.

" Only to a slight extent. He began writing verse when at
the academy at Andover, but this was only playfulness. He
was an undergraduate when he first published.

" His school life began in a boarding-school, and later he
went to the Boston Latin School. In Boston he was mate of
a number of boys who became famous in professional life and
in letters. He recalled in after years Ralph Waldo Emerson
as a boy whom he used to see playing around Chauncy Place
and Summer Street, < one of those pale little moral-sublimes
with their shirt collars turned over who were recognized by
Boston schoolboys as having " fathers that are Unitarians ; "
who ' came to his first short hair about the time that we came
to our first tail-coat, six or eight years behind us. 7 Willis
went to Phillips (Andover) Academy to prepare for Yale,
which he entered at seventeen, in 1823. In his junior year
verses from his pen began to appear in the f Poet's Corner ' of
his father's Boston Recorder, in other religious weeklies, and
in the Youth's Companion. These were mainly on scriptural
subjects. In his sophomore year he won a prize for a poem
in the New York Mirror, with which he afterward became
connected. His 'Absalom,' and 'The Sacrifice of Abraham/
were also prize poems. These early efforts were widely

148 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

copied ; some were reproduced in popular collections of poems ;
and while yet in college the young author's contributions were
being sought by magazine editors. He thus became a little
literary lion in the college town ; was received much in
society, and nattered and petted. At graduation he delivered
the valedictory poem of his class. Upon his leaving college,
his first collection of verses appeared, a thin volume, entitled
< Sketches.'

" Returning to Boston he began work with Samuel G.
Goodrich (< Peter Parley ') who had published Willis's first
book. Here he edited The Legendary, a periodical, of which
only two volumes were published ; and next Goodrich's
' Annual/ The Token, in 1829. For the latter, he wrote,
besides other poems and sketches, your ' Saturday Afternoon.'
It was written to accompany the frontispiece of the volume,
an engraving of a painting of children swinging in a barn.

" Meanwhile, in the spring of 1829, Willis started his own
journal, the American Monthly Magazine, without capital,
with only the experience of his apprenticeship in editing for
Goodrich, and a profound incapacity for business. Of course
it failed. But it had a run of two and a half years, and held
a fair place among its contemporaries. Willis wrote the larger
part of its contents, and drew to its pages some of the best of
the younger writers at that time centering in Boston, among
them Eichard Hildreth, George Lunt, Isaac M'Lellan, Albert
Pike, Park Benjamin, and Motley, then a student in Harvard.
This magazine stopped in the summer of 1831, with a debt of
some three thousand dollars.

" Willis then went to New York, where he joined friends
in the New York Mirror, a weekly paper founded eight years
before by George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth. Morris
became the most popular song writer of his time (your mother
may recall that sentimental old ballad of his, ' Near the Lake
Where Droops the Willow/ or surely, < Woodman, Spare That
Tree')- Woodworth was the author of the 'Old Oaken

JN THE FOREST CITY. 149

Bucket,' but nothing else of like popularity or merit. He had
withdrawn from the Mirror when Willis entered. Thus began
a business relation and an ardent friendship between Willis
and Morris, which continued with but slight interruption
through the lives of both of them.

" When Willis removed to New York he shook the dust of
Boston most impatiently from his feet. He felt that it had
treated him with rank injustice. ' The mines of Golconda,' he
wrote his mother, ( would not tempt me to return and live in
Boston.' He had been subjected to harsh personalities, anony-
mous and open attacks in the newspapers for his i frivolity, his
dandyism, and his conceit ; ' he had been a victim of slander-
ous towntalk about his debts, his worldliness, his love of
fashionable society and of good clothes, his fondness for fast
horses, good suppers, and good fellows. Then, having failed
to get honorable dismission, which he sought, from the Ortho-
dox Park-Street Church, of which his father was a deacon for
twenty years, he was formally excommunicated for absence
from its communion and < attendance at the theatre as a
spectator.'

" Soon after joining the Mirror Willis was sent abroad to
act as the ' foreign correspondent ' of the paper, his associates
getting together, with no little difficulty, a capital of five
hundred dollars for the enterprise. He was to write weekly
letters, at ten dollars the letter. He sailed away on a
merchant brig, and entered a new and glittering world which
charmed him and animated his pen. He was in Europe this
time for four years, 1832-36. Five or six months were spent
in Paris, where he was warmly received by the choice little
American colony. He lodged there with Dr. Samuel G. Howe
of Boston, then on the threshold of his noble career as a
philanthropist, and before his marriage with the brilliant
Julia Ward Julia Ward Howe. Through the following
winter and spring Willis was traveling about Northern Italy.
The next summer and winter were passed between Florence,

150 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Home, and Naples. Then a six months' cruise up the
Mediterranean was made, in a United States frigate, with a
convoy, by invitation of the officers.. At Smyrna he left the
frigate and sailed in a Yankee brig with a Maine captain ;
Portland bound, as far as Malta. Thence by easy stages
through Italy, Switzerland, and France, he reached England.

" These were great and rare journey ings for those days, and
they were chronicled in the Mirror letters in charmingly frank
detail, with gay sketches of life, personages, and society, under
the caption, ' Pencilings by the Way.' It was all of surface
touches, but of such liveliness, joyousness, and frankness that
it captivated his steadily widening public. It also opened
London periodicals to his pen. In England he remained two
years. He settled down in London lodgings for a while, writ-
ing for various English magazines, among other things, the
clever < Philip Slingsby ' papers, later collected in his < Inklings
of Adventure ' ; and sending home Mirror letters, Loiterings
of Travel ' ; meanwhile he was making fast friends among
English literary folk ; frequenting literary salons, Lady Bles-
sington's especially ; country houses ; ' excursioning ' into
Scottish cities and the highlands. Later he prepared collec-
tions of his writings for English editions.

" In the autumn of 1835 he married an English girl, Mary
Stace, a daughter of General William Stace of Woolwich,
and the following spring they sailed on the homeward voyage.
It was this departure that inspired his * Lines on Leaving Eng-
land,' dated English Channel, May, 1836, one of his few living
lyrics, part of which Emerson quotes in the ' Parnassus,' with
its spirited opening :

'Bright flag at yonder tapering mast!

Fling out your field of azure blue ;
Let star and stripe be westward cas^,

And point as Freedom's eagle flew !
Strain home ! oh lithe and quivering spars I

Point home, my country's flag of stars I

IN THE FOREST CITY. 151

The wind blows fair ! the vessel feels

The pressure of the rising breeze,
And, swiftest of a thousand keels,

She leaps to the careering seas !
Oh, fair, fair cloud of snowy sail,

In whose white breast J seem to lie,
How oft, when blew this eastern gale,

I've seen your semblance in the sky,
And long'd, with breaking heart to flee

On such white pinions o'er the sea I '

" Some time after his return Willis set up at Oswego, New
York, near the Susquehanna, the rural home which he named
' Glenmary,' for his wife. Thence was sent forth some of his
finest work. This included his l A 1'Abri ; or, the Tent
Pitched,' treating jocundly of nature and out-door life, and the
small sights and happenings about him, which Lowell so pleas-
antly complimented :

" Few volumes I know to read under a tree
More truly delightful than his A 1'Abri."

"He also tried his hand at play -writing, but with indifferent
success so far as performance went, although after the publica-
tion of the plays in London Longfellow wrote in his diary,
' they are full of poetry and do him honor/ Then he entered
into another periodical venture, joining his friend Dr. T. O.
Porter, the * Doctor ' to whom the ' Letters from Under a
Bridge ' were addressed, in The Corsair. This was ' a gazette
of literature, art, dramatic criticism, fashion, and novelty/
which frankly announced its intention to ' convey ' the fresh
European literature it desired, inasmuch as Europeans were
freely taking American publications in the absence of inter-
national copyright. The Corsair ran only a year, without
profit. During part of this year and the next Willis was again
abroad, sending letters to his journal, and occupied with other
work. While in England he engaged Thackeray, then in the
first flush of his popularity, to write Paris letters for The Cor-

152 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

sair. Some of these letters Thackeray subsequently repro-
duced in his ' Paris Sketch Book,' and all were republished
after his death. It was this work of his own that Thackeray
had in mind when, afterward, in ' Philip/ he made his hero
contribute letters to a New York fashionable journal entitled
'The Gazette of the Upper Ten Thousand,' Willis's phrase.

" The two or three years following Willis's second return
from Europe were crowded with work for various periodicals,
famous successes of their day, but long since faded. The sto-
ries, tales and sketches thus published were afterward collected
in his ' Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil.' This was the
period of his greatest popularity, when, Beers avers, he was
the best paid, and in every way most successful magazine-
writer that America had yet seen. After five years of blissful
life at Glenmary he was obliged to sell the place, having
met with losses ; and one of the most pathetic yet charming
papers written at this time was his * Letter to the Unknown
Purchaser and Next Occupant of Glenmary.' A tender pas-
sage was the reference to the grave of his child there :

"In the shady depths of the small glen above you, among the wild
flowers and music, the music of the brook babbling over rocky steps, is a
spot sacred to love and memory. Keep it inviolate, and as much of the
happiness of Glenmary as we can leave behind stay with you for recom-
pense."

" Willis then returned to New York to live, and soon
afterward rejoined Morris in the New Mirror, which succeeded
the earlier weekly, and their life-long partnership began.
From the New Mirror came the Evening Mirror, a daily
journal, upon the staff of which was Edgar Allan Poe, for a
while, as critic and sub-editor. Then the two partners, having
withdrawn from the Mirror, joined in the National Press,
from which evolved the Home Journal, with James Parton for
some time assistant editor, and after him Thomas Bailey
Aldrich. Of each of these journals Willis was the active
editor, and to them most of his later writings were contributed,

IN THE FOREST CITY. 153

taking book form afterward. In this editorial work, as Beers
happily says, he became a sort of * Knickerbocker Spectator.'

" His English wife died in New York in the spring of
1845, and the following summer he made his last visit abroad.
He was absent about a year, and because of his ill-health he
called his writings to the home paper < Invalid Letters.' The
autumn after his return he married his second wife. She was
Cornelia Grinnell, a niece of Congressman Joseph Grinnell of
New Bedford, Massachusetts, whom he met in Washington,
when there writing letters to the London Morning Chronicle.
She was twenty years his junior. In 1850 he returned to
rural life at his second country seat, near Cornwall-on-the-
Hudson, which became famous as ' Idlewild.' Here he wrote
his only novel, < Paul Fane.' And here ho died. His body
was brought to Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, for burial, with
Longfellow, the elder Dana, Holmes, Lowell, and Aldrich
among the pall-bearers.

" Willis's favorite brother, Richard Storrs Willis (born in
Boston, 1819-) became a musical editor, author, and composer,
and attained a good name as a poet. The youngest sister, Sara
Payson Willis (born in Portland, 1811 died in Brooklyn,
N.Y., 1872), was the ' Fanny Fern ' once so well known in
juvenile and light magazine literature. These two were also
Portland born. < Fanny Fern's ' life was rather meteoric.
She was a high-spirited, merry girl, educated in Catherine E.
Beecher's ' Young Ladies' Seminary,' at Hartford, Connecticut.
Married young, she lost her first husband after twelve years
of wedded life, and was left with two children and little
means. From her second husband, with whom her union was
unhappy, she was finally divorced. He third husband was
James Parton. Her relations with her brother Nathaniel
grew strained in later life, and she bitterly attacked him in
her story of 'Ruth Hall,' published in 1854. Her most
successful books were ' Fern Leaves,' t Fresh Leaves,' and her
second novel, ' Rose Clark.' "

154 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

We spent this night at the Preble House, which stands
where Commodore Treble's mansion stood. Percy selected
this hostlery rather than one of the grander and newer
hotels, because, he said, his father used to stop here when
passing through Portland on the summer journey ings to the
Maine coast, and had talked about the cheery outlook upon the
street in the gloaming, from its front piazza.

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN.

College days of Longfellow and Hawthorne. Where "Uncle Toin's
Cabin" was written. Story of the execution. Mrs. Stowe's
"vision." Longfellow's first professorship. Poems written in
Brunswick. Longfellow's last visit to his Alma Mater. " Morituri
Salutamus." The farewell gathering of the surviving classmates.
Footprints of Hawthorne. The Abbott brothers, Jacob, John S.
C. and Gorham I). Story of the " Hollo Books" and their com-
panions. Birthplace of " Artemus Ward." His career recalled.

THE next morning we journeyed down to Brunswick, the
beautiful college town on the Androscoggin, with its memories
of Longfellow and Hawthorne as Bowdoin College boys, and of
Harriet Beecher Stowe and " Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is a
railroad ride of about an hour from Portland, through cheerful
towns and piney ways and picturesque country that delighted
Percy's eye.

But the town itself, with the river curving about it, "as if
with a gentle caress," the broad shaded streets and pleasant
mall, the college buildings and the college yard with its " hedge
of lofty trees," the old-type mansion-houses embowered in
green, this most impressed my companion. The day and
the place invited to stroll and loiter. So we wandered leisurely
along the shady ways and about the college grounds, in the
footprints, as Percy liked to imagine, of Longfellow and
Hawthorne.

We came upon the house in which Longfellow the student
roomed, and then upon that which Longfellow the professor
occupied, both pleasant dwellings pleasantly placed. The
former was doubly distinguished as the home of the Stowes
during their residence in Brunswick, where "Uncle Toin's

155

156

L1TEHAUY PILGRIMAGES.

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 157

Cabin " was written. We were told that in Longfellow's col-
lege days it was the home of the minister of the old church,
Parson Titcomb. Longfellow and his brother, two years his
senior and in the same class with him, shared a single room on
the second floor. According to Samuel Longfellow's description,
it was a very plainly furnished room, embellished only with
bombazine window curtains and a set of card-racks painted by
the boys' sister ; and in winter the chill was but partly taken
off by a wood fire in an open grate. On the door of the closet
young Longfellow marked an image of a boy about his own
age, which he used to attack vigorously with the leathern
gauntlet on his fists, for exercise when the heavy snow
out doors prevented long walks. "This is a very splendid
classick amusement," he wrote home, " and I have already be-
come quite skilful as a pugilist."

" Longfellow came to college at the beginning of the second
term," I chatted as Percy looked about the place, " his first year's
studies having been pursued at home, owing to his extreme
youth. He was but fourteen when he passed the entrance
examinations. At Bowdoin he wrote a number of poems
and some prose, which found place in several periodical publi
cations. The productions of his first year were published in
the Portland papers. His subsequent prose articles were
accepted first by the American Monthly Magazine of Phila-
delphia ; while his poems appeared in the United States Lite-
rary Gazette, an admirable Boston journal of literature, started
in 1824 under the editorship of Theophilus Parsons, son of
that Judge Theophilus Parsons of whom we heard in New-
buryport. Seventeen of these poems were the work of one
year, and being pretty widely copied in other journals they
brought the youthful writer a fair reputation before his
twentieth year.

" What sort of a fellow was Longfellow in college ? n
Percy asked. " Was he a grind ? "

" Classmates of his have described him as companionable.

158 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

He was a faithful student, but not too devoted to his books.
Professor Packard remembers him as an attractive youth, of
well-bred manners and bearing. His was an ambitious class.
It came in only a year after Maine was separated from Massa-
chusetts and erected into an independent state, and state pride
inspired some at least of its members to good report of their
college. It was composed of excellent material, including
with Longfellow and Hawthorne, John S. C. Abbott, afterward
the historical writer ; George B. Cheever, later on the eminent
clergyman and litterateur of Salem, Massachusetts, whose
1 Deacon Giles's Distillery,' a temperance tract, brought him
wide reputation and a term in Salem jail, for < Deacon Giles '
was a veritable person ; Horatio Bridge, subsequently Com-
modore Bridge ; and the sons of Chief Justice Mellen of Port-
land, of Jeremiah Mason of Newburyport, and of Commodore
Preble. It numbered thirty-eight members, and Longfellow
ranked fourth."

The association of the Stowes with this house was now re-
called. It began, I remarked, with the appointment of Pro-
fessor Stowe to the Collins professorship of Natural and Revealed
Religion, upon the establishment of .that chair in the college,
in 1849. They had been living here about two years when
Mrs. Stowe engaged in her greatest work. And then I repeated
the oft-told story of its execution in this wise.

"Mrs. Stowe, with others of the Beecher family, were
greatly moved by the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, editor of the
anti-slavery paper The Observer, in Alton, Illinois, in 1837 ; and
later by the passage of the Fugitive Slaw Act of 1850 with its
exciting results. Her brother Edward Beecher, then minister
of the Salem Street Church in Boston, had been especially out-
raged by the Alton tragedy ; for when living in Illinois he had
been an intimate friend and supporter of Lovejoy (who, by
the way, was a native of Maine, born in the town of Albion).
In his Boston household these and kindred matters were sub-
jects of indignant discussion, and warm letters upon them

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 159

passed between Mrs. Beecher and Mrs. Stowe. At length
Mrs. Beecher wrote: 'Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen
as you can I would write something that would make the
whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.' Mrs.
Stowe read this letter aloud to her family ; and when she came
to the passage quoted, she l rose up from her chair, crushing
the letter in her hand, and with an expression on her face that
stamped itself on her child ' (her son, the Rev. C. E. Stowe,
editor of her ( Life and Letters ') exclaimed, < I will write
something. I will, if I live.' The work, however, was not
immediately begun, for family cares interfered. But one Sun-

HOUSE IN WHICH " UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" WAS
WRITTEN.

day in February, 1851, when at the communion service in the
college church, Mrs. Stowe experienced what she has called
a vision :

* Suddenly like the unrolling of a picture, the death of " Uncle Tom "
passed before her mind. So strongly was she affected that it was with
difficulty she could keep from weeping aloud. Immediately upon return-
ing home she took pen and paper and wrote out the vision which had
been, as it were, blown into her mind as by the rushing of a mighty
wind. Gathering her family about her she read what she had written.

160 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Her two little ones of ten and twelve years of age broke into convulsions
of weeping, one of them saying through his sobs, " O, mamma ! slavery
is the most cruel thing in the world." Thus "Uncle Tom" was ushered
into the world, and it was ... a cry, an immediate, an involuntary
expression of deep, impassioned feeling.'

" The original scheme was a magazine tale of about twelve
chapters, but it grew into book proportions as it developed.
Its serial publication in the National Era began in June, 1851,
and ran to April of the following year. Mrs. Stowe wrote a
few chapters in Edward Beecher's study in Boston, during a
visit to that city, and read them aloud, as composed, to her
brother and his wife. The serial publication brought her three
hundred dollars. Meanwhile a Boston publisher, John P. Jewett,
had made overtures for the issue of the story in book form, pro-
posing a joint arrangement by which Professor and Mrs. Stowe
should share with him the expense of its publication and take
a half share of the profits. This Professor Stowe declined
(Mrs. Stowe left the business to him to handle, having herself
little faith in the further success of the work as a book) for
the reason that neither he nor his wife had the means to
warrant the venture. Finally an agreement was effected on
the basis of a ten per cent royalty to the author on the sales.
And there was no more astonished person in the country than
Mrs. Stowe when she learned that three thousand copies of
' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' were sold the very first day of its
publication, and when she received on the sales in three
months a royalty of ten thousand dollars.

" ' Uncle Tom ' was Mrs. Stowe's third book ; her first being
a school geography published in 1832 in the West, and her sec-
ond, the story of ' Mayflower,' published by the Harpers."

Passing next to the other Longfellow house, we took up
again the thread of the poet's Brunswick life.

" It is interesting to note," I observed, " that as to his life-
profession Longfellow knew his mind from the beginning.
When a sophomore he wrote to his father, who desired him to

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 161

pursue the law : ' The fact is and I will not disguise it in
the least, for I think I ought not, the fact is I most eagerly
aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul
burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres
in it.' His theme in the graduating exercises of his class, in
which he had the third English oration, was in line with his
cherished thought : ' Our Native Writers.'

" When shortly after his graduation he was selected for
the newly established chair of Modern Languages and Litera-
ture in the college, a way to his ambition most opportunely
opened. He postponed the beginning of this work, however,
in order that he might qualify himself more thoroughly for
the position by study of European languages on their native
soil. This was before transatlantic steamship days, which did
not begin till the late thirties, and it was deemed best for him
to wait until summer to make the voyage to Europe. The
autumn and winter before he sailed were passed at the Port-
land home, in reading Blackstone to please his father, and in
literary pursuits to please himself. A little room adjoining
his father's house-office was his < study.' Three years were
spent abroad, and at the opening of the college year of 1829
he assumed the professorship. He held the chair for five and
a half years, popular with the students, and in high standing
as an instructor. At the same time he also served as librarian
of the college, a congenial rather than a laborious task.

"No, Longfellow did not take this house immediately upon
becoming a professor. For about two years he occupied
rooms in the college halls. He came here upon his marriage
with Mary Potter in 1831, when they first set up housekeeping.
She was a daughter of Judge Barrett Potter of Portland, his
father's friend and neighbor. To her he alludes in his < Foot-
steps of Angels '

4 ... The Being Beauteous
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me.'

162 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" Of the house in their first season of its occupancy Long-
fellow has given this summer-morning picture

u * I can almost fancy myself in Spain, the morning is so soft and
beautiful. The tessellated shadow of the honeysuckle lies motionless
upon my study floor, as if it were a figure in the carpet ; and through the
open window comes the fragrance of the wild brier and the mock orange.
The birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit across the
window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine ; while the murmur of the
bees, the cooing of doves from the eaves, and the whirring of the little
humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of
joy to meet the rising sun. 1

" The study was a room on the first floor at the right of
the entrance. Here the poet wrote the first numbers of his
' Outre-Mer : a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea/ suggestive of
Irving, which was started under the title of ( The School-
master 7 in Buckingham's Boston monthly, the first New
England Magazine.

" Longfellow .left Brunswick upon his appointment to the
chair of modern languages at Harvard, which his friend
George Ticknor had resigned in 1834. There, as here, his
assumption of his professorship was postponed till he had
studied further in Europe. This time his attention was given
especially to the languages of Northern Europe. He spent a
summer in Norway and Sweden, and an autumn and winter
in Holland and Germany. At Rotterdam, in November, 1835,
affliction came upon him in the sudden death of his wife, who
had accompanied him on his travels. A year later he returned,
and at once entered upon the Harvard work. Then began his
life in Cambridge, which continued to his death."

A word was here added as to Longfellow's last visit to his
alma mater, and then our talk turned to Hawthorne's college
days at Bowdoin.

" This farewell visit was in 1875, the fiftieth anniversary of
his class, when he read his sublime ' Morituri Salutamus,' with
its now familiar opening lines and picture of the college town
of his youth :

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 163

* O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you !" was the gladiator's cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes, ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,
Ye halls in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose,
And vanished, we who are about to die,
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town ! '

" The scene in the old church when the now venerable poet
saluted these scenes of his youth, and the instructors, of
whom all save one, Professor Packard, had died, the stu-
dents, who filled the seats that he and his classmates had occu-
pied, and finally his classmates,

4 Against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set, 1

has been tenderly described by one of this little band, the Kev.
Dr. David Shepley. Just before leaving for their homes these
aged classmates gathered in a retired college room for the last
time and talked together a half hour as of old. ' Then/ con-
tinues the narrative, * going forth and standing for a moment
once more under the branches of the old tree, in silence we
took each other by the hand and separated, knowing well that
Brunswick would not again witness a gathering of the class
of 1825."'

We could trace fewer footprints of Hawthorne than of
Longfellow in the modern town. Percy had read, or been
told, that during his college days our romancer roomed in a
house with a stairway on the outside leading to the second
story. This house was in the village opposite the home of

164 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Professor Cleaveland. Hawthorne lived here, however, only
through his last two years. He roomed alone, but his class-
mate Bridge, afterward his life-long friend, boarded with him
at the family table. When he first came to the college he
took a room with his chum Mason Jeremiah Mason's son
in Maine Hall, where they remained till the burning of the
building in March, 1822. From this disaster they fortunately
saved their effects, Hawthorne suffering only a torn coat;
" luckily," he afterward wrote his sister, " it happened to be
my old one." Thereafter, till Maine Hall was rebuilt, they
roomed in the large house opposite the President's house. They
occupied room No. 19 in the new Maine Hall in their sopho-
more year.

" Was Hawthorne at all chummy with the other fellows, or
did he keep by himself ? " Percy asked.

"Bridge, in his i Personal Recollections' of him, best answers
your question. Although taciturn he was ' invariably cheer-
ful with his chosen friends, and there was much more of fun
and frolic in his disposition than his published writings indi-
cate.' His manner was self-respecting and reserved. He was
' neither morose nor sentimental.' Bridge describes him in
personal appearance ( a slender lad, with a massive head, dark,
brilliant and most expressive eyes, heavy eyebrows, and a
profusion of dark hair.' His figure was ' somewhat singular,
owing to his carrying his head a little on one side ; but his
walk was square and firm.'

" He was less fond of the simple college sports of those
days (although ,he took some part in them) than of long walks
through the pine forest, and of hunting, fishing, and musing.
In his dedication of the ' Snow Image ' to Bridge, who first ex-
pressed faith in him as a writer of fiction, and later helped him
to public recognition, he gives pleasant glimpses of this college
life. He pictures himself and his friend as lads together at
the country college, i gathering blueberries in study hours
under those tall, academic pines, or watching the great logs as

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 165

they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin, or shoot-
ing pigeons or gray squirrels in the woods, or bat-fowling in
the summer twilight, or catching trout in that shady little
stream which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through
the forest, though you and I will never cast a line in it again ;
two idle lads in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge
now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard of,
or else it would have been the worse for us/

" And in ' Fanshawe ' he describes under the name of < Har-
ley College ' the Bowdoin of this time :

'"If this institution did not offer all the advantages of elder and
prouder seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to its students by
the inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep and awful sense of reli-
gion, which seldom deserted them in their course through life. The mild
and gentle rule . . . was more destructive to vice than a sterner sway ;
and though youth was never without its follies, they have seldom been
more harmless than they were here.' "

Many of " those tall academic pines " of Hawthorne's de-
light long since fell under the axe, and his favorite paths are
no more to be traced ; but we came upon the " shadowy little
stream " singing along under the fitting modern name of " Haw.
thorne Brook."

" Did Hawthorne's genius, like Longfellow's, begin to show
itself while he was a college man ? " Percy asked as we were
again strolling over the campus.

" No. But in his confidences with his friend Bridge it was
evident what direction his thoughts were taking. Though he
had yet written nothing for publication, the studies in which
he excelled revealed the talent that was in him. In English
and Latin composition his superiority was acknowledged by
professors and students alike. Professor Packard has said of
his themes that they were written in the sustained, finished
style that gave to his mature productions their inimitable
charm. Metaphysics he disliked, and mathematics he abhorred.
His ambition to be an author he had expressed when a school-

166 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

boy in Salem, Massachusetts, where, you know, he was born.
' How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of
books written by your son, with " Hawthorne's Works " printed
on their backs ? ' he wrote his mother when he left school to
fit for college under a Salem lawyer. While keeping on with
his preparatory studies, he worked part of each day as clerk
in the office of one of his Uncles Manning (his mother's broth-
ers), who owned a line of stages. He found this task uncon-
genial, declaring to his sister that i no man can be a poet and
a book-keeper at the same time.'

" He was seventeen when he came to Bowdoin, with a mind
awakened by much miscellaneous reading, and with a poetic
temperament. When a little fellow in the Manning homestead
in Salem, being kept much in-doors by a lameness resulting
from an accident at bat and ball, he absorbed several of the
English classics with which the old-fashioned library there was
stored. And during a year or so spent with his mother on the
farm of another Uncle Manning, down here in Maine, by
Sebago Lake, ' drinking in the tonic of a companionship with
untamed nature,' he practiced his boyish pen in writing little
sketches. Of this country life he wrote long afterward to
James T. Fields, ' I lived in Maine like a bird of the air, so
perfect was the freedom I enjoyed. But it was there I first
got my cursed habits of solitude.'

" Hawthorne ranked eighteenth in his class, and had no
'commencement part' because he had taken no part in decla-
mation. This exercise he invariably cut, having a horror of
public or formal speaking. Upon his graduation he returned
to Salem, and it was there, in seclusion, that his serious work
as an author began."

Next we talked about the three Abbott brothers, who were
students here at this same period : Jacob Abbott (born 1803
died 1879), the elder, who wrote the perennial " Eollo Books,"
the " Franconia Stories," and scores of other juveniles, the
delight of the youth of generations before Percy's ; John

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN.

167

Stephen Cabot Abbott (born 1805 died 1877), the prolific
author of those popular lives of kings and queens, and of Napo-
leon Bonaparte, which had so great a run half a century ago ;
and Gorham Dummer Abbott (born 1807 died 1874), writer
of religious books.

We considered side by side the careers of the brothers
Jacob and John. Both were natives of Maine, born, the
elder, in Hallowell, whence comes the Hallowell granite, the
other in Brunswick. Both were fitted for Bowdoin at the Hal-

JACOB ABBOTT IN HIS PARLOR AT " FEWACRES."

lowell Academy. After graduation from college each in turn
went to Andover Hill and took the Theological Seminary
course ; so both were fitted for the ministry. Jacob began
active life as a teacher, later became a minister, and afterward
devoted himself exclusively to writing. John began as a min-
ister, subsequently took up teaching, and finally, like Jacob,
engaged wholly in authorship.

Jacob Abbott was for a short time teacher in the Portland
Academy which Longfellow had previously attended ; then he
was at Amherst College, Massachusetts, first as a tutor, after-

168

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ward as a professor of mathematics and mental philosophy.
From there he went to Boston and established a school for
girls, one of the first in the country to give young women the
same standard of education as young men, and unique in the
principle upon which it was conducted, that of self-govern-
ment, in which the pupils had share with the teachers. And
later, in New York City, he was associated with John and
Gorham (who also was an ordained minister) in the Abbott
Institute, another "young ladies' school." He had become a
minister meanwhile, having been licensed to preach when at
Amherst ; and he had also made a start in authorship, having

" FEWACRES," JACOB ABBOTT'S COUNTRY HOME.

written his first books, the " Young Christian Series " of juve-
niles in three volumes.

u The Hollo Books" were begun in the thirties. They
were written partly in Boston, when Mr. Abbott was teaching
school, partly in Roxbury where he was pastor of the Eliot
Congregational Church, partly in New York and abroad.
Their success was phenomenal, and " Uncle George " and
" Hollo " and " Jonas " became household familiars. The
series embraced twenty-four volumes, composed of the distinct

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 169

" Rollo Books/' the " Lucy Books," and the " Jonas Books," all
prime favorites with many young folk in their day. Next the
" Marco Paul Series " appeared, in six volumes. Then, most
fascinating of all to Mr. Abbott's youthful public, the twelve
volumes of " Franconia Stories," their scene laid in the Fran-
conia Notch of the White Mountains. Then the " Florence
and John Stories ; " and the many-volumed " Harper Story
Books." His books numbered in all more than two hundred,
and were reproduced in foreign countries. Much of the work
of his later years was done in Maine, at his country home of
" Fewacres " in the rural town of Farmington, where his father
had sometime lived, and where his sister resided. And there
he died at the age of seventy-six. He was one of our pioneer
writers of the widely popular order of juveniles, following
close upon Samuel C. Goodrich (born in Kidgefield, Conn.,
1793, _ died in New York City, 1860), with his "Peter Parley "
books begun in the late twenties, which reached a total of one
hundred and sixteen volumes.

John S. C. Abbott's first publication was the " Mother at
Home," a series of "talks" given originally in his parish
when he was a minister in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the
thirties. It was the popularity of this publication that de-
termined him to take up book-making as a steady occupation
along with preaching. After publishing one more religious
book he entered valiantly into the field of popular history ;
and his freehand sketches of kings and queens and others of
the purple fell rapidly from his tireless pen. His life of
Napoleon Bonaparte first ran as a serial in Hater's Magazine
in the early fifties. His popular history of our Civil War
was one of the earliest published. Then came his life of
Napoleon III. He continued his preaching and pastoral duties
while producing his popular histories. He accomplished a
prodigious amount of work through a long life, due largely to
his methodical habits and equable temper. His writing was
generally done in two hours of the early morning before break-

170 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

fast, and after breakfast until early afternoon dinner-time.
His last home was in Fair Haven, Connecticut, where he lived
to his seventy-third year.

With a little drive in the country about Brunswick this
pilgrimage ended. And with our visit to the old college town
ended our pilgrimage to Maine literary landmarks.

We should have liked to visit the birthplace of Charles
Farrar Browne (born 1834 died in England, 1867), whom the
world knew as "Artemus Ward," the humorous writer and
lecturer; but that involved too long a journey for a single
" landmark." And only the boyhood of " Artemus Ward "
was passed in Maine ; his writings began elsewhere. I recalled
his career, however, in our talk. It was on a back-country
farm that he was born, in the .upper village of Waterford
toward the New Hampshire line, set in an agricultural region
amidst charming scenery. The village in his youth, as he
described it, contained not over forty houses in all. " But
they are milk white, with the greenest of blinds, and for the
most part are shaded with beautiful elms and willows. To
the right of us is a mountain, to the left a lake. The village
nestles between." A pleasant picture Percy thought this.
Browne was a boy of twelve when he left this country home to
learn the printer's trade. His first " piece " was published in
Boston, in Shillaber's Carpet Bag, when he was a compositor
in its little office, yet in his teens. This " piece " was a lively
description of a Fourth-of-July celebration in Skowhegan, the
Maine town in which he had learned his trade. He wrote it
in a disguised hand, and secretly slipped the manuscript into
the editor's box ; and it was his pride next day to receive it
with other "copy" to "set up." From Boston he drifted
through the country westward as a journeyman printer.

At length he put down the composing-stick and took up
the pen alone, as writer of " funny paragraphs " for a Toledo,

IN MAINE'S CHIEF COLLEGE TOWN. 171

Ohio, paper. Shifting next to Cleveland, he first made use of
the signature of " Artemus Ward " in the Plaindealer, attached
to letters concerning a " Great Moral Show," and to humorous
stories. These were copied by
other papers and caught up and
repeated by traveling minstrels
and circuses. At length the
popularity of his productions led
him to take the lecture field
with them. Meanwhile his name
had become more familiar in the
East as editor of Vanity Fair, a
short-lived comic journal of New
York. He started out with his
first lecture near the Christmas
season of 1861, the handbills
announcing simply "Artemus

Ward Will Speak a Piece," with place and date. This was
his famous lecture on " The Babes in the Woods," the whimsi-
cal feature of which was its failure to touch the subject. His
second lecture was entitled "Sixty Minutes in Africa"; the
third, " Among the Mormons," the tickets to which admitted
" the Bearer and One Wife." With these lectures he made a
successful tour across the continent.

In 1866 he sailed for England, where he soon became
somewhat of a lion, receiving more attention than in his own
country. He was made much of by the literary set in
London ; wrote for Punch ; reproduced his " Artemus Ward :
His Book," first published in New York in 1862 ; issued other
books; and lectured to immense audiences. In the seventh
week of a London lecture engagement he was taken gravely
ill, and shortly after, close upon his thirty-fourth birthday, he
died. His body was brought back to the little Maine home-
stead, and lies buried in the village cemetery by the side of
his father, mother, and brother.

172 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" While ' Artemus Ward's ' productions were not of so
pronounced literary value as to rank him with the higher
grade of humorous writers," I concluded, "their dry humor
and homely diction tickled the popular taste, and brought him
renown wider than that which the finer literary wits of his
day achieved.' 7

The next day we drove over to Bath, and that night sailed
therefrom by steamer to Boston.

THE HEART OF ESSEX.

Ipswich landmarks. Homes of Colonial writers and scholars. John
Winthrop, jun. Anne Bradstreet's earlier home. Nathaniel Ward,
"The Simple Cobler of Aggawam." Hubbard, the early his-
torian. John Norton. Thomas Cobbett. Nathaniel Rogers.
The progenitors of Ralph Waldo Emerson. " Gail Hamilton's "
home in Hamilton. Scene of "The Witch of Wenhain."
"Peter's Pulpit."

THE next day we completed our survey of literary land-
marks east of Boston with a pilgrimage into the heart of old
Essex County and back along the North Shore of Massachu-
setts Bay, finishing at the " headland height " of Nahant.

It was a little journey of less than thirty miles from
Boston to our first objective point, into a thrifty country and
a region yet retaining some fragments of those early New
England characteristics in which our writers have found so
much for verse and story. We went out by steam cars, and
returned along trolley lines, by carriage, and by steamboat to
our starting-place.

This first objective point was Ipswich, the ancient Agawam,
that choice old Essex-town set upon its hills and along its
river winding to the sea, where Anne Bradstreet began her
poetizing ; and where Nathaniel Ward (born 1570 died 1653),
the versatile parson, compiled the " Body of Liberties," the
first code of laws in the Bay Colony, and in 1645, when he
was severity-five, wrote those shrewd and witty commentaries
of the " Simple Cobler of Aggawam," on manners and cus-
toms of his time. Where, too, lived the Rev. William Hubbard
(born 1621 died 1704), New England's early historian j the

173

174 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Rev. John Norton (born in England, 1606 died in Boston,
1663), who wrote the first Latin book published in America;
the Rev. Thomas Cobbett (born in Newbury, England, 1608
died in Ipswich, 1685), writer of more books in his time than
any man in New England ; and Thomas Emerson, baker, the
American progenitor of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Old Ipswich folk remark with just pride, I observed in
the customary " preliminary talk," of our outward trip, the
character of the town's early settlers, the intellectual caliber
as well as the social standing in the colonial community of

these first families. Their
historians are fond of quot-
ing Edward Johnson's
phrase, in his " Wonder-
W T orking Providence of
Sions Savior in New Eng-.
land," that early de-
scription of the Bay Col-
ony, " The peopling of
this town is by men of
good ranke and quality."

First there was the
founder, John Winthrop,
jun. (born 1605 6 died
1676). He was eldest son
of Governor John Win-
throp, and was that Win-
throp who became the first
governor of Connecticut.
He was an accomplished
scholar and the compan-
ion of scholars. He possessed a library of more than a thousand
volumes, one of the largest in the colony, a remnant of which
still preserved bears testimony to his learning and broad intel-
lectual tastes, so those who have examined it say. He was

IN THE HEART OF ESSEX. 175

but twenty-seven when this plantation was begun. He built
him a house among the earliest, in a picturesque spot on the
south side of the river, which tradition confidently identifies ;
and this home he and his gentle wife made a center of Puritan
hospitality. She was Martha Painter, an old England minis-
ter's daughter. She died a few years after coming here, and
her dust lies in an unmarked grave in the old town bury ing-
ground. For his second wife Winthrop took Elizabeth Reade,
step-daughter of the famous Hugh Peters who met his fate at
Charing-Cross as one of the regicides, after the restoration of
Charles II. Winthrop's son, John Fitz, born here, became the
second Governor Winthrop of Connecticut. A daughter mar-
ried a son of Governor Endicott.

Then there were the Dudleys with the Bradstreets, who
lived here for a number of years ; the. Saltonstalls, Richard,
son of Sir Richard, and Muriel Gurden, his wife, whom he
went back to England in one of the earliest returning ships to
marry, he then twenty-two, she eighteen; and the Denisons,
Daniel, scholar and statesman, first major-general in the
colony, and his wife Patience Dudley, Anne Bradstreet's sister,
with whom he fell in love in Newe Towne (Cambridge) when
the Dudleys were living there ; the Symondses, Samuel, long
time deputy-governor, and his wife Rebekah; the Appletons,
Samuel, who became General Appleton, a brave Indian fighter ;
the Eastons, Nicholas, later of Newport, Rhode Island, and
president of that colony, whose name is perpetuated in the
fashionable beach of Newport ; and the Rogers family of
ministers, whence came John Rogers, fifth president of Har-
vard College. At a later period that Joseph Rowlandson,
who, for too freely exercising his pen in prose and verse
in criticism of the government and his fellow townsmen, of
one of whom he wrote, " When he lived in our country a wet
eele's tayle and his word were something worth ye taking hold
of W as sentenced to be whipped or pay a fine, but was let
off upon apologizing.

176 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Twice Governor John Winthrop visited the town, making
the whole distance from Boston and back on foot, along the
narrow trail through the wilderness ; and evidently thought
these no extraordinary performances. His first visit was in
the second year of the settlement, when the people were
temporarily without a minister, and during a Sunday spent
with them he " exercised by way of prophecy," or, in modern
term, preached. The second visit was four years later.
Then the journey out was more stately, the people of the few
towns along the way guarding him on his progress " to show
their respect to the governor, and also for his safety in regard
it was expected the Indians were come this way " ; while all
Ipswich turned out to greet him.

Percy delighted in the quiet beauty of Ipswich's setting,
and the serenity of the venerable town. He found much to
charm him as we strolled leisurely along the tranquil streets,
across the Common spreading up to the First Church on a
sightly knoll, over the Green and under the elms before the
Old South Church, and by the river side. On one of the
Greens two lofty elms were pointed out to him as growing
from the beds of the whipping-post and the stocks of colony
days. Opposite the soldiers' monument we passed the site of
the old tavern of frequent mention by the chatty Sewall in
his Diary, at a later period noted pleasantly in John Adams's
Diary, and still later thus attractively sketched by Whittier :

"The tavern was once renowned throughout New England. . . .
During court time it is crowded with jocose lawyers, anxious clients,
sleepy jurors, and miscellaneous hangers on ; disinterested gentlemen,
who have no particular business of their own in court, but who regularly
attend its sessions, weighing evidence, deciding upon the merits of a
lawyer's plea or a judge's charge, getting up extempore trials upon the
piazza or in the bar-room of cases still involved in the glorious uncer-
tainty of the law in the court-house proffering gratuitous legal advice to

IN THE HEART OF ESSEX. 177

irascible plaintiffs and desponding defendants, and in various other ways
seeing that the Commonwealth receives no detriment. In the autumn
old sportsmen make the tavern their headquarters while scouring the
marshes for sea-birds ; and slim young gentlemen from the city return
thither with empty game-bags, as guiltless in respect to the snipes and
wagtails as Winkle was in the matter of the rooks, after his shooting
excursion at Dingle Dell."

On a cross street running river-ward we came upon the
Rev. John Norton's house, later the home of the Rev. Thomas

THE ANCIENT NORTON HOUSE.

Cobbett. We found it bearing well its load of years, two
and two-thirds centuries, and having the good fortune of an
occupant with a lively appreciation of its dignity and historic
worth. The front door opened at our knock ; and Percy
viewed the massive central chimney, the great fireplace, the
deep ovens, the broad low-studded rooms with the exposed
hewn oak beams. He tarried in the "best room/' where
distinguished personages traveling this way were entertained ;
for this, he was reminded, was the minister's house, Norton
being the second minister of Ipswich, and Cobbett the third.
Once, if not oftener, Governor Endicott was received here.
Cotton Mather was a welcome guest. And here, with his

178 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

retinue of braves, came Mogg Megone of Agamenticus (York,
Maine), that Indian chief of Whittier's earliest narrative
poem, when on his way to Boston in 1676 during King
Philip's War. One of John Norton's sons lost his life by
drowning; and at the funeral here, so runs the record, five
barrels of rum were consumed by the mourning town-folk in
attendance.

Along the river we followed a foot-path close to the water
side. Near the low-arched bridge carrying a highway across,
we saw another early seventeenth century house which tradition
says was Winthrop's. About the South Church Green were
more distinctively literary landmarks, indicated by an inscribed
tablet in front of the meetinghouse, set up by the local his-
torical society. According to this authority, Nathaniel Ward's
house stood on the east side of the Green ; that of William
Hubbard, the minister-historian, a few rods eastward near the
river ; that of Richard Saltonstall, on the south side ; that of
Nathaniel Rogers, the first Parson Rogers of Ipswich, on the
west side ; and that of Ezekiel Cheever, the first schoolmaster
(afterward schoolmaster at Boston), with the schoolhouse ad-
joining, near Nathaniel Ward's. Percy also took note from
this tablet that " The expedition against Quebec, Benedict
Arnold in command, Aaron Burr in the ranks, marched by this
spot September 15, 1775."

Of the house sites he naturally took most interest in that
of Nathaniel Ward, since Ward's work, as he had been told,
was the "Ipswich classic.' 7 "Was the * Simple Cobler of
Aggawam' written in the house here ? " he asked. Presum-
ably ; and perhaps in the room where upon the mantel-piece
was inscribed the cheerful minister's motto : " Sobrie, Justie,
Pie, Laete." Although Ward was minister the first minister
of Ipswich only about three years, he remained in town
three or four years longer, and then removed to Haverhill, of
which he was a founder.

Tradition points vaguely to the site of Anne Bradstreet's

IN THE HEART OF ESSEX. 179

house; and to that of Thomas Emerson, the first of Ralph
Waldo Emerson's American ancestors, here settled six years
after the plantation at Agawam began, which was in 1634.
Of the Ipswich Emersons the only definite landmarks are the
graves in the old bury ing-ground.

On our rambling way to the bury ing-ground we crossed the
stone-arched Choate Bridge, built in 1704, which the wiseacres
expected to see crushed into the river with the first test of a
loaded team, but the glory of which, nevertheless, a local poet
sung at its finish :

*' Behold this bridge of lime and stone,
The like before was never known
For beauty and magnificence,
Considering the small expense."

In the old burying-ground, as we loitered about the worn
mounds, deciphering historic names on many a mossy stone
and lingering longest by the Emerson graves, we talked of the
emigrant Emerson, and traced the line from him to the Con-
cord seer.

Beyond the facts that Thomas Emerson, by trade a baker,
was from near Durham, England, and was among the earliest
comers to the Bay Colony, little of him could be told Percy.

" It would be interesting to know what sort of mail he
was," Percy thought.

" We may safely assume," I ventured, " that he was a man
of worth and standing, for he sent one son, and possibly two,
to college to be trained for the ministry. He was a progenitor
of ministers. Of his sons, Joseph, Ralph Waldo's great-great-
great-grandfather, was the pioneer minister of Mendon, an
interior Massachusetts town, and barely escaped death when
the village was burned by the Indians in King Philip's War.
This Joseph married Elizabeth Bulkeley, granddaughter of the
first minister of Concord, and daughter of the second; and
thus early the identification of the Emersons with Concord
began. Joseph and Elizabeth's son Edward, Ralph Waldo's

180 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

great-great-grandfather, was a merchant ; but he was near the
1 cloth,' for the headstone at his grave records that he was
' sometime deacon of the church at Newbury.' Edward's wife
Rebecca, daughter of Cornelius Waldo, brought the < beloved
name of Waldo ' into the Emerson family.

" The ministerial line was resumed with their son Joseph,
Ralph Waldo's great-grandfather. He was long minister of
Maiden, near Boston, and < the greatest student in the country,'
his grand-daughter averred. He also married a minister's daugh-
ter, Mary Moody, daughter of ' Father Moody, of Agamen-
ticus,' most zealous of preachers and most charitable of men.
Of him our Emerson has related that < when the offended parish-
ioners, wounded by his pointed preaching, would rise to go out
of church, he cried out, "Come back, you graceless sinner,
come back ! " When they began to fall into ill customs and
ventured into the alehouse on Saturday night, the valiant
pastor went in after them, collared the sinners, dragged them
forth, and sent them home with rousing admonitions.' To
which anecdote Mr. Cabot, Emerson's biographer, has added,
' He gave away his wife's only pair of shoes from her bedside
to a poor woman who came to the house, one frosty morning,
barefoot. When his wife, thinking to restrain a profuseness of
almsgiving which his scanty salary could ill afford, made him
a purse that could not be opened without a tedious manipula-
tion, he gave away purse and all to the next applicant.'

" Joseph and Mary Emerson had a numerous family, of
whom three sons became ministers ; and the youngest of these,
William Emerson, was Ralph Waldo's grandfather. He was
the patriot minister of Concord, who began his pastoral work
as assistant to Dr. Daniel Bliss there ; succeeded to the pas-
torate upon the good old minister's death ; married his daugh-
ter Phebe ; built the Manse ; had a hand in the Concord fight ;
and died in the service at thirty-three while chaplain in the
army at Ticonderoga. His son William, Ralph Waldo's father,
was minister first in the little town of Harvard, a dozen miles

IN THE HEART OF ESSEX. 181

from Concord, and afterward of the First Church of Boston.
It was in Boston that he married ' the pious and amiable Ruth
Haskins,' as he recorded in his diary at the time ; and there
Ralph Waldo was born in 1803, their third son."

Our tour of the town finished with a drive toward " Heart-
break Hill," overlooking the sea, which derives its melancholy
name from an old legend of an Indian maid who "watched
from the hill-top her life away " for the sailor lover that never
returned, the subject of one of Celia Thaxter's poems.

Then boarding an out-going trolley-car we sped on our
backward course through other old Essex towns.

Our first stop was at Hamilton, since Percy had learned
that here lived " Gail Hamilton," the vigor and candor of whose
writings he had heard his father praise. The car left us on a
country road some distance from the village, but we found the
walk over an agreeable one, enlivened by extensive views of
rich and varied landscape. We passed through the village
center along the old Bay Road which the Puritans cut out, and
which before railroad days was the stage highway. Handsome
trees now line it, and pleasant estates face its either side.

The " Dodge place " which we were seeking for " Gail
Hamilton" was Mary Abigail Dodge (born 1830 died 1896)
in private life lay just outside the village, the house occupy-
ing a slight elevation overlooking fair, wide-spreading country.
It is of simple design, with a two-story entrance porch, and a
side porch or veranda overhung with vines. Within Percy was
shown the room in which " Gail Hamilton " wrote many of
those trenchant essays on social, religious, and political topics
which gave her a unique place among the woman writers of her
time ; while her literary life was outlined to him by one who
knew her best.

Thus he learned that she was born in this country town, of
a family well rooted in New England ancestry. As a girl she

182

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

was of high spirit and high aims, a forerunner of the ath-
letic girl of to-day. At twenty-one she was teaching physical
science in a high school at Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after
she became a governess at Washington, in the family of the

intrepid Dr. Gamaliel Bai-
ley, then editing the Na-
tional Era. While in Dr.
Bailey's household she
became thoroughly im-
bued with its anti-slavery
atmosphere ; and then be-
gan her earliest writing
for the press, much of
which appeared in the
Era. When she returned
to Hamilton she settled
down to systematic liter-
ary work, and soon her
pen-name grew familiar
to the weekly newspaper
and magazine public. This pen-name quite suited her whirl-
wind style of writing. She was among the earliest to write in
popular vein for woman's rights and against woman's wrongs
in domestic and general life. She produced rapidly, and for a
succession of years published one volume of collected papers
annually, sometimes two. First appeared, in 1862, " Country
Living and Country Thinking ; " the next year, " Gala Days ; "
the next, " A New Atmosphere." This book, composed of high-
keyed essays on the upbringing of girls and the marriage rela-
tion, most stirred her critics, while it inspired Wliittier's highly
complimentary " Lines on a Fly Leaf " of a copy of it :

"GAIL HAMILTON."

(From "Gail Hamilton's" "Life in Letters."
permission of the publishers, Lee & Shepard.)

Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
I frankly own I like her well.

IN THE HEART OF ESSEX. 183

It may be that she wields a pen

Too sharply-nibbed for thin-skinned men,

That her keen arrows search and try

The armor joints of dignity,

And, though alone for error meant,

Sing through the air irreverent.

I blame her not, the young athlete

Who plants her woman's tiny feet,

And dares the chances of debate

Where bearded men might hesitate,

Who deeply earnest, seeing well

The ludicrous and laughable,

Mingling in eloquent excess

Her anger and her tenderness,

And, chiding with a half-caress,

Strives, less for her own sex than ours,

With principalities and powers,

And points us upward to the clear

Sunned heights of her new atmosphere. 1 '

Meanwhile she was attaining a name as a juvenile writer ;
and when in 1865 Our Young Folks' magazine was started in
Boston, she was made one of its editors, in association with
John T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom. During this editorial
work, however, there was no break in her system of annual
bookniaking. In her later years her writings were rather more
on political than social themes. The marriage of her cousin
to James G. Blaine brought her into close relations with that
astute politician, and her sharp and pungent pen was much
employed in the discussion of questions with which he was
more or less identified. Her last work was on the life of
this distinguished relative. After 1876 her home was again
principally in Washington; but she died in this Hamilton
home, whither she was tenderly brought from Washington
when attacked by her last illness. She enjoyed warm and
true friendships with many of her contemporaries, none truer
or more lasting than that with Whittier.

18 1 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Leaving the Dodge place with pleasant memories, we con-
tinued along the old elm-lined road for a comparatively short
distance, as country distances go, to the adjoining town of
Wenham, where we were to take a trolley-car on another line
onward to Beverly. Before boarding the car we glanced at
" Fairflelds," the Porter Farm, with spreading mansion and
acres of out-lands, the home for nearly two centuries of the
Porter family, with which was allied that eminent astronomer
and cultured gentleman, the late Benjamin Apthorp Gould,
and of which also is the poet and essayist, Elizabeth Porter
Gould.

The car ride was through picturesque parts. We traveled
alongside of Wenham Lake, the scene of Whittier's sweet
ballad of "The Witch of W T enham":

" O fair the face of Wenham Lake
Upon the young girl's shone."

By the lakeside near the highway we passed the point where
formerly stood the "small conical hill" where Hugh Peters
preached to the colonists before there was a meetinghouse in
the region. So it was called " Peter's Pulpit " till its leveling
in our day. We spun through North Beverly, where some of
our younger poets and story writers have found inspiration ;
then we were fairly in old Beverly, and soon at the end of
this ride.

XII.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE.

Old Beverly landmarks. Birthplace of Lucy Larcoin. Her early lit-
erary efforts when a cotton mill-hand. Her later career. " Hannah
Binding Shoes." Songs of the sea. Birthplace of Wilson Flagg.
His contributions to the literature of nature. Birthplace of
George E. Woodberry. His "North Shore Watch,' 1 and "My
Country." Beverly Farms. Oliver Wendell Holmes at " Beverly -
by-the-Depot." Manchester-by-the-Sea, Summer home of Dana,
Bartol, and Fields.

WE alighted from our car on Beverly's main street at the
corner of Wallace Street. For on this corner is the little
building in which the father of Lucy Larcoin (born 1824
died in Boston, 1893), a retired ship-captain, kept his West-
India goods shop ; and back on the cross street, then a rural
lane leading through open fields to the Bass-River side, is the
house in which the poet was born.

It is a humble landmark, this plain house amid plain sur-
roundings. It has no association with Miss Larcom's literary
work, for only her childhood was passed here. To be sure,
she composed verses when in pinafores, or " tires," and " stuffed
them into the cracks of the floor of the attic" here, as her biog-
rapher notes. But these were childish things with no spark of
genius in them. Still, as Lucy Larcom's birthplace the modest
dwelling had sufficient fascination to keep Percy gazing up at
it till he had gathered about him on the sidewalk quite a
group of curious children.

" You see," he said, " I've read something about the family
life here it must have been this house in l A New-England
Girlhood,' one of the books my sister owns. I wonder if the
big fireplace in which the children sat, so big that sometimes

185

186 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the snowflakes came floating down its long throat, is still open.
And the garden, there's some suggestion of a garden yet, I
see ; but it's pretty lonesome-looking, isn't it ? "

We were cordially admitted to the house upon stating our
mission, and Percy was permitted to roam over it. He recog-
nized, however, very few of the features of Miss Larcom's
sketch, and the old fireplace was no more to be seen. But
this change was inevitable and natural, I reminded him, since

BIRTHPLACE OF LUCY LARCOM.

it was back in the twenties that the Larcoms came here to live,
a short time before Lucy was born in the little chamber on the
second floor ; and it was but a few years afterward, when Lucy
was a slip of a girl, and the kind old father had died, that the
mother moved the household of children away to Lowell.
. " It was there," I continued, " when she was a cotton < mill-
hand,' that her career as a writer began, with contributions
to the Lowell Offering, the factory girls' journal. Her ballad
of ' Hannah Binding Shoes/ which first brought her wide rec-
ognition, and has sung its way through the English-speaking
world, was written when she was a teacher. Other of her ex-
cellent work was done in the West when she was teaching
with the pioneers on the prairies of Illinois. But her native

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE.

187

place by the sea, where her ancestors had lived for generations,
was always home to her, and here she found inspiration for
her best poems. < Hannah Binding Shoes ' was a study of life
here in Beverly. So was < Skip-
per Ben/ And all her songs of
the sea, in which she most ex-
celled, < On the Beach,' < A
Sea Glimpse/ 'The Light
Houses/ < Peggy Blight's Voy-
age, 'Wild Eoses of Cape Ann/
< My Mariner/ < On the Misery/
and the rest, were of its neigh-
borhood. So, too, was that
choicest of her few narrative
poems, ' Mistress Hale of Bev-
erly/ which relates the historic

LUCY LARCOM.

incident of the dispelling of

the witchcraft delusion through

the ' crying out ' against the Beverly minister's wife, renowned

for her sweet disposition, genuine piety, and Christian virtues,

and the awakening of her husband to the awful error of the

persecution in which he had been among the most active."

Returning to the main street we shortly came to the fine old
Burley mansion now occupied by the Beverly Historical So-
ciety, where Percy saw, with other treasures, the manuscript
of " Hannah Binding Shoes " ; and he was given the rare privi-
lege of copying it.

While he was thus engaged the singular controversy over
the first publication of this poem was recalled. According to
Miss Larcom herself, she sent it originally to the Knickerbocker
Magazine, with her name and a request for the usual payment
if the poem was accepted. Then, after a lapse of some months,
having heard nothing from it, and assuming that it had been
rejected, she offered it to The Crayon, another New York
magazine, where it duly appeared with her signature. But

188 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

meanwhile it had been tardily published in the Knickerbocker
with a nom de plume ; and when it came out in The Crayon,
the editor of the Knickerbocker publicly charged Lucy Larcom
with stealing it, branding her as a " literary thief ess." A brisk
correspondence ensued j but Miss Larcorn had no difficulty in
proving her authorship, or in justifying her course. To this

'"T

FACSIMILE OF " HANNAH BINDING SHOES."

circumstance she modestly attributed the wide notice the poem
speedily received, but the human touch and the pathos of it
were most potent in bringing it close to the heart of the people.
It was set to music, and was sung by the concert singers of the
day, of whom jione rendered it with truer and tenderer feeling
than Clara Louise Kellogg.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE. 189

In speaking of Lucy Larcoin's earliest writings when a
Lowell mill-hand, Percy expressed surprise at her literary
development under such adverse circumstances.

" That was fairly explained, if my memory serves me," I
observed, "in <A New England Girlhood/ Lowell at the
beginning was a far different mill-town from now, or from
what it was during the last generation. It drew its operatives
at first from the farms and country villages, and the sea-coast
towns of eastern New England. They came for the most part
from well ordered families and respectable homes ; and numer-
ous associations were established for their mental and social
advantage. There were ' social circles ' organized by the
various churches, the ' lyceum ' with the best of lecture courses ;
literary societies, and night schools.

" When an agent came from Illinois for school teachers, he
was told by one of the mill superintendents that in his mill
alone there could be found five hundred girls thoroughly quali-
fied for school-teaching. The girls had reading clubs, and
many of them read and studied systematically in their hours of
leisure. While the Larcoin family were at Lowell, the mother
kept one of the operatives' boarding-houses, and the home-life
there was as wholesome and refined as in the smaller Beverly
home. When Dickens first visited the country, in 1842, he
wrote of these operatives, in his ( American Notes : ' ' I sol-
emnly declare that from all the crowd I saw in the different
factories, I cannot recall one face that gave me a painful im-
pression ; not one young girl whom, assuming it to 'be a matter
of necessity that she should gain her daily bread by the labor
of her hands, I would have removed if I had the power/
Literary journals were early started among the mill-hands, and
the first of them was a home production of Lucy's elder sister
Emetine.

"This sister Emeline," I continued, speaking of Miss Lar-
com's training, " was her earliest literary guide. She directed
her reading from childhood. She interested her in such books

190 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

as < Pilgrim's Progress/ * Paul and Virginia,' Miss Edgeworth's
juvenile stories, 'Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia;' and, as
her years advanced, in Scott, Spenser, Southey, Wordsworth,
and Coleridge. Later Lucy enjoyed the influence of Whittier,
with whom an acquaintance, begun when she was a factory
girl, ripened into a friendship which lasted throughout his life.
With him she compiled < Child Life,' and < Songs of Three
Centuries.' She was also an early and life long intimate friend
of the poet's sister, Elizabeth Whittier.

HOME OF MISTRESS HALE.

" Her first book ? That was f Similitudes,' made up in part
of her Lowell Offering essays. Her best poetry was the work
of her mature life. Some of her best work was produced while
she was engaged in the prosaic occupation of teaching, which
covered a period of about twenty years from her twentieth
birthday. Beginning with district-school teaching, in a prairie
log house, she developed into an instructor in the higher
branches. For this she qualified in the West by a course in
the Monticello Female Seminary, at Alton, Illinois. For a
while she kepi? an excellent school of her own here in Beverly.
Then she taught eight years in the Wheaton Female Seminary

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE. 191

at Norton, near Boston ; and it was while there that she wrote
Hannah Binding Shoes/ Later she lectured on literature in
various schools. When Our Young Folks' was started, she had
become a favorite writer with children, and her assistant
editorship of that magazine continued through its entire
career. The religious poems which occupy so large a space in
her collected works were composed mostly during her later
years. She died in Boston, but her grave was made here in
the old burying-ground within sound of her beloved sea."

BEVERLY HOME OF WILSON FLAGG.

From the historical rooms we strolled farther down Cabot
Street where, on the opposite side, we were pointed to the
birthplace of Wilson Flagg (born 1805 died 1884), the
naturalist, forerunner of Thoreau and Burroughs as a con-
tributor to our literature on natural scenery and objects. His
name was unfamiliar to Percy, which was not surprising, for
his works were slighter than those of his contemporaries, and
less widely distributed. Yet they have been aptly described
as "standard New England classics for every household."
" They treat/' I further explained, " in agreeable diction and

192

LI TERA R Y PIL GRIM A GES.

with intimate knowledge, of various scenes and aspects of
nature ; of our native trees and shrubs, the forests and their re-
lation to climate and salubrity ; of our birds as songsters, and
their service to agriculture.

"Flagg was born twelve years before Thoreau, and the
publication of his essays began in periodicals ten years or so
before Thoreau's first book appeared. In his young manhood
he made a pedestrian tour alone, from Tennessee to Kentucky,
and upon his return home he engaged in teaching and lecturing
on natural science. Though bred for a physician, he never

practiced, but devoted him-
self instead to journalistic
and literary pursuits, with
his favorite study of nature
uppermost. After 1840 he
wrote exclusively on rural
subjects and natural science,
publishing first in the agri-
cultural press and other peri-
odicals. During part of
Tyler's and Folk's adminis-
trations he enjoyed a posi-
tion in the Boston Custom
House, possibly in reward
for his previous service as
a political writer in the par-
tisan press. His first book,
' Studies in the Field and
Forest/ was published in
1857. The other books,
three of them only, appeared
at long intervals ; and in 1881 these, with added matter, were
reproduced in three volumes with new titles, * Halcyon Days/
< A Year Witli the Trees,' and < A Year With the Birds.' This
was not a large output, but it was choice. Flagg spent the

WILSON FLAGG.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY /DE. 193

latter half of his life in Cambridge, where his home was
within easy reach of rural parts ; and there he died full of
years."

Retracing our steps we walked to the Common, and in its
neighborhood came to the birthplace of Professor George E.
Woodberry (born 1855 ), whose " North Shore Watch," I but
echoed the declaration of authoritive judges in saying, has
given him rank with our foremost modern poets, as his
"Makers of Literature" and Heart of Man" have placed
him first among the purely literary American essayists and
critics of to-day. We saw in this place a genuine ancestral
home; for the Woodberry s are of the oldest of Beverly
families, tracing back to the " first comers," a house, back
from the street, long and low, of dignified aspect, shaded by
venerable trees, set in restful old-fashioned grounds. The
room at the left of the entrance with a westward outlook,
Percy was told, was the study, where Professor Woodberry has
wrought much of his fine work. Here he retires occasionally
from the duties of his chair of English literature in Columbia
University, New York City, or in the vacation seasons, when
some especial literary task is in hand.

Then, as we strolled about the vicinity that we might not
attract attention, but keeping the house in view, I gave as
follows the details of the poet-essayist's development, which
Percy most desired to have.

" Woodberry is the son of a Beverly shipmaster. He was
a Phillips (Exeter) Academy boy, and went to Harvard when
he was seventeen. But ill health compelled him to withdraw
from his class, and he was unable to return to Cambridge till
almost three years later. He was graduated in 1877, having
taken the highest final honors in philosophy and been awarded
an oration at Commencement. He was not permitted, how-
ever, to deliver his thesis ; for the Faculty committee in
charge disapproved its substance, or decided that certain
passages might shock the religious sensibilities of the audience.

194

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

It was a treatment of the < Kelation of Pallas Athene to
Athens.' Some time afterward, at the request of college
friends, it was privately published in a limited edition.
While in college Woodberry was one of the editors of the
Harvard Advocate, the college journal, and in its columns
appeared some of his earlier verses. Before his graduation,
these writings were issued in a thin volume as ' Verses from

the Harvard Advocate.'
Upon its publication
Lowell wrote to How-
ells, ' If you notice the
poetry from the Har-
vard Advocate, pat him
on the back. His name
is Woodberry, and his
1 Violet Crown ' is a far
cry beyond anything
else in the volume/

" Almost immedi-
ately after leaving col-
lege he got a position
in the West, as acting
profesors of English
and history in the Uni-
versity of Nebraska.
He held it, however,
only a year, and return-
PROFESSOR G. E. WOODBERRY. i llg East became assis-

tant editor of The Nation in New York. After another year
of this work, an excellent training, he returned to Massa-
chusetts, and settling down in Cambridge under the shadow of
Harvard, devoted himself to the congenial labors of a general
literary worker. In 1880 he was called back to the Nebraska
University, and for two years occupied the English professor-
ship there. Then there came a clash in the government of the

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE. 195

college, the result of which was his retirement with others of
the faculty of his side of the controversy.

" Woodberry then returned to Beverly, and again en-
gaged in general literary work. During this period his < North
Shore Watch : a Threnody ' was produced ; and his * Life of
Edgar Allan Foe,' which, as Lindsay Swift in his apprecia-
tive study of Woodberry (in the Book Buyer) has justly said,
1 became almost at once the recognized authority on Poe, and
did a true service in American literature in dispelling some
deceptive mists of popular tradition.' In 1885 he went to
Italy with high anticipations, but, to quote again from Mr.
Swift, 'he soon returned apparently disheartened with his
journey, in which he saw much in foreign conditions to distress
and disturb him. Good results ensued nevertheless. He
started out a citizen of the world : he came back an American
of no uncertain sort.' And this American loyalty has been a
dominant note in him since. It found early expression after
he retouched his native soil in his noble poem My Country.'
Listen to this passage :

'Large-limbed they were, the pioneers,
Cast in the iron mould that fate reveres;
They could not help but frame the fabric well,
Who squared the stones for heaven's eye to tell ;
Who knew from eld and taught posterity,

That the true workman's only he

Who builds of God's necessity.
Nor yet hath failed the seed of righteousness ;
Still doth the work the awe divine confess,
Conscience within, duty without, express.
Well may thy sons rejoice thee, O proud Land ;
No weakling race of mighty loins is thine,
No spendthrifts of the fathers ; lo, the Arch,
The loyai keystone glorying o'er the march
Of millioned peoples freed ! on every hand
Grows the vast work, and boundless the design.
So in thy children shall thy empire stand,

196 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

As in her Caesars fell Rome's majesty

O Desolation, be it far from thee !

Forgetting sires and sons to whom were given

The seals of glory and the keys of fate

From Him, whom well they knew the Rock of State,

Thy center, and on thy doorposts blazed His name

Whose plaudit is the substance of all fame,

The sweetness of all hope forbid it Heaven ! '

And this -

' O Land beloved !
My Country, dear, my own !
May the young heart that moved

For the weak words atone ;

The mighty lyre not mine, nor the full breath of song!
To happier sons shall these belong.
Yet doth the first and lonely voice
Of the dark dawn the heart rejoice,
While still the loud choir sleeps upon the bough ;
And never greater love salutes thy brow

Thau his, who seeks thee now.
Alien the sea and salt the foam
Where'er it bears him from his home ;

And when he leaps to land,
A lover treads the strand ;
Precious is every stone ;
No little inch of all the broad domain
But he would stoop to kiss, and end his pain,
Feeling thy lips make merry with his own ;
But oh, his trembling reed too frail

To bear thee Time's All-Hail !
Faint is my heart, and ebbing with the passion of thy praise !

The poets come who cannot fail ;
Happy are they who sing thy perfect days !

" Upon the text of this poem Professor John K. Paine com-
posed a cantata, ( A Song of Praise/ which was performed at
the Music Festival in Cincinnati in 1888.

" Woodberry made another journey to Italy in the winter
of 18.88-'89, when he observed foreign conditions in a happier

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE. 197

mood, to use Mr. Swift's expression, but his Americanism
was, if anything, intensified. In the decade succeeding ap-
peared, among other volumes, his 'North Shore Watch and
Other Poems ' in new book form ; his ' Studies in Letters and
Life/ the basis of his later ' Makers of Literature ' ; his Shel-
ley's Works, with memoir and notes ; Foe's works, with me-

;

FACSIMILE OF WOODBERRY'S MANUSCRIPT AND AUTOGRAPH.

moir and notes, in collaboration with Edmund C. Stedman ;
' National Studies in American Letters ' ; the ' Heart of Man ' ;
and ( Wild Eden,' his third volume of collected poems. Mean-
while, or previously, he was a frequent writer of critical arti-
cles for the Atlantic, and a regular book reviewer for The
Nation and for the Boston Post when that journal was under

198 LITEEAEY PILGRIMAGES.

Edwin M. Bacon's editorship. He became professor of Eng-
lish literature in Columbia University in 1891.

" Of Woodberry's personality Mr. Swift has given the
truest estimate. ' His simplicity of manner, his evenness and
absence of exaggeration do not at first bespeak the ability and
cleverness behind it all. His face is of the essentially higher
Yankee type, such as Emerson's was, with eyes of great
kindliness and good fellowship, but expressive, too, of moods.
In his writings, too, he shows some of that sternness and re-
moteness from meaner interests, and characteristics of what is
best in New England life. In the constitution of his mind, in
the great patience of his accurate methods, there is a close
resemblance in him to the older literary craft of New Eng-
land. ... In purely critical matters he is unsparing and in-
flexible, manifestly holding that his profession must be beyond
the possibility of contamination.' "

We now engaged a smart trap for a late afternoon and
early evening drive to sumptuous Beverly Farms and back,
and across Old Beverly Bridge to Salem.

Our particular object in visiting the Farms was to see the
favorite summer place of Oliver ,Wendell Holmes (born in Cam-
bridge 1809 died in Boston, 1894), at Beverly-by-the-Depot,"
as the genial Autocrat was wont facetiously to date his letters,
imitating the fashion of the summer colonists of his neighbor
town of Manchester who dubbed that " Manchester-by-the-Sea ; "
but the place itself with its natural beauties and its opulent
summer seats enhanced the attractiveness of the trip. Had
the time allowed we should have liked to extend the ride into
Manchester where the poet, Richard Henry Dana, the elder (born
in Cambridge 1787 died in Boston, 1879), had his gray old
summer mansion on the edge of a lofty bluff overlooking a singing
beach, years before the fashionables absorbed the place ; where
the late Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol (born in Freeport, Maine, 1813
died in Boston, 1901), the Boston poet of the pulpit, occupied
for a generation and more "Glass Head" with his summer house

MASSACHUSETTS BAY SIDE. 199

and its detached " study tower ; " and where James T. Fields
so long summered, with many a lettered guest, in his low
spreading, verandaed cottage, crowning " Thunderbolt Hill."

The Holmes cottage we found remaining as in the Doctor's
time, a modest two-story house of wood, with broad verandas
overhung with vines, commanding the ocean view. It was in
the cosy parlor that the Autocrat sat and received his friends
during those last serene summer and autumn days of his long
life. Here he celebrated the birthdays of his old age, when
many came as to a shrine. In the little sanctum off the parlor
much of his later work was done. Hours of glowing days he
passed on the piazza with its protecting awnings, in his big,
enveloping willow chair. " This house is not one of tone," he
once said, "it is very modest indeed, I am fully aware ; but it
suits me well."

This night we spent at the Farms as guests of a summer
resident whose friendship I enjoyed. Bright and early the
next morning we bade our host adieu, and drove from his sea-
side castle Salem-ward.

XIII.

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM.

Beverly Bridge and " The Toll-Gatherer's Day." Birthplaces of Charles
T. Brooks and William W. Story. Hawthorne's house on Mall
Street. His study " high from all noise." Story of " The Scarlet
Letter." The romancer's previous work and its slow recogni-
tion. The Union Street and Herbert Street houses. The Peabody
house and "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." The old burying-ground
as pictured by Hawthorne. Nathaniel Mather, "an aged man at
nineteen years." The so-called " Seven Gables house." Other
Hawthorne homes. Historic house of Abner C. Goodell. Birth-
place of Prescott. Jones Very. Nahant.

ON the Beverly, Bridge or the Essex Bridge, its official
title we were at the scene of Hawthorne's " The Toll-
Gatherer's Day," of his Twice Told Tales." But Percy had
to imagine it all : the earlier and plainer structure ; the toll-
house "the small, square edifice" standing "between shore
and shore in the middle of the long bridge," with its hospi-
table outside wooden bench upon which the weary wayfarers
reposed ; the toll-gatherer, " of quiet soul, and thoughtful,
shrewd, yet simple mind"; the "travel north and east con-
stantly throbbing like the life-blood through a great artery."
For there were no railroads in those days, no trolley-cars, no
bicycles, no automobiles, no " conveniences " of modern times,
but far more picturesqueness on the public road.

Well within Salem we passed on Bridge Street, at the north
corner of Arabella Steeet, the birthplace of Charles Timothy
Brooks (born 1813 died in Newport, K. I., 1883) preacher,
scholar, poet, author ; " half Lamb, and half Cowper," as his
townsman, the critic Silsbee, characterized him. " He was,
boy and man, remarkable," I chatted. " He himself told how,

200

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 201

when he was four years old, he used to come down in his
nightgown and say the multiplication table and read the
newspapers to the family. He was minister at Newport,
Rhode Island, for thirty-five years : first minister of the first
Unitarian society there. He was an anti-slavery man, and
grandly independent, as the following incident shows. At the
close of a sermon in which he had spoken his mind on the
subject of slavery, an influential parishioner said to him, ' I
have felt for some time that you must go, but now I am sure

BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

of it.' ' Sir,' firmly replied the quiet, gentle preacher, ' I have
my hat in my hand.' His literary productions were astonish-
ing in variety and compass. Said one of his eulogists, ' Lite-
rary and theological essays, reviews, historical monographs,
odes and hymns for religious, patriotic, and festive occasions,
drolleries, children's books, translations from the masterpieces
of foreign literature [especially of Richter] both in prose and
rhyme, occasional poems and jeitx d* esprit, flowed from his
busy pen in an uninterrupted stream.'"

Turning into Winter Street, broad and elm-lined, and

202 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

thence to Washington Square by the Common, around which
the nabobs of Salem's golden age of commercial supremacy
built their stately mansions, we passed, near the corner, the
Judge Joseph Story mansion, where was born his son William
Wetmore Story (born 1819 died in Vallombrosa, Italy,
1895), the author and sculptor. "What did he write?" I
replied to Percy's questioning : " poems and essays of delicate
texture. He wrote ' Roba di Roma,' on modern Rome and its
life. He published several volumes of poems ; he produced a
novel which had some vogue, l Fiametta, A Summer Idyl ; ' but
his < Conversations in a Studio ; ' and ' Excursions in Art and
Letters ' were perhaps his choicest papers. He lived most of
his life in Italy, and his studio there was a center of art and
literature."

In Mall Street, opening from Washington Square, we came
to the first of a succession of Hawthorne landmarks, the
house, No. 14, in which "The Scarlet Letter" was written.
Although these were all familiar to Percy, from our historic
pilgrimage to Salem, he approached them with the zeal of a
first visit ; and we could give them more time than before.

Since the Mall-Street house was associated with Hawthorne's
first sustained work of fiction, and was the best of his Salem
literary workshops, we traced his life here in somewhat close
detail.

The house was taken in the autumn of Hawthorne's second
year in the Salem Custom House. His mother and his two
sisters came to live with him here, but occupied a separate
part. His quiet study, " high from all noise," was the front
room in the third story. He greatly appreciated this seclusion,
for before he had attempted to write in the family sitting-
room ; and there were now two children, Una and Julian.
Here during his leisure hours he composed a few of his after-
ward famous stories, " The Snow Image " among them. Some-
time before he began " The Scarlet Letter " he hada " romance
growling in his mind," but the distractions of his Custom-house

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM.

203

duties, slight though they were, interfered with its execution.
The opportunity came by what at the time seemed to be ex-
treme hardship, the loss of his surveyorship through political
maneuvers. On the day of the announcement of his discharge
in July, 1849, he came home earlier than usual, and to his
wife's expression of surprise and pleasure at this unexpected
appearance, he remarked with grim humor that he had left his
head behind him. " Oh, then," she exclaimed with a glad

HAWTHORNE'S MALL STREET HOUSE.

smile, " you can write your book ! " When with returning
smile he retorted that it would be agreeable to know where
their bread and rice were coming from while the book was
being written, this genuine help-meet turned to her desk and,
pulling out a drawer, revealed a little heap of gold ! It was
her savings from the sums he had from time to time given her
from his salary, for household expenses. So he began " The
Scarlet Letter" that very afternoon.

The story was produced amid various perplexities and afflic-

204 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

tions. Before it had got far under way his mother was taken
dangerously ill, and in a few weeks died. Later came the
inevitable domestic embarrassments from narrowing means.
Then in the autumn illness fell upon the entire family. But
the work sped steadily on, and within six months of its begin-
ning the manuscript was in the printers' hands. When he
read the last scene to his wife just after writing it, " tried
to read it rather," as he afterward wrote in his English Note
Book, apropos of Thackeray's coolness in respect to his own
pathos, " my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed
up and down on an ocean as it subsides after a storm." The
book appeared in the spring of 1850, and the world at last
recognized in its author the American master romancer.

"Hawthorne was now forty-six," I remarked at the finish
of this summary, " and he had toiled for a quarter century,
with much exquisite workmanship, before he was thus fully
discovered by that elusive class denominated the general
reading public. It was twenty-two years since ' Fanshawe,'
his first book, was published anonymously, at his own expense
and with a loss. He had produced and published numerous
little masterpieces, stories and sketches, in magazines,
' Annuals,' and ' Souvenirs.' His works in book-form had in-
cluded the ' Twice Told Tales,' a second series of the Tales
eight years later, and the ' Mosses From an Old Manse,' which
had spread his reputation in cultivated fields. Long before,
his genius had been warmly acknowledged by his literary con-
temporaries. ,But till now his creations had failed to reach
the popularity which others of far less worth had attained."

"A singular lack of appreciation," Percy interjected.
" How is it accounted for ? "

"This slow recognition has been the subject of much specu-
lation by latter-day critics ; and Salem has come in for a share
of criticism, for its ' cold treatment of its illustrious son/
.The late Dr. George B. Loring, himself a cultured son of Salem,
and a relative by marriage of Hawthorne's, offered an intelli-

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 205

gent explanation of the matter, in a letter which is quoted in
Conway's Life/ < Salem/ he said, < did not " treat its illus-
trious son " at all, because he gave it no opportunity. He was
a recluse there always. In early life he was part of the time
in college, and the rest of the time an unknown, and appar-
ently idle young man. He wrote stories and published them
in the magazines, but nobody knew who wrote them ; and
Elizabeth Peabody [his sister-in-law] told me that for a long
time it was supposed they were written by a woman and
that not long before the " Twice Told Tales " came out. She
first discovered that they were written in Salem, and then,
after long search, that they were written by one Hawthorne.
It was very difficult for the Peabodys to make his acquaint-
ance. At last their culture and intellectual capacity drew him
out, and he began to call at their house. To the Peabody
family he confined his social attentions in Salem. . . .
Salem was full of cultivated and brilliant people at that time,
but Hawthorne could not be induced to visit them. He was
really too shy for such social intercourse ; his brain was too
busy with its creations ; and he had no gift whatever for
ordinary conversation. His life had been too long secluded.'

"One reason for the popular recognition of Hawthorne
with ' The Scarlet Letter/ Henry James finds in the fact that
its publication was in the United States a literary event of the
first importance. The book was the finest piece of imaginative
writing yet put forth in the country, and, he says, ( there was
a consciousness of this in the welcome that was given it, a
satisfaction in the idea of America having produced a novel
that belonged to literature, and to the forefront of it. ...
^fc the best of it was that the thing was absolutely Ameri-
can; it belonged to the soil, to the air; it came out of the
heart of New England.'

" The Ha^bhornes moved finally from Salem shortly before
1 The Scarlet Letter's ' appearance, making their next home in
Lenox up in the Berkshire Hills."

206 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

We now crossed over to Essex Street, and thence passed to
Union Street, where we revisited the old house No. 21 in
which Hawthorne was born. Then we turned into neighboring
Herbert Street to the now decayed "Manning mansion," -
Nos. 10J and 12, where part of his boyhood and youth were
spent, and whither he returned again and again in after life.
Next we were in Charter Street before the Peabody house,
where Hawthorne found his wife, and the model for the grue-
some " Dr. Grimshawe's " house. We wandered over the
adjacent earliest Salem bury ing-ground, this time with Haw-

THE PEABODY OR "DR. GRIMSHAWE" HOUSE.

thorne's description in hand. We called at the Custom House,
and peered again into Hawthorne's old office. And we finished
our round of this Hawthorne neighborhood with a glance at
the Turner-Street house, marked the "House of the Seven
Gables," albeit the gables are wanting, and sufficient authority
for the distinction it assumes.

The Union-Street house, Percy had learned on his first
visit, was of historical value as well as literary, since it was
built before the witchcraft frenzy of 1692. He was aware, too,
that at the time of Hawthorne's birth here, July 4, 1804, in
the northeast chamber of the second story, it had been a
Hathorne house since 1772, when Daniel Hathorne acquired it.

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 207

Percy recalled, by the way, the change in the spelling of the
surname with the insertion of the letter w by Nathaniel Haw-
thorne. " This grandfather Hathorne," I reminded him, " a
ship-master and captain of a privateer in the Revolution, was
grandson of John Hathorne, that unrelenting witchcraft judge,
and great-grandson of William Hathorne, who came over with
Winthrop in the Arbella in 1630, and became a military man, a
deputy in the General Court, tax collector, and magistrate.
William Hathorne was that first ancestor whose figure, Haw-
thorne wrote, ' invested by family tradition with a dim and
dusty grandeur, was present in my boyish imagination as far
back as I can remember.' With this lineage on the father's
side was joined in Hawthorne a similar lusty Puritan ancestry
on the maternal side, his mother, daughter of Richard Manning,
merchant, being of the Puritan Manning family that settled in
Ipswich and Salem as early as 1680."

Percy also knew that Hawthorne's father was a ship-master ;
that he died at Surinam while on a voyage in command of the
Salem ship Nabby, when Hawthorne was but four years old ;
and that the mother, left without resources, then moved with
her three children back to her father's house, the Herbert-
Street homestead, her brother Robert Manning having under-
taken to provide for her. " From that time till her death," I
added, "she became practically a recluse, and Hawthorne's
sisters grew also into lives of retirement. The elder, Eliza-
beth Manning, long outlived him, reaching the age of eighty-
one ; the younger, Maria Louisa, born the year of the father's
death, lost her life in the burning of the Hudson-River steamer
Henry Clay, July 27, 1852."

Percy was further reminded that in this Herbert-Street
house, in his " dismal chamber " on the southwest corner of the
third story, overlooking his birthplace, for the yards of the
two estates originally joined at the rear, Hawthorne wrote
his first stories ; that here, as he afterward chronicled in his
Note-book, " fame was won." " This," I observed, " referred

208 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

to the achievement of the stories gathered in the ' Twice Told
Tales.' It was here, too, that < Fanshawe ' was produced, and
those ' Tales of My Native Land,' which he afterward de-
stroyed. The periods of his life in Herbert Street covered
about eleven years of his boyhood ; about three years after his
graduation from college ; a part of the late thirties ; and a few
months of his married life, after the birth of his first child,
Una, just before and a little after his occupation of the survey-
orship in the Custom House. It was a serious and solemn life
that his own little family led in this home, which Mrs. Haw-
thorne christened the * Castle Dismal.' During his young man-
hood days here, before his marriage, this was Hawthorne's
daily routine : study or reading in the forenoons, writing in
the afternoons, and in the evenings, sometimes extending into
the night, long, solitary walks about the silent town, or out
into the country, or along the sea-coast.

" The Peabody house," I observed as we approached this
dwelling, in slightly better condition than the other two
houses, though bereft of its former refinement, "came into
Hawthorne's life after he had won something of fame. He
may have played in his boyhood with the Peabody children, or
with Sophia Amelia, who became his wife, for a former home
of theirs was in a brick block on the opposite side of Union
Street, near his birthplace, to which the Peabodys came in
1812, when Sophia was three years old. The family was a
cultivated one, with Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, a man of excep-
tional parts, at its head. The eldest sister, Mary, married
Horace Mann, the eminent American educator and developer
of the common school system, and after his death she wrote
his biography. The next oldest, Elizabeth Palmer, introduced
the kindergarten system into this country, and was a teacher
of wide scope, a writer of educational books, and a noble
philanthropist. It was Elizabeth who ( discovered ' Hawthorne^
as we have seen ; and it was through her influence that his
worldly affairs were from time to time fostered. Sophia

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 209

Feabody hud an artistic sense which was cultivated in drawing
and painting. Before her marriage she drew an illustration
for Hawthorne's ' The Gentle Boy,' which was published in a
special edition in 1839. Theirs was a long engagement.
They were finally married in Boston, after the Peabodys had
removed there, in July, 1842 ; and their married life began in
the < Old Manse/ at Concord."

Hawthorne's fanciful description of the Peabody house in
his sketch of " Dr. Grimshawe's " house, I had copied, and
Percy made note of the real and the fancy in the picture as
he read "it :

... It stood in a shabby by-street, and cornered on a graveyard
with which the house communicated by a back door, so that with a hop,
skip, and jump from the threshold, across a flat tombstone, the two
children were in the daily habit of using the dismal cemetery as their
playground. ... It did not appear to be an ancient structure, nor one
that could ever have been the abode of a very wealthy or prominent
family, a three-story, wooden house, perhaps a century old, low-
studded, with a square front standing right upon the street, and a small
enclosed porch, containing the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and
down the street through an oval window on each side, its characteristic
was decent respectability, not sinking below the boundary of the genteel."

Then turning into the graveyard, Percy read on from my
extract, this sketch :

" Here were old brick tombs with curious sculpture on them, and
quaint gravestones, some of which bore puffy little cherubs, and one or
two others the effigies of eminent Puritans, wrought out to a button, a
fold of the ruff, and a wrinkle of the skull-cap ; and these frowned upon
the children as if death had not made them a whit more genial than they
were in life. But the children were of a temper to be more encouraged
by the good-natured smiles of the puffy cherubs, than frightened or dis-
tressed by the sour Puritans. . . . This graveyard was the most ancient
in the town. The clay of the original settlers had been incorporated with
the soil. . . . Here . . . used to be specimens of common English
flowers which could not be accounted for, unless, perhaps, they had
sprung from some English maiden's heart, where the intense love of those
homely things, and regret of them in the foreign land, had conspired

210 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

together to keep their vivifying principle, and cause its growth after the
poor girl was buried. Be that as it might, in this grave had been hidden
from sight many a broad, bluff visage of husbandmen. . . . Here, too,
the sods had covered the faces of men known to history, and revered
when not a trace of distinguishable dust remained of them ; personages
whom tradition told about ; and here, mixed up with successive crops of
native-born Americans, had been ministers, captains, matrons, virgins
good and evil, tough and tender, turned up and battered down by the
sexton's spade, over and over again ; while every blade of grass had its
relation with the human brotherhood of the old town. . . . Thus rippled
and surged with its hundreds of little billows the old graveyard about the
house which cornered upon it ; it made the street gloomy so that people
did not altogether like to pass along the high wooden fence that shut it
in ; and the old house itself, covering ground which else had been thickly
sown with bodies, 'partook of its dreariness, because it hardly seemed
possible that the dead people should not get up out of their graves and
steal in to warm themselves at this convenient fireside."

With the exception of a few of the " puffy cherubs," and
the tombs or graves of men " known to history," as Governor
Bradstreet, John Hathorne, the witch judge, and Judge Lynde,
there was little that Percy could identify from this descrip-
tion. Somewhat more serviceable was this earlier sketch,
given in the "American Note-Book," from which, doubtless,
the other description was constructed :

" In the old burial-ground, Charter Street, a slate gravestone, carved
round the borders, to the memory of ' Colonel John Hathorne Esq.', who
died in 1717. This was the witch-judge. The stone is sunk deep into
the earth, and leans forward, and the grass grows very long around it ;
and on account of the moss, it was rather difficult to make out the date.
Other Hathornes lie buried in a range with him on either side. In a

corner of the burial-ground, close under Dr. P 's [Peabody's] garden

fence, are the most ancient stones remaining in the graveyard ; moss-
grown, deeply sunken. One to ' Dr. John Swinnerton, Physician '
[brought into the ' House of the Seven Gables ' and the ' Dolliver
Romance'] in 1688; another to his wife. There, too, is the grave of
Nathaniel Mather, the younger brother of Cotton, and mentioned in the
' Magnalia ' as a hard student, and of great promise. ' An aged man at
nineteen years,' saith the gravestone. It affected me. deeply when I had
cleared away the grass from the half-buried stone, and read the name.

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM.

An apple-tree or two hang over these old graves, and throw down the
blighted fruit on Nathaniel Mather's grave, he blighted too. . . . [Note
made in 1838.]

Percy was curious about that Nathaniel Mather, the
scholar, who died so young with such an old head. So I gave
a few extracts drawn from his brother Samuel's pamphlet
upon him, bearing the quaint title of " Early Piety, Exampled
in the Life and Death of Mr. Nathaniel Mather, who, having
become at the age of 19, an instance of more than com-
mon Learning and Virtue, changed Earth* for Heaven, October
17, 1688." I quoted also from the eulogy of his elder brother
Cotton, whose phrase "an old man without gray hairs upon
him " when he died, was condensed into the line on the tomb-
stone. Says this brother :

44 From his very childhood his Book was, perhaps, as dear to him as
his Play, and thus he grew particularly acquainted with Church History
at a rate not usual in those that were about thrice as Old as he. ... He
afforded not so much a Pattern as a Caution to young students for it may
be truly written on his grave, Study Killed Him. . . . When he was but
twelve years old he was admitted into the college by strict examiners ;
and many months after this passed not before he had accurately gone over
all the old Testament in Hebrew, as well as the New in Greek ; besides his
going through all the Liberal Sciences before many other designers for
Philosophy do so much as begin to look into them. . . . He commenced
Bachelor of Arts at the age of sixteen, and in the act entertained the
auditory with an Hebrew oration. . . . His second degree after seven
years being in the college he took just before death gave him a third,
which last was a promotion infinitely beyond either of the former. . . .
[He was] admirably capable of arguing about almost every subject that
fell within the Concernments of a Learned Man."

" Nathaniel Mather's morbid piety while acquiring all this
learning," I observed, " reflects the stiff theology of his time.
When a mere child he repented in sackcloth and ashes that he
had ' whittled on the Sabbath Day, and thus reproached his
God by his youthful sports/ At fourteen he recorded in his
diary, * How little have I improved this time to the Honour of

212

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

God as I should have done.' * Nor/ his brother Cotton chroni-
cled, did he slubber his prayers with hasty amputations, but
wrestled in them for a good part of an hour together.'"

" Poor boy ! " ejaculated Percy, and we turned to cheer-
fuller things.

A little walk over to and along Derby Street brought us to
the Custom House. Our call was brief, for the reminders of

HAWTHORNE'S CHESTNUT STREET HOUSE.

Hawthorne's service here, from 1846 to 1849, are now gone
(Percy remembered that his desk is preserved in the Essex
Institute up on Essex Street). Another short walk, and we
were at Turner Street, and the so called " Seven Gables "
house.

As to the identity of this house, I remarked : " Other old
Salem houses have been fixed upon as the house of the

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 213

romance, but Hawthorne himself has stated that it was copied
from no actual edifice : that it was simply a reproduction in a
general way of a style of colonial architecture, examples of
which survived to the time of his youth. The slender ground
upon which the claim for this house rests is found in these
facts and statements: that the Ingersoll family, relatives of
the Hawthornes, long lived in it, and that Hawthorne fre-
quently visited them ; that one day Miss Ingersoll told him it
once had seven gables ; that coming down stairs, after she had

HAWTHORNE'S DEARBORN STREET HOUSE.

shown him the beams and mortises in the attic, he murmured
half aloud, < House of the Seven Gables, that sounds well ; '
and that afterward appeared the romance bearing this name
it was nearly finished before the title was selected. No, this
romance was not in part written here in Salem; it belongs
wholly to the Lenox home period.

" This Turner Street house," I added, " has a less ques-
tioned distinction as the place where the 'Tales of Grand-
father's Chair ' originated. And it is interesting as one of the
oldest houses in Salem, dating from 1662."

Other Hawthorne houses in other parts of Salem, the

214

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Chestnut-Street house (No. 18) and the Dearborn-Street house,
in North Salem, had lesser interest than those we had now
visited. The former was the family home for about a year and
a half, beginning with the surveyorship period in 1846, the early
part of which Mrs. Hawthorne spent in Boston, where, in June,
1846, Julian was born. The Dearborn-Street home was of an
earlier date. It was Nathaniel's mother's house, built for her
by her brother on land adjoining the later Manning estate.

Hawthorne lived here
between 1828 and 1832.
Then the family returned
to the Herbert-Street
house.

There remained one
more Hawthorne land-
mark, worth visiting
however, the little old
building by the corner
of Washington and Fed-
eral streets, in which
was the school of Joseph
E. Worcester, the com-
piler of Worcester's Dic-
tionary, who was the
boy Hawthorne's school-
master.

Following up Fed-
eral Street toward its
head we reached the
home of Abner C. Goodell ( born in Danvers, 1831 ), the his-
torical student and writer, whose literary monument is the
"Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay"
with his copious and scholarly notes as editor, the most valua-
ble work of all of this nature undertaken by the state. This
house, No. 4 Federal Street, quaint and curious in itself,

ABNER C. GOODELL.

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 216

has additional interest because it contains a portion of the
original wooden frame of the jail in which the victims of
the witchcraft delusion were incarcerated, and from which
was the great " jail delivery " in May, 1693, when the frenzy
passed.

Again in Essex Street, we revisited the Salem Athenaeum,
Plummer Hall, on the site of the birthplace of William
Hickling Prescott (born 1796 died in Boston, 1859), the
historian. Percy was shown a picture of the house in which
Prescott was born, a typical old-time Salem mansion, and
was told its history in brief. It was built originally by Nathan
Reed, who had the distinction of being the first, though unrec-
ognized, American inventor of a paddle-wheel steamboat ; and
after the Prescotts moved from here, it was a Peabody man-
sion, famed for its elegant hospitality. Of the Prescotts here,
he was told about the father, Judge William Prescott, who was
born in Pepperell, Massachusetts, son of Colonel William Pres-
cott, commander of the American forces at Bunker Hill, and
who became an eminent jurist and one of the ablest New Eng-
landers of his time. He lived in Salem from 1789 to 1808, and
then moved to Boston. His wife, the historian's mother, was a
daughter of Thomas Hickling, of Salem, American consul at
St. Michael's for half a century. It was from him that the
historian derived his middle name. Since Prescott was but
eleven years old when the family moved to Boston, we should
find his literary landmarks mostly there, I observed.

The site of the Athenaeum also had interest as that of the
Salem home of Governor Simon Bradstreet, upon his second
marriage, with the widow Gardner, in 1676. The Athenaeum
itself was identified with the beginning of the career of Edwin
P. Whipple (born 1819 died 1886), the eminent critic and es-
sayist, to whom we had alluded in connection with James T.
Fields when at Portsmouth. Whipple, born down the North
Shore, in Gloucester, came to Salem when a youth and was em-
ployed in a bank. Meanwhile he served some time as librarian

216

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

of the Athenaeum, and it was here that he acquired his literary
tastes and began his essay writing. " We shall also visit his
principal literary workshop," I promised, "' in Boston."

Our Salem jaunt ended with a look at the quaint little
house, No. 154 Federal Street, on the south side of the city, in
which Jones Very (born 1813 died 1880) was born and lived
his gentle life through.

" Jones Very ? " queried Percy, " who was he ? "

HOME OF JONES VERY.

" I do not wonder at your question. Few remember him
now ; and his single volume of essays and poems, some of them
of rare charm, slumbers quietly on the remotest library shelf.
Yet it was predicted when he died, twenty odd years ago, that
his work would long survive. One of his eulogists declared
that his writings had lent <a spiritual and personal interest
to the scenery about Salem which would prove a worthy com-
plement to the historic and romantic pageantry with which his

HAWTHORNE'S SALEM. 217

friend Hawthorne's brilliant imagination had already filled its
streets.' He was the personal friend of Emerson, the elder
Dana, Channing, and James Freeman Clarke ; and it was at the
instance of Emerson, who assisted in its preparation, that his
book, 'Essays and Poems of Jones Very/ was published in
1839.

" Jones Very was one of a family of brother and sisters all
of whom had a genius for verse-making. His father was a
ship-master, and so was his mother's father, an uncle of his
father. When a lad he made voyages with his father to Kussia
and to New Orleans. The father died in 1824, and he became
a store-boy in an auction-room. He fitted himself for college,
and entering Harvard in the last term of the sophomore year of
1834, graduated in 1836, second in his class. He became a
tutor of Greek in the college, and attended the Divinity School.
He was subsequently licensed to preach, but he never had a
parish. His life and work thereafter were based on his belief
that he had surrendered his will to the will of God and become
a passive instrument of the Divine Spirit. Of his poetry James
Freeman Clarke wrote, f I think there are a few of his poems
that will last with those of George Herbert and Henry Vaughan.
His poetic vein was a slender rill, but pure, clean, coming from
a deep source, and like that of Siloam that flowed

'Fast by the oracle of God.'"

We now took a steam train for Lynn, and engaging a
carriage at the station there drove over to Nahant. In the
long ago, I told Percy, this was the favorite summering place
of Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, Longfellow, Agassiz, and others
of their kind ; and here " Hiawatha " in part was written.
But their habitations no longer exist ; so we could visit them
only in imagination while we traversed the rocky point and
listened to the sea. Percy, however, found some compensation
in passing glances at the summer homes of the modern writers

218 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

who sustain the literary atmosphere of Nahant the seat of
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, whose excursions into American
history have broadened his reputation as a " scholar in poli-
tics " ; and the villa of Judge Kobert Grant, the essayist and
novelist who treats with such frank and clever pen our
American social tendencies and foibles.

Then, our ramble finished, we sat down to a toothsome fish
dinner at the tavern of the place ; and in the late evening,
happily by moonlight, we returned by the last boat to Boston.

XIV.

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON.

BOSTON literary landmarks now engaged us for a day.
Percy was surprised at the number still remaining of homes
and other places identified with those writers who gave to the
historic city its fame as an American literary center in the first
half of the last century ; for I had, at the outset, prepared
him for disappointments by remarking the repeated recon-
structions of the city which have ruthlessly swept away many
of its choicest monuments.

We began with a call at the Boston Athenaeum on the
slope of Beacon Hill, since this nearly a century-old institution
(incorporated in 1807), I explained, is a result of one of the
earliest efforts after the Revolution for the cultivation of
" polite literature " in the new republic. And within the
serene shades of this classic building, ensconced in a quiet
corner of an alcove overlooking the elm-shaded Granary
burying-ground where lies thick the dust of colonial and
provincial worthies, we had as preliminary to our excursion, a
little whispered talk of the pioneers of the Anthology Club.
For the Athenaeum sprang from this club, organized in 1804,
a group of worthy young litterateurs, whose labors formed, as
the elder Quincy recorded, "an epoch in the intellectual
history of the United States."

219

220

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" These young men," I remarked, " came together originally
at the instance of the Rev. William Emerson the father of
Ralph Waldo Emerson for the conduct of a periodical.
This periodical had been started under the name of The
Monthly Anthology, a Magazine of Polite Literature, with the
opening of the nineteenth century by one Phineas Adams, a
native of historic Lexington and a Harvard graduate; and,

THE BOSTON ATHEN/EUM.

being unremunerative, it had been placed by the printers in
Mr. Emerson's hands. The club changed the name to The
Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, and issued six octavo
volumes, which constitute, so Quincy held, <one of the most
lasting and honorable monuments of the taste and literature of
the period.' Within the first few months of their organization
the club started a movement for a semi-public library, and
from this the Athenaeum evolved.

A DAY AliOUT BOSTON. 221

" There were only half a dozen of the group at the begin-
ning as * founders.' William Emerson, their leader, was espe-
cially distinguished for literary taste. He was one of the
most constant contributors to the Anthology, as well as its edi-
tor for the longest period. The Rev. John Sylvester John
Gardiner, the club's first president, was an exceptionally fine
classical scholar. He had been educated in England by the
celebrated Dr. Samuel Parr. Later he became rector of Trinity
Church. He kept a classical school in his study, in which
were trained several youths who afterward attained distinction
in literature, among them George Ticknor and William Hick-
ling Prescott. He was a frequent contributor to the Anthology.
William S. Shaw, the club's first treasurer, was a nephew of
Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams. For a while
he served President Adams as private secretary, and lived with
the family, then in Philadelphia. During this time, as he
wrote a friend, his mind became ' deeply impressed by the low-
ness of the standard of literature in the United States, and
earnestly possessed with a desire of adopting measures to
enlarge and elevate it.' As one means of aiding its advance-
ment, he began a collection of literary and political tracts, which
grew to large proportions, and subsequently became a posses-
sion of the Athenaeum. He was twenty-six when the club was
formed. William Tudor, Shaw's junior by a year, was simi-
larly inspired. He was the founder of the North American
Review, started in 1814, ten years after the formation of the
club, ' to open a field for the successful pursuit of general lit-
erature and the political relations of the country.' Three-
fourths of its first four volumes are said to have been from his
pen. He also published two or three books of merit, one of
them being the life of the patriot James Otis. Arthur May-
nard Walter, the club's first secretary, was one of the most
promising of the younger Boston litterateurs of the time, and
died in his twenty-seventh year, on the threshold of a rare
literary career. He was a great-grandson of Increase Mather,

222 LITERARY PILGRIMAGED.

and on the maternal side a descendant of Chief -Justice Ben-
jamin Lynde, whose tomb you saw in the old Charter-Street
bury ing-ground in Salem. He entered Harvard in his four-
teenth year, and while there was distinguished for literary
attainments. During two years in Europe he engaged in lit-
erary studies. He wrote much for the Anthology. Joseph
Stevens Buckminster was another young man of exceptional
promise, who died prematurely-, at twenty-eight. He was a
son of Joseph Buckminster, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
minister. His precocity was astonishing. At four, it is
averred, he began to study the Latin Grammar, and was intro-
duced to the first elements of Greek. He prepared for Har-
vard at twelve, and was graduated with high honors. He was
a tutor in his teens ; at twenty he was minister of the Brattle-
Street Church in Boston ; and at twenty-seven, lecturer on
Biblical Criticism in the college at Cambridge. His early
piety was as marked as his early learning. We are told that
* between the ages of five and seven he was accustomed, in the
absence of his father, to assemble the domestics of the family,
and with great earnestness and solemnity to read to them a
sermon, repeat the Lord's Prayer, and sing a hymn.' As a
preacher the elegance and genius which he displayed were
called remarkable. Edmund Trowbridge Dana, the sixth of
the founders, was the elder brother of the poet, Richard Henry
Dana, and a man of active pen. Later the poet-brother joined
the club ; also George Ticknor and John Thornton Kirkland,
then minister of the New South Church, in which he succeeded
Oliver Everett, father of Edward Everett, and afterward presi-
dent of Harvard College.

" It is admitted that what the Anthology Club men accom-
plished in living contributions to our literature was slender.
But we must remember that they were pioneers in an almost
un worked field. It was not till 1809 that Irving's ' Knicker-
bocker's History of New York/ with which our literary his-
torians date the real beginning of our distinctively national

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 223

literature, appeared. It was ten years afterward that the Edin-
burgh Review asked contemptuously, <Who reads an American
book ? ' The greatest achievement of these young men of let-
ters was the elevation of the American literary standard.

i( This Athenaeum is especially their landmark. They
took for its model the then newly established Athenaeum of
Liverpool. This building is its fourth home, and is identified
with many Boston authors as their favorite studying or work-
ing place."

A few steps from the Athenaeum brought us to the first of
a series of homes of historians. This was the "Ticknor
house," home of George Ticknor (born 1791 died 1871), around
the Park-Street corner of Beacon Street, facing the unique
Boston Common. We saw only a remnant of the once stately
mansion in the present business building. A semblance of its
outward appearance in Ticknor' s time alone remains. Haw-
thorne, however, has preserved a pleasant sketch of its interior
with Ticknor in his library ; and I quoted this passage from
his " Note Book," dated May, 1850 :

"A marble hall, a wide and easy staircase, a respectable old man-
servant, evidently long at home in the mansion, to admit us. We entered
the library, Mr. Folsom considerably in advance, as being familiar with
the house, and I heard Mr. Ticknor greet him in friendly terms. . . ,
Then I was introduced and received with great distinction, but yet without
any ostentatious flourish of courtesy. Mr. Ticknor has a great head, and
his hair is gray or grayish. You recognize in him at once the man who
knows the world, the scholar, too, which probably is his more distinctive
character, though a little more under the surface. He was in his slippers ;
a volume of his book was open on a table, and apparently he had been
engaged in revising or annotating it. His library is a stately and beauti-
ful room for a private dwelling, and itself looks large and rich. The fire-
place has a white marble frame about it, sculptured with figures and
reliefs. Over it hung a portrait of Sir Walter Scott, a copy, I think, of
the one that represents him in Melrose Abbey."

" This portrait," I interjected, "was, in fact, an original, painted
by the American artist, Leslie, at Scott's request, for Ticknor.

224

L I TEE A R Y PIL GUI MA GES.

" Then Hawthorne muses, ' Methinks he must have spent a
happy life (as happiness goes among mortals) writing his great
three-volumed book for twenty years ; writing it not for bread,
nor with any uneasy desire of fame, but only with a purpose to
achieve something true and enduring.' ''

" What was this great work ? " Percy asked, confessing
that he had but a vague idea of Ticknor's accomplishments.

"His History of Span-
ish Literature/ upon which
his reputation as a scholarly
historian rests. Yes, it was
written entirely in this
house, in the * stately li-
brary/ For this was Tick-
nor's home through forty-
one years, from the late
twenties, sometime before
this work was begun, until
his death at eighty. Dur-
ing this period, except
when he was abroad at
long intervals, he made
this home a place of re-
fined hospitality, a choice
literary center in the ris-
ing literary town." Then at Percy's request, I proceeded to
sketch his career somewhat in detail.

" Ticknor was fortunately born. In his father were com-
bined the culture of the scholar and the sagacity of the man
of affairs j his mother was a woman of refined mind and per-
ceptions. Both father and mother had been school-teachers.
Elisha Ticknor, son of a Connecticut River farmer, after grad-
uating from Dartmouth College, became the head of a pre-
paratory school connected with that college, and afterward a
teacher of private and public schools. He made his contri-

GEORGE TICKNOR.

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 225

bution to literature in an English grammar, 'English Exer-
cises ' it was called a text-book, which was in general use
till superseded by Lindley Murray's work. From the school-
master's desk he passed to trade ; and as a grocer in Boston
he acquired a modest competence which enabled him to retire
in 1812, nine years before his death. George Ticknor's mother
was also of a farming family, living in the hill-town of Sha-
ron, some eighteen miles south of Boston. She was a widow
with four little children when his father married her, and had
kept a private school for girls in Boston to which were sent
the daughters of leading families of the town. Her first hus-
band had served as surgeon in the Revolutionary army, and at
the time of his death was a young Boston physician. He was
Benjamin Curtis, a nephew of the minister of Sharon. Of the
four children of this first marriage, with whom George Tick-
nor was f brought up/ one became the father of two eminent
Curtises, Judge Benjamin E-. Curtis of the United States
Supreme Bench, and George Ticknor Curtis, the biographer
of Daniel Webster.

" George Ticknor was the only child of his father's mar-
riage. His birthplace was a comfortable house in Essex
Street, at that time a delightful quarter of Boston, with great
elms shading it, but long ago rebuilt in business blocks. He
never attended a regular school, but was so well fitted under
the tuition of his scholarly father that he received a certificate
of admission to Dartmouth when he was only ten years old.
He actually entered at the age of fourteen, admitted as a
junior. Before he went to Hanover he had acquired a smat-
tering of French and Spanish from a tutor, and had studied
Greek a while with Ezekiel Webster, brother of Daniel
Webster, who had a private school near the Ticknor home ;
but it soon appeared that this pedagogue knew less of Greek
than the boy's father. After leaving college, he was put with
John Sylvester John Gardiner in Boston, to study the classics.
Mr. Gardiner received his pupils, as Mr. Ticknor has related,

226 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

'in his slippers and dressing gown/ Being older than the
other scholars, Ticknor was now about seventeen he was
often invited to join a circle of clever persons at choice little
suppers of which the rector was fond, and so began an agree-
able acquaintance with some of the brightest of the glowing
literary lights of the town.

"After nearly three years with Mr. Gardiner, Ticknor
took up law-reading, still continuing, however, his Greek and
Latin studies. He was admitted to the bar, and practiced for a
year, meeting his office expenses. Then he abandoned the law,
resolved to indulge his dominating desire for the pursuit of
letters. It was determined that he should go abroad for fur-
ther study, in those days a rare undertaking. In preparation
for this work he spent some months striving to acquaint
himself with foreign educational institutions, and particularly
with the German language. But such was then the literary
poverty of the country, as his biographer notes, that he was
obliged to seek a German text-book in one place, a dictionary
in another, and a grammar in a third, the last two very in-
different of their kind. These preliminary studies were carried
on in agreeable company. Every Saturday evening he was the
host of gay little gatherings in his study at his father's house,
composed of a rare set of ambitious young fellows among
them the brothers Everett, Alexander and Edward. At these
' Saturday evenings ' the company devoted two hours zealously
to reading and writing Latin, and finished off with a cheerful
supper. He finally sailed in the spring of 1815, and on the
same packet with him was Edward Everett, then a young man
of twenty -one, also making his first journey for foreign culture.
" Ticknor spent four years in Europe, years of rare experi-
ence for those days. He became proficient in the romantic
dialects of the Provencal speech. He made the acquaintance
of eminent scholars and literary men. He visited Sir Walter
Scott, who afterward wrote of him as ' a wondrous fellow for
romantic lore, and antiquarian research/ He formed a friend-

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 227

ship with Robert Southey, which ripened into intimate rela-
tions in correspondence after his return home. While yet
abroad, he was appointed to a new professorship of French
and Spanish Languages and Belles-Lettres in Harvard College.
In 1819 he assumed this chair, which he held for fifteen years.
He was married in 1821, to Anna Eliot. She was a daughter
of Samuel Eliot, a wealthy Boston merchant (founder, by the
way, of the Harvard chair of Greek literature) who had died
the previous year. Thereafter, with his wife's inheritance, and
the competence which he received from his own father, who
died some months before Mr. Eliot, he was enabled to live at
ease and pursue his favorite studies to the end of his days.

" Ticknor's history of Spanish literature was begun in
1840, after his return from a second sojourn in Europe.
During this visit he began collecting his library of Spanish
literature, which, with accessions subsequently made, became a
wonderful collection. Although his history was founded upon
his studies of the previous twenty years, the results of which
had been largely embodied in his Harvard lectures, everything
written in the lecture form was cast aside and the work begun
anew.- The sumptuous volumes made their first appearance
nine years later, in 1849. Before the manuscript was put into
type it was submitted to his fellow historian, Prescott, for
revision and correction, as Prescott had submitted his own
histories in the manuscript to Ticknor. Prescott heartily
commended the work, and this commendation was echoed by
leading reviewers when the volumes appeared. They were
received at home and abroad as a scholar's work. An English
edition was published in London by Murray simultaneously
with the appearance of the work here ; and subsequently
Spanish and German translations were published. Still
Ticknor went on accumulating material, revising, amending,
and elaborating the original work up to the close of his life ;
and the results appeared in the edition of 1863, < corrected and
enlarged,' published a year after his death.

228 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

"What became of his fine library? His Spanish and
Portuguese books were given to the Boston Public Library, of
which he was one of the chief founders. They constitute one
of the several valuable special libraries of that excellent insti-
tution. And in the Barton-Ticknor Room of the building is
Mr. Ticknor's great writing-table, which was the center-piece
of his < stately library/

" Of Ticknor's other literary production, the most impor-
tant and the most human was his ( Life of Prescott,' written
in his old age, between his sixty-eighth and seventy-first
years. This was preeminently a tribute to a treasured friend,
with whom he had been intimate from the time when they
were pupils of John Sylvester John Gardiner."

We naturally turned next toward the " Prescott house,"
only a short walk off down the westerly slope of Beacon
Street. Before leaving Park Street, however, I pointed out at
No. 4, now the publishing-house of Hough ton, Mifflin & Co.,
the old Quincy mansion, which was the winter home of the
elder Josiah Quincy (born 1772 died 1864), president of
Harvard College from 1829 to 1845, and its historian,
through the last seven years of his long and useful life, which
closed in his ninety-second year. Also, in No. 2, we saw the
last Boston home of John Lothrop Motley (born 1814 died
1877), the historian, which he occupied in 1868-1869, prior to
his appointment as Minister to England.

Our way down Beacon Street, along the line of favored
dwellings, favored by their beautiful setting, of the older
and statelier Boston type, carried us by other landmarks in
which Percy displayed the keenest interest. He was shown
the house in which Wendell Phillips (born 1811 died 1884)
was born, still standing on the lower corner of Beacon and
Walnut Streets ; while up Walnut Street, by the Chestnut-
Street opening, he saw Motley's boyhood home. As he gazed
at these spots, I whipped out my note-book, and gave him
this picture of a scene in the garret of the Motley home,

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON.

229

taken from Oliver Wendell Holmes's genial memoir of the
historian :

44 Mr. Motley's home was a very hospitable one, and Lothrop and two
of his young companions were allowed to carry out their schemes of
amusement in the garden and the garret. If one with a prescient glance
could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternon while our
century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have
found three boys in cloaks
and doublets and plumed
hats, heroes and bandits,
enacting more or less im-
promptu melodramas. In
one of the boys he would
have seen the embryo
dramatist of a nation's
life history, John Lothrop
Motley ; in the second, a
famous talker and wit,
who has spilled more good
things on the wasteful
air in conversation than
would carry a diner-out
through half a dozen Lon-
don seasons, and waked
up somewhat after the
usual flowering time of
authorship to find himself
a very agreeable and cor-
dially welcomed writer,
Thomas Gold Apple-
ton. In the third he would
have recognized a cham-
pion of liberty known
wherever that word is
spoken, an orator whom to hear is to revive all the traditions of the grace,
the address, the commanding sway of the silver-tongued eloquence of
the most renowned speakers, Wendell Phillips."

" These three neighborly boys," I chatted " continued their
close intimacy through school and college days, and their
friendship was lifelong. They were classmates at Harvard,

From Harper's Catalogue by permission,
"irper i Ki

Harper & Brother
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

pyright, 1899, by

230 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Motley and Appleton being room-mates. They were all of
strong New England blood. Phillips was of the family who
founded the Andover Academy. His father, John Phillips,
was long town advocate and public prosecutor of Boston, and
subsequently the first mayor, when the town became a city in
1822. Appleton's father was the liberal-minded merchant,
Nathan Appleton, one of the fathers of New England manu-
factures. Motley's father, Thomas Motley, also was a mer-
chant, one of that fine old school of commercial men * in whom
with the sagacity of the merchant was combined the manners
and the sentiments of the accomplished and genial gentleman/
as Edwin P. Whipple has so well phrased it.

" Phillips's contribution to our literature was altogether that
of the orator and the platform agitator ; yet he was an accom-
plished scholar and a master of diction. Choicest of his more
literary efforts was his lecture on < The Lost Arts/ a classic,
delivered hundreds of times, and each time with added graces.
Another, of rare felicity mixed with that biting satire which
marked his every public utterance, was his Phi Beta Kappa
address on 'The Scholar in a Republic/ delivered at Cam-
bridge, in 1881, at the fullness of his career. In his young
manhood, at the threshold of a promising professional life in
the law to which he was bred, he threw himself into the anti-
slavery struggle, and thenceforward devoted his talents and
means unreservedly to it. Unlike Garrison, he suffered none
of the hardships of poverty; but he sacrificed, almost with a
jocund air, an unquestioned social position and a life of
aristocratic ease to which he had been nurtured, for this unpop-
ular and despised cause. His home was always in Boston;
after his marriage in a house of his own, plain within as well
as without, in that old Essex Street where Ticknor was born,
till business changes in the quarter drove him from it to a
plainer house in a soberer street. His grave is in the old
bury ing-ground of Milton, beyond the outskirts of the city.
There he lies by the side of his wife, wfro, though a life-long

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 31

invalid, survived him. The two graves are marked by a
boulder thus simply inscribed, in accordance with his wish,
showing his chivalrous courtesy, in placing the wife's name
first:

Ann and Wendell Phillips,

Died April 24, 1886 February 2, 1884

Aged 73 Aged 73.

"Thomas Gold Appleton's (born 1812 died 1884) late
literary blossoms, to which Holmes alluded, appear in several
small volumes of essays, sketches and reminiscences of travel,
and verses. Among his numerous much-quoted sayings was
that mot, f Good Americans when they die go to Paris.' He
was a brother-in-law of Longfellow, and one of the closest
friends of the poet.

" Motley's greatest literary work, that which gave him his
rank among the first historians of his time, was done abroad,
where he lived through the larger part of his career. Only his
young manhood and a few scattered years of his mature life
were passed in Boston. Yet here his literary career began.
His earliest effusions, written while an undergraduate in his
teens, found place in the college journal, and in N. P. Willis's
slender Boston magazine. His efforts at novel writing, the
results of which were depressing, were aLso made here. The
first of these productions ' Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of
a Provincial,' failed, although its critics found evidence of
uncommon resources of mind in the author, and also of scholar-
ship. It was written soon after his marriage, in 1837, to
beautiful Mary Benjamin. She was one of the two engaging
sisters of Park Benjamin, afterward the New York editor,
poet, and lecturer, who was then living here in Boston and
editing Buckingham's New England Magazine. The second
novel, ' Merrymount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony/
which appeared six or eight years later, met only a slightly
better fate.

232 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

' Meanwhile, however, Motley was finding his field in
historical composition ; and in the mid-forties he made a begin-
ning in his Boston study, and in his summer house at Nahant,
on his history of the Dutch Republic. After some years of
work he saw that he must consult authorities which were only
to be found in the libraries and archives of Europe. So he
cast aside all that he had done here and began afresh there.
After ten years' labor in exhaustive research and composition,
' The Rise of the Dutch Republic/ the first work of the series,
was completed, and he went up to London with the bulky
manuscript in search of a publisher. But the London pub-
lishers were shy, and the work was finally ventured only at
the author's expense. Its success was immediate. It brought
him at once into the * full blaze of a great reputation,' and
firmly fixed his place in literature. This was in 1857. Four
years later the first two volumes of 'The History of the
United Netherlands ' appeared, increasing his fame ; and in
1868 the concluding volumes of the Netherlands. The l Life
and Death of John of Barneveld ' was his last and crowning
work.

" You know, of course, of Motley's long service as Ameri-
can minister to Austria through our Civil War, and of his
short career during the first year of President Grant's admin-
istration, as our minister to England. Yes, there was some
trouble attending the last mission ; and also the first one. He
was led to resign the Austrian post after six years' service,
through the course of President Johnson's administration
toward him, resulting from a political slander ; and he was
recalled from the English mission on the allegation that he
had been guilty of diplomatic indiscretions. His friends,
however, felt satisfied that the real occasion of this recall was
his close friendship with Senator Sumner, who was then in
controversy with the administration. Be the reasons for the
treatment of him in either, or both cases, just or unjust, it is
undeniable that his representation of the country in both posi-

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 233

tions was able, faithful, and dignified, and that it reflected
honorably upon our government.

" Motley's foreign life began in the early thirties, as a stu-
dent in the universities of Berlin and Gottingen. At the latter
he had as a fellow student Bismarck, with whom he became
intimate. The two lodged together shared their meals and
their outdoor exercises. He died abroad, and was buried in
Kensal Green Cemetery, near London, by the side of his wife,
who died also in England, three years before him. Both his
daughters married in England, the eldest becoming Lady Har-
court.

" His middle name of Lothrop ? That was a family name,
the name of his mother's family, one of the earliest in New
England, from which sprang learned New England clergymen
and men of affairs. His mother was distinguished for the
i charm of her serene and noble presence.' He, too, was a type
of manly beauty. In his youth he was thought to resemble
Byron, e though handsomer,' Wendell Phillips said."

We had now reached the Prescott house, No. 55, near the
foot of the Beacon-Street slope. This was most satisfying to
Percy, for here he saw a landmark but slightly changed in the
years since it acquired distinction. In its outward aspect it
was as in Prescott's day. A double-swell front of light-colored
brick, with pillared porch, and an air of quiet elegance, it
stood out among its fellows rather notably. Within; on the
entrance floor, was originally the historian's library-room,
which he had built on to the house, crowded to the ceiling with
rows of manuscript copies of Spanish State papers, and richly
bound volumes, some of them of incalculable value. Above
this room, reached from it through a secret door hidden among
the books, and up a winding staircase, was the working study,
where the partially blind scholar, rendered so by an accident
at college, toiled with his noctograph, or listened to his
secretary's reading of voluminous notes copied from the auto-
graphic despatches of the conquerors of Mexico aud Peru.

234

LITEBAEYf PILGRIM A GES.

In his day family and other portraits embellished the
library-room, and on the cornice appeared those "crossed
swords " to which Thackeray so graciously alludes in the
opening of " The Virginians." And I repeated the familiar
passage :

** On the library -wall of one of the most famous writers of America
there hang two crossed swords, which his relatives wore in the great war

HOME OF WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

of Independence. The one sword was gallantly drawn in the service of
the King, the other was the weapon of a brave and honored republican
soldier. The possessor of the harmless trophy has earned for himself a
name alike honored in his ancestors' country and in his own, where genius
like his has always a peaceful welcome."

They were the weapons borne by the ancestors of Prescott
and his wife on either side at the Battle of Bunker Hill : his
grandfather, Colonel Prescott, the American commander ; and

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 235

her grandfather, Captain Linzee, commander of the Falcon,
one of the British war-ships in the engagement.

" I should have liked to see those swords," Percy mused.

"You may see them, quite as Thackeray saw them," I
replied to his great gratification. And I told how they are
now displayed, crossed just as Prescott had arranged them, on
a wall in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
in another part of the city, to which they went after Prescott's
death.

Then we talked of the remarkable work accomplished in
this house, remarkable in its execution as in its substance,
since it was done, as was all that the historian did, under the
disadvantages of excessive bodily afflictions. This work em-
braced the composition of his "Conquest of Peru" and of the
three volumes of " Philip the Second " unfinished at his death,
" but not that which brought him his first fame," I explained,
observing that Percy was associating this house with all of
Prescott's literary achievements. " He was famous when he
moved here, in 1845, his i History of the Reign of Ferdinand
and Isabella ' having been out eight years, and his ' Conquest
of Mexico ' two years. The ' Peru ' and the < Philip Second/
indeed, added lustre to his reputation, but neither caused the
literary sensation which the first work of all produced. That
sensation was occasioned not by the greater excellence of the
1 Ferdinand and Isabella/ but by the publication of such a
work from such a source. The historian's near friend, William
H. Gardiner, son of his old rectory preceptor, Dr. Gardiner,
graphically tells the tale :

" * Mr. Prescott had acquired earlier no marked reputation as an
author. As a mere man of letters his substantial merits were known only
by a few intimate friends ; perhaps not fully appreciated by them. To
the public he was little known in any way. But he was a prodigious
favorite with whatever was most cultivated in the society of Boston.
Few men ever had so many warmly attached friends. . . . When, there-
fore, it came to be known that the same person who had so attracted by
an extraordinary combination of charming personal qualities was about to

236 L1TEEAEY PILGRIMAGES.

publish a book, and it was known only a very short time before the
book itself appeared, the fact excited the greatest surprise, curiosity,
and interest. The day of its appearance was looked forward to and
talked of. It came, and there was a perfect rush to get copies. A con-
vivial friend, for instance, who was far from being a man of letters,
indeed, a person who rarely read a book, got up early in the morning
and went to wait for the opening of the publisher's shop, so as to secure
the first copy. -It came out at Christmas [1837], and was at once adopted
as the fashionable Christmas and New Year's present of the season. No
one read it without surprise and delight. . . . Love of the author gave
the first impetus. That given, the extraordinary merits of the work did
all the rest.'

" In the market at large the sale of the book was astonish-
ingly rapid. In a few months more copies were sold than the
publisher's contract assumed could be disposed of in five years.
' A success so brilliant had never before been reached in so
short a time by any book of equal size and gravity on this side
of the Atlantic/ says Ticknor. It brought the author before
the public, as Webster grandiloquently expressed it, like i a
comet which had suddenly blazed out upon the world in full
splendor.' Its reception by the critics on both sides of the
ocean was hardly less marked than were the popular sales.

" This Beacon-Street house was identified with the last
fourteen years of the historian's life. His work here was pur-
sued through difficulties incident to his infirmities with the
same thoroughness, patience, and persistency that characterized
his earlier productions. His mode of writing was thus de-
scribed by one of his secretaries, in a letter to Ticknor :

" ' When he had decided upon the subjects to be discussed, or events
to be related in a particular chapter, he carefully read all that portion of
his authorities, in print and manuscript, bearing upon [them], . . . tak-
ing copious notes of each authority as he read, and marking the volume
and page of each statement for future reference. These notes I copied
in a large, legible hand, so that, at times, he could read them, though
more frequently I read them aloud to him, until he had impressed them
completely on his memory. After this had been accomplished he would
occupy several days in silently digesting this mental provender, balancing

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 237

the conflicting testimony of authorities, arranging the details of his narra-
tive, selecting his ornaments, rounding his periods, and moulding the
whole chapter in his mind, as an orator might prepare his speech. Many
of his best battle-scenes, he told me, he had composed while on horse-
back [when taking his exercise]. . . . When he had fully prepared his
chapter in mind, he began to dash it off with rapidity by the use of his
writing-case. . . . He was as cautious in correcting as he was rapid in
writing. Each word and sentence was carefully weighed and subjected to
the closest analysis. If found wanting in strength or beauty, it was
changed and turned till the exact expression required was found, when he
dictated the correction which was made by me on his manuscript. . . .
After the chapter had been thus carefully corrected I copied it in a large,
heavy, pike-staff hand, . . . and Mr. Prescott then re-perused and re-
corrected it. He then read again my copy of the original notes that he
had taken from the authorities on which he founded his chapter, and from
them prepared the remarks, quotations, and references found in his foot-
notes. These I copied, . . . and my copy was again and again carefully
scrutinized and corrected by him.'

" And then," I added, " when the matter was in type, and
before the plates were made, it was submitted to experts for
final inspection and correction."

Percy thought this the method of the true workman, and
the description of it heightened his respect for the historian.
Then he inquired as to that accident which caused the partial
blindness of Prescott ; and I related the story as follows, bas-
ing my account on the narration in Ticknor's Life.

"It was a singular accident. It happened in his junior
year at Harvard, when he was sixteen. One day in the Com-
mons Hall after dinner, when the college officers had left the
tables, some of the undergraduates indulged in rough frolick-
ing. Prescott had no part in the play, but hearing a disturb-
ance behind him as he was passing out of the hall, he turned
his head quickly and received a blow full in the open eye from
a crust of bread, flung at random by one of the frolickers. He
fell to the floor, and comrades immediately brought him to
his father's house here in Boston. He recovered in time suf-
ficiently to return to Cambridge and finish his course. But the

238

LITER A R Y PIL GRIM A OES.

eyesight was gone. About a year and a half afterward the
other eye became inflamed, and was attacked with acute rheu-
matism ; and this disease persecuted him through the remainder

of his life. Twice at
intervals after the first
attack it recurred in the
remaining eye, accom-
panied each time with
total blindness.

"Fortunately the
sightless eye did not mar
Prescott's face ; nor to
common observation was
any difference between
it and the remaining eye
perceptible. In personal
appearance and carriage
he was strikingly hand-
some. Ticknor sketches
him as 'tall, well formed,
manly in his bearing, yet
gentle, with light hair
that was hardly changed
or diminished by years,
a clear complexion and a
ruddy flush on his cheek
that kept for him to the
last an appearance of
comparative youth, but,
above all, with a smile that was the most absolutely conta-
gious ' his friend ever looked upon. No figure in the city's
streets attracted such < regard and good will from so many' as
his. He had many arid strong friendships with men of letters
abroad as in his own country. He died at sixty-two from
apoplexy, the fatal attack coming upon him in his library."

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 239

Of Prescott's other Boston homes, about which Percy nat-
urally inquired, I could only repeat the descriptions which
others have given, for all traces of them were long gone. So
I told of the immediate predecessor of this home in which he
lived for twenty years and more, where his literary work be-
gan, and where fame found him. That was the house of his
father, Judge Prescott, pictured as a fine old mansion behind
great trees. It stood on Bedford Street, easterly of the Com-
mon, in what is now a wholesale business quarter, thick with
business blocks. It had other associations which rendered it
especially dear to Prescott, for here he brought his bride, Susan
Amory, whom he married on his twenty-fourth birthday. And
in the self-same house, twenty-five years before, his bride's
mother, the daughter of that British sailor at Bunker Hill, had
been married. The {t crossed swords " were here first displayed
in the historian's study above his books.

Ketracing our steps a few paces, we took the short cross
street to Chestnut Street, running parallel with Beacon Street,
where a little way down on the southerly side we came to the
last Boston home of that other historian, whom John Fiske
has pronounced " the most deeply and peculiarly American of
all American historians, yet, at the same time, the broadest
and most cosmopolitan," - - Francis Parkman (born 1823 died
1893). This house was No. 50, backing nearly opposite the
rear of the Prescott house, which suggested to Percy a fitting
neighborliness of the two historians. But, as a matter of fact,
Prescott had been dead five years when Parkman moved here.
Parkman had, however, been living some years in this quarter,
on Walnut Street, where the boy Motley had lived ; and he
and Prescott had been near friends.

I pointed out, also, the similarity between their careers.
Both pursued their historical investigations in unworn fields.
Both worked with heroic fortitude and perseverance under the
hard conditions of physical infirmities. Both were remarkably
thorough in their preparation for the literary execution of their

240 . LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

histories, and exhaustive in their preliminary researches. Both
suffered impaired sight, and were obliged to depend much upon
others' eyes for their reading and in the composition of their
works.

This No. 50 Chestnut Street had for us especial attractions,
since it was Parkman's town house during the last twenty-nine
years of his life, when appeared all of the seven volumes con-

HOME OF- FRANCIS PARKMAN.

stituting his " France and England in North America,' 7 the
great work which he set out to accomplish before he left college.
They came in this order : Part I., " The Pioneers of France in the
New World," published in 1861, when he had lived here a year ;
Part II., " The Jesuits," in 1867 , Part III., " The Discovery of
the Great West," in 1869 ; Part IV., The Old Kegime," in
1874; Part V., Count Frontenac," in 1877; Part VII., "Mont-
calm and Wolfe," in 1884 ; and Part VI., A Half Century of
Conflict," in 1892. The break in chronological sequence by

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 241

the publication of Part VII. before Part VI. was due to Park-
man's wish to make sure of the final chapters, the climax of the
story, and his fear that he might not live to complete it. Hap-
pily, however, this fear was not realized. The completing
link Part VI. was finished some months before his death,
which occurred shortly after his seventieth birthday.

Of the interior of this house in Parkman's day, and particu-
larly of the historian's study, his biographer, Charles Haight
Jfarnum, has given a charming sketch (and I read from my note-
book) :

**.... A twilight house of subdued colors, simply furnished with
heirlooms, and full of the peace and comfort derived from good house-
keeping and a quiet spirit. Daring the last years of his life, when his
lameness was very troublesome, he mounted to his study on the third
floor by an elevator which he could operate by the power of his own arms.
The room had a subdued light from two windows facing the north. An
open stove with a soft-coal fire cast a glow into the shadows ; two of the
walls were covered with bookshelves, the others with engraved portraits of
historic persons. On the mantel stood some of Barye's statuettes of ani-
mals, and on the wall were a few Indian relics he had brought from
the Oregon Trail. ... It was simply a writer's workshop, without any
luxurious or ornamental appointment. He did not approve of large col-
lections of books in private houses, because of the trouble they give, and
because such sources of information should be accessible to students in
public libraries. His collection consisted of about twenty-five hundred
volumes, which he bequeathed to Harvard College ; some of these were in-
herited from his father. The chief feature of his library was his collection
of manuscripts, which far outweighed in value all the other works. Next
in importance was a collection of eighty-nine maps, and about fifteen
hundred works relating to his historic labors. All these are now kept
together in Harvard College library as the ' Parkman Collection.' "

Parkman's methods of work in his study are described by
the same competent hand, and I gave Percy this condensation
of the detailed statement, which he contrasted with that of
Prescott's methods :

"In beginning a volume he had all the documents concerning it read
to him, the first time for the chief features of the subject. While this

242 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

reading was in progress he made, now and then, a short note, or walked
over from his shady corner to where the reader sat in the light, to mark a
passage for future reference. . . . He could not listen to this reading for
more than an hour or two per day in even his best health, and with the
help of frequent rests, requiring in the reader a quiet manner, a low voice,
and a slow pace. . . . Then came a second reading, during which he
noted accessory matters and details of the story ; and sometimes a third
examination was needed of portions of his great mass of documents. By
this slow method he acquired perfect possession of the materials needed
for a volume. He then set to work at composition, always finishing one
volume before touching another. . . . "When it came to writing or dictat-
ing the book, he had each day's production already arranged, probably
some of it composed and memorized. He dictated at a moderate pace
sometimes holding a few notes in his hand without hesitation and with
a degree of finish seldom requiring any correction. At the close of the
morning he would listen to what had been written down, and make neces-
sary changes. During the day he would look over the composition, for he
never failed to verify his citations and authorities himself, or to paste with
his own hand his notes on the bottom of the pages. ... As the sensitive-
ness of his eyes often made it impossible for him to look at paper while
writing, he caused to be constructed what he called his ' gridiron ' [a
wooden frame of the size and shape of a sheet of letter paper, with stout
wires fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, and a movable back
of thick pasteboard fitted behind them : the paper for writing was placed
between the pasteboard and the wires, guided by which, and using a black
lead crayon, he could write with closed eyes]. During the last few years
of his life his eyes allowed him to write out quite freely for short periods
of time. Thus he was able to write out by himself, with pencil on orange-
colored paper, the greater part of his ' Half Century ' and ' Montcalm and
Wolfe.' "

Parkman's "birthplace, I remarked in passing, was also in
this old West End region, within perhaps fifteen minutes walk
of this Chestnut-Street house. The house is still standing, on
Allston Street, named for the artist Washington Allston,
on the northerly slope of the hill. Percy straightway wished
to be led to it, but I checked his ardor, since it was out of our
present route. Nor was it much of a landmark, I added, for
the Parkmans lived there only a few years after Parkman's
birth. However, it is well preserved and not unattractive,

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 243

and is worth at least a glance, although in a neighborhood
long past the " genteel " period. "A finer sight," I said,
" would have been the house in the same neighborhood where
much of Parkman's youth was spent. That was an ample and
stately mansion, built by Samuel Parkman, his paternal grand-
father, which, with its deep front yard and rear terraced gar-
den, once embellished the now shabby corner of Bowdoin Square
and Chardon Street. It disappeared in the early sixties, after
its degradation to unlovely trade uses. It was the fortune of
this grandfather, by the way, ' patiently acquired in the wise
fashion of those days/ as Lowell has written, which ' would
have secured for his grandson a life of lettered ease had he not
made the nobler choice of spending it in strenuous literary
labor.' "

This remark led to talk of Parkman's lineage, and I ob-
served : " He was strong in other ancestors. His paternal
great-grandfather, Ebenezer Parkman, grandson of the first
Parkman in the colony (he was Elias, settled in Dorchester,
now part of Boston, in 1633), was the first minister of the
Massachusetts town of Westborough and a man of note. He
held this charge for fifty-eight years, and during all that period
kept chronicles of his time, as well as a diary, marked by quaint
humor. One of his entries was on the death of his slave
' Marco ' : ' Dark as it has been with us, it became much darker
about the sun-setting : the sun of Marco's life Sat.' His third
son was * the boy of thirteen who at Ticonderoga, in 1758, car-
ried a musket in a Massachusetts regiment, and kept in his
knapsack a dingy little notebook in which he jotted down what
passed each day,' as Parkman mentions in his ' Montcalm and
Wolfe.' Another son served in the Revolution.

" The sixth son was Parkman's grandfather. Samuel Park-
man came to Boston a poor boy to make his fortune ; and he
made it, becoming one of the richest men of the town. His
son, the historian's father, was the Rev. Francis Parkman, min-
ister for thirty-six years, till his death in 1849, of the New

244

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

North Church of Boston. Of this church Parkman's great-
great-grandfather William, the father of the Rev. Ebenezer
was one of the original members, in 1712, and afterward a
ruling elder ; and Samuel Parkman was deacon there for
twenty-three years. The old meeting-house is yet standing in
the North End, transformed into a Catholic church.

" In the maternal line Parkman traced back to the famous
Rev. John Cotton, being in direct lineage from Cotton's son,
the Kev. Rowland Cotton of Plymouth. His maternal grand-
father was the Rev.
Edward Brooks, of
the distinguished old
Medford family of
that name, who on the
nineteenth of April,
1775, ( went over to
Lexington on horse-
back with his gun on
his shoulder, and in
his full-bottomed wig. ?
" Parkman was a
Bostonian of Bostoni-
ans, for his father and
his great-grandfather
were born here, and
his grandfather's ac-
tive life was identified
FRANCIS PARKMAN. with the town. He

was bred for the law, and faithfully took the Harvard Law
School course, after his graduation from the college in 1844, to
please his father ; but he never practiced. He began in boy-
hood to prepare for the work of his life, unconsciously at the
start. While in college his vacations were spent in extended
expeditions into regions of which afterward he wrote. On one
of these expeditions he followed the trail of Rogers the Ranger

A DAY ABOUT BOSTON. 245

in his retreat from Lake Memphremagog to the Connecticut
River in 1759, as he mentions in a note in his < Montcalm and
Wolfe.' On another he journeyed to the mouth of the Magal-
loway River into a region hitherto untrodden save by the foot
of the hunter. In his senior year he went abroad, primarily
for his health, but took the opportunity to spend several days
in a ( retreat J of Passionate Fathers in Rome, thus gaining a
view of clerical machinery which helped him later in portray-
ing some of the actions of his histories.

" Two years after graduation he made a remarkable expe-
dition to the Rocky Mountains, and spent several weeks in a
village of the Dakota or Sioux tribe, then thorough savages,
living as one of the family in the lodge of the principal chief.
He took part in an excursion with his Indian friends beyond
the Black Hills to hunt the buffalo and cut lodge-poles. On
this western journey he also became familiar with the life of
the trapper, the hunter, and the Canadian voyageur. The
knowledge thus gained enabled him in his books to picture the
Indian as a living thing, and to infuse, actuality into his stories
of border warfare.

" But it was acquired through exposure and hardships, at
the expense of his health, impaired earlier by over-exertion in
the college gymnasium. Then followed the increasing weak-
ness of his eyes, first injured in studying by candle-light in the
early mornings while at the Law School, when, in addition to
his legal studies, he pursued general history, Indian history
and ethnology, and models of English style, having secretly
in view his historical writings. Upon his return from the
West his health was so shattered that he was obliged to go to
a water-cure establishment in Brattleborough, Vermont ; and
there he dictated a record of the expedition to his companion
on it, his cousin Quincy A. Shaw.

" This was his ' The Oregon trail ; or, A Summer Journey
Out of Bounds.' It was published first as a serial in the
Knickerbocker Magazine, in 1847. It appeared in book form

246 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

two years later, and in course of time took its place as one of
the most popular stories of travel. Meanwhile, in 1848, he
began his first historical work, the ' History of the Conspiracy
of Pontiac/ and through much suffering managed to complete
it two and a half years later. Its publication in 1851 first
gave him rank as a historian.

" In 1856 Parkman published his first and only work of
fiction. This was l Vassal Morton,' which, like Motley's first
novel, fell flat. For the next half dozen or more years his
physical condition made literary work impossible. Accordingly
he devoted himself to horticulture at the rural country seat
which he had established in 1854 beside Jamaica Pond, then
on the outskirts of the city. This avocation was pursued with
such ardor and skill that he introduced to the country many
attractive plants, among them new varieties of the lily and the
poppy. Subsequently he wrote one of the most useful books
on the rose and its cultivation. His success in this field also
led to his appointment to the professorship of horticulture in
Harvard University.

" Although it was fully nine years after the appearance of
his novel when he was enabled to publish the initial volume
of his histories, the purpose to do honest historical writing
was never off his mind. In spite of all the hindrances inci-
dent upon ill health, his material was gathered with pains-
taking care. Every theme which he treated was studied on
its own ground.

" In Canada the histories as they appeared excited enthu-
siasm. McGill University of Montreal gave him his LL.D.
ten years before Harvard conferred similar honor upon him.
In Quebec a new township was named for him, and his por-
trait was placed in the Library of Parliament at Ottawa."

XV.

OVER BEACON HILL.

Home of Richard H. Dana, the poet. Story of his publication of Bry-
ant's " Thanatopsis." The younger Dana. Arlo Bates. Henry
Child Merwin. Cyrus A. Bartol. Charles Francis Adams, senior.
T. B. Aldrich's hill homes. William Ellery Charming and his
work. Margaret Deland. William D. Howells. The Alcotts.
Pinckney Street. Origin of "The Hanging of the Crane." Homes
of George S. Hillard, Edwin P. Whipple, Edwin D. Mead, Louise
Imogen Guiuey. The poet Parsons.

CROSSING to the other side of Chestnut Street I pointed to
the house numbered 43, where once lived the poet Richard
Henry Dana (born 1787 died 1876).

"Oh, no," I corrected my friend, "he was not the Dana
who wrote 'Two Years Befor'e the Mast. ? So your father
thinks that a fine book ? He shows his appreciation of good
work. You're mixing the Danas up. The poet Dana was
the father of the sailor-story Dana. The poet was that Dana
who wrote the ' Buccaneer ' away back in the twenties, which,
on its re-appearance on the other side of the Atlantic, Chris-
topher North compared favorably with Old Grimes ' of Crabbe,
the ' Peter Bell ' of Wordsworth, and < The Ancient Mariner '
of Coleridge. His was The Idle Man, that unique little
periodical, also of the twenties, to which Bryant and other
poetical lights of that day contributed, while he wrote most of
the prose. It started in 1826 and ran through only six num-
bers, then stopped for lack of patronage. Its owner had ac-
quired in the venture ' the experience, not uncommon in i/he
higher walks of American literature/ as Duyckinck well put
it, f that if an author would write as a poet and philosopher,

247

248 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

and publish as a gentleman, he must pay as well as compose/
Things have changed somewhat since that day."

Then I told of Dana's occupancy of this house for more
than forty years, and of his death here at the advanced age of
ninety-one, the last of his contemporaries. I tried to picture
the interior of the house in his time. The atmosphere of
books breathed less of the literary workshop than of the
serene abode of the leisurely man of letters. The walls of the
various rooms were hung with paintings by Allston, who was
Dana's brother-in-law through his second wife, and cousin
through his first marriage. Among other portraits was one of
Dana's father, Chief Justice Dana, in gown and bands. There
was a smaller one of the poet himself, by William M. Hunt.
In the library stood a bust of Allston.

"The work that brought Dana his fame," I observed,
"was mostly accomplished before be came to this house,
although he was then under fifty. His first book which in-
cluded 'the Buccaneer/ was published in 1827; his second,
repeating his poems with some of his prose writings added, in
1833. That was two years before this became his city home.
During his first ten years here he was delivering his scholarly
lectures on Shakspere's characters, about the country and in
the colleges. His collected works in two volumes came out
in 1850, almost thirty years before the close of his life, and
proved to be his last publication. It is a melancholy fact that,
of Dana's various literary ventures, only the Shakspere lectures
were remunerative ; nor were they really popular. And yet,
as was remarked after Ms death, the critics almost uniformly
placed a high value on them as contributions to the intellectual
wealth of the country. It was simply that the community
was then not up to their standard."

Speaking of Bryant in connection with The Idle Man, re-
minded me of the circumstances of the first publication of his
" Thanatopsis," which he composed in his nineteenth year.
So I related it in this wise, adopting a version given after

OVER BEACON HILL. 249

Dana's death, and differing, somewhat, from the earlier ac-
count.

" Dana was one of the club of gentlemen who, about 1814,
succeeded Tudor in the North American Review, and he became
associated with his cousin, Edward T. Channing, in editing it.
One day Willard Phillips, a member of the club, who after-
ward became a judge of probate, brought to the editor's room
several poems, some of which, he said, were written by a
young friend of his in the country named Bryant. One was
'Thanatopsis/ and another <The Fragment/ subsequently re-
named ' The Entrance to a Wood/ Both Dana and Channing
were struck with these poems, particularly the ' Thanatopsis ' ;
and Dana declared that no author on this side of the Atlantic
could have written them. They must have been written by a
poet of experience, he said. Phillips then intimated that
young Bryant wrote ' The Fragment/ and his father the
' Thanatopsis.' Thereupon Dana pronounced both poems
admirable, but said that the father was the greater of the two
men. 'Thanatopsis' was published in the North American
of November, 1817, and ' The Fragment' later, the author
receiving no compensation for either.

"Some time afterward, hearing that the elder Bryant was a
member of the State Senate, Dana walked over from Cam-
bridge, where he was then living, to the Boston State House
to make the " new poet's " acquaintance. He found a man of
affairs, strong, clear, decided, but not one of sentiment; and
a few minutes' conversation satisfied him that the senator
could not have written such a poem as ' Thanatopsis.' After
this interview it was admitted that the first statement was cor-
rect that the young man wrote both poems.

" The publication of these verses," I added as a sequel to
this story, " brought Bryant the invitation to deliver the Phi
Beta Kappa poem at Cambridge in 1821 ; and ' The Ages ' was
the result. On this occasion he was Dana's guest in Cam-
bridge. While there he prepared a new edition of his poems

250 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

written up to that time, and it was then that he changed
< Thanatopsis ' to the form to which it afterward held. The
intimacy thus begun between the two poets continued through
life, maintained by frequent exchange of visits and a regu-
lar correspondence. Bryant, when an editor, in his turn
published Dana's earlier poems. These were ' The Dying
Raven,' and 'The Husband and Wife's Grave,' which first
appeared in the New York Review and Athenceun Magazine
in 1825.

"Dana was a high-bred American," I concluded. "His
grandfather, Richard Dana, was a distinguished lawyer, and
leader on the American side in the Revolutionary period.
His father, Francis Dana, was secretary of legation to France
with John Adams, commissioner to Russia later in the Revolu-
tion, and afterward chief justice of the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts. His mother was a daughter of William Ellery
of Rhode Island, a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
another daughter of whom became the mother of William
Ellery Channing. Dana was born in Cambridge, and spent
his early youth in Newport. He was at Harvard in the class
of 1808. Although trained for the law, he soon became
convinced that he was unfitted for legal life ; thereupon he
took up literature seriously as his profession. He gradually
withdrew from the active world after the early death of his
wife. Seclusion and natural scenery were always his choice.
Throughout his mature life he spent large portions of each
year by the seashore, at first in his cottage at Nahant ; then at
his < old gray mansion ' on the bluff at Manchester-by-the-sea.
He never crossed the ocean."

The second Richard H. Dana (born 1815 died 1882), he
of the " Two Years Before the Mast," lived for a time in
Boston, but he was longest identified with Cambridge. At
this point, however, we drifted into talk of his work. Taking
up the story, I told how " Two Years Before the Mast " was
written from a journal of his experiences and observations

OVER BEACON HILL. 251

which he kept during a voyage around Cape Horn to the
western coast and back in the late thirties.

" The voyage," my narrative ran, " was in a Boston brig on
which, in a spirit of adventure, Dana had shipped as a com-
mon sailor, a sea voyage having been prescribed for him when
an undergraduate at Cambridge, on account of some trouble with
his eyes. The book gave a true account of a sailor's life in the
golden days of the merchant marine in a style fresh and
animated. But it was rejected by publisher after publisher,
till Dana finally sold it to the Harpers for a pittance of two
hundred and fifty dollars. Its success was immediate, and it
proved a little mine to its publishers, the sales being continu-
ous for years. It was republished in England, translated into
various languages, adopted by the British Admiralty Board for
distribution in the English navy, and became as popular in the
forecastle as in the libraries ashore. Nearly thirty years after
its first appearance, Dana having prudently reserved the copy-
right in his own name, the book was issued in a new edition
with an additional chapter, < Twenty-four Years After. 7 This
met a reception almost as flattering as the first one." I spoke
also ,of Dana's " The Seaman's Friend," republished in Eng-
land as " The Seaman's Manual," which followed close upon
the first successes of "Before the Mast," and took similar
rank, although it was not so popular.

" Dana wrote other notable things," I added, " and became
an authoritative writer on international law; but this first
book gave him his lasting popular fame. His ' To Cuba and
Back,' published in 1859, was in the same felicitous style. He
shone in the profession of law which his father abandoned,
although his tastes were strong for literature. He became a
foremost advocate especially in admiralty cases. In the early
years of his practice he was a i Conscience Whig ' and a l Free
Soiler,' and defended the fugitive slaves Simms and Burns
and the rescuers of Shadrac, another fugitive slave, here in
Boston. Unlike his father he was an extensive traveler

252 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

abroad. He died suddenly in Rome, from pneumonia, and
was buried in the cemetery at Porte Pia near the graves of
Keats and Shelley."

Directing Percy's attention down the street, I pointed
toward a snug, old-style house facing a cross street West
Cedar Street, by name which I told him was the home of
Arlo Bates (born in East Machias, Me., 1850-) novelist and
poet, best known, perhaps, by his " The Philistines," " The
Puritans," and " Under the Beech Tree." " Nearby, on West
Cedar Street, in a quainter row of houses (No. 3)," I added,
" lives Henry Childs Merwin (born in Pittsfield, Mass., 1853 ),
one of the small group of high ranking modern American essay-
ists, a master of English, some of whose best work is seen in
his rugged essays on * Tammany/ his terse biographical studies
of Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, and his * Road, Track,
and Stable,' which brings the American horse to the fore."

Now we resumed our walk, passing up Chestnut Street,
and in a few moments were before No. 17, the long-time home
of Cyrus A. Bartol (born 1813 died 1900), the preacher and
essayist, whose portrait-eulogies of contemporaries, delicate,
subtle, keen, have been called the finest work of this kind yet
done in America. This quaint house, high set, with broad old-
fashioned faqade, and antique entrance door flanked by four
slender pillars, Percy declared to be unique among the choice
old dwellings of the neighborhood. An atmosphere of great
comfort and serenity pervaded the interior. From the broad,
deep entrance hall, with antique furnishings, a stately stair-
case ascended. On the second floor was the study, a sunny
room, with books and pictures and wide open fireplace set with
ancient andirons. Other ample rooms open from the halls,
on the walls of which hung paintings by Dr. Bartol's artist
daughter.

It was all most interesting to Percy when he had gathered
the full story of the house : that Dr. Bartol had occupied it as
his city home from near the beginning of his ministry back in

OVER BEACON HILL. ' 258

1836, till his death at eighty-seven ; that here he found his
wife, whom he married in 1838, the estimable woman con-
nected by blood or marriage with " three worshipping genera-
tions, and with as many ministers " of the old West Church in
Boston, which was his own pulpit from 1837, first as colleague
then as successor of Charles Lowell, father of the poet Lowell.
In the sunny study here was done most of the work which has
given Bartol his peculiar place in our literature, books of
essays mainly, of a style quite his own, dazzling in illustra-
tion and metaphor, issued at intervals through a period
of thirty years. Percy here learned that Dr. Bartol came
from Maine, where he was born in the little seaport town of
Freeport, was a schoolboy at Portland, and a student at
Bowdoin, graduating in 1832. Then he came to Harvard, arid
his life-long identification with Boston began a few years
after his graduation from the Divinity School in 1835. He
was the last of the famous group of Boston transcendentalists.

A house next to Dr. Bartol's was pointed out as the meeting-
place of the Boston Radical Club, in the sixties and seventies,
of which for a time Emerson and others of his kind were
shining lights. And in this same house earlier lived for a few
years Mrs. Julia Ward Howe before she had written that stir-
ring war-lyric The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

At the head of Chestnut Street we turned into Walnut
Street, and so crossed up to Mt. Vernon, the next 'hill-street
parallel with Beacon. And here, taking the downward slope,
we passed in review a succesion of literary landmarks. In the
line of London-like dwellings on the north side, with deep
front yards separating them from the public walk, the upper-
most (No. 57) first claimed attention. For this was long the
town house of Charles Francis Adams, senior (born 1807 -
died 1886), son of one President of the United States and
grandson of another. It was not, however, so distinctively a
literary beacon as the others, for the work which Mr. Adams
did in literature, the editing of the Diary and the ten

254 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

volumes of the works of his grandfather, President John
Adams, and the Letters of his grandmother, Abigail Adams,
with his memoir of her, was done, for the most part, at the
ancestral seat in Quincy. Still, as associated somewhat inti-
mately with his career in statesmanship, it was interesting.

Mr. Adams died in this house, I remarked. He had reached
his eightieth year, but his public career had closed fourteen
years before with the accomplishment of the Geneva Award,
which fitly followed upon his estimable service as American
minister to England during the Civil War. And I mentioned,
by the way, that he was a native of Boston, born eighteen years
before his father became President. His birthplace was a little
mansion which stood where now is the Hotel Touraine at the
corner of Tremont and Boylston streets ; and he was baptized
by Ralph Waldo Emerson's father.

The next house below (No. 55), with its classic entrance
door, was most engaging to Percy when he was told that this
was Thomas Bailey Aldrich's city home. Seldom, he thought,
had poet been more happily lodged. The house seemed to him
a poetically fit successor to the poet's boyhood home in his
grandfather's mansion down in Portsmouth. Inside the prom-
ise of the exterior was fulfilled. The library, from floor to
ceiling lined with books, some of rare editions, some in exquisite
bindings, with the poet's desk of antique pattern in a comforta-
ble corner, was on the drawing-room, or second, floor. Off from
the deep entrance-hall opened the hospitable dining-room whose
walls might tell of many a dainty feast, and sparkling table-
talk, about the mahogany of the gracious and- cheery host.

" What of Aldrich's published works have been written in
this house it is hard to tell," I replied to Percy's questions,
" for he has often published long after he has composed. His
habit of holding a poem or a story till it is fashioned quite to
his satisfaction is one of his most marked characteristics. Once
he was asked by the managing editor of a daily newspaper to
write an editorial article for the next morning's issue, upon an

OVER BEACON HILL. 255

eminent man of letters and intimate contemporary of his, who
had just died. He could not possibly do it, he protested. It
was hopeless for him to attempt to write within a definite time-
limit. Nor could he let an article go from his hands till he
had worked it out thoroughly. < Why,' he exclaimed, taking
a manuscript page from a pigeon-hole of his desk, ' here's a
poem I wrote I can't say how long ago, and I've been hold-
ing it tili the right word comes to me in place of one

HOME OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, BOSTON.
(Former Town Home of Charles Francis Adarns, Senior, at the Right.)

which is not right. When that word comes I'll let the little
thing go/

" George Parsons Lathrop has related that when Aldrich
was once invited to write something for a soldier's reunion, he
declined because he could not stir himself up to the occasion ;
but the very day after the reunion, the strain being relaxed and
the mood coining, he wrote the tender war-eulogy ' Spring in
New England/ which appears in his volume { Flower and

256

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Thorn.' Another illustration of his moods Lathrop has given
in repeating this whimsical remark of his : ' I've got a story
under way that promises well. But just as my people were in
the midst of a flourishing conversation they stopped. No one
of them would say a thing, and there they sit, while I've been

kept waiting a couple

of weeks for the next
speech ! '

" Aldrich's mode of
work is not methodi-
cal. That is, he is not
like those prosaic souls
who can sit them-
selves down to their
desks at a given hour
and minute each day,
and write till a given
hour and minute, pro-
ducing a given num-
ber of thousand words
with irritating regu-
larity. He writes as
his mood is, sometimes
one part of the day,
sometimes another,
producing more or less
as the spirit moves.
So he is never careless
always exquisite in form and

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

It is

in his workmanship,
finish."

The last house in this row of dwellings was identified with
William Ellery Channing (born 1760 died 1842), it having
been the home of that remarkable man during the latter years
of his life. As we tarried before it Percy followed, evidently
with keen interest, the sketch I outlined of the great divine's

OVER BEACON HILL.

i n> tf7 ^7 ^

258

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

career and the manner of his work which made so strong an
impression and exerted so wide an influence upon his time.

" Channing's Boston home," I related, " was the Mecca of
all sorts and conditions of men. He was accessible to all
comers. Young men, poor men, unknown men, it has been
said, could visit him, and ' find him as ready to talk with them

as with the Euro-
pean savants and
British noblemen,
who, so soon as they
landed in Boston,
would find their
way' to his study.
Slight of frame, fra-
gile, from his young
manhood never en-
joying a full day of
unimpaired vigor, he
pursued his work
with unflagging con-
stancy. Here is the
story of an average
day of his Boston
life," and I read
from my note-book

HOME OF WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. .. i

the following conden-
sation which I had made from the pages of the biography of
him by his eminent nephew, Willfam Henry Channing :

" ' The sun is just rising, and the fires are scarcely lighted, when, with
rapid step, Dr. Channing enters his study. He has been wakeful during
many hours, his brain teeming, and, under the excitement of his morning
bath, he longs to use the earliest moments for work. . . . His first act is
to write down the thoughts which have been given in his vigils ; next, he
reads a chapter or more in Griesbach's edition of the Greek Testament ;
and after a quick glance over the newspapers of the day, he takes his

OVER BEACON HILL. 259

light repast. Morning prayers follow, and then he retires to his study-
table.

" 'If he is reading, you will at once notice this peculiarity, that he
studies pen in hand, and that his book is crowded with folded sheets of
paper, which continually multiply, as trains of thought are suggested.
These notes are rarely quotations, but chiefly questions and answers,
qualifications, condensed statements, germs of interesting views; and
when the volume is finished, they are carefully selected, arranged, and
under distinct heads, placed among other papers in a secretary. If he is
writing, unless making preparation for the pulpit or for publication, the
same process of accumulating notes is continued, which, at the end of
each day, or week, are also filed. . . . When a topic is to be treated at
length . . . these notes are consulted, . . . and then, with treasures of
memory orderly arranged, Dr. Channing fuses and recasts his gathered
ores under the warm impulse of the moment. . . . With flying pen he
makes a rough draft of all he intends to say, on sheets of paper folded
lengthwise, leaving half of each page bare. He then reads over what he
has written, and in the vacant half page supplies defects, strikes out
redundances, indicates the needed qualifications, modifies expressions.
Thus sure of his thought and aims, and conscientiously prepared, he
abandons himself to the ardor of composition. . . .

'* ' By noon Dr. Channing's power of study and writing is spent and
he seeks the fresh air. . . . After dinner he lies for a time upon the sofa,
and walks again, or drives into the country. Sunset ... he keeps as a holy
season, looking from upper windows which command wide prospects. . . .
During the winter twilight he likes to be silent and alone. After tea he
usually listens for an hour or more to reading. . . . Then guests come in,
strangers to be introduced, earnest reformers seeking his sympathy or
advice, familiar acquaintances with interesting topics of the day. . . . On
other occasions a party of select friends gather in his rooms by invitation,
for the purpose of unfolding some great subject of speculative or practical
interest, not in the way of discussion so much as colloquy.'

" Dr. Bartol, his intimate friend and near neighbor (Dr. Bar-
toPs Chestnut-Street estate opened, at the rear, nearly opposite
Channing's house), pictures him during his later years, in figure
short, slender, thin with ' scarce more than a hundred pounds
of flesh' clothing * in him the informing soul.' When he went
out he was obliged to wrap his weak chest in many a covering
against the damp and cold, and he was often only able to pace

260 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

up and down on the sidewalk before his dwelling in the sun,
till his slowly moving form became one of the sights of Bos-
ton.' A quainter picture is this by Longfellow, ' He wears a
blue camlet wrapper, silver-bowed spectacles, a shawl round his
neck, and an enormous hat, coming down over his eyes.'

" Channing lost his health through his ascetic practices and
his passion for study, when tutor of a group of boys in a family
at Richmond, Va., just after his graduation from Harvard, in
his nineteenth year (1798). According to his biographer, he
was absorbed in teaching through the day, and passed most of
the night in study, usually remaining at his desk till two or
three o'clock in the morning, and sometimes till daylight.
Meanwhile, to the end that he might overcome effeminacy,
after the manner of the Stoics, he accustomed himself to sleep
on the bare floor, and would spring up at any hour of waking
to walk about in the cold. With the same purpose, he made
experiments in diet and was rigidly abstemious, while he ne-
glected exercise for too close application. Thus an originally
fine constitution was broken, and from that time till his death
he was battling against disease.

" He came to Boston in 1803 and early made his pulpit in
the old Federal Street church, widely famous through his won-
derful preaching, which displayed unusual independence of
mind for that day, lofty purposes, and ripe scholarship. His
church was always crowded, and to 'hear Channing preach'
became one of the chief attractions of the town to visiting
strangers. His voice was marvelous. Bartol has described it
as having 'more in it of the violin than the flute, yet with
liquid notes such as Wilhelmj or Joachim can fetch from the
strings, and with an habitual rising inflection, rather than ca-
dence, at the end of the sentence, which seemed to raise every
hearer to the skies. It melted and resounded, was clear when
it whispered, and a clarion when it rang.'

" He was first brought into general notice throughout the
country by his published anti-war sermons in 1812-'1G. Sub-

OVER BEACON HILL. 261

sequently his reviews and other contributions to literature ex-
tended his reputation among literary men abroad. On all
questions and reforms which accorded with his principles he
was outspoken, unmoved by popular applause or criticism. He
died at Bennington, Vt., while on a journey for his health, after
a service of nearly forty years in his Boston pulpit, and was
buried at Mount Auburn, in Cambridge. The monument over
his grave, which his church erected, was designed by Washing-
ton Allston (whose first wife was Channing's sister Ann), and
George Ticknor wrote the inscription for it. This records him as
' honored throughout Christendom for his eloquence and cour-
age in maintaining and advancing the Great Causes of Truth,
Keligion, and Human Freedom.'

Channing was also closely identified with Newport, Rhode
Island, his birthplace. There he spent most of his summers,
and his love for the old sea-side town was constant throughout
his life.

Crossing to the opposite side of the street, we took a look
at the house numbered 57, the home of Margaret Deland
(born 1857 ) whose reputation in the modern literary world
was established by her first novel " John Ward, Preacher."
This house attracted Percy's attention before he understood
that it was a landmark on our list, from the peculiar fashion
of its faqade. The long windows extending across the entire
front at the first story, and the glass extension along the roof
line, betokened, he thought, an artist's home ; and the refine-
ment of its setting, a prosperous artist's home. And when he
learned whose house it was, he remarked gallantly that his
surmise was correct, for Mrs. Deland is an artist of the pen
instead of the brush. He confessed that he had not himself
read her stories, but he had heard his father (who, as they
say in England, "took in " the Atlantic) speak of her work as
superior ; and surely his father ought to know for he was the
president of a reading-club at home. I explained that the
expanse of windows was to open the house to the sunlight

262 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

and to cheer the indoor gardens, for Mrs. Deland is an ardent
cultivator of flowers, especially of jonquils, of which it has
been her custom to give exhibitions and sales in their blossom-

Reproduced by permission of Harper & Brothers.
MARGARET DELAND.

ing season, for the benefit of some charity or philanthropic
mission.

" This is Mrs. Deland's town home," I remarked. " The
open seasons are spent in her country home in Kennebunkport,

OVER BEACON HILL.

263

Maine. There a considerable portion of her later work has
been composed, but it has generally been finally shaped for
publication in her work-room here. Although her topics are
New England ones, she is not a New Englander. She was
born in Pennsylvania, educated in New York, and only came
to New England in her maturity. She was born Margaret

MARGARET DELANO'S LIBRARY.

Wade Campbell. Her father was a merchant in Allegheny,
her mother a daughter of a United States army officer. Both
parents died when she was a child, and she was brought up
in an uncle's family. She was a school girl at ' Pelham's
Priory/ an English-like boarding school at New Rochelle,
New York, and later studied designing in the Cooper Union,
New York City.

"It was not until after her removal to Boston, and she

264 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

had become Mrs. Deland, that her first appearance in litera-
ture was made, and this was with a volume of poems. It was
< The Old Garden and Other Verses,' published in 1886. The
critics received it kindly. The following year 'John Ward,
Preacher/ appeared, almost simultaneously, it happened, with
' Robert Elsmere,' of similar character. Accordingly the two
were not infrequently considered together. * Sidney,' in some
respects stronger than the first venture, came two years later,
after running as a serial in the Atlantic ; and four years after-
ward, ' Philip and His Wife.' Meanwhile some short stories
were successfully published. Like others who have made the
surest reputations Mrs. Deland writes slowly, with painstaking
revision, and lets her creations go forth only when they are
fully fashioned to her satisfaction, without regard to the time
consumed in their fashioning."

Now we turned into Louisburg Square, taking the lower
side of the enclosed green with its lofty trees and little
weather worn statues, that we might pass the house (No. 4)
which William Dean Howells (born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio,
1837 ) occupied for a few seasons in the late seventies, when
he was a Bostonian, and editing the Atlantic; and near by
(No. 10) the last Boston home of Louisa M. Alcott, where her
father, Bronson Alcott, died. Thence we crossed to quaint
Pinckney Street, an old-time haunt of Boston literary folk.
Taking the upward grade and the south side, our first land-
mark was the house No. 62, where long dwelt George Stillman
Hillard (born in Machias, Me., 1808 died in Longwood, near
Boston, 1879), one of the most scholarly of that brilliant
coterie who sustained the literary leadership of Boston in the
second third of the nineteenth century.

" Hillard's publications ' between covers,' " I remarked as
we paused for a moment here, "are but a small part of his
literary accomplishment. His career began simultaneously in
letters and in law, and he achieved equal distinction in both
among his contemporaries. He began practice in the early

OVER BEACON HILL. 265

thirties, as a partner with Charles Sumner, and at the same
time took up the work of an editor, critic, and essayist. He
had the name of the purest classical scholar of his generation
in the Boston bar. Among his earliest extended undertakings
was the Boston edition of Spenser's Poetical Works in five
volumes, published in 1839, with his critical introduction and
notes, which were accepted as models of literary thought and
execution. But his reputation in the widest field was gained
by the ' Hillard's Readers,' those carefully edited reading
books for schools, issued about 1856, which instilled a love of
good literature, and a knowledge of the best English writers to
generations of American school boys. Afterward these readers
were used in the schools of Brazil, by order of Dom Pedro,
to give their pupils the best idea of the English language.

"His 'Six Months in Italy/ published in 1847, with its
charm of diction, passed quickly through several editions,
unusual with American books of that day, and was repub-
lished in England. Hillard was Boston bred, although a
native of Maine. He was also a Harvard man, class of 1828,
and in later years a Phi Beta Kappa orator.

" This was Hillard's home from 1848 till a few years before
his death. He had previously occupied a house a few doors
above," and we stepped up to No. 54, " which is especially in-
teresting as that from which Hawthorne sent his unique note
to James Freeman Clarke engaging the good minister to marry
him to Sophia Peabody, but naming neither place nor day. It
ran in this wise," and I read :

"No. 54 PINCKNEY STREET,

BOSTON, JULY, 1842.

My Dear Sir. Though personally a stranger to you, I am about to
request of you the greatest favor which I can receive from any man. I
am to be married to Miss Sophia Peabody ; and it is our mutual desire
that you should perform the ceremony. Unless it should be decidedly
a rainy day, a carriage will call for you at half-past eleven o'clock in
the forenoon. Very respectfully yours,

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE."

266

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" The Peabodys were then living in Boston, and were friends
and parishioners of Dr. Clarke : so the minister probably knew
all about the coming event. Hillard was an intimate friend of
both Hawthorne and the Peabody family. Hawthorne had
recently withdrawn from the community of Brook Farm, in the
then country town of West Eoxbury, now a part of Boston
city, the scene, by the way, of his ' Blithedale Romance.'
The marriage took place on the ninth of July, at the home of
the Peabodys in West Street, the site of which was long since
covered with shops, and Hawthorne took his bride to the
<Old Manse' in Concord. It is said that Hawthorne and

Clarke never met again in life ;
but Clarke performed the last
rites at the burial of the ro-
mancer."

Our next point of interest
was a house a little above, the
home of Edwin Doak Mead
(born 1849) editor of the
New England Magazine, and
the developer of the far-reach-
ing " Old South " system of
historical work for the instruc-
tion of youth in genuine Ameri-
can history, by methods most
engaging, a monument of
patriotic and intelligent en-
deavor. "Mead is of New
Hampshire birth," I chatted
on. " He was born in Chesterfield on the Connecticut River,
the son of a farmer; and near by, in Brattleboro, on the
Vermont side of the river, lived during his boyhood his cousins,
the Mead boys and girls, who in after years became, one, the
distinguished sculptor, Larkin G. Mead, another, the architect,
William R. Mead ; and one of the girls, the wife of William

EDWIN D. MEAD.

OVER BEACON HILL. 267

D. Howells. Young Mead got what education he could from
the village school and through the reading of many books ; and
at length came to Boston, to take a clerkship in the < Old Corner
Bookstore,' at that time Ticknor & Fields's. So soon as he was
able, however, he left business and went abroad, to acquire a
more liberal education, in German and English universities.
Then he took up the literary life, which he has since followed,

EDWIN D. MEAD'S LITERARY PARLOR.

along the way concerned much in wholesome philanthropic,
educational, reform, and civic matters, as becomes the good
citizen. His most notable published works, all practical con-
tributions to literature, are his ' Martin Luther : a Study of the
Reformation/ ' Outline Studies of Holland,' and 'Representa-
tive Government.' "

Continuing along the narrow street, we passed one of the
earlier Boston homes of the Alcotts, a narrow-faced house with
lofty stoop (No. 20). It was occupied by the family in Louisa's

268 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

young womanhood, and was the scene of some of her early
struggles in authorship; also of a story, somewhat pathetic,
which I would reserve for telling in Concord, I remarked as we
walked by. Then we came upon another poet's former home.
This was the modest little house No. 16, occupied by Louise
Imogen Guiney (born in Boston, 1861 ) when preparing her
fourth book of poems, which appeared in 1900. And at Percy's
bidding I recalled Miss Guiney's delicately refined work, best
characterized in a stanza from some verses of the older Boston
poet, Dr. Thomas W. Parsons, written " On Beading a Book of
Poems " by her, which I quoted :

"Not for all eyes those lovely lines:
Too deep the music of her art ;
Yet every soul that reads, divines

A touch that trembles from the heart."

"Her first volume struck a note which the critics wel-
comed," I said. " This was < Songs at the Start,' published in
1884. Three years later appeared ' The White Sail, and Other
Poems' of stronger and richer fiber. Five years later came
1 A Eoadside Harp : a Book of Verses ' ; the next year, < Eng-
land and Yesterday ' ; and then < The Martyr's Idyl, and Shorter
Poems.' Between these poetical collections appeared little vol-
umes of her prose, including 'Patrins,' a collection of essays
marked by the true poetic touch. Miss Guiney is the daughter
of a soldier of the Civil War, General P. R. Guiney. She
graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart, in Provi-
dence, Rhode Island, and began writing at once, publishing first
in Boston periodicals. She has spent much time abroad in the
close and ardent study of Old World classics on their native
soil."

Who was T. W. Parsons ? " Percy asked. I confess his
name is quite new to me."

"Thomas William Parsons (born in Boston, 1819 died in
Scituate, 1892), according to Charles Eliot Norton's dictum,

OVER REACON HILL. 269

was one of the three most eminent lovers and disciples of Dante
in America, the other two being Longfellow and Lowell. His
miscellaneous poems and sonnets have been extolled by other
poets for their exquisiteness in form and diction ; yet he was
singularly indifferent to public recognition, and published
almost reluctantly and at rare intervals. He preferred most
an audience of friends and the literary coteries with which he
was allied. Stedman calls him a poet for poets rather than for
the people. He stood for * The Poet ' in Longfellow's l Way-
side Inn ' ; and he himself, at a later day, pictured the aban-
doned hostelry in his lines on 'The Old House in Sudbury
Twenty Years Afterwards ' :

" ' House and landlord both have rest.

On the broken hearth a dotard

Sits, and fancies foolish things;
And the poet weaves romances

Which the maiden fondly sings,

All about the ancient hostel

With its legends and its oaks,
And the quaint old-bachelor brothers

And their minstrelsy and jokes.

No man knows them any longer :

All are gone, and I remain
Reading, as it were, mine epitaph

On the rainbow-colored pane.'

Dr. Parsons was the son of a former Dr. T. W. Parsons,
born in Boston, but dwelling abroad a large part of his life.
At seventeen his father took him to Italy ; and there during
a winter passed between Pisa, Florence, and Rome, began his
passionate love for Dante, which possessed him throughout
his life. Thus early he started upon the translation of the
' Inferno ' ; and in 1843, sometime after his return home, he put
forth, anonymously, the first part of his work in a thin volume

270 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

with the title < The First Ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dante
Alighieri, Newly Translated into English Verse.' It won for
him the instant recognition of scholars on both sides of the
Atlantic. He was then twenty-four, and it was not till he had
reached his forty-eighth year (in 1867) that the complete ver-
sion made its appearance. This contained a revision of the
earlier part. Nine years later he published 'The Ante-Purga-
torio.' Subsequently cantos of the 'Purgatorio' appeared at
irregular intervals in the Catholic World. He died with his
task unfinished, the ' Purgatorio ' being only partly completed,
and the l Paradiso ' only begun. After his death all that he
had accomplished was published in the volume ' The Divine
Comedy of Dante Alighieri : Translated into English Verse/
with an appreciative introductory essay by Professor Norton,
and a memorial sketch of him by Miss Guiney.

" His progress was slow because of his extreme fastidious-
ness, the high standard he had set for himself, and his peculiar
temperament. He once said that no one should approach
Dante's temple who was not master of his time, and he devoted
his without stint to patient study. He would not and could
not be hurried. When once pressed by his publishers for the
return of proofs sent him for revision, he retorted, ' I expect
to be a student of Dante through all eternity, and therefore I
cannot afford to be hurried by the exigencies of your house/

" His fugitive poems were from time to time collected from
the literary corners of Boston newspapers and magazines where
they first appeared, and published in a few small volumes.
One of these, 'The Ghetto di Roma/ brought out in 1854,
included his ' Lines on a Bust of Dante/ published in its first
draft as a preface to his ' First Ten Cantos of the Inferno/
and now refashioned, which Stedman has called the 'peer of
any modern lyric in our tongue.' Later selections appeared in
'The Magnolia' in 1866, in 'The Old House at Sudbury' in
1870, and in ' The Shadow of the Obelisk ' in 1872, the latter
bearing a London imprint.

OVER BEACON HILL. 271

" Dr. Parsons studied medicine in the Harvard Medical
School, and practiced successfully for some years in Boston,
and afterward in London, the unpoetic profession of dentistry.
For the last twenty years of his life, which were devoted alto-
gether to his literary pursuits, his home was alternately in
Boston, in the country town of Way land, and in placid Scit-
uate on the South Shore of Massachusetts Bay. His Boston
home was in this neighborhood. It was in an old ' Boston
swell front ' house on Beacon Hill Place, a delightfully secluded
by-way, hard by the Boston Athenaeum, his favorite haunt,
close to the throbbing city. House and by-way with neighbor-
ing estates were blotted out a few years ago to make space for
the park about the State House. Dr. Parsons's sister, the sec-
ond wife of the poet George Lunt, of whom we heard in
Newburyport, was also a writer of graceful lyrics."

We were now on the opposite side of Pinckney Street,
before the plain little brick house (No. 11) distinguished as the
home of Edwin Percy Whipple, the critic and essayist, of whose
literary start in Salem we had made note. Accordingly his
brilliant story from the time of his leaving Salem and coming
to Boston was next narrated.

" That was in 1839," I said, when he was but twenty ;
and so early he had begun to exercise his critical faculty with
keenness and strength. He found work first as clerk in a State-
Street broker's office, and then as superintendent of a business
institution of that time the News Exchange Room. Mean-
while he continued zealously his self-training so systematically
started in Salem. He became the soul of the club of young
merchants' clerks alluded to in our talk about another member
of it, James T. Fields, when we were in Portsmouth. This
club, called 'The Attic Nights/ from its meeting-place, an
attic room in a business building, had exercises in debate,
declamation, and composition ; and early collected a library,
from which developed the Boston Mercantile Library, a worthy
Boston institution preceding the Public Library. These young

272

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

fellows educated each other by their keen criticisms of each
other's efforts, their sparkling interchange of ideas, their rol-
licking wit. The club was for them a practical college, a fine
training school in composition and in speech.

"Whipple was their cleverest literary man. They organ-
ized public lecture courses, and he was their first lecturer.
His maiden effort was the first draft of his essay on Macau-
lay, which became celebrated, and upon its publication in a
magazine elicited from the English historian a letter express-
ing high regard of the youthful critic. Whipple was in his

twenty-fifth year when this
essay was written. He had
enormous powers of intellec-
tual absorption. Most of his
best work was done between
1840 and 1850, although in his
subsequent writing he never
fell short of his standard. He
; was one of the literary lecturers
7 most sought during the flour-

\ |f Unw / ishing days of the lyceum, and

V / ke * s sa ^ to ^ ave l ecture d more

\ than a thousand times.

xij* * K > / '' / '^ "His first books were his

' Essays and Reviews ' in two

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE. . . .

volumes, published in 1848,

made up of several lectures and critical articles originally con-
tributed to reviews and magazines. The next year his ' Litera-
ture and Life ' appeared ; then after an interval of seventeen
years his ' Character and Characteristic Men ' ; next, in 1869,
his l Literature of the Age of Elizabeth/ which competent
critics predicted would live as the best writing of its kind yet
done in America. Then came ' Success and its Conditions ? ;
and after his death, 'American Literature and Other Papers/
including his admirable survey of our literature through the

OVER BEACON HILL.

273

first century of the republic; and < Recollections of Eminent
Men/ Whipple was remarkable especially for the delicacy
and strength of his analysis. His essay on George Eliot drew
from her the exclamation, < This man understands me.'

FACSIMILE OF E. P. WHIPPLE'S MANUSCRIPT.

" In Whipple was united geniality of disposition with
intellectual force, so that his literary friendships were many
and strong. His daily conversation sparkled with wit and
clever sayings. His ' Sunday evenings,' when he was at home

274 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

to his friends, were occasions of rare charm to those whose
good fortune it was to cross the threshold. His working study
was a pleasant room on the second floor, delightfully cluttered
with books. He lived in this house for nearly forty years, and
drew to its bookish parlors the best elements of the intellectual
life of Boston during that period, while few persons of literary
distinction from abroad failed to seek him out here this
critic whose abilities in his youth had been recognized by
Macaulay, and who lived to attain the position of the fore-
most purely critical American writer."

Down the hill again, we passed, on the slope, "the little
house in Pinckney Street " (No. 84) in which T. B. Aldrich and
his wife first " set up housekeeping " in the " light of their
honeymoon," upon their coming to Boston in 1867. And I
recalled that here Longfellow's " Hanging of the Crane " was
inspired, as Aldrich has so pleasantly related :

" One morning in the spring of 1867 Mr. Longfellow came to the little
house in Pinckney Street. ... As we lingered a moment at the dining-
room door, Mr. Longfellow turning to me said, 'Ah, Mr. Aldrich, your
small round table will not always be closed. By and by you will find new
young faces clustering about it ; as years go by, leaf after leaf will be
added until the time comes when the young guests will take flight, one by
one, to build nests of their own elsewhere. Gradually the long table will
shrink to a circle again, leaving two old people sitting there alone together.
This is the story of life, the sweet and pathetic poem of the fireside.
Make an idyl of it. I give the idea to you.' Several months afterward I
received a note from Mr. Longfellow in which he expressed a desire to use
this motif in case I had done nothing in the matter. The theme was one
particularly adapted to his sympathetic handling, and out of it grew ' The
Hanging of the Crane.' "

" This was the poem," I added as a postscript, " which
brought Longfellow the tidy sum of three thousand dollars,
fifteen dollars a line, from Robert Bonner, for the right
to its publication in his New York Ledger ; while in book
form, through Longfellow's regular publishers, it speedily
earned a larger sum in royalties."

OVER BEACON HILL. 275

Mention was also made of the pleasant fact that from his
little Pinckney-Street house Aldrich sent forth that inimitable
" Story of a Bad Boy," which we followed in our visit to his
beloved " Old Town by the Sea."

Nearby, on the same hill-slope, we took note of the home
of Alice Brown (born in Hampton Falls, N.H., 1857-), poet,
and writer of cleverly wrought stories of New England life, as
shown in her " Meadow Grass," " The Day of His Youth," and
later volumes ; working to some extent in the rare field which
Sarah Orne Jewett has opened so finely.

XVI.

IN NEWER BOSTON.

Charles Street homes of Aldrich, Fields, and Holmes. A side note about
Ponkapog. The library in the Fields house. Holmes's work in his
Charles-Street house. As a lecturing professor. His career re-
viewed. His earlier home on Montgomery Place. Where the
"Autocrat" papers were written. Stories of notable poems.
Holmes's last home on Beacon Street, water side. His closing years
and gentle death. Home of Julia Ward Howe. Story of the " Bat-
tle Hymn of the Republic." Other " Back Bay " literary homes.
Edward Everett Hale. Edwin Lassetter Bynner. Brook Farm.
Lindsay Swift.

AT the foot of Beacon Hill we turned into Charles Street,
northward, to see the old houses of Oliver Wendell Holmes and
James T. Fields ; then returning southward to Beacon Street,
we entered the " Back Bay " quarter, the modern West End of
Boston, built entirely upon " made lands " where formerly a
great bay backed from the river along the Charles-Street line.

" Once," I observed as we were walking along Charles
Street, "this now unlovely thoroughfare was beautified by
noble trees and had a well-bred air. Holmes and Fields, as
we shall see, were close neighbors; and latterly, while the
street yet retained its literary flavor, Aldrich took a house
opposite them." Since we were walking on the east side we
came first to the Aldrich house (No. 131). "To this house
Aldrich moved from Pinckney Street," I remarked, " and it was
associated with much of his work through the decade of 1871
to 1881. The library was the back room of the second floor ;
the retired study was above stairs. Aldrich moved back to
The Hill, taking his statelier Mount Vernon Street house,

276

IN NEWER BOSTON. 277

in 1884, after a two years' residence at Ponkapog, celebrated in
the title of his sketches of travel, < From Ponkapog to Pesth.' "

" And where is Ponkapog ? " asked Percy. " Is it really a
real place ' ? "

" Indeed it is. A charming spot, rural and secluded, though
not far from the city, set by the beautiful Blue Hills of Milton.
Aldrich's own sketch
of it is exact: 'After
its black bass and wild
duck and teal, soli-
tude is the chief staple
of Ponkapog. . . .
The nearest railway
station (Heaven be
praised !) is two miles
distant, and the seclu-
sion is without a flaw.
Ponkapog has one mail
a day ; two mails a
day would render the
place uninhabitable.'
The Ponkapog home
was an ancient farm
house, which Aldrich
remodeled and fitted

P , , , , JAMES T. FIELDS.

most comfortably and

artistically, producing the cosiest of literary homes and work-
shops. Fortunate was the guest who was entertained within
its aged walls."

We now crossed to the Fields house (No. 148), and Percy's
interest was freshly kindled when he heard that this continues
to be a literary home, for Mrs. Annie Fields, the publisher's
widow, herself a maker of good books, still abides here through
the winter seasons, and with her Sarah Orne Jewett. No more
inviting literary interior was enjoyed by Percy on this pilgrim-

278

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

age. In the library remain many of Fields' s treasures. His
collection of books, and souvenirs of famous writers, was, in
some respects, one of the rarest of his day in Boston. He
loved to show off to the appreciative visitor his great shelf-full
of volumes, in tasteful bindings, composed of the original man-
uscripts of works by Dickens, Thackeray, "Whittier, Hawthorne,
the full manuscript of " The Scarlet Letter " as it went to
the printers, Longfellow, and others. In the dining-room

LIBRARY OF JAMES T FIELDS.

has been many a brilliant feast ; in the drawing-room, with its
western windows looking out, over the garden, upon the Charles
River, many a fine literary gathering. Dickens, upon his
memorable American visits, was at home in this house. So was
Thackeray. A wide hospitality was exercised all through the
quarter century of Fields's life here, from 1857 till his death.
And, as Dr. Bartol has expressed it in his "portrait-eulogy,"
he " radiated far and near a large and general good will."

IN NEWER BOSTON. 279

The Holmes house (No. 164) was not so interesting, for it
has been transformed since Holmes moved from it, and its lit-
erary flavor faded with his going. Still, as his home for twelve
years through the period during which he produced many not-
able works, it fascinated Percy, dismantled though it was.
It was here that he wrote his second " Breakfast-Table " papers
the " Prof essor at the Breakfast Table"; his two novels,
"Elsie Venner" and "The Guardian Angel"; his stirring
poems of the war times ; that classic of our war literature,
" My Hunt After the Captain," - the narrative of his search
for the soldier-son, who, wounded at the battle of Ball's Bluff
in 1862, lived to fight and to suffer more wounds another day
and in after time to become chief justice of Massachusetts ;
numerous verses of occasion, and " Dorothy Q." Percy gazed
up at the first floor windows out of which " the Autocrat " used
to look from the pleasant down-stairs study, and fancied the
kindly eyes beaming down upon him.

" The twelve years of Holmes's life here," I stated, since
Percy asked for dates, " were the years between 1859 and
1871 : busy years, for, along with his literary work he was
part of this time traveling about the country as a favorite
lyceum lecturer on English poets of the nineteenth century,
and was delivering regularly his medical lectures in the
Harvard Medical School, as he had been doing since the late
forties. The latter work was in its way as important as his
writing. He held the Parkman professorship of anatomy for
the long period of thirty-five years, in that time delivering a
succession of lectures which ranked high for their learning as
well as their diction. And when at length, in 1882, he retired,
becoming professor emeritus, the students whose rare privilege
it had been to hear him, gave him a loving cup, inscribed fit-
tingly with his own lines : f Love Bless Thee, Joy Crown
Thee, God Speed Thy Career/ Of him as the lecturing pro-
fessor we have this true picture, by that clever Scotsman, David
Macrae :

280 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" ' Holmes is a plain little dapper man, his short hair brushed down
like a boy's, but turning gray now [this was in 1863], a trifle of furzy
hair under his ears ; a powerful jaw and a thick strong underlip which
gives decision to his look, with a dash of pertness. ... He reads with a
sharp percussive articulation, is very deliberate and formal at first, but
becomes more animated as he goes on. ... He enlivens his lecture with
numerous jokes and brilliant sallies of wit, and at every point hitches up
his head, looks through his glasses at his audience as he finishes his
sentence, and then shuts his mouth pertly with his underlip as if he said,
44 There, laugh at that I "

" He began professional life, you know, as a regular prac-
ticing physician, after study abroad, some time having pre-
viously been spent at Harvard in law studies which were not
to his liking. Though he retired from practice within ten
years, he continued steadily to keep step with the progress of
the profession. He was called a fashionable physician, but he
was rather the good physician. At first his tendency to versi-
fication, he was already famed as a poet when he began as a
doctor, and his merry humor, told against him. It was
thought that a doctor and a poet could not be combined suc-
cessfully in one person : as to-day a lawyer given to poetizing
is looked upon askance. When he was quoted as announcing
gayly to his friends that in his profession of practitioner
' fevers would be thankfully received ' precise Bostonians were
dismayed if not shocked at such trifling with serious matters.
He was thirty-one when he put out his doctor's sign, and then
began his lifelong identification with Boston.

" That was in 1840, the year of his marriage to Amelia
Jackson, a daughter of Judge Charles Jackson of Boston,
associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachu-
setts, of which in after years their son, 'the Captain,' as we
have seen, became the chief. Theirs was a fortunate and a
happy union long lasting. As his biographer, John T. Morse,
says, she was an ' ideal wife' for him. Their life in the
Charles-Street home was serene and kindly. In their time it
had a pleasing outlook at the rear over the river and the then

IN NEWER BOSTON. 281

open hills beyond. One late August day the doctor wrote to
his neighbor, Fields, ' We sit an hour or so after tea at the west
window to enjoy the recollections of sunset which is pre-
mature nowadays and dig up the roots of remembrances
that flowered and went to seed in the old summers and
autumns/

" The Autocrat's earlier Boston homes ? All vestige of
them disappeared years ago. He lived the longest period in
the house which he describes in the Autocrat papers as the
Professor's house, in that passage recounting one of his walks
with the Schoolmistress (which" I read from my note-book) :

** * We came opposite the head of a place or court running eastward
from the main street. Look down there, ! said. My friend, the
Professor, lived in that house at the left hand next the further corner,
for years and years. He died out of it, the other day. Died ? said
the Schoolmistress. Certainly, said I. We die out of houses just as
we die out of our bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred men's
homes for them, as a railroad smash kills their mortal frames and drives
out the immortal tenants. Men sicken of houses until at last they quit
them, as the soul leaves the body when it is tired of its infirmities. . . .
The Professor lived in that house a long time not twenty years, but
pretty near it. When he entered that door two shadows glided over the
threshold ; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for
the last time, and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be
larger than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place ! Death
rained through every roof but his ; children came into life, grew to
maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away ; the whole drama
of life was played in that stock company's theater of a dozen houses,
one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered
his dwelling. Peace be to those walls, forever, the Professor said,
for the' many pleasant years he has passed within them.'

" This quiet court was then Montgomery Place, opening
opposite the old Granary Burying-ground. Now it is Bosworth
Street, a prosaic thoroughfare with one picturesque feature,
the rough stone steps at its end leading down to the ancient
narrow cross street into which it empties. The doctor lived
here for eighteen years, from 1841, the year after his jnar-

282 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

riage, till his removal to Charles Street, and here all his
children were born.

" Here the Autocrat papers were in large part written, dur-
ing the first year of the Atlantic Monthly, starting with its first
number in November, 1857. You are familiar with the story ?
Holmes has told it in the preface (or the Autocrat's autobiog-
raphy) to the papers in book form : how they were started in
two numbers of Buckingham's New England Magazine in the
winter of 1831-'32, and then were dropped ; and how twenty-
five years afterward, when the Atlantic was projected and he
was asked to write for it, the recollection of these productions
of his t uncombed literary boyhood ' suggested the thought that
it would be a curious experiment * to shake the same bough
again and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the
early windfalls.' This explains the whimsically abrupt open-
ing of the first Atlantic paper, < I was just going to say, when I
was interrupted/ a quarter of a century before.

" The experiment proved a most successful one, for it fixed
firm the reputation of its author as the first of American essay-
ists in the lighter vein, and the maker of a distinctly new depar-
ture in literature. It is interesting to note that among the
poems so cleverly worked into the text are those which have
contributed most to Holmes's fame, as ' The Promise,' < The
Chambered Nautilus,' with its swelling note :

' Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll !
Leave thy low-vaulted past !
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! '

' The Living Temple/ ' The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the
Wonderful One-Hoss Shay/ ' Contentment/ with the familial-
worldly lines :

IN NEWER BOSTON. 283

'Little I ask, my wants are few;

I only wish a hut of stone
(A very plain brown stone will do)

That 1 may call my own
And close at hand is such a one

In yonder street that fronts the sun.'

< Parson Turell's Legacy,' and the much quoted < The Old
Man's Dream,' which I dare say was in your school Reader.

" And of these earlier poems Holmes was fondest. ( If you
will remember me by " The Chambered Nautilus," or " The
Promise," or " The Living Temple," - he once wrote some school
children of Cincinnati who had been committing to memory
several of his poems, ( your memories will be a monument I
shall think more of than any of bronze or marble.'

" ' The Last Leaf,' also among his favorites and perhaps
the most widely popular, was written at an earlier period. For
this poem 'good Abraham Lincoln,' the doctor took pride in
noting, had a great liking, and repeated it from memory. It
took the fancy of the fastidious Edgar Allan Poe, who made
an autograph copy of it ; and it appeared in a French version.
The famous ' Old Ironsides,' which countless schoolboys have
declaimed, was produced when Holmes was a law student at
Cambridge in 1830. It was cast at white heat upon reading
of the threatened breaking-up of the Constitution by the Navy
Department as useless, and was hurried to the Boston Adver-
tiser^ where it appeared the following morning. Copied by
newspapers throughout the country, it roused public senti-
ment, and saved the grand old ship.

" It was to < The Last Leaf ' and < The Old Man's Dream,'
by the way, that- the London Punch harked back in its fine
tribute to Holmes upon his death at eighty-five :

" "The Last Leaf ! " Can it be true
We have turned it, and on you,
Friend of all ?

284 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

That the years at last have power ?
That life's foliage and flower
Fade and fall ?

Of sweet singers the most sane,
Of keen wits the most humane,

Wide, yet clear.
Like the blue above us bent
Giving sense and sentiment

Each its sphere.

With a manly breadth of soul
And a fancy quaint and droll,

Ripe and mellow.
With a virile power of hit,
Finished scholar, poet, wit,

And good fellow !

Sturdy patriot, and yet
True world's citizen ! Regret

Dims our eyes

As we turn each well-thumbed leaf;
Yet a glory 'midst our grief

Will arise.

Years your spirit could not tame,
And they will not dim your fame ;

England joys

In your songs, all strength and ease,
And the "dreams" you "wrote to please

Gray -haired boys." '

" ' A Mother's Secret/ * St. Anthony the Reformer/ ' Under
the Violets/ 'The Crooked Path/ and 'The Boys' were among
the poems incorporated in the Professor papers. ' The Boys '
was the best of his forty and more verses written for the re-
unions of his class at Harvard; that famous class of 1829,
which included Benjamin Pierce, in after life the mathemati-
cian and astronomer ; James Freeman Clarke and Chandler Rob-
bins, the Boston ministers ; William Henry Channing, nephew

IN NEWER BOSTON.

285

of the great Charming, himself ranking high in literature;
George T. Bigelow, judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ;
Benjamin K,. Curtis, justice of the United States Supreme
Bench ; and Samuel F. Smith, who wrote < America/ Holmes's
lyric, so much quoted and made a popular song, ' No Time Like
the Old Time/
was written in
1865, of the
Charles-Street
home period."

We had been
strolling down
Beacon Street on
the "Back Bay,"
and were come
before Holmes's
last town house
(No. 296), on the
favored water
side, the verita-
ble "brown stone"
of his "Content-
ment" wish, to
which he moved
from Charles
Street.

" This house
he greatly en-
joyed," I remarked, while we stood at the door awaiting the
response to the bell, "as that letter of his to Motley, which
Morse quotes in the Life, attests :

" ' We have really a charming house, and as I turn my eyes to the left
from this paper I seem to look out on all creation, Bunker Hill and the
spires of Cambridge, and Mount Auburn, and the wide estuary commonly
called Charles River we poor Bostonians come to think at last that there

LAST HOME OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

286

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

is nothing like it in the orbis terrarum. I suppose it sounds to one who
is away, like the Marchioness with her orange-peel and water.' "

In this house it was observed that the Autocrat's study or
library-study as it was termed was on the second floor back :
a large room with the view over the river through broad bay
windows. As it appeared in his time, books filled the shelves
against the four walls, that part of his library which he most
used as his literary tools, while other portions of his collec-
tion were scattered over the house. The writing-table stood
near the middle of the apartment, and roomy chairs were on either
side of the deep open grate, suggestive of comfort for guest and
host.

" This," Percy was told, " was the Mecca of Holmes's
army of admirers, of men and women of distinction and those
striving for distinction, coming from everywhere. He was

tolerant of all who gained
entrance, ever the genial,
kindly host, but with a
happy knack of edging off
the bores, so gently and
cleverly that they found
themselves on the street
side of the outer door with-
out realizing that they had
been, though graciously,
most effectively bowed out.
"The study here was
identified with 'The Poet
of the Breakfast Table/ the
last of the inimitable Breakfast-table series, which appeared
in 1873; and 'Over the Tea Cups,' the last of all his engaging
table-talk, written in his old age after his return from that
memorable summer in London, in 1886, when he enjoyed the
merry round of distinguished courtesies, in part recounted in
his 'Hundred Days.' While living here he published those

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

IN NEWER BOSTON.

287

prime favorites of the centennial celebrations, ( A Ballad of the
Boston Tea Party/ and ' Grandmother's Story of the Bunker

FACSIMILE OF HOLMES'S MANUSCRIPT.

Hill Battle/ And here was written, or shaped, 'The Iron
Gate,' which one naturally associates with Tennyson's ' Cross-

288 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ing the Bar,' though it is quite different, his response at the
Birthday Breakfast given him on his seventieth anniversary by
the Atlantic folk, than which no cheerier or tenderer picture
of serene old age is found in our literature.

"After he was eighty he sent hence his rollicking 'The
Broomstick Train : or the Return of the Witches/ which may
well be called ( The Song of the Trolley-car,' brim full of his
old-time wit and fancy.

" When Dr. Holmes came to die, it was in his chair < pain-
lessly as so humane a man well deserved to make his escape
out of life, 5 as Mr. Morse, with fine sentiment, notes in the
Life. Only a few days before his death he was taking his
usual walks out-of-doors in the sunshine, and on the very day
of his passing he was up and about the house. The day of his
death was the seventh of October, 1894. Two days later he
was buried from Old King's Chapel."

We extended our walk over the " Back Bay " to pass a few
modern literary homes.

On the opposite side of Beacon Street I pointed out (No.
241) the later town home of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (born in
New York City, 1819 ), whence in her old age she sent out her
pleasant " Reminiscences," and where her gracious hospitality
has been dispensed to many of the literary guild, who have found
charm in her ever brilliant conversation and her scintillating
wit. Her " Battle Hymn," about which Percy asked, was writ-
ten, I stated, when Mrs. Howe's home was in Boston (on little
Boylston Place, opening opposite the Common), but during a
visit to the army about Washington, in 1861, in company with
her minister, James Freeman Clarke. As she tells the story,
one day they were invited to attend a review of troops at
some distance from the Capitol. While they were watching
the maneuvers, a sudden movement of the army necessitated
immediate action by these troops. The review was discontinued,
and they saw a detachment gallop to the assistance of a small
body of our men who were in imminent danger of being sur-

IN NEWER BOSTON. 289

rounded and cut off from retreat. The return of her party to
the city was slow, for the troops nearly filled the road. To
beguile the rather tedious drive she and her friends sang from
time to time snatches of the popular army songs, concluding

with

"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave;

His soul is marching on."

The soldiers applauded the singing with cries "Good for
you ! " and Dr. Clarke remarked, " Why don't you write some
good words for that stirring tune ? "

In the middle of the following night Mrs. Howe was awak-
ened with the words of a hymn singing in her mind. Getting
up, she groped for a light and hurriedly scribbled the lines on
a chance bit of paper lest they should escape her. Then she
retired again, and slept soundly till morning. The words of
the "Battle Hymn," with but a few slight changes, are the
words she transcribed that night. It was published anony-
mously in the Atlantic, and made no stir at the moment.
Some time after, Chaplain McCabe in a lecture related an
incident of Libby Prison : when the prisoners, upon hearing
that a battle reported to them as a Union defeat was really a
victory, made the prison walls ring with their singing of a
battle hymn by an unknown author, which had been found in
a stray newspaper ; and he repeated the thrilling lines. They
were those of Mrs. Howe's. This was the touch that brought
them popularity. The authorship was made known, and the
hymn became at once a leading lyric of the war.

Farther down, again on the " water side " at No. 392, we
passed the home of James Ford Rhodes (born in Cleveland, 0.,
1848 ), the historian, whose " History of the United States
from the Compromise of 1850," through the Civil War period
to 1885, is the standard of its class. Turning into Fairfield
Street, was seen, at No. 16, the home of John T. Morse, writer
of sterling biographies (whose life of Holmes we had quoted),
and editor of the " American Statesmen " series of " popular

290 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

lives." Farther southward we came upon the house of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, close by " The Fens," part
of the city's 'chain of public parks, and entering this build-
ing, many of the society's treasures were shown to Percy by
the genial librarian and expert in Americana. Then we
strolled back to Copley Square and revisited the famous Public
Library, this time making a full tour of the various depart-
ments of the beautiful structure. Finally we took a " Broom-
stick train " and returned by " The Subway " to our starting
point down town.

As we were comfortably dining at the Parker House after
our long tramp, I remarked that this hotel covers the site of
the home of Dr. Holmes's maternal grandfather, Oliver Wen-
dell, on School Street, and that of the birthplace of Edward
Everett Hale (bwn 1822), on Tremont Street.

Thus our table talk turned to Hale's good life and work.
" He gives us himself," I observed, " most pleasing glimpses
of his early homes in the autobiographical ' Story of a New
England Boyhood.' The home life in the second house to
which the family was moved when Hale was a little fellow of
six is here fully pictured. That house was near by, in Tre-
mont Place, which opens from Beacon Street behind the great
office building opposite us. It remained as part of a delight-
fully old fashioned and roomy place of offices till only a year
ago, when the structure made way for a modern < sky scraper. 7
The Tremont-Place house was the Hales' home till young
Edward had reached eleven, and was a Latin School boy.
Then they removed to Central Court, a place of genteel Boston
dwellings in its heyday, which once opened from Washington
Street just above Summer Street, but is now obliterated, being
built over by a great retail shop. While the family home was
here the boy became a college youth, entering Harvard when
he was but thirteen. After his graduation he became a teacher
in the Latin School where he had been a pupil ; worked on his
father's newspaper ; and later prepared for the ministry. He

IN NEWER BOSTON.

291

was licensed to preach in 1842. Four years later he was set-
tled in Worcester. Ten years later, or in 1856, he returned
to Boston, becoming minister of the South Congregational
Church. He has ever since remained in this charge, and
ardently associated with everything of good report in his
native city.

" You know about his lineage ? On the paternal side he
is a great nephew of Captain Nathan Hale, the patriot of
the Revolution, hanged as a spy, after uttering those memorable

HOME OF EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

(From Hale's " The Brick Moon and Other Stories." Copyright, 1899,
by Little, Brown & Company.)

last words, < I only regret that I have but one life to lose for
my country.' On the maternal side he is of the Everett family,
his mother having been a sister of Edward . Everett, for whom
he was named. His father, Nathan Hale, was the founder
and first editor of the Boston Advertiser, for which he won the
honorable title of ' the Eespectable Daily ' ; and he was a
pioneer in the introduction of the railway system.

"Hale's most famous stories ' The Man Without a Coun-
try,' < My Double and How He Undid Me,' < Ten Times One is

292 LITEEAEY PILGRIMAGES.

Ten/ <In His Name,' < The Ingram Papers/ < Philip Nolan's
Friends ' were all written here in Boston. He became known
and recognized as foremost among American writers in the
art of short story writing, a third of a century ago, and he
has well sustained this reputation. Underlying his stories
is a wholesome morality, and each teaches a lesson ; but the
workmanship is so clever, the touch so human, and the execu-
tion so spirited and fascinating, that the moral and the lesson
are absorbed unconsciously but none the less absorbed.

" Of all his works none had such a vogue, or so moved the
public, as his ' Man Without a Country.' Coming in the Civil

EDWARD EVERETT HALE IN HIS STUDY.

(From Kale's " Addresses and Essays." Copyright, 1900, by

Little, Brown & Company.)

War time, published anonymously, with all the air of a sober
narration of fact, it was accepted by many as a true statement,
and was profoundly impressive ; and it did much to inspire in
the public mind a truer devotion to the flag and loyalty to the
country. His < Ten Times One is Ten/ with the hero's motto,
1 Look up and not down, look forward and not backward, look
out not in, and lend a hand/ first published in 1870, was the

IN NEWER BOSTON.

293

inspiration not only of the numerous ' Lend-a-Hand ' clubs in
the land, but of the various other Christian leagues of young
people. His versatility is remarkable ; his industry astonishing.
At the celebration of his seventieth birthday, when the number
of his published works exceeded eighty, and he was still actively
producing, Dr. Holmes characterized him in verse, as 'The
human dynamo. 7 Upon his eightieth birthday celebration,
when three thousand people crowded a great public hall to
do him honor, Senator Hoar styled him <the representative
and incarnation of the best and loftiest Americanism.' His
home for years has been in the Roxbury district (on Highland
Street), in a large, rambling, old-time house, which well bents
him. His study there is a veritable literary workshop."

An allusion to Dr. Hale's interest in historical matters,
especially early New England history, led me to speak of the

younger Boston writer upon m

such subjects, Edwin Las-
setter Bynner (born in
Brooklyn, N. Y., 1842 died
in Boston, 1893), whose
" Agnes Surriage " ranks, in
style and character, with
the higher type of histori-
cal novels. "Bynner, as
Hale has said," I remarked,
" was perfectly informed
in the history of New Eng-
land, and had ' a gift which
hardly any one else has had
for reproducing the broken
lights of the picture, work-
ing in, with his insight, de- EDWIN LASSETTER BYNNER -
tails forgotten by most writers; in a word, making real tht
past. 7 His materials were gathered with painstaking care, with
an eye for accuracy as well as for ' color.' The peculiar old

294 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Marblehead dialect in ' Agnes Surriage/ for example, was ob-
tained through visits, with a friend, to the older fishermen
there, one engaging them, in easy conversation, while the other
took notes.

" Bynner was bred to the law, and practiced his profession ;
but literature was his real vocation. 'Penelope's Suitors/
published in 1884, after running as a serial in the Atlantic,
was his first genuine literary success, although he had then
published two novels, ' Nimport/ and ' The Tritons,' which had
been well received by discerning readers. ' Agnes Surriage }
appeared in 1887, and was at once favorably compared with
Hawthorne's work. His later novels included ' The Begum's
Daughter/ his most serious effort, and ( Zachary Phips.' He
was also a successful short-story writer. Bynner's father was
an Englishman, sometime editor of an inland Massachusetts
newspaper, and his mother was of an old Massachusetts family,
a woman of fine mental powers ; so he came naturally by his
literary bent. His home was not far from Hale's in the
West Roxbury District.

" More distant in the West Roxbury District lies ' Brook
Farm/ scene, as we have before remarked, of Hawthorne's
< Blithedale Romance/ the place where in 1841-47 that
group of men and women of high ideals, led by George Ripley,
instituted the ' Brook Farm Institute of Education and Agricul-
ture/ and made their unsuccessful experiment in socialism.
And within a pleasant walk of the Farm lives Lindsay Swift
(born in Boston, 1865 ), the author of the story of this
community, in his ' Brook Farm/ in the ' National Studies of
American Letters' series; also accomplished critic, essayist,
and authority on Americana."

XVII.

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED.

Home of the poet-painter, Washington Allston. Lowell's picture of
him. Birthplace of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Story of her career.
The 'Dial.' Home of Louis Agassiz. His Cambridge life and
work. Latter home of Jared Sparks. Where he wrote his his-
tories. Old "Professors' Row." Home and study of Francis J.
Child. His classic. Charles Eliot Norton at " Shady Hill." The
Palfrey Place. Palfrey's public and literary life. Birthplace of
T. W. Higginson. His literary and reform work. Site of Holmes's
Birthplace. The " Gambrel-roofed house" and its memories. In
the old church yard. John Holmes.

OUR Cambridge pilgrimage occupied but a short day, for
the points visited were all within the compass of an easy walk
(as our walks went), and we passed the university buildings
in quick review, they being familiar to Percy from his pre-
vious pilgrimage to the cit^. So, too, were several of its
distinctively literary landmarks known to him ; but devoting
ourselves exclusively to these features, we saw much more
than before, and made more intimate and definite acquaintance
with the purely literary side of Cambridge.

We went out by trolley car and disembarked at Qirincy
Square by the college grounds where I had planned that our
walk should begin.

On the way out, while we were riding through " The
Port " the local abbreviation for Cambridgeport, I pointed
down Magazine Street, at the left of us, indicating in a
general way the site of the last home and studio of the poet-
painter Washington Allston (born in Charleston, S.C., 1779
died in Cambridge, 1843). Above, at our right, was Prospect

295

296 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Street, in which just off the main street stood the " Cambridge
Port Private Grammar School " where Oliver Wendell Holmes
got his preliminary schooling along with other favored Cam-
bridge boys, and with that remarkable Cambridge girl, Sarah
Margaret Fuller (Ossoli) (born 1810 died 1850).

Speaking of Allston, I remarked that he came to live in
Cambridge at the time of his second marriage in 1830, and
this remained his home and work place till his death. " His
second wife," I went on, " was the poet Dana's sister, and
cousin to his first wife, William Ellery Channing's sister Ann,
who had been dead for twenty years. When a youth in
Newport he became acquainted with the Channing family, and
coming to Cambridge as a student he had Channing as a
college mate, and Dana as a classmate. So with both friend-
ship began early and was life-long. While he was the greatest
American painter of his day, his poetical works gave him
rank among the first American poets of the early nineteenth
century. Though a Southerner by birth, born on a plantation,
his boyhood and youth were spent .in New England, and his
art work in his own country was identified with Boston and
Cambridge. He began writing poetry and studying art, in the
crude way of those days, when in college ; and in his senior
year he delivered a poem on the death of Washington, at the
commemoration by the college of that event. After his gradu-
ation he returned to Charleston and began painting. He went
abroad in 1801, and a few years later settled down in Rome
for the practical study of his art. There began an acquaint-
ance which developed into a life-long intimacy with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, and our own Washington Irving.

" He returned home in 1809, and marrying A^n Channing
established himself in Boston, where he remained for a few
years painting, and writing poetry, his rooms the center of a
refined society. Then, going back to Europe, he settled in
London. While there, in 1813, the volume of poems which
established his reputation ' The Sylphs of the Seasons and

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED. 297

Other Poems' was published. His novel, or tale, <Monaldi,'
appeared twenty-eight years later. He enjoyed during his
London life the friendship of Wordsworth, Southey, and
Lamb, besides Coleridge, while in his art he ranked with the
leading English painters. One of his works was a portrait of
Coleridge, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His
first wife died in England.

" Of Allston's homes here in Cambridge there were two
of them no trace now is to be found. Both were on Maga-
zine Street near the Charles Kiver end. The first, as he
described it, was a ' commodious little mansion, prettily situ-
ated in a retired part of the village [Cambridgeport was then
a place of farms, and rural fields], and commanding a pleasant
view of the adjacent country, taking in a part of the river and
a picturesque little pine wood which used to be the favorite
haunt of my younger days, to which I used to saunter after
college hours and dream sometimes of poetry and sometimes
of my art/ The second house was closer to his studio, - or
4 painting-room,' as he called it, a very plain barn-like building
and was built after his own model, to suit his fastidious
taste. It remained an interesting object long after the neigh-
borhood was built up with modern dwellings.'

" Allston himself was a picturesque figure of almost exqui-
site mold. Lowell in the e Cambridge Thirty Years Ago ' thus
attractively sketched him in his old age :

'"The stranger who took the "Hourly" at Old Cambridge [the
omnibus rumbling between Cambridge and Boston, long before street-
car times], if he were a physiognomist and student of character, might
perhaps have had his curiosity excited by a person who mounted the
coach at the Port, so refined was his whole appearance, so fastidiously
neat was his apparel, but with a neatness that seemed less the result
of care and plan, than a something so proper to the man as whiteness to
the lily, that you would have at once classed him with those individuals
rarer than great captains and almost as rare as great poets, whom Nature
sends into the world to fill the arduous office of Gentleman. . . . There
are some men whom destiny has endowed with a faculty of external

298 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

neatness, whose clothes are repellent of dust and mud, whose unwither-
ing white neck-cloths preserve to the day's end, unappeasably seeing the
sun go down upon their starch, and whose linen makes you fancy them
heirs in the maternal line to the instincts of all the washerwomen from
Eve downward. There are others whose inward natures possess this
fatal cleanness, incapable of moral dirt spot. You are not long in dis-
covering that the stranger combines in himself both these properties. A
nimbus of hair, fine as an infant's, and early white, showing refinement
of organization and the predominance of spiritual over the physical,
undulated and floated around a face that seemed like pale flame, and over
which the flitting shades of expression chased each other, fugitive and
gleaming as waves upon a field of rye. It was a countenance that, with-
out any beauty of features, was very beautiful. I have said that it looked
like pale flame, and can find no other words for the impression it gave.
Here was a man all soul, whose body seemed a lamp of finest clay, whose
service was to feed with magic oils, rare and fragrant, that wavering fire
that hovered over it. ... As the stranger brushes by you in alighting,
you detect a single incongruity, a smell of dead tobacco-smoke. You
ask his name, and the answer is, " Mr. Allston." "Mr. Allston !" and
you resolve to note down in your diary, every look, every gesture, every
word of the great painter ? Not in the least. You have the true Anglo-
Norman indifference, and most likely never think of him again till you
hear that one of his pictures has sold for a great price, and then contrive
to let your grandchildren know twice a week that you met him once in a
coach, and that he said " Excuse me, sir," in a very Titianesque manner,
when he stumbled over your toes in getting out.'

" Allston died suddenly at midnight of a July Sunday while
sitting in a contemplative attitude after hard labor on the un-
finished canvas of his great painting f Belshazzar's Feast.' r '

From this picture we turned to Holmes's sketch of Marga-
ret Fuller as a schoolgirl and after, copy of which I had also
made in my note book :

"'She came with a reputation of being smart. . . . Her air to her
schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and distance, as if she
had other thoughts than theirs and was not of them. She was a great stu-
dent and a great reader of what she used to call naw-ve"ls. . . . Margaret
as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair cornplexioned,
with a watery aqua-marine luster in her light eyes, which she used to
make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine. A remarkable point

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED.

299

about her was that long, flexible neck, arching and undulating in strange,
sinuous movements which one who loved her would compare to those of a
swan, and one who loved her not to those of the ophidian who tempted
our common mother. Her talk was affluent, magisterial, de haul en 6oa,
some would say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk of women in breadth
and audacity.' "

Then her career, and its influence on the literature of her
time, were recalled, for her birthplace was in " the Port." It
was not worth while, I sug-
gested, to visit the spot, for it
is all changed now. The
house was on Cherry Street,
at the corner of Eaton Street,
a roomy dwelling, with pil-
lared doorway, adorned in
front with a row of elms, be-
hind with a blooming flower
garden. When Margaret was
still a girl the family left this
house and moved up to Cam-
bridge proper, just above the
Port line, into the " old Dana
mansion," a local landmark
of distinction then on this
main street. In her mature
life, in the early forties, the home was for a twelve-month on
Ellery Street near the Dana house site, and for a similar period
on Prospect Street near by the academy of Margaret's girl days.

" Probably no woman of her time," I went on, " surpassed
Margaret Fuller in intellectual culture, yet she left in published
books little illustrative of her powers. She was the eldest of
eight children, a precocious girl almost from infancy, and was
educated at high pressure, receiving a training which boys only
were given in those days, when destined for college. At six
she had begun studying Latin, and before her teens she was a

MARGARET FULLER (Marchioness Ossoh).

300 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

promising Greek scholar. At fifteen this was her daily routine
in the summer season : ( She rose before five o'clock, walked an
hour, practiced an hour on the piano, breakfasted at seven, read
Sisinondi's "European Literature" in French till eight, then
Brown's " Philosophy " till half past nine, went to school for
Greek at twelve, practiced again till dinner ; after the early
dinner read two hours in Italian, then walked or rode, and in
the evening played, sang, and retired at eleven to write in her
diary/ ' This be it observed/ says Thomas Wentworth Hig-
ginson in his biography of her from which this statement is
quoted, ' was at the very season when girls of fifteen or six-
teen are in these days on their way to the seashore or the
mountains/

" No wonder that with such rigorous regime she became
the most learned American woman of her day, and one of the
most peculiar. Her father, Timothy Fuller, was a man of
strong intellect and pronounced opinions, descended from a
line of hard-headed Fullers, a successful lawyer, politician, and
orator, whose public service had covered terms in the State
Legislature and in Congress. He directed and pushed his
daughter's studies and was proud of her extraordinary intel-
lectual capacity. When she was twenty -three the family
moved to Groton, then an isolated country town, nearly forty
miles away from the intellectual center of Boston. Here, how-
ever, she managed to provide herself with books out of the
common reach, and while teaching her brothers and sisters, she
pursued an astonishingly full course of reading in German lit-
erature and philosophy, and in European and American history,
mastering subjects and doctrines with which but few of her
contemporaries of the masculine sex were familiar. She early
became intimately associated with the foremost literary men of
her time, notably Emerson, and when yet in young womanhood
was famed in her circle for the brilliancy of her conversation,
and her masterful critical faculty.

" The exercise of Margaret Fuller's literary influence out-

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED. 301

side her own coterie began after her father's death, when she
was twenty-live. She had then come down to Boston to teach
the languages in Bronson Alcott's unique school, and to report
the mystic schoolmaster's ' Conversations on the Gospels ' which
he delivered to his tender pupils as part of the regular school
course an occupation of short duration, for the school was
short lived. While engaged in this work she taught French,
German, and Italian to private classes of her own, and indulged
her marvelous conversational powers.

" After another year's teaching in an academy at Provi-
dence, Rhode Island, she began her famous t Conversations ' on
literary and philosophical themes in Boston before classes of
women. These continued through five winters, from 1839
to 1844, and were without precedent in this country. They
were given weekly, beginning at mid-day, and were chief of all
the literary < functions' of their seasons. Among the maids
and matrons constituting the classes at different times were
such women as the wives of Emerson, Theodore Parker, and
George Bancroft, Channing's daughter, Lydia Maria Child, and
Maria White who became Lowell's wife. The subjects treated
ranged from German philosophy to mythology, with a great
variety of learned topics considered along the way. Margaret
opened each Conversation with an introductory talk, and then
drew out her hearers by inducing them to question her; but
generally she did most of the talking. After the opening
of the series when Greek literature was the theme, she wrote
Emerson enthusiastically, < I assure you, there is more Greek
than Bostonian spoken at the meetings.' Later on, evening
Conversations to men were instituted, but these though draw-
ing some very clever folk did not have much vogue.

"But the broader achievement of Margaret Fuller, for
which Higginson declares she will always be an important
figure in American history, was as 'the organizer and execu-
tive force' of what he terms 'the first thoroughly American
literary enterprise.' This was The Dial, of which, she was the

302 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

editor through part of its existence of four troubled years
(1840-1844). It had its origin in a club of ' speculative stu-
dents who found the air in America getting too close and
stagnant/ as Emerson has chronicled. This was the original
Transcendental Club, so called, formed after several years of
talk and consultation. It was the time of the literary awaken-
ing in America, of the movement for a national literature, im-
pelled to a not inconsiderable extent by Emerson's famous
Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1837 here in Cambridge on ' The
American Scholar/ The members of this club, nearly all of
whom became contributors to The Dial, included Dr. Frederick
H. Hedge, the Greek scholar, George Eipley, founder of the
Brook Farm community, Emerson, Alcott, James Freeman
Clarke, Theodore Parker, Convers Francis, the learned Water-
town minister, Cyrus A. Bartol, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth
P. Peabody.

" The Dial announced itself as a quarterly magazine for
literature, philosophy, and religion ; its purpose to furnish a
medium for * the freest expression of thought on the questions
which interest earnest minds in every community. 7 It encoun-
tered much criticism and not a little ridicule from contempo-
rary publications and writers. Its failure from a financial
point of view, at least. was due, Emerson has explained, to
the limited number of workmen at that time of sufficient cul-
ture for a poetical and philosophical magazine, and to the cir-
cumstance (which has wrecked many a worthy periodical
venture since its day) that ' as the pages were rilled by unpaid
contributors, each of whom had, according to the usage and
necessity of this country, some paying employment, the jour-
nal did not get his best work, but his second best/ Emerson
edited it through its last two years.

" Margaret Fuller's later work was in New York as a regu-
lar writer on Horace Greeley's Tribune, one of the first
women to be attached to the staff of a daily newspaper. Her
contributions, like her 'Conversations/ treated a wide range

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED. 303

of topics, but her principal occupation was the review of
books. In this department her critical powers were displayed
at their fullest, and with a frankness and a vigor which have
seldom been matched. Longfellow and Lowell, then among
the accepted newer poets, were of those who came under her
lash. Some of her longer criticisms are collected in the vol-
ume of her writings entitled l Life Within and Life Without/

" Her last years were marked by romance and tragedy.
One day in Kome, while she was on a tour of Europe in ful-
fillment of a long cherished wish, she became separated from
friends with whom she had attended vespers in a church, and
missing her way out, she was piloted to her destination by a
young Italian gentleman. He was Giovanni Angelo, Marquis
Ossoli, of an old Roman family. This chance meeting speedily
ripened into friendship, then to love ; and despite the disparity
of ages, they married, and she became the Countess Ossoli.
For some reason the marriage was kept secret ; and it was not
divulged till the siege of Kome by the French army, in the
revolution of 1848, when the marquis was fighting with the
revolutionists, and she was succoring the wounded in the hos-
pitals. A short year of placid life in Florence, with their
infant boy Angelo, followed the Roman upheaval, while Mar-
garet's pen was busied with the history of the short-lived
Roman Republic of 1849.

" Then came the voyage home with its fatal ending : the
long strain of two months on shipboard ; the death of the
captain at sea from small pox ; the illness of the child from
the dread disease, and his almost miraculous recovery; the
approach at last to land with the hope of speedy disembarka-
tion ; the gale off the coast of New Jersey and the midnight
hurricane ; the striking of the ship on Fire Island ; the long
wait for help within sight of the protecting shore ; the drown-
ing before the parents' eyes of the little Angelo in the arms of
the steward trying to make the beach ; the sweeping off of the
deck by the great waves ; the final engulfing of the few pas-

304 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

sengers clinging to the wreck, Margaret and her husband,
Horace Sumner, brother of Charles Sumner, and a young
Italian girl.

" The history of the Koman Eepublic never appeared.
The manuscript went down with the ship. Of Margaret Ful-
ler's books, her translations of Eckermann's Conversations with
Goethe, and of the letters of Fraulein Giinderode and Bettina
von Arnim, and her Women in the Nineteenth Century/ pub-
lished in 1844, have endured the longest."

From Quincy Square, where we left the car, we turned into
Quincy Street the eastern boundary of the college grounds,
upon which the president's house faces to pass the Agassiz
house, the home of Louis Agassiz (born in Switzerland, 1807
died in Cambridge, 1873) through the last twenty years of
his life. We came upon it near the upper end of the short
street, on the right side, a house of unusual size and unusual
architecture, which attracted Percy's eye before I had chance
to identify it for him. It was built by the college, he was told,
expressly for Agassiz. There was the great library on the
entrance floor, its lines of shelves packed with his thousands
of volumes of scientific works, and broad-surfaced tables strewn
with maps and " specimens." There was the spacious drawing-
room into which the sociable savant was wont of evenings to
bring his work, writing on a portfolio on his knee, that he
might at the same time enjoy the companionship of his family
and neighboring friends who happened in. There was the
generous dining-room in which famous men of science and lit-
erature gathered on occasion about the liberal board. On the
upper floor was the roomy apartment of the Agassiz School
for Young Ladies, that unique academy, a forerunner of Rad-
cliffe College, which Mrs. Agassiz conducted, and in which the
professor taught through easy conversational lectures in the
sixties, established to eke out the family income, for in those

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED. 305

times Agassiz's regular salary was but fifteen hundred dollars
per annum, and his lecture fees often went largely for science.

I quite agreed with Percy that next to the great Museum
of Comparative Zoology, which Agassiz founded from the
smallest beginnings, and which is his noble monument, this
house is the most interesting landmark of the savant. For
here was done much, if not most, of the literary and scientific
work of his pen, which increased the wide fame he had when
he came to America, and which added so much to the world's
knowledge. When he moved into this house in 1854, he had
been but eight years in the United States, and but six years in
his professor's chair, that of natural history created for him
in the Lawrence Scientific School, then newly established.
Only a few years before, he had married Miss Elizabeth Gary
(she was his second wife ; the Swiss wife, who had shared
his European work and honors, having died in the old home in
Switzerland) and had settled down for life here in Cam-
bridge.

" In this house he composed the four large quarto volumes
of the contemplated ten-volumed (but never finished) ' Contribu-
tions to the Natural History of the United States/ the first of
which was completed on his fiftieth birthday, that day cele-
brated by Longfellow's lines < To Agassiz.' Here was written
his ' Methods of Study in Natural History,' published in 1863,
and his ( Geological Studies ' ; and the outlines of many of
those fascinating lectures which he delivered at various times
all over the country.

" You have heard how he came to make America his chief -
est working field ? No ? His coming was primarily a mission
from the King of Prussia to study the geological formations
and the natural history of North America, and incidentally to
give some lectures before the Lowell Institute of Boston.
These lectures, the first course <0n the Plan of Creation,
especially in the Animal Kingdom,' and the second on his
especial subject of Glaciers, given in 1846-'47, were such a

306 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

momentous success that an interest was immediately awakened
in his teachings, and place was soon made for him at Harvard.
The revolutionary upheavals of 1848 in Europe changed his
plans ; and his ardent devotion to the work begun here led him
ultimately to determine to give the remainder of his life unre-
servedly to it. He died in this house, and was buried in yon-
der Mount Auburn, where a bowlder from the glacier of the
Aar, and a group of pine trees from his native place in
Switzerland, mark his grave."

Another landmark of interest was seen in the house next
above the Agassiz place, now occupied by The Theological
School of the New Jerusalem Church. This was the home of
Jared Sparks (born in Wellington, Conn., 1789 died in Cam-
bridge, 1866), the historian, through the last twenty years of his
life, during which period he brought out his " Correspondence
of the American Revolution " ; and also collected the mass of
material for his contemplated diplomatic history of the Rev-
olution, now preserved with the Sparks Manuscripts in the
College Library. It was while living here that he served as
President of Harvard (1849-1853), his Alma Mater, from
which he had graduated thirty odd years before. Of the
" sunny library " in this house in which Sparks did his literary
work in most methodical and orderly fashion, and which was
'reserved practically unchanged for years after his death by his
widow who long survived him, I had copied the pleasant sketch
given by Professor Herbert B. Adams in his life of the histo-
rian ; which I duly read :

* His standing desk was still there, as he left it, surmounted by silver
candlesticks. Adjoining this library there was a little room containing
his private papers. . . . There were his bound manuscript journals, his
commonplace and account books ; his letter-book in quarto form, contain-
ing copies of the most important letters written by him ; there, too, was
the vast collection of letters received by him chronologically arranged in
leathern-bound cases resembling quarto and octavo volumes, with the
records of letters received and sent through a long and busy life. The
manuscripts of Mr. Sparks's lectures on the American Revolution were

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED.

307

there. So also were the bound manuscripts of his printed works, and a
set of the North American Revieio during the period of his editorship."

" When Sparks was engaged upon his Writings of General
Washington,' " I remarked, " he was living in the Craigie house,
where the identical letters which he was editing were written,
when that house was Washington's headquarters, a coincidence
upon which the historian felicitated himself in his journal. That
was between 1833 and 1835. The ' Diplomatic Correspond-
ence of the Revolution,' which preceded the < Washington,' and
was also in twelve volumes, he prepared largely during his
residence in Boston. His
editorship of the North
American extended from
1824, when he purchased
the review, to 1831. The
notable ' Library of Amer-
ican Biography,' which he
edited and brought out
between 1834 and 1837,
was carried forward
partly in Boston and
partly here in Cambridge.
His ten volumes of Frank-
lin's Works and Life,
published between 1836
and 1840, were also in part prepared during his Cambridge
life. Fully a hundred volumes of historical or biographical
work bear Sparks's name as author or editor."

Turning now into Kirkland Street and walking a little way
down this old thoroughfare, which used to be called Profess-
ors' Row, because so many of the college professors lived
here, we reached the long-time home of that fine personality,
Professor Francis James Child (bora in Boston, in 1825 died
there, 1896), who has been ranked foremost among American
scholars in Anglo-Saxon and early English literature, and whose

PROF. FRANCIS J. CHILD.

308

LI TERA R Y PIL GRIM A GES.

" English and Scottish Popular Ballads" is a classic. This
house, set back from the street, with vine-clad piazza along the
street front, entrance porch at the side, the front grounds a
garden, struck Percy's fancy. I wished that he could have
seen the place in the professor's time, when it was embowered
in roses, of which he was an ardent and devoted cultivator,
growing them, as Howells has written, " in a splendor and pro-
fusion impossible to any but a true lover with a genuine gift

STUDY IN PROFESSOR CHILD'S HOUSE.

for them." The peculiar appearance of the dwelling, as of two
distinct houses brought together, I explained was due to the
building of the larger rear part as an afterthought, when the
occupants had outgrown the front part. The library was in
the front part, and the working study in the rear. The latter
was a veritable scholar's den, with the genuine bookish flavor,
a retreat into which it was the privilege of only his nearest
friends to penetrate. The scholar's desk, a flat table, stood

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED.

309

near the middle of the room, near at hand were his literary tools,
and always in their season blooming roses from the garden.

"Probably for no professor of his day had Harvard men
a warmer affection," I observed as Percy stood contemplating
the house. " He was connected with the college as tutor or
professor almost from his own graduation, in 1846, after a few

PROFESSOR CHILD IN HIS ROSE GARDEN.

months spent abroad in study in his favorite fields. He was
professor of rhetoric and oratory from 1851, and professor of
English literature from 1871 till his death, and gave these
departments of the university a superior character and stand-
ing. His class lectures on Anglo-Saxon, Chaucer, and Shak-
spere were especially rich, while his handling of the students'
themes was of infinite value to those who would heed his choice
criticism, and be guided by him to the pure English, style of
which he was master.

310 LITER AEY PILGRIMAGES.

"His collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads
was a literary recreation with him, begun almost with his pro-
fessorship and pursued with an ardor and thoroughness which
a scholar would be expected to give to an absorbing life-study.
Its final publication, in exquisite form, between 1883 and the
year of his death, was a literary event. Nearly a quarter of
a century before he had brought out his first eight-volume
edition of the ballads, following the standard American edition

"SHADY HILL," HOME OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

of the ( British Poets' which he edited, and which inspired
him to the closer study of balladry."

The Norton house, home of Professor Charles Eliot Norton
(born in Cambridge 1827 ), the Dante scholar and authority
on the literature of the fine arts, was next on our list. A short
walk brought us to " Shady Hill," as it is fitly called a man-
sion of early nineteenth-century type, long and low, with long
piazzas, retired among venerable trees on the edge of which
was once " Norton's Woods." It was the home originally of
the father of the professor, Andrews Norton, the Biblical

CAM Kill I)(,'K HEVISITED. 311

scholar, and himself a professor in the Harvard Divinity
School, where he occupied the chair of sacred literature from
1819 to 1830. Percy heard with lively interest that these
Nortons were in direct descent from the minister, John Norton
of Ipswich, whose ancient homestead we had visited on our
pilgrimage to Ipswich town.

"They were all cultivated men, these Nortons," our talk
ran on, " each leaving his stamp on the literature of the soil.
Charles Eliot Norton held his Harvard professorship of the
history of art for nearly a quarter of a century (1874-'98),
retiring at length to devote himself exclusively to literary
work which was accumulating on his hands. To him we owe
the published Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, and of
Goethe and Carlyle ; the miscellaneous Letters of Carlyle ; the
Letters of his life-long friend James Russell Lowell, with the
slight thread of biography running through them ; and the col-
lected writings of that Bayard of American letters, George
William Curtis. In his young manhood, and indeed quite to
middle life, Mr. Norton was much abroad, making long stays
in Europe, given to study and observation of the development
of the fine arts, some of the results of which appeared in his
' Historical Studies in Church Building in the Middle Ages,'
and in his class-room lectures. His translation of Dante was
among his earlier works. He holds the primacy among culti-
vated Americans."

A turn or two by cross paths took us up past the Palfrey
place, the Cambridge home of John Gorham Palfrey (born in
Boston, 1796 died in Cambridge, 1881), the historian of New
England. The house of this estate was seen also, secluded in a
grove of trees. Here Palfrey spent his declining years after his
retirement from public life, placidly pursuing his historical work.
" Few, I fancy," I remarked, " few of this day and generation
are aware of the strenuous part which Palfrey played in public
affairs in his prime, or of the extent of his literary activity.

" Son of a merchant of Demerara and Boston, who was also a

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Louisiana planter, and grandson of an officer of the Revolution,
who was an aide-de-camp of Washington at the occupation of
Dorchester Heights, he became early an aggressive anti-slavery
advocate. When the slaves of his father's Louisiana planta-
tion came to him by inheritance he liberated them all. Gradu-
ating from Harvard in the class which included Jared Sparks
and Theophilus Parsons (the class of 1815), he became first a
clergyman. For thirteen years he was settled over the Brattle-

HOME OF JOHN G. PALFRE'

Square Church 'in Boston, the immediate successor there of
Edward Everett. He served eight years as professor at Har-
vard, succeeding Andrews Norton in the chair of sacred litera-
ture. Then he entered politics, and served successively in
the Massachusetts Legislature, the secretaryship of the Com-
monwealth, and Congress. In the Legislature he interested
himself with Horace Mann in developing the public school
system. In Congress his uncompromising course brought upon

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED.

313

him much ostracism, and his defeat for reelection in a remark-
able contest which inspired Lowell's lines beginning :

" There are who triumph in a losing cause
Who can put on defeat as 'twere a wreath
Unwithering in the adverse popular breath,
Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause ;
'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws.'

" He was a political abolitionist, and a founder of the Free
Soil party. All this time, from his ministry through his politi-
cal career, he was
actively engaged
in literature. Be-
tween 1836 and
1842, within the
period of what has
been termed its
' great days,' he
edited the North
American, contribu-
ting also to its
pages numerous ar-
ticles alluded to
as remarkable for
scholarship and ac-
umen. Later he
wrote much on theo-
logical subjects.
His history of New
England, planned
large, was conceived
while he was in the
thick of politics ;
and after his en-
forced retirement to literary privacy, he gathered the material,
here and in England, and developed the work with precision

BUST OF DR. PALFREY IN MEMORIAL HALL.

314 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

and painstaking detail. The publication of the three large
octavo volumes, between 1858 and 1864, widened his reputation
especially with historical scholars. The compendious history
in four smaller volumes followed, in 1866-'73."

Back again on Kirkland Street and at its upper end, we
passed the birthplace of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born
1823 ); and a little north of this the site of the "gambrel-
roofed house" in which Oliver Wendell Holmes was born.
Holmes's description of this place and its association with the
opening of the Revolution as the headquarters of General Arte-
mas Ward, were yet fresh in Percy's memory, they having
been fully recalled in our earlier historic pilgrimage. He tried
again to picture in his mind the mansion's appearance and set-
ting in Holmes's boyhood : with the " row of tall Lombardy
poplars mounting guard on the western side " ; the line of
elms leading up to the western entrance ; the porch from which
President Langdon prayed for God's blessing on the little band
of raw troops starting off on their night march to Bunker Hill.
And within the great " dark and haunted garret" beneath the
gambrel roof ; the attic chambers " which themselves had his-
tories " ; the rooms of the second story, " chambers of birth and
death, sacred to silent memories " ; the heavy -beamed " study "
on the ground floor, with its shelves of books about which the
boys of the household " tumbled " in familiar association with
literature, and those legendary " dents " in the floor credited to
the ponderous butts of the Continental soldiers' firelocks ; the
old-fashioned garden; the "fields of waving grass" beyond,
" and trees and singing birds ; and that vast territory of four
or five acres around," the Holmes Farm, " to give a child the
sense that he was born to a noble principality." Percy tried,
also, to imagine this farm, covered now by the Hemenway
Gymnasium, the Lawrence Scientific School, the Jefferson
Physical Laboratory, and old Holmes Field.

Meanwhile I was speaking of other points in the story of
the historic mansion : its association with men connected with

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED

315

316 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the college before and after its occupancy by the Holmes
family. Of these before the Holmes' s day were the second
Jonathan Hastings (who inherited the place from his father,
the first Jonathan), for thirty years steward now called bur-
sar of the college, and Eliphalet Pearson, the learned pro-
fessor of Oriental literature. After the Holines's day and its
purchase by the university, it was the home successively of
Professor William Everett, Edward Everett's son, and Profess-
or James B. Thayer of the Law School, for the new building
of which, on its grounds, the mansion finally made way. Also,
it was the seat of Judge Oliver Wendell, the Autocrat's mater-
nal grandfather, before his father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes,
established himself in it, two years preceding the Autocrat's
birth.

Then we chatted about Parson Abiel Holmes himself : his
" Annals " of Cambridge, the early history of the town ; his
ministry of nearly forty years, from 1792, in the First Parish ;
his tenacious adhesion to the old faith after the Unitarian
whirlwind had swept through the Puritan churches ; his ulti-
mate dismissal for this adhesion, and his association with the
seceders who held the faith with him in a new Trinitarian
church, the Shepard church, the steeple of whose present
meeting-house we could see across the Common ; and his long,
cultivated life in the gambrel-roofed house till his death, in
1837.

Of Higginson's birthplace we had his own sketch in his
autobiographical " Cheerful Yesterdays " : a house spacious
and roomy, then facing an open field now largely covered by
Memorial Hall, and occupying grounds adjoining the Holmes
Farm. It was built shortly before his birth, by his father, at
the time steward of the college. " Higginson alludes to him-
self as a ' child of the college,' " I said, " born in the college,
so to speak, bred to it, and interested in all its men. The
home life, too, must have been in itself a liberal education for
him. His father's connection with the college, and the popu-

GAM r.UIDGE EE VlSl TED.

317

larity of his inotlier and aunt, brought many guests to the
house, including, he has told us, the most cultivated men in
Boston as well as in Cambridge. And there was a fascinating
library of a thousand or so volumes, composed chiefly of English
literature and history of the eighteenth century. There were
here also the new books of the choicest, though then few, Ameri-
can writers, copies of which it was their custom upon publica-
tion to present to their friends, among whom the Higginsons
were counted.

" The father, Francis Higginson, came of a < line of Puritan
clergymen, officials, militia officers, and latterly East India
merchants/ all dating back to that Reverend Francis Higgin-

BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

son who landed in Salem in 1629 with the first large party for
the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He had been a prosperous
East India merchant in Boston, till the Embargo preceding the
War of 1812 swept away his trade and fortune. The mother
was a great granddaughter of one of the Portsmouth Went-
worths, Judge Went worth, a grandson of the first of the three
royal Governors Wentworth, from whom Colonel Higginson gets
his middle name. She was his father's second wife, married
at nineteen, sixteen years the junior of her husband. They had
ten children, of whom Thomas Wentworth was the youngest.

318 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" Higginson passed his boyhood here in Cambridge (his
father died when he was nine years old), and in his fourteenth
year entered the college in the class of 1841. Among his
classmates was Levi L. Thaxter, of whom we heard at the Isles
of Shoals as Celia Thaxter's husband, and a warm friendship
grew up between them, fostered by their mutual love of letters.
Thaxter, Higginson says, was an ardent student of literature,
and first led him to Emerson and to Hazlitt. They were both
also lovers of Longfellow, and he tells how they used to sit at
the open window every New Year's Eve and read aloud Long-
fellow's ' Midnight Mass to the Dying Year. 7

" From these college days the literary life was Higginson's
choice ; but he was first turned to the ministry. He was at
work in the literary field, however, early in his pulpit career ;
indeed, while in his first settlement in Newburyport, he at-
tained a standing as a litterateur as marked, almost, as his
prominence as an anti-slavery advocate, which so soon lost
him his parish there. So through his service as minister of the
Free Church in Worcester his literary pen was much employed.
It was during this period that he compiled with Samuel Long-
fellow, the poet's minister brother, his first book, the volume
of seaside poetry, entitled i Thalatta.'

" It was also while a Worcester preacher, by the way, that
he took a leading hand in the attempt to rescue the fugitive
slave, Anthony Burns, in Boston (1854), and was indicted with
Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and others, a deputy mar-
shall having been killed in that affair, but escaped with the
rest through a flaw in the indictment. He had previously been
concerned in the attempted rescue of that other fugitive slave
Thomas Simms. Later he was in Kansas prepared to fight in
the Free Kansas cause. In the Civil War he headed the first
regiment of freed slaves mustered in the United States service
the First South Carolina Volunteers, as colonel ; thus he
got his title and won unique distinction.

".Higginson's regular ministry closed, and his work exclu-

CAMBRIDGE REVISITED. 319

sively in letters began three years before the Civil War, and
since that time his pen has been pretty constant in the produc-
tion of good literature. After the war he settled in Newport,
Rhode Island, and thence issued some of his best essays, papers
on social topics, poems, his romance < Malbone,' his ' Young
Folks' History of the United States,' that admirable pioneer
of its class, the ' Larger History of the United States,' and his
mellow ' Oldport Days/ Then he returned to Cambridge as
his final home. That was twenty years ago, and with this
home is identified his literary work of finest flavor. Here he
married his second wife, one of Longfellow's nieces, and the
' Aunt Jane ' of his ( Malbone/ His first wife was his second
cousin, Mary Elizabeth Chaiming, of the famous Channings.
We are to pass this later house of his, before long."

Colonel Higginson tells us that in the immediate neighbor-
hood of the Holmes house and of his birthplace, stood the
house of Royal Morse, the old village constable and auctioneer
whom, as " R. M.," Lowell has immortalized in the " Fireside
Travels."

We now made a detour round the Common, having on our
left the ancient burying-ground between the two churches,
" like Sentinel and Nun " keeping " their vigil on the green,"
where the dead presidents of the college " stretched their
weary bones under epitaphs stretched out at as full length as
their subjects " ; and where lies the gentle Vassal lady :

"Dust in her beautiful eyes.

At her feet and at her head

Lies a slave to attend the dead,
But their dust is white as hers."

Just above old Christ Church, "where the gouty Tories
used to kneel on their hassocks," we turned into the meek
little street staggering under the weight of the classic name of
Appian Way, here to pass the latter-day home of John Holmes
(born 1812 died 1899), Dr. Holines's younger brother.

320 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Percy had not heard of this Holmes, he said, and asked
what had been done by him in literature.

" Little," I replied. " And yet he had the author's talent
as well as his brother. Emerson once said that John Holmes
represented humor, while Wendell Holmes stood for wit. His
winsome quality sparkled in conversation, in his familiar letters
or terse notes to friends, and on rare occasions in verse ; but
it seldom got into print. Though not a recluse, he was, as
Higginson has said, * in the last degree self-withdrawing and
modest, more than content to be held by the world at arm's
length, yet capable of the most devoted and unselfish loyalty
to the real intimates he loved.' He basked in his brother's
fame, but good-humoredly resented any implied superiority of
the Autocrat over him. When one day a gentleman, upon
being introduced to him, exclaimed, < What ! John Holmes,
the brother of Oliver Wendell Holmes ! ' he retorted, with a
twinkle, < No, sir, he is the brother of me.' His few publica-
tions, which he reluctantly let go out, were confined to some
stray verses, and unique sketches of Old Cambridge, delight-
fully reminiscent and lightly historical.

" With the exception of two extended visits to Europe,
long intervals apart, John Holmes lived all his life of eighty-
seven years here in Cambridge, and in two houses, the
gambrel-roofed house, which was also his birthplace, and this.
He moved here, then the dwelling of an old domestic of the
family, and established his bachelor quarters in the second-
floor rooms, when the homestead was sold to the university a
few years after the death of his mother, which occurred, in
1862, at the great age of ninety-five. For many years he had
lived alone in the homestead with the gentle old lady, caring
for her in the most tender way, as his brother has testified.
Howells says that he was the most devoted Cantabrigian, after
Lowell, whom he knew. Lowell called him the best and most
delightful of men."

XVIII.

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD."

The approach along Brattle Street. Scene of " The Village Black-
smith." Homes of John Fiske. His notable work. In the library
of " Craigie house." Longfellow's Cambridge life. His lirst rooms
on Professors 1 Row. The "Five of Clubs." First coming to the
Craigie house. Madam Craigie. The upper and lower studies and
the work done in them. The tragedy of the poet's life. Neighbor-
ing homes of Horace E. Scudder and T. W. Higginson. Lowell at
" Elmwood." The attic study. Story of the "Biglow" papers.
Lowell's closing years at the beloved home. John T. Trowbridge at
Arlington. Story of " Neighbor Jackwood."

FROM the Appian Way we entered Brattle Street and our
steps were now directed westward toward the Longfellow, or
Craigie, house. At the turn I indicated with a general sweep
of the hand, down the street, where stood the " village smithy,"
beneath the " spreading chestnut tree," scene of Longfellow's
" Village Blacksmith." This was by the corner of Brattle and
Story Streets.

As we strolled up Brattle Street Percy's eye was attracted
by a long, low, peculiarly designed dwelling on the left, at the
corner of Ash Street, having a distinguished look and an air of
exceptional breadth and roominess within. It interested him
the more when I told him that this was the house of the late
John Fiske (born in Hartford, Conn., 1843 died in Glouces-
ter, Mass., 1902) the historian, ripe student of philosophy, and
lecturer. It was not, however, I explained, an old established
landmark, so to speak, for it is a new house, built for Professor
Fiske, but never occupied by him, his sudden death occurring
as he was preparing to move into it. It was fashioned as he

322

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

desired on a large and comfortable scale, the library being
made especially spacious to accommodate his great collection
of books. The house identified with his large historical work
was his former home on Berkeley Street, off Craigie Street, in
neighborly nearness to the Longfellow place. These remarks
moved Percy to questionings about Fiske and his career, and
as we walked I gave a rapid sketch of him in this wise.

LIBRARY OF JOHN FISKE.

" He lived here in Cambridge almost from his first coming
to the college as a student ; and he was preeminently a Cam-
bridge author. He was born, by the way, not Fiske, but
Green, Edmund Fiske Green. He adopted in his boyhood,
after his father's death, the name of John Fiske, which was
that of his maternal great-grandsire, a soldier of the Revolu-
tion. His father, native of Delaware, was a newspaper editor,
at different periods, in Hartford, Connecticut, New York, and

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD." 323

Panama, and died in the last place. His mother was of
Middletown, Connecticut. Most of his youth before entering
Harvard, at seventeen, was spent in Middletown, in the family
of his maternal great-grandmother. This was a cultivated
home, enriched with a good classical library ; and here, with
congenial surroundings, he very early began his ardent excur-
sions into literature.

" The boy was a prodigious reader, and a marvelous scholar.
If we are to believe his earlier biographer, at seven he had read
through Caesar ; at nine had devoured much of Milton, Pope,
and Bunyan, and nearly all of Shakspere ; at eleven had read
histories of many lands ; at thirteen, a large part of Livy,
Cicero, Ovid, Catullus, and Juvenal, and all of Virgil, Horace,
Tacitus, Sallust, and Suetonius. In like manner Greek was
disposed of; then modern languages were taken up, German,
French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese ; at seventeen and eighteen
(when in* college) he was reading Hebrew and Sanskrit ; and
later, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Roumanian, and Rus-
sian. He started in professional work not long after his grad-
uation as University lecturer on philosophy at Harvard. He
then lectured at large for several years, on philosophical and
historical subjects in various parts of the country and abroad,
before his reputation as an author had spread. At one time,
also, he was librarian of Harvard College.

" Fiske's lectures on evolution brought him first into promi-
nence, and his earlier books were on this and kindred subjects.
It has been said that no American has done more than he in
expounding the Darwinian theory. His notable contributions
to scientific thought began with his < Outlines of Cosmic Philos-
ophy,' made up of a series of lectures on the doctrine of evolu-
tion. That was brought out a quarter of a century ago, and
arrested instant attention from philosophical students and
readers. The next year ' The Unseen World ' appeared ; three
years later, < Darwinism ' ; after an interval of four years, ' Ex-
cursions of an Evolutionist ' ; then in succession, * The Destiny

324

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

of Man Viewed in the Light of his Origin/ f The Idea of God
as Affected by Modern Knowledge,' < The Doctrine of Evolu-
tion : Its Scope and Influence,' and < Through Nature to God,'
all profound subjects, so treated, and in such attractive dic-
tion, as to invite and hold the general reader as well as the
student.

"Meanwhile Professor Fiske's historical publications pre-
senting especially the philosophical characteristics of American

history, were advanced
with uncommon rapidity.
His first work in this field,
which also grew out of
lectures, was 'The Criti-
cal Period of American
History: 1783-1 789,' is-
sued in 1888. This was
followed within a year by
{ The Beginnings of New
England.' Two years later
appeared 'The American
Revolution ' ; the next
year, < The Discovery of
America,' later <Old Vir-
ginia ' ; and * The Missis-
sippi Valley in the Civil
War.' Between these larger studies were produced his histori-
cal manuals for schools and his < Myth and Myth-Makers.' No
writer has done more in popularizing American history, and
accurate history, than John Fiske.'"

At length at the doubly historic Longfellow house, as
Washington's headquarters and the poet's home, imchanged
in aspect since Percy first saw it in our previous pilgrimage,
we took up the poet's story from the point at which we dropped
it in Maine.

" We left him there, you will remember," I said, " about to

JOHN FISKE.

FROM ^CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELM WOOD." 1 325

take up his Harvard work as Professor of Modern Languages
and Belles Lettres, in the chair which his friend George Tick-
nor had occupied. It was in December, 1836, that he estab-
lished himself here in Cambridge, first in a house on old
Professors' Row. These were very pleasant chambers, he
wrote a friend, ' with great trees in front whose branches
almost touch my windows ; so that I have a nest not unlike
the birds, being high up in the third story. Right under me,
in the second, lives and laughs Cornelius whose surname is
Felton.' This was Professor Cornelius C. Felton, then profess-
or of Greek, afterward president of the college.

" The poet's Cambridge life thus began quietly and agree-
ably. < Like the clown in Shakspere,' he wrote, ' I have no
enemy but winter and rough weather.' With Felton he was
already on terms of intimacy, having made his acquaintance
some time before ; and he soon formed close friendships with a
little group of Felton's friends, Charles Sumner, then an in-
structor in the Law School, George S. Hillard, and Henry R.
Cleveland. These four were then young men about Longfel-
low's own age, Felton like himself being twenty-nine, Sumner
twenty -five, Hillard twenty-eight ; and all were pursuing liter-
ature along with their professions. They early associated
themselves in a literary club, taking for name the < Five of
Clubs,' which held together for years. Later, when their glow-
ing notices of each other's productions began to appear in the
reviews, the slashing newspapers dubbed the ' Fives ' the * Mu-
tual Admiration Society,' and this was the origin of the phrase
which has come into such common use, and has been so vari-
ously applied.

" Only a season was passed in the Kirkland Street rooms,
for in August of his first year Longfellow was most fortunately
lodged in this ' Craigie house,' in ' two large and beautiful
rooms ' ; and, as it happened, this remained his home through-
out the rest of his life. How he came to seek rooms here, and
how Madam Craigie received him, he has himself picturesquely

326 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

related in a note which his biographer his brother Samuel
quotes in the Life. Thus it runs," and taking up the first
volume, and turning to the chapter on the Craigie house, I
read :

" * The first time I was at the Craigie house was a beautiful summer
afternoon in the year 1837. I came to see Mr. McLane, a law-student,
who occupied the southeastern chamber. The window-blinds were
closed, but through them came a pleasant breeze, and I could see the
waters of the Charles gleaming in the meadows. McLane left Cambridge
in August, and I took possession of his room, making use of it as a library
or study, and having the adjoining chamber for my bedroom. At first
Mrs. Craigie declined to let me have rooms. I remember how she looked
as she stood, in her white turban, with her hands crossed behind her,
snapping her gray eyes. She had resolved, she said, to take no more
students into the house. But her manner changed when I told her who
I was. She said she had read Outre-Mer, of which one number was lying
on her sideboard. She then took me all over the house and showed me
every room in it, saying, as we went into each, that I could not have that
one. She finally consented to my taking the rooms mentioned above, on
condition that the door leading into the back entry should be locked on
the outside.

** 'Young Habersham, of Savannah, a friend of Mrs. Craigie's, occu-
pied at that time the other front chamber. He was a skillful performer on
the flute. Like other piping birds, he took wing for the rice fields of the
South when the cold weather came, and I remained alone with the widow
in her castle. The back part of her house was occupied, however, by her
farmer. His wife supplied my meals, and took care of my rooms. She
was a giantess, and very pious in words, and when she brought in my
breakfast frequently stopped to exhort me. The exorbitant rate at which
she charged my board was rather at variance with her preaching. ' Her
name was Miriam, and Felton called her 'Miriam, the profit-ess.' Her
husband was a meek little man.' "

" And who was Madam Craigie ? " Percy asked.

" She was the relict of Andrew Craigie, who bought the
mansion in 1795. He had been Apothecary General to the
American Army in the Revolution, and after the war had
grown rich. He enlarged the estate to about one hundred and
fifty acres, extending back to and including what is now Ob-
servatory Hill, where the Harvard Observatory stands. He

FROM "CRAIGIE UOUSE" TO " ELMWOOJ)." 327

also enlarged the mansion, building on the western wing and
broadening the square northeastern room into a banqueting-
hall, embellished with pillars and columns, for his grand din-
ners. He set up a princely establishment, with horses and
carriages, and greenhouses and gardens. But by and by his
fortune disappeared, and when he died he left the Madam a
life interest in the mansion, but very slender income. Accord-
ingly she reserved a few rooms for herself, and let out the
others to lodgers carefully selected. She was an eccentric per-
son, and many tales are told of her peculiarities. In this same
note which I have just read, Longfellow gives us a droll one.
During his first summer here < the fine old elms in front of the
house were attacked by canker worms, which, after having
devoured the leaves, came spinning down in myriads. Mrs.
Craigie used to sit by the open windows and let them crawl
over her white turban unmolested. She would have nothing
done to protect the trees from these worms. She used to say,
" Why, sir, they are our fellow-worms ; they have as good a
right to live as we have." } Craigie's name is perpetuated in
the beautiful street originally cut by the rear of the estate,
and in one of the bridges crossing the Charles.

" How old is the mansion ? Colonel John Vassal built it
in 1759, and it was the ' Vassal house/ stateliest of the stately
mansions of ' Tory Row,' along this road, till the Vassals had
fled with the oncoming Revolution, and it was taken for Wash-
ington's headquarters.

" But let us get back to Longfellow. The poet's first study
was this historic upper chamber, which had been Washington's
private room

" ' Yes, within this very room

Sat he in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head, '

as Longfellow has sung, and there were written all of his
poems till 1845. Then, after his second marriage it became

828 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the nursery, and lie moved down to the large front room ad-
joining the library. This remained his study ever after. The
same room was Washington's office, or business headquarters,
while the library room was used by his military family.

" * The Psalm of Life ' was the second poem written in the
up-stairs study. It was composed, Samuel Longfellow has
related, ' hastily, upon the blank portions of a note of invita-
tion, and was dated July 26, 1838.' The poet kept the manu-
script closely to himself for some time, unwilling that any one
should see it. ' It was a voice from my inmost heart,' he wrote
long after, ' at a time when I was rallying from depression.'
It appeared first in the Knickerbocker in October, 1838, and
was immediately copied far and wide. In it, the biographer
says, the critics ' recognized a new strain in American poetry.'
And it won the recognition of the world. Its quatrains be-
came veritable household words on both sides the Atlantic.
The poem reappeared, with < The Midnight Mass,' < The Keaper
and the Flowers,' and a dozen other verses, in the thin first
volume of ' Voices of the Night/ in 1839, which, Professor
Charles C. Carroll has said, formed an epoch in our literary
history.

" * The Wreck of the Hesperus ' was based on newspaper
reports of shipwrecks of fishermen. In the poet's journal this
note appears under date of December 17, 1839 :

" 4 News of shipwrecks horrible on the coast. Twenty bodies washed
ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a
reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place : among others,
the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-flower, near Black Rock. I must
write a ballad on this; also two others The Skeleton in Armor, and
Sir Humphrey Gilbert.'

Then on the thirtieth, thirteen days afterward, we find the
ballad written, and the manner of its composition disclosed, in
this note :

" ' I wrote last evening a notice of Allston's poems ; after which I sat
till twelve o'clock by the lire smoking, when suddenly it came into my

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELM WOOD." 1 329

mind to write the ballad of the Schooner Hesperus, which I accordingly
did. Then I went to bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were run-
ning in my mind, and I got up to add these to the ballad. It was three
by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the
ballad. It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by
lines, but by stanzas.'

" < The Hesperus ' was first published in the New World, of
New York, which Park Benjamin was editing, and the honora-
rium for it was twenty-five dollars. It is an interesting fact
that Longfellow never saw Norman's Woe till long years after.
So late as 1878 he wrote in a note to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
[Ward] upon his return from an August day call at her tiny
summer cottage, the ' Sea Shell,' in Gloucester: <Iam sorry
that I did not stay long enough at East P/)int to see the fog
lift and Norman's Woe rise to view. I have never seen those
fatal rocks/

" ( The Skeleton in Armor ' made its first appearance in the
Knickerbocker in 1841, and for this the sum received was also
twenty -five dollars. ( ' Excelsior' was written, in the first draft,
on the back of a note to Sumner, and was dated 'half -past
three, morning.' This first draft is preserved in the College
Library.

" Mrs. Craigie died in 1841, and Joseph E. Worcester, the
maker of Worcester's Dictionary, took the mansion for a year,
Longfellow keeping his rooms. The summer and autumn of
1842 he spent abroad for his health. While there the < Belfry
of Bruges ' was inspired, and possibly written. On the return
voyage he wrote some poems against slavery, which were sub-
sequently published in a little volume.

"In the summer of the following year, 1843, his second
marriage took place, when he wedded Miss Frances Elizabeth
Appleton, daughter of Nathan Appleton, the Boston merchant
and manufacturer, and sister of Thomas Gold Appleton, of
whom we spoke when in Boston. Longfellow had met her
six years before while traveling in Switzerland, when she was

880 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

a maiden of nineteen. She was the ' Mary Ash burton ' of his
' Hyperion.' He brought his bride to his rooms here,
increased to three some years before by the addition of the
front room across the hall, for a dining room, where he had
given choice little dinners to his literary friends, among them
Dickens, on his first visit to America in 1842. Soon the
mansion was purchased for them by Mr. Appleton, with
the grounds immediately adjoining. Afterward he added to
his gift the land across the street, now the public park so well
named the Longfellow Garden, thus securing the open view to
the river and beyond which the poet so loved.

" Longfellow gave up the old study reluctantly. To Sum.
ner he wrote some time after, <I have always regretted the
dismantling of that consecrated chamber. But what can one
do against the rising tide of the rising generation ? ' Yet the
new study was charming ; richer than the old, with the same
outlook from the deep windows, only from a lower point of
view. The poet's work table with his high desk upon it, was
placed by the corner front window; antique oaken bookcases
were fitted between the windows and against the high wain-
scoted walls, and in this adjoining library ; in front of the
generous fireplace was set the poet's deep armchair in which
he was wont to muse before he wrote, or sometimes to firstcast
in pencil upon a portfolio resting on his knee. In course of
years the beautiful room assumed the appearance which became
so familiar to us through repeated descriptions and pictur-
ings, with the portraits on the walls of Felton and Sumner,
Emerson, Hawthorne, and the poet himself, each in his young
manhood.

"There was the round table in the middle of the room
agreeably cluttered with books and periodicals, and upon it
the < oblong ebony tray, with two flacons for the ink,' inscribed
on an ivory plate < Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his inkstand ' ;
also the inkstand of Thomas Moore, both gifts to the poet
from English admirers ; and the poet's own inkstand, with the

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELM WOOD." 331

332 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

quill pens by its side, the only kind which he used, having no
fondness for pens of steel. Below the ancient mirror on the
eastern wall, surmounted by a statuette of Dante, stood the
antique table, holding the little Italian casket containing frag-
ments of Dante's coffin, and a miniature edition of the ' Divina
Commedia.' On the poet's high desk was the statuette of
Goethe, in long gray coat, with hands folded behind him; and
nearby, the tall, old-fashioned clock, similar to the ' Old Clock
on the Stairs.' By the fireplace, in congenial company with
the older arm-chair, was the ' Children's Chair,' which Cam-
bridge school children presented to the poet on his seventy-
second birthday, made from the wood of the ' Village
Blacksmith's Spreading Chestnut Tree,' cut down by un-
poetic city fathers to widen Brattle Street.

"The first year in this study was prolific. Within that
year Longfellow wrote or finished for publication, among other
poems, 'The Bridge Across the Charles,' 'Birds of Passage,'
'The Old Clock on the Stairs,' and 'The Day is Done'; he
began ' Evangeline ' ; and brought out his fourth volume of
collected poems.

" ' Evangeline ' was started under the name of ' Gabrielle,'
as a note in the journal, dated November, 1845, indicates : ' Set
about Gabrielle, my idyl in hexameters, in earnest.' But soon
he wrote, ' Shall it be Gabrielle, or Celestine, or Evangeline ? '
Evangeline was settled upon, however, before the work had far
progressed. The suggestion of the idyl came indirectly from
Hawthorne. One day he and a Boston friend were dining here
with Longfellow, and during the dinner-table talk, the friend
related an incident of the banishment of the Acadians, the
story of a young maiden who, in the dispersion, was separated
from her lover and spent the rest of her life in searching for
him. The friend observed that he had long been trying to
persuade Hawthorne to write a story on this theme. Haw-
thorne being evidently reluctant to undertake it, Longfellow
remarked, 'If you really do not want this incident for a tale,

FROM "VRAK.'IK IIOUSK" TO - KLM WOOD."* 333

let me have it for a poem,' to which Hawthorne heartily con-
sented. That the subject had been in the romancer's mind for
some time appears from the note in his ' American Note-Book/
made eight years before this talk at Longfellow's table :

" ' H. L. C heard from a French Canadian a story of a young

couple in Acadie. On their marriage day all the men of the Province
were summoned to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When
assembled, they were all seized and shipped off to be distributed through
New England, among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in
search of him, wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at
last, when she was old, she found her bridegroom on his death-bed. The
shock was so great that it killed her likewise.'

" ( Evangeline ' appeared in October, 1847, almost two years
from its inception, and won the popular heart. One English
critic hailed it as ( the first genuine Castalian font which had
burst from the soil of America.' Some criticised the rhythm,
the choice of hexameters ; but most commended the radiant
pictures of scenery, the pathos of the tale, and the beauty of
its telling.

" When eight years later Hiawatha ' appeared, hostile
critics broke out again. Some of the newspapers were < fierce
and furious ' over it. But the poet took all this complacently.
When in less than a month after the first issue the publishers
were putting to press the tenth thousand, he wrote, 'Critics
may assail as they please, op-pur si nuove.' Again it was the
meter which received the brunt of attack ; in this, the eight-
syllable trochaic verse. The work was ridiculed, imitated,
parodied. One humorist, ' P. Philander Doesticks ' (Mortimer
Thomson), published a burlesque in a book of similar size,
which he called < E. Pluri Buster.' But its popularity con-
tinued steadfast. After it had been out five years the poet
notes, < A new edition of Hiawatha." My publisher says that
he sells two thousand a year, which is a great sale for an old
book of which fifty thousand have already been sold.' That
was forty and more years ago, remember, when the literary

384 LITJSRAJtr PILGRIMAGES.

field was much more contracted than now, and the hundred-
thousand-edition book, now so common, was undreamed of.

" The composition of ' Hiawatha ' occupied less than a year.
Under date of a day in June the journal has this note, * I have
at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians.
It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole.'
And under date of June the next year is recorded 'Proof
sheets of " Hiawatha." ' Although it started briskly, well out-
lined in the poet's mind after he had absorbed the great quarto
of Schoolcraft's Indian legends and lore, it did not move for-
ward smoothly. There were many interruptions in the work ;
some misgivings at times about it all ; much rewriting. Some
progress was made in the summer, at the seaside in Nahant.
In October the poet seemed to be quite in the spirit of the
work, noting in his journal, < " Hiawatha " occupies and de-
lights me. Have I no misgivings about it ? Yes, sometimes.
Then the theme seizes me and hurries me away, and they van-
ish.' But in November he notes, ' Head to - - some pages of
"Hiawatha." He finds the poem will want human interest. So
does F. So does the author. I must put a live, beating heart
into it.' Then it lagged till mid-winter. Finally in February
he had eighteen cantos satisfactorily fashioned, and a month
later the poem was assumed to be finished.

The prose tale of < Kavariagh,' < The Building of the Ship,'
' The Golden Legend,' and the ' Seaside and Fireside ' volume
of collected poems preceded ' Hiawatha ' ; also < The Two
Angels,' written upon the birth of a daughter to the poet's
house, and the death of Lowell's wife. Before, too, he began
' Hiawatha,' Longfellow resigned his professorship to give him-
self wholly to poetry. 'My Lost Youth,' the poem on his
birthplace, from which we quoted when in Portland, followed
close upon the finish of ' Hiawatha.' Next he devoted himself
to writing < The Courtship of Miles Standish,' which came out
in 1858. Two years later appeared 'Paul Eevere's Kide,' a
part written on the historic Nineteenth of April.

l-'HOM " CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD." 335

" Then caine the tragedy of Longfellow's life, sharp and
swift. His brother has related it in the fewest and tenderest
words. < On the 9th of July, 1861, his wife was sitting in the
library with her two little girls, engaged in sealing up some
small packages of their curls which she had just cut off. From
a match fallen upon the floor her light summer dress caught
fire. The shock was too great, and she died the next morning.'
Three days later she was buried at Mount Auburn. < It was
the anniversary of her marriage day, and on the beautiful head,
lovely and immarred in death, someone had placed a wreath of
orange blossoms. Her husband was not there, confined to
his chamber by the severe burns which he had himself re-
ceived.' The recovery from this calamity was slow, and the
shadow of it remained on his life.

" When again he took up his pen it was to begin the ' Tales
of a Wayside Inn.' But he felt the need of a * continuous and
tranquil occupation.' So it was that early in 1863 he returned
to the task of translating the 'Divina Commedia,' which he
had taken up years before and laid aside. When the work was
ready for the press he called Norton and Lowell to his aid, and
the three, with sometimes one or two other Dante scholars,
went through it on a final revision, critically at every step.
Thus was formed the Dante Club which met here Wednesday
evenings, when a dainty supper followed the literary labors.
The translation was published in 1867, the same year in which
Norton's translation of the ' Vita Nuova ' appeared, and Dr. T.
W. Parsons's fine version of the ' Inferno.' Meanwhile the
first installment of the 'Wayside Inn' had made its appear-
ance, adding fresh laurels to the poet's fame ; the ' Flower-de-
luce ' had been completed, and the ' New England Tragedies '
begun.

" In 1868-'69 another, and the poet's last, visit to Europe
was made, when he received distinguished courtesies, private
and public ; and spent some felicitous dayb with Tennyson at
the Isle of Wight. Home again, he settled down to his old

336 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

quiet and serene life, and a notable period of literary activity
followed. From this time until his death the ( output' in-
cluded the translation of <The Divine Comedy'; the volume
of < Christus ' ; the < Three Books of Song ' ; < Aftermath ' ; the
' Tales of a Wayside Inn ' ; the l Masque of Pandora ' ; the
thirty-one little volumes of his selected i Poems of Places ' ;
and < Keramos.' Then the last volume, < Ultima Thule,' with
the familiar lines familiar from much quoting of the

initial poem :

*" Ultima Thule! Utmost isle !
Here in thy harbors for a while
AVe lower our sails : a while we rest
From the unending, endless quest.'

'' During these latter years of his life Longfellow was the
chief figure in Cambridge, and this house was beset by callers,
some distinguished, more curious, to see the poet and ' Wash-
ington's headquarters.' One day he notes in his journal, f Four-
teen callers in the afternoon.' On another, ' Six Pennsylvanians
and one Bostonian, called in a body.' Another day an English-
man called, introducing his visit with the remark, <In other
countries, you know, we go to see ruins and the like ; but you
have no ruins in your country, and I thought I thought I'd
call and see you ! '

" He died at the close of a March day, in 1882, after a short
illness, surrounded by his family, in the chamber where his
wife had died. The city bells announced the end, tolling off
his seventy-five years. At the simple home funeral his brother
Samuel read selections from his poems ; and at the public ser-
vice at the Appleton Chapel, in the College Yard, were read
these fitting lines from ' Hiawatha ' :

' ' ' He is dead, the sweet musician !
He the sweetest of all singers !
He has gone from us forever,
He has moved a little nearer
To the master of all music,
To the master of all singing. 1 "

FliOM "CRA1GIE HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD." 387

With ;i reluctant leave-taking of this revered landmark, we
resumed our walk.

Strolling on to the junction of Brattle and Craigie streets,
and turning back into the latter, we came to Buckingham
Street, and presently reached the later home of Colonel Higgin-
son, which I had promised should be in our route. This is one
of the pleasantest of Cambridge streets, as Percy fancied it
must be, with com-
fortable detached
houses agreeably
placed, those on the
left side set against
a gentle hill-slope.

We followed this
side, and along the
way I pointed out
(No. 19) the house
where lived Horace
E. Scudder (born in
Boston, 1838 died
in Cambridge, 1902),
maker of many and
various books, some-
time editor of the
Atlantic, and the
biographer of Low-
ell. It was a modest

, *' . "i HORACE E. SCUDDER IN HIS LIBRARY.

house of quiet but

attractive design, Percy pronounced, retired from the street, yet
in a neighborly way open to it through uninclosed grounds.
"Though Scudder was a Bostonian by birth, and a gradu-
ate of Williams College (1858), rather than of Harvard,
through all his literary life Cambridge was his home," I re-
marked, while we tarried a moment before this house. " Here in
Cambridge he wrote those fascinating 'Dream Children ' and the

338 LITER ART PILGRIMAGES.

' Bodley Books ' for young folk, eight volumes of them, detail-
ing pleasing and profitable adventures among things historic.
Later appeared his excellent * History of the United States '
for young readers ; then his essays into the broader field of
literature, brought together in his ' Men and Letters.' Earlier
he wrote and published his first and only novel, ' The Dwell-
ers in Five Sisters' Court/ now, I dare say, unknown to the
general reader who feeds most lustily on novelties, and only a
memory to others; but it was widely read when new, and is
well worth rereading these days, for its clever portraiture and
its Dickensian flavor, though not at all an imitation of Dickens.
Subsequently was gathered together some of his lighter fiction
in his ' Stories and Romances.'

"As editor and author Scudder added good store to our
stock of biography in his life of his missionary brother, David
Coit Scudder ; his < Noah Webster ' ; the ' Life and Letters
of Bayard Taylor,' done in conjunction with that poet's widow ;
and the life of Lowell. In his books and papers on historical
topics, and his f Recollections of Samuel Breck,' he contributed
to our knowledge of Colonial life and times. In the important
branch of editorial work that of compilation, which is too
often slightingly and slovenly performed he did great ser-
vice, the numerous volumes and booklets which have come
from his hands being models in their way. Scudder was first
a magazine editor from 1867 to 1870, in charge of the River-
side Magazine for Young People, which had a popular run for
several years. His editorship of the Atlantic, succeeding that
of Aldrich, covered the period from 1890 to 1898."

We came upon Higginson's home (No. 27) a little way
above the Scudder place, and on slightly higher ground.

"Quaintness," Percy ventured while we stood looking up
to it over the rustic front fence, " Quaintness, I should say,
is what you would call ' the dominating feature ' of this place.
And how picturesque it all is ! the house of red, the vine-clad
piazza, the side entrance porch, the broad window-panes framed

FROM "CUAIG1E HOUSE" TO "XLMWOO&S

339

in old-fashioned side lights ; and the grounds, bounded by that
close line of pines on the upper side, and this fence of bark-
covered pales. Now this, to my mind, is what a litterateur's
place should be."

Within it was equally choice. Across the threshold, in
the hall, are trophies of the colonel's war life. And on the

HOUSE OF THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

entrance floor are the library and study, from which have
issued those engaging essays, the life of Margaret Fuller
Ossoli, and the mellow books, the "Cheerful Yesterdays,"
" Contemporaries," Concerning All of Us," " Old Cambridge,"
and the rest, now brought together with Higginson's other
productions in his " Collected Works," which have marked

340 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

his ripened years. Since 1878, when he came back to Cam-
bridge permanently to live, as Percy learned, his work has
borne the Cambridge stamp.

Again on Brattle Street, and perhaps a third of a mile
beyond the Craigie-Longfellow house, we were at that equally

revered land-
mark, "El m-
w o o d," b i r th-
place and home
of James Russell
Lowell (born
1819 died
1891). Pressed
upon by modern
dwellings more
than on our pre-
vious visit, cur-
tailed in extent,
and somewhat
weathered and
worn, the place
yet retained its
familiar aspect.

Percy recol-
lected the history
of the mansion,
as it was outlined
to him on our pre-
vious pilgrim-

COL. HIGGINSON IN HIS STUDY. ,, , .,

age : that it was

built in the days " when we lived under the king," about the
year 1760, as the country seat of Thomas Oliver, a Provincial
magnate and the last of the royal lieutenant governors of
Massachusetts ; that at its entrance door, in 1774, this Tory
official was forced by the men of Middlesex to hand over his

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO "SLMWOOD."

341

resignation of his office; that after the Battle of Bunker Hill
the mansion was converted into a hospital for Provincial sol-
diers ; that some time after the Revolution, and for a quarter
of a century, it was the country seat of Elbridge Gerry, patriot,

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

governor, and vice-president ; and that it became the Lowell
house shortly before the poet's birth (two years, to be accurate,
T suggested), when it was purchased by his father, the Rev.
Charles Lowell, minister of the West Church, in Boston.

342 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Then Percy was told* how the place acquired its poetic
name of Elniwood, from the old English elms which formed
the noble arch of approach to the mansion, and were mostly
of the minister's planting ; and its appearance in Lowell's
boyhood and youth was pictured to him. "At that time,"
I observed, "it was a genuine country place, with garden,
orchard, and pasture, fronting a rural lane between two country
roads. Brattle Street was then the 'Old Road/ and Mount
Auburn Street, the thoroughfare on the other side, the ' New
Road.' And all the surroundings were rural. Eastward,
toward the river, was Symonds's Hill, long since leveled, from
which Lowell's ' soothing and placid ' view of < Cambridge
Thirty Years Ago ' almost eighty years now was so invi-
tingly sketched.

" While in time, with the growth of the village into the town
and then the city, all about Elmwood became changed, the estate
itself steadfastly retained its old air and dignity, only increasing
in beauty, till Lowell's death. When toward the close of his life
Lowell returned to it, after his years abroad, he wrote, ' But oh,
the changes ! I hardly know the old road, now a street, that I
have paced so many years, for the new houses. My old home-
stead seems to have a puzzled look in its eyes as it looks down
(a trifle superciliously, methinks) on these upstarts. " He who
lives longest has the most old clothes," says the Zulu proverb,
and I shall wear mine till I die. 7 It was dearer to him than
any other place in the world. ' I am back again in the place I
love best : I am sitting in my old garret, at my old desk, smok-
ing my old pipe, and loving my old friends/ he wrote on an-
other occasion of return after long absence."

Entering the mansion, we found no difficulty in recalling
the interior as it appeared in Lowell's time. Here is the great
hall, eight feet wide, running straight through the middle
of the house, terminating with broad glass doors giving upon
the rear grounds. From either side open the four large rooms,
each wainscoted in deal, painted white, so often described.

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO "ELMWOOD." 343

344 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Here is the drawing-room, in the poet's later years the lower
study, with its deep paneled recesses on either side of the ample
fireplaces, the farther recess lighted by a window looking upon
the lawn. Beyond, the library, connected with the drawing-room
by arches at the sides of the great chimneys. Ascending from
the hall, the staircase, broad and stately, with quaint old twisted
banisters.

Passing the rooms of the second floor, one of them the
chamber in which the poet was born on Washington's Birthday,
in 1819, the " attic high beneath the roof " was reached where
was the older study. This was the room in which most of the
poet's work at Elmwood was done, and it was his room in child-
hood. His own description of it we find in Charles Eliot Nor-
ton's volumes of Lowell's letters. It appears in one of his
letters, written in 1848, to his intimate friend Charles F. Briggs,
sometime editor of Putnam's magazine in New York, and I
read this passage .

" ' Here I am in my garret. I slept here when I was a curly-headed
boy, and used to see visions between me and the ceiling. ... In it I
used to be shut up without a lamp my mother saying that none of her
children should be afraid of the dark to hide my head under the pillows
and then not be able to shut out the shapeless monsters that thronged
around me, minted in my brain. It is a pleasant room, facing, from the
position of the house, about equally toward the morning and the afternoon.
In winter I can see the sunset, in summer I can see it only as it lights up
the tall trunks of the English elms in front of the house, making them
sometimes, when the sky behind them is lead-colored, seem of the most
brilliant yellow. ... In winter my view is a wide one, taking in a part
of Boston. . . . As the spring advances, and one after another of our
trees puts forth, the landscape is cut off from me piece by piece, till the
end of May I am closeted in a cool and rustling privacy of leaves. Then
I begin to bud with the season. . . . When I can sit at my open window
and my friendly leaves hold their hands before my eyes to prevent their
wandering to the landscape, I can sit down and write.'

" Lowell's earliest literary efforts here," I said as we settled
down for a chat over the poet's life, " were mostly his versifica-

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD." 345

tions when an undergraduate at the college, which he entered
at fifteen. During his junior year he translated some odes from
Horace. The next year he had produced a number of ' poetical
effusions/ as he wrote his mother in dedicating them to her,
1 you, who have been the patron and encourager of my youthful
muse.' His mother was a woman of exceptional mental powers,
and an ardent lover of nature. She was a Spence of New
Hampshire, of an old Orkney family, and Norton says, ' In her
blood was a tincture of the romance of those solitary Northern
isles.' These traits she imparted to her son (her youngest
child) ; while from his father he inherited a refined intellectual
temperament, a most kind and tender heart. He once charac-
terized his father as ' Dr. Primrose in the comparative degree.'

" The first of Lowell's verses to be published was his col-
lege class poem, which he did not deliver, for he was ' rusti-
cated ' at the time and the suspension extended over class day.
This suspension was in part due to his ' cutting ' certain studies
which he did not care for, and devoting himself only to those
he liked. The season of rustication was spent in Concord,
where his studies were carried on under the charge of good Dr.
Ezra Ripley, the Concord minister, of the Old Manse. He was
wretchedly lonesome and homesick there. He called it ( this
infernal Concord.' Still he got on well with his tasks, and for
diversion wrote this class poem. Although not delivered, it
was published in a little pamphlet, now very rare. Norton
says of it, guardedly, that ' as a poem it is perhaps above the
general level of such performances.' Lowell was back in season
to receive his degree with his class.

"The choice of a profession much perplexed him. He
knew clearly enough what he wanted most to do. ' Above all
things should I love to be able to sit down and do something
literary for the rest of my natural life,' he wrote one of his in-
timates. But a more practical occupation was desired by his
elders. He thought at one time of the ministry, following in
his father's and grandfather's footsteps ; at another, of medi-

346 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

cine. At length he settled upon law. Taking up the study, he
tried hard to like it. ( I am reading Blackstone with as good
a grace and as few wry faces as I may,' he wrote, his classmate
Loring afterward Dr. George B. Loring of Salem, Hawthorne's
friend. But only a few weeks later he wrote, e I have renounced
law. I am going to settle down into a business man at last,
after all I have said to the contrary. Farewell, a long farewell
to all my greatness ! I find that I cannot bring myself to like
the law, and I am now looking for a place " in a store." ... I
must expect to give up almost entirely all literary pursuits, and
instead of making rhymes, devote myself to making money.'

" A month after this renunciation, however, when he was in
Boston looking for a business opening, he happened into the
United States Court where Webster was one of the counsel
in a case pending, and before he had been there an hour he
determined to continue in the law. Accordingly he resumed
his studies. Meanwhile he kept steadily at verse making and
prose composition. Again, and very soon, he wrote his friend
Loring, ' I have quitted the law forever.' For a while he took
up lecturing at lyceums. A lecture at Concord brought him
five dollars. He wished he might get a call to lecture in his
own Cambridge, which paid fifteen dollars ; or in Lowell,
where the pay was twenty -five, a lofty figure to him, evi-
dently, for he quoted it with two exclamation marks. Shortly,
however, he is found actually in business, writing from a
Boston counting-room about his verses which are appearing in
the newspapers and magazines. At this time the ' Threnodia,'
which leads off his 'Earlier Poems' in his collected works,
appeared in Knickerbocker's. At first he published anony-
mously, or with the nom de plume of ' Hugh Percival.' The
business trial ended abruptly, with his decision that he was
1 never made for a merchant,' and for a third time he returned
to the law, this time finishing at the Harvard Law School.
He was duly graduated in the summer of 1840.

" It was now necessary for him to earn his livelihood, for

FROM "CRA1G1E HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD." 347

his father had suffered misfortune in the loss of the greater
part of his personal property, although the home estate re-
mained intact. An additional spur to activity was his engage-
ment to Miss Maria White, whom he had first met a few
months before at her father's home in the neighboring Water-
town, and whose attractiveness of person and mind had speedily
charmed him she also became a poet. So he went into a
Boston law office, and endeavored to pursue his profession.
But he never practiced.

" While in the law office he brought out his first volume of
collected poems, ( A Year's Life,' and wrote some of the best
sonnets and lyrics that, in his judgment, he had yet written.
At this he expressed much. gratification, for he had feared that
the law would ' cover all the sunny greensward of his soul with
its dust.' The < Year's Life ' included poems which Norton
declares gave him at once the highest place among the younger
American poets. The reception of his work, it may be, led.
him the speedier from law to literature as his life work ; at all
events, within two years thereafter, literature became and
remained his sole occupation.

"It 'paid,' however, very slowly. In the autumn of 1842,
after having published much of both poetry and prose in the
current periodicals, he ventured a magazine of his own, in
the hope of increasing his slender revenues. This was the
Pioneer, a literary and critical monthly journal, of high grade.
Its contributors, besides himself, included Poe, Hawthorne, and
other growing writers of the day ; but financially it was a
lamentable failure. Only three numbers were issued, when it
expired, leaving a debt upon the projectors' hands.- This debt
hung heavily upon Lowell for awhile, but ultimately he cleared
it all off.

"At the end of 1843 he published his second volume,
' Legends of . Brittany, Miscellaneous Poems, and Sonnets.'
This included the < Prometheus,' his first long poem in blank
verse, ' overrunning with true radicalism and antislavery,' as

348 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

he wrote upon its original publication in a magazine. He was
now fully launched in the antislavery cause. His lines on
The Present Crisis/ closing with the familiar stanza begin-
ning -

" ' New occasions teach new duties : Time makes ancient good uncouth ;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of
Truth ; ' -

were written, with other poems of similar note, the following
year; and at its end his second book appeared: a book of
essays purely literary ' Conversations on Some of the Old
Poets.' At this time, too, Lowell's marriage with Maria White
took place. They went to live for the winter and spring in
Philadelphia, where he was a regular contributor to the Penn-
sylvania Freeman, the antislavery paper which Whittier had
edited. Returning to Cambridge, they made their home thence-
forth at Elmwood. In the early summer of 1846 his pen was
engaged for the Antislavery Standard of New York, the organ
of the American Antislavery Society, edited by Sidney Howard
Gay. He was to write regularly each week, prose or poetry.

" At the same time the first of ' The Biglow Papers '
appeared, that one beginning

" * Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle

On them kittle-drums o' yourn,
'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle

That is ketched with mouldy corn ;
Put in stiff, you fifer feller,

Let folks see how spry you be,
Guess you'll toot till you are yeller

'Fore you git ahold o' me ! '

" These pungent satires were directed against our Mexican
war which Lowell held to be a war of false pretenses, <a
national crime committed in behoof of slavery.' His desire
to put in a way that would tell, the feelings of those who
thought as he did, promoted his conception. < I imagined to

FROM "CBAIGIE HOUSE" TO "ELM WOOD." 349

myself/ he long after related, in that elaborate ' Introduction '
to the Second Series, ' such an up country man as I had often
seen at antislavery gatherings, capable of district-school English,
but always instinctively falling back into the natural strong-
hold of his homely dialect when heated to the point of seli-
forgetfulness.' Needing on occasion to rise above the level of
mere patois, he conceived the character of the Rev. Mr. Wilbur,
' who should express the more cautious element of the New
England character and its pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should
serve for its homely common-sense vivified and heated by con-
science.' Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of Latin he adopted
deliberately to heighten the contrast. Then, finding soon
afterward that he needed some one as a mouthpiece of the mere
drollery, he invented Mr. Birdofredum Sawin, ' for the clown '
of his ' little puppet-show.' In Sawin, moreover, he meant to
embody that ' half-conscious immorality ' which he had noticed
as the < recoil in gross natures from a puritanism that still
strove to keep in its creed the intense saVor which had long
gone out of its faitfi and life.'

" The success of his experiment not only astonished him,
but early made him feel the responsibility of holding in his
hand < a weapon instead of the mere fencing-stick ' he had sup-
posed. The Papers following through 1846-'4T were soon
transferred to the Antislavery Standard. They were all pub-
lished anonymously, for, as he wrote Gay, he wished ' slavery
to think it had as many enemies as possible.' He composed
them always rapidly, and sometimes, as in the case of the sec-
ond one, ' What Mr. Robinson Thinks/ with its

" ' John P.

Robinson he '

at one sitting ; so he wrote Thomas Hughes, ' Tom Brown of
Rugby/ you know, . who introduced the first English edition
of the Papers twelve years afterward.

" Lowell's connection with the Standard continued uninter-

350 LTTERAR? PILGRIMAGES.

rupted for about four years, at an annual salary beginning at
$500, but dwindling after a while as the resources ol tiie jour-
nal narrowed. His contributions were of varied character,
editorials, miscellaneous articles, and verse. ]n its pages first
appeared, besides the antislavery poems, < Eurydice ' ; 'The
Changeling,' on the death of one little daughter and the birth
of another, with its picture of a child's smile, so frequently

quoted :

" ' To what can I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover,
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,

And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also,

And I almost seemed to see
The very heart of her mother

Sending sun through her veins to me ! '

the lines ' To Lamartine' ; ' A Parable,' written the morning
after a Thanksgiving Day ; ' The Parting of the Ways ' ; ' Bea-
ver Brook ' ; ' The First Snow Fall,' and others which- have
become favorites. Conspicuous among the antislavery poems
were the uplifting ' Stanzas to Freedom,' the lines ' To John G.
Palfrey ' from which we have quoted, and the familiar < To W.
L. Garrison,' beginning

"'In a small chamber friendless and unseen,

Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man ;
The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean ;
Yet there the freedom of a race began.'

" The year 1848 was especially prolific, the output embra-
cing 'The Fable for Critics'; 'The Biglow Papers' in book
form, with the unique introductory matter ' Notices of an
Independent Press,' and Parson Wilbur's ' Introduction ' ; and
the narrative poem of ' The Vision of Sir Launfal.' The
' Fable ' was a New Year's gift to his friend Charles F. Briggs,
Lowell retaining only the copyright. He declined even to
' share the profits,' as Briggs suggested. ' I wish they might

FROM " CRAIG1E HOUSE" TO "ELMWOOD." 351

be a thousand dollars with all my heart, but I do not think
that they will be more than enough to buy something for my
little niece [Briggs's daughter] there in New York/ he wrote.
As it turned out, however, they were quite beyond his expecta-
tions, for the ' Fable ' proved to be one of the most popular
things he had written. It was composed rapidly, ' slapdash,'
was Lowell's expression, and sent over to Briggs in sections
as written. It was published anonymously, and stirred up the
critics considerably.

" In the collected < Biglow Papers ' the first draft of < The
Courtin' ' made its first appearance

"'Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown

An' peeked in thru the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to heuder.'

and so on. The story of its composition shows not only how
literary workers are often * inspired ' to their cleverest things,
but also Lowell's facility. He tells it in this wise. While the
introductory matter was going through the press he received
word from the printer that there was a blank page left which
must be filled. He sat down at once and improvised another
fictitious ' notice of the press,' in which ( because verse would
fill up the space more cheaply than prose' he inserted an* ex-
tract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. He kept no copy
of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was
filled. After the publication of the volume he received letters
asking for the rest of it. He had none, but to answer such
demands, he patched a conclusion on it in a second edition.
Afterward, during the Civil War, being asked to write it out
as ah autograph for a Sanitary Commission Fair in Baltimore,
he added other verses, into some of which he c infused a little
more sentiment in a homely way,' and completed it by < sketch-
ing in the characters and making a connected story.'

" The < Sir Launfal ' had a flattering reception. But no

352 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

part of it was so widely copied as the stanzas on June. Every-
body is familiar with the lines

'"And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days ;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays : '

"It was planned that the next volume should be <The
Nooning/ on the i Canterbury Tales' plan. The scheme was
to bring together at Elmwood a party of old friends, who were
to go to the river to bathe, and then, at the suggestion of one
of them, go up into a great willow tree, which stood at the
end of the causey near the house, and hac(Jfeeats in it, to take
their nooning. There they were to agree that each should tell
a story or recite a poem. In the tree they were to find a
countryman already resting himself, who should enter into
the plan and tell a humorous tale with * touches of Yankee
character and habits in it.' Lowell, as the host, was to read
his poem of the ' Voyage of Leif to Vinland.' Two of the
poems were already written 'The Fountain of Youth ' and
an < Address to the Muse/ to be offered by the Transcendentalist
of the party. But the plan was never carried out, although
seventeen years afterward the dropped thread was taken up,
and more matter written. Several poems intended for it, how-
ever, were published separately. Of these the < Voyage to
Vinland,' < The Fountain of Youth,' * Pictures from Appledore,'
from which we quoted at the Isles of Shoals, and the June
Idyl,' appear in i Under the Willows,' the * June Idyl ' without
its title, as the ' forefront ' of the volume.

" In 1851-'52 Lowell made his first visit to Europe, one of
the results of which was his ' Leaves from my Journal in Italy
and Elsewhere.' A saddening shadow on this journey was the
death of his only boy, Walter, in Eome, and the grave decline
of his wife's health. A twelvemonth after their return to
Elmwood she died. Of their four children only one was left
Mabel, who in after years became Mrs. Burnett, the mother

FROM -CIIAIUIE HOUSE" TO " ELMWOOD." 353

of his four grandchildren. Like Longfellow, after the loss of
his wife, Lowell sought distraction in work.

" The autumn of 1854 was devoted to the writing of his
series of twelve lectures on the English Poets, for the Lowell
Institute course in Boston. No such discourses had to that
time been heard in America, and they added greatly to his repu-
tation as critic, scholar, and poet. The following January he
was appointed to succeed Longfellow in the chair of < French
and Spanish Languages and Literatures and Belles-Lettres 'in
the university. Thereupon he went to Europe again for special
studies, as his predecessors had done. Returning after an
absence of a year, he took up his new duties, and held the
professorship for twenty years.

" This period was marked by the editorship of the At/antic
for about four years from its start in the autumn of 1857 ; his
joint editorship with Norton of the North American for about
two years, the two editors making it the organ of the best con-
temporary thought of the country ; the revival of The Biglow
Papers ' in the Civil War period ; and his poems of the war,
beginning with 'The Washers of the Shroud' and culminating
with the ' Commemoration Ode ' at Harvard at the end of the
conflict, with the sublime closing stanza well worth cherishing
in the memory :

" ' Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release !

Thy God, in these distempered days,

Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace !

Bow down in prayer and praise l
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.
O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more !
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled-hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,

And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet

354 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the Nations bright beyond compare ?

What were our lives without thee ?

What all our lives to save thee ?

We reck not what we gave thee ;

We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! '

" During the second year of his professorship Lowell mar-
ried Miss Frances Dunlap ; and toward the close of the college
service they were in Europe two years, whence he sent his
beautiful Eulogy on Agassiz, written in Borne.

" The ' Commemoration Ode ' when its composition was
actually begun, dangerously near the time for its delivery, was
written with extraordinary rapidity. ' Till within two days of
the celebration,' Lowell wrote in one of his letters, 1 1 was hope-
lessly dumb, and then it all came with a rush.' In another letter,
written twenty years after, he repeats that it was an improvisa-
tion, and tells this incident of Professor Child's cheery indorse-
ment of it. He had sat up all night writing it out clear, and
on the morning of the day it was due he took it to Child, to
whom two days before he had declared that it was impossible,
that he was dull as a doormat. ' I have something,' he said,
' but don't know yet what it is or whether it will do. Look at
it and tell me.' Child went a little way apart with it under an
elm tree in the College Yard, and read a passage here and there.
Then he brought it back to the waiting poet and said, < Do ?
I should think so ! Don't you be scared ! '

" The years 1877-'85 covered Lowell's public service as
United States minister first to Spain, then to England. He
accepted the Spanish mission, after declining the posts at
Vienna and Berlin. His appointment to the English mission
came upon him unexpectedly, while at Madrid. None of his
literary predecessors in similar positions gave higher distinc-
tion to them. He was no diplomat, in the political sense, but
he was ever the representative of the highest type of Ameri-
canism, and of the ripest culture of the country. His literary

FROM "CRA1GIE HOUSE" TO " ELM WOOD." 355

activity during this time was slight as compared with that of
the previous decade. Its richest fruits were his various
scholarly addresses in England, which are collected in his
* Literary and Political Addresses.' The volume of ' Last
Poems,' edited by Norton, was published soon after his death.

S -

FACSIMILE OF LOWELL'S MANUSCRIPT.

Lowell's last years glided by very quietly. For a while
his winters were spent in England, and his summers at his
daughter's home in Southborough, a charmingly unadulter-
ated New England village, < and with as lovely landscapes as I

356 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ever saw,' lie wrote his English friends. At length he renewed
his life here at Elniwood, with his daughter and her children :
his second wife had died in England, in 1885. Ke turning to
Elmwood he felt, so he wrote, < as if Charon had ferried me
the wrong way, and yet it is into a world of ghosts that he
has brought me.' But this, as always, was his only real home.
He wrote a friend who wished him to come to Washington to
live, < I have but one home . . . and that is the house where I
was born, and where, if it shall please God, I hope to die ; I
shouldn't be happy anywhere else.'

" Here he died as he wished, his death occurring on the
12th of August, 1891, after an illness of a year. His funeral
was at Appleton Chapel, in the College Yard. The pall-
bearers were all his cherished friends, President Eliot of
the University, Norton, Child, John Bartlett, Christopher P.
Cranch, the poet-painter, Dr. Holmes, John Holmes, George
William Curtis, and Howells. As the simple procession made
its slow way from the Chapel to Mount Auburn, all the bells of
the city tolled. He was buried in the spot of his own selec-
tion, almost in sight of the old study windows of Elmwood,
at the foot of the ridge upon the brow of which Longfellow
rests."

With this picture of Lowell among his books by his
English friend Leslie Stephen, our Elmwood visit ended :

" All around us were the crowded bookshelves, whose appearance
showed them to be the companions of the true literary workman, not of
the mere dilettanti or fancy bibliographer. Their ragged bindings, and
thumbed pages scored with frequent pencil marks, implied that they were
a student's tools, not mere ornamental playthings. He would sit among
his books, pipe in mouth, a book in hand, hour after hour. Or he would
look from his ' study windows ' and dwell lovingly upon the beauties of
the American elm, or the gambols of the gray squirrel on his lawn. . . .
To see Lowell in his home and the home of his father, was to realize more
distinctly what is indeed plain enough in all his books, how deeply he had
struck his roots into his native earth. Cosmopolitan as he was in knowl-
edge, with the literature not only of England but of France and Italy at

FROM "CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO ELM H'OOD." 357

his fingers' ends, the genuine Yankee, the Hosea Biglow, was never far
below the surface. No stay-at-home Englishman of an older generation,
buried in some country corner, in an ancestral mansion, and steeped to
the lips in old-world creeds, could have been more thoroughly racy of
the soil."

Since a remnant of the day was left, and we would have no
better opportunity, I suggested a drive to Arlington, the home
of John T. Trowbridge (born in Ogden, K Y., 1827 ), story

HOUSE OF J. T. TROWBRIDGE.

writer and poet, whose " Neighbor Jackwood " was a house-
hold friend through a generation. The suggestion was agree-
able, and accordingly we lost no time in engaging a road
wagon and driver. We could have made the little journey
by trolley lines ; but the drive was preferable, since it en-
abled us to select our route along byways.

We found Trowbridge's home on Pleasant Street, an
elm-arched thoroughfare well named, backing upon the
pretty lakelet which still clings to its old-time name of Spy
Pond. His comfortable estate occupies historic as well as

358 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

picturesque ground : " for here it was," I observed, " as
tradition tells (a well authenticated, not an apocryphal tale,
Trowbridge pronounces), that those fleeing British soldiers on
the Nineteenth of April, 1775, surrendered to old ' Mother
Batherick/ who had been peacefully digging dandelions, un-
mindful of the unwonted happenings on the high road; and
who upon delivering them up, charged them, if they ever got
back to England alive, to ' tell King George that an old
woman of Menotomy took six of his grenadiers prisoners ' ; "
all of which was related during our historic pilgrimage to
these parts and Lexington and Concord beyond, as Percy re-
membered.

We passed up to the house, a red painted house, with
roomy piazzas, set back from the road in a frame of trees,
and were cordially received by my long-time friend. Percy
found the study a cosy apartment on the second floor, cheerful
with books and pictures and comfortable furnishings, and with
windows opening upon inspiriting views. By a window over-
looking the pond was the desk at which Mr. Trowbridge has
written most of the stories that have made him so beloved by
young folk, and the poems that rank him with our best New
England poets ; for this house, Percy was informed, has been
his home during more than a third of a century.

The period included Trowbridge's editorship of Our Young
Folks' Magazine, with Jjucy Larcom and " Gail Hamilton," when
this study was the real editor's sanctum, the formal office
being in Boston. Here were written "Jack Hazard," which
first ran as a serial in Our Young Folks, "A Chance for
Himself," " Doing His Best," " Lawrence's Adventures," " The
Young Surveyor," " The Tide Mill Stories," and so on, several
of which Percy had read. The poems of this period are col-
lected in Mr. Trowbridge's various volumes of verse. The
initial lyric of his first volume " The Vagabonds," which
has become classic, was of an earlier date. That first appeared
in the fifties. It has been recited on the platform or stage

FROM "CRA1GIE HOUSE" TO "ELMWOOD." 359

hundreds of times. Percy knew it, he said, and in proof
repeated the first two verses :

" We are two travelers, Roger and I.
Roger's my dog. Come here, you scamp !
Jump for the gentleman, mind your eye
Over the table, look out for the lamp !
The rogue is growing a little old ;
Five years we've tramped through wind and weather,
And slept out-doors when nights were cold,
And ate and drank and starved together.

We've learned what comfort is, I tell you !

A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin,

A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow !

The paw he holds up there's been frozen),

Plenty of catgut for my fiddle

(This out-door business is bad for strings),

Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the griddle,

And Roger and I set up for kings."

"Neighbor Jack wood," Percy learned, also dates from the
fifties. It preceded " The Vagabonds." It was written in
France at Passy, then a little suburb of Paris, during Mr.
Trowbridge's first visit to Europe in 1855. " He wrote the
novel," I remarked, " as he once expressed it, between two
lives in the greatest possible contrast to each other one with
friends in the atmosphere of the brilliant metropolis, and the
other in the plain Vermont farmhouse in which the scene of
it was set. It was published upon his return home, in 1856.
Soon afterward he wrote the play founded upon it, which
started on its long career at the Boston Museum in 1857.

" < Neighbor Jackwood' was Mr. Trowbridge's third novel.
' Martin Merrivale : His + Mark ' preceded it by about two
years. That was his first notable success in fiction. His first
book, 'Father Brighthopes,' of pleasant memory, was well
received, however, and disclosed the talent that was in him.
Before its publication he had written and published numerous
stories and sketches, under the pen-name of * Paul Crey ton ' ;

360

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

had edited a story paper; and had enjoyed a brief experience
as a sub-editor of a newspaper, which he nearly killed during
his chief's absence in Washington by publishing a brave edito-
rial against the Fugitive Slave Law. The story 'Coupon
Bonds,' and the novel of ' Cudjo's Cave,' both popular though
in different fields, were of the Civil War period."

With a reference to Mr. Trowbridge's fine poem " The Win-
nower," published in the autumn of 1899, fitly celebrating his

seventy-second birthday,
our call to this poet's
home ended. On the way
to the station, where we
were to take a return train
to Boston, I spoke of Mr.
Trowbridge's early life,
telling of his birth in a
log house on a little clear-
ing in the woods where
now is the town of Ogden,
New York, to which his
parents had moved from
New England ; of his boy-
hood on the farm, passed
in farm duties with scant
schooling at the district

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. sc hool ; of Ws passion for

books, which he procured from a neighboring town library ; of
his " den " in an unused part of the house where all his spare
time he lived with his dreams and his books ; of his teaching
himself French, Latin, and German, while following the plow,
through the " noonings," and in the leisure hours : of his one
term in a classical school ; of his service as a country school
teacher; of his boyish writings ; of the thrill with which he
saw his first poem in print, lines on " The Tomb of Napoleon,"
written when he was sixteen.

"CRAIGIE HOUSE" TO "ELMWOUU" 361

"His manner of work," I concluded, "has always been
methodical. His custom has been to write regularly through
the forenoon hours. His poems have generally been first
thought out in the open air during long walks or shorter
strolls. His most profitable work has been his contributions
to juvenile literature. He once said, ' While I might perhaps
be able to secure bread from the sale of my poems, it is from
the profits of my boys' stories that I afford butter and jam.' "

XIX.

SUDBURY AND CONCORD.

The Wayside Inn. Longfellow's Picture in the " Tales.' 1 Story of the

poem. The Wadsworth Monument. Homes of u the Concord

Group." Thoreau and his haunts. The poet Channing. "Aunt
Mary Emerson " and Thoreau's mother. The Hut at Walden.
Frank B. Sanborn and his work. The Concord Library. Birthplace
of the brothers Hoar. Emerson in Concord. The Alcotts and their
homes. Story of a remarkable family. Bronson Alcott's unique
career. Louisa Alcott's achievements. The Concord School of
Philosophy. Hawthorne at " The Wayside." Scenes of his later
romances. His "Walk" on the Ridge. His earlier life at the
Old Manse.

THE " Wayside Inn " at Sudbury, and literary Concord,
were next on our schedule. Taking an early morning train for
South Sudbury, twenty miles from Boston, we reached the
little Wayside Inn station in the woods when the forenoon
was yet young. Before leaving the city we had telephoned the
landlord of the Inn to have a carriage meet us here, and ac-
cordingly we found awaiting us a smart trap with a fresh-
faced driver. The ride over of about a mile and a half along
a country road, through sweet-scented woods and bush, and
upon high land with off-spreading pastoral landscapes, was ex-
hilarating. A final turn brought us on the highway, in the old
days the traveled thoroughfare between eastern and western
Massachusetts, but now indeed a " region of repose " ; and off
to the left the Inn first appeared to our view in its picturesque
setting, " just as Longfellow sketched it," Percy exclaimed

" 4 A place of slumber and of dreams
Remote among the wooded hills.' "

362

8UDBUST AND CONCORD.

363

My young friend had evidently been "coaching" for this
trip, and had memorized quotable lines from the poem. As we
drove up to the porch, the landlord, quite as in the old way,
appeared at the door, and gave us welcome. For, as I had
explained to Percy on the drive over, the Inn has been restored

THE WAYSIDE INN.

in recent years, and, equipped in harmony with its colonial
fashion, reopened to guests as an antique hostelry.

We found the interior, though freshened and furbished,
retaining most of its ancient finish and features. Here was
the public parlor, large and low, where sat the group of friends
as Longfellow pictured

" Around the fireside at their

Who from the far off noisy town
Had to the Wayside Inn come down
To rest beneath its old oak trees:"

364

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

with each his tale to tell. Here were the old tap-room, with
its lattice guard above the counter; the low-browed dining-
room, and the ample kitchen. Above the " stairways worn "
were the chambers with their creaking and uneven floors."
Here were the rooms which had been occupied by many an
important guest in provincial days when this was the Red
Horse Tavern, far famed, patronized by the processions of
travelers along the great road by stage-coach, or in their own

OLD DINING-ROOM, WAYSIDE INN.

equipages, some with postilions and out-riders. From the
windows we looked down upon the picket line of ancient oaks
on either side of the road eastward, beneath which, as the local
historian relates, " Washington and his retinue passed, and
perhaps Wadsworth and Brocklebank when they sped in
haste to relieve Sudbury " in King Philip's War of 1675 ; and
where "soldiers to Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the
various expeditions to the west and south in the Revolutionary
and French and Indian wars/' halted in their march for rest
and refreshment at the tavern.

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 365

Although it was early in the day, we followed the custom
of the place and took luncheon in the quaint dining-room;
and while at table we talked of Longfellow's conception of his
" Tales of a Wayside Inn " and the men arid scenes it depicts.

" The idea of making this Inn the setting of a poem after
the manner of the ' Canterbury Tales/ " I began, " was sug-
gested to Longfellow, perhaps, by hearing of its unique attrac-

OLD TAPROOM, WAYSIDE INN.

tions and serene surroundings from his friends Professors
Daniel Treadwell and Luigi Monti of Cambridge, and the poet
T. W. Parsons, who had been in the habit of spending the sum-
mer months here in the waning days of Landlord Howe, the
last of a family who had kept the tavern for more than a cen-
tury. His own first visit to Sudbury was not until after he
had b^un the work. This visit was on an Indian summer
day in 1862, when he drove out with James T. Fields. The
house was no longer an inn, the last Landlord Howe having

366 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

died a year before. They were shown over the place by a
kinswoman of his, and elsewhere saw the coat-of-arms of the
Howes, and the old clock, mentioned in the poem.' Subse-
quently the verses written on one of the parlor window-panes
were copied and sent to the poet :

"'The jovial rhymes that still remain,
Writ near a century ago
By the great Major Molineux,
Whom Hawthorne has immortal made.'

" These ' jovial rhymes' read ;

" ' What do you think,
Here is good drink,
Perhaps you may not know it,
If not in haste do stop and taste
You merry folks will show it.

WM. MOLINEUX, JR., ESQ.
24th June 1774. Boston.'

" The pleasant allusion to ( My Kinsman, Major Molineux/
drew from Hawthorne, upon the publication of the poem, a
graceful note to Longfellow, in which he expressed his gratifi-
cation at finding his own name shining in the poet's verses,
' even as if I had been gazing up at the moon, and detected my
own features in its profile.'

" The group of friends who tell and listen to the ' Tales '
were all real characters. Lyman Howe, the last of his line
and a bachelor, was ' The Landlord ' :

" ' Grave in his aspect and attire ;
A man of ancient pedigree,
A Justice of the Peace was he,
Known in all Sudbury as the Squire.

His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed,
Upon the wall in colors blazed ;

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 367

And over this, no longer bright,
Though glimmering with a latent light,
Was hung the sword his grandsire bore
In the rebellious days of yore,
Down there at Concord in the fight.'

" Henry Ware Wales, of Cambridge, a scholar of promise
who died young, was ' The Student ' :

" 'To whom all tongues and lands were known
And yet a lover of his own ;

With many a social virtue graced,
And yet a friend of solitude ;
A man of such a genial mood
The heart of all things he embraced,
And yet of such fastidious taste,
He never found the best too good.'

" Luigi Monti, a Palermo refugee, instructor in Italian at
Harvard, was ' The young Sicilian ' :

'"In sight of Etna born and bred,
Some breath of its volcanic air
Was glowing in his heart and brain.

His face was like -a summer night,

All flooded with a dusky light ;

His hands were small ; his teeth shone white

As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke ;

His sinews supple and strong as oak ;

Clean shaven was he as a priest,

Who at the mass on Sunday sings,

Save that upon his upper lip

His beard, a good palm's length at least,

Level and pointed at the tip,

Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings.'

" Israel Edrehi, a merchant, was ' The Spanish Jew from

Alicant ' :

"'Vender of silks and fabrics rare,
And attar of rose from the Levant.
Like an old Patriarch he appeared,
Abraham or Isaac, or at least

368 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Some later Prophet or High-Priest ;
With lustrous eyes, and olive skin,
And, wildly tossed from cheeks and chin,
The tumbling cataract of his beard.'

" The < Theologian/ who

" '. . . preached to all men everywhere
The Gospel of the Golden Rule,
The New Commandment given to men,
Thinking the deed, and not the creed,
Would help us in our utmost need : '

was Professor Treadwell, the Physicist of Harvard.
t{ The ' Poet ' whose verse

"'Was tender, musical, and terse;
The inspiration, the delight,
The gleam, the glory, the swift flight,
Of thoughts so sudden, that they seem
The revelations of a dream,

was Dr. Parsons.

" Last, < The Musician ' -

*' ' Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,
His figure tall and straight and lithe,
And every feature of his face .
Revealing his Norwegian race ;
A radiance, streaming from within,
Around his eyes and forehead beamed,
The Angel with the violin,
Painted by Raphael, he seemed;'

was Ole Bull.

" The tavern dates from near the beginning of the eighteenth
century, quite as the poet describes :

" 'Built in the old Colonial day

When men lived in a grander way
With ampler hospitality,'

SUDBURY AND CONCOHD. 369

"The Howes who erected it were a family of consequence
in the town, and became innkeepers upon the loss of their
fortune. The sign of the ' Red Horse ' was put out by Colonel
Ezekiel Howe, < The Landlord's* grandsire of Revolutionary
fame. Upon his death, in 1796, his son Adam succeeded him,
and kept the Inn for forty years ; when he died his son Lyman
became 'The Landlord,' and so continued until his death in
1861. He died suddenly, found dead in his bed one morning
by his long-time faithful negro servant, ( Pete.'

" The scenes about the tavern in ante-railroad days are pleas-
antly pictured by the historian of Sudbury :

'"It was largely patronized by the up-country marketers, who, by
their frequent coming and going, with their large, canvas-topped wagons,
made the highway . . . look like the outlet of a busy mart. Stages also
enlivened the scene. The sound of the post-horn, as it announced the
near approach of the coach, was the signal for the hostler and house-
maid to prepare refreshment for man and beast. In short, few country
taverns were better situated than this to gain patronage in the days when
few towns of the province were -better known than old Sudbury.' "

Again taking carriage, we were driven over to the town center
of Sudbury, there to take train for Concord. This way, rather
than by South Sudbury, was selected that we might make a
visit in passing to the site of the Sudbury fight in King Philip's
War, or the place on Green Hill where Wads worth and Brockle-
bank with most of their command fell on an April morning,
caught by the Indians in ambush. Captain Wadsworth, Percy
was told, was a son of Christopher Wadsworth, of Puxbury, the
common ancestor of the Massachusetts and Maine W r adsworths,
from whom came Longfellow's mother. He was the father of the
Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, president of Harvard College from
1725 till his death in 1734, for whom was built the old Presi-
dent's House, now known as the " Wadsworth House," on the
college grounds at Cambridge. Captain Wadsworth lived in
Milton, near Boston, on Wadsworth Hill, named for him, in the

370

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Blue Hills region (which embraces Aldrich's " Ponkapog," I
reminded Percy) ; and he had marched his command from that

town to the re-
lief of Sudbury.
President Wads-
worth was born
on Wadsworth
Hill.

We reached
the point where
the action took
place about a
mile south of
the village cen-
ter. It is within
an old burying
ground, the cen-
tral feature of
which is the

WADSWORTH MONUMENT.

granite monu-
ment to Wadsworth and his soldiers, some distance from the
place of their original burial, in a common grave. This monu-
ment, we saw, was erected by the State of Massachusetts, half
a century ago ; it is in place of a simpler one set up by Presi-
dent Wadsworth about 1730.

It was a short railroad ride from Sudbury to Concord Junc-
tion, and thence to the Concord station on the Fitchburg line.
This station is on a side of the town which we had not visited
on our historic pilgrimage to Concord, and so the approach was
altogether new to Percy. Very soon, too, we came upon land-
marks not seen on that previous visit. The first street which
we entered, in the direction of Main Street, the way to the vil-
lage center, indicated neighboring literary landmarks, for this

SUDBURT AND CONCORD. 371

was Thoreau Street. And true to the indication, when we
turned the corner into Main Street, a plain, yellow house, se-
cluded by a hedge of trees, was pointed out to Percy as the
" Thoreau house," home of Henry David Thoreau (born in Con-
cord, 1817 died there, 1862).

Here, he was told, Thoreau lived during the last twelve years
of his life ; and here he died of consumption, the result of ex-
posure on a bleak November day a year and a half before, when
tramping through the woods in the snow " counting the rings
on trees." On the opposite side of the street earlier lived
Thoreau's rare companion and first biographer, William Ellery
Channing (born 1818 died 1902), a nephew of the great "
Channing, himself a poet, whose wife was Margaret Fuller's
sister. Channing's was a house with a garden sloping to the
river. At the foot of this garden, under a group of trees,
Thoreau moored his boat, and thence started on his river voy-
ages. In this same part of the town is the present home of
Thoreau's later biographer and literary executor, Franklin B.
Sanborn (born in Hampton Falls, N.H., 1831), the last
remaining of the " Concord group " who gave this town its
unique distinction. Thoreau's birthplace was a mile or more
beyond the village, to the eastward, in country parts. That
was the home of his maternal grandmother: a typical New
England farmhouse, standing on the old "Virginia road," a
back way to Lexington. Before the family came to this Main-
Street house they had lived for a long time in a little house
on the village square. Thoreau's "hermitage" was on the
shore of Walden Pond a mile and more to the southward of
the village, in a piece of woodland belonging to Emerson ; and
devotees of the poet-naturalist have marked its site by a cairn.

" Thoreau," I remarked, after thus enumerating his land-
marks, " was the only one of the ' Concord group 7 of Concord
birth. He was of a family, as Sanborn shows, settled in Con-
cord a hundred years ago. His grandfather Thoreau, of
French descent, came from the island of Jersey to New Eng-

372 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

land in 1773, and a few years after married in Boston a Scotch-
woman. He moved his family to this town in the year 1800,
after his wife's death, and the next year he died, of consump-
tion, in his home on the village square. Thoreau's father was
a store-keeper, then a pencil-maker, pencil-making being at one
time quite ah industry in Concord ; and this was the family
occupation till after Thoreau's death, his sister Sophia contin-
uing it for some years. Sanborn describes the father as a
' small, deaf, and unobtrusive man,' leading a * plodding, unam-
bitious, and respectable life/ The mother was a daughter of a
New England clergyman, an active body, and < one of the most
unceasing talkers ever seen in Concord.' She was fond of
dress, and had a weakness for ribbons, apropos of which San-
born relates this droll anecdote, illustrative also of Concord
frankness : One day in 1857, when Mrs. Thoreau was seventy
years old, she called with her daughter Sophia upon Miss Mary
Emerson (the austere aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson), who was
then eighty-four, wearing bonnet ribbons of a good length and
of a bright color, perhaps yellow. During the entire call
Miss Emerson kept her eyes shut. As Mrs. Thoreau and her
daughter rose to go the little old lady said, ' Perhaps you
noticed, Mrs. Thoreau, that I closed my eyes during your call.
I did so because I did not wish to look on the ribbons you are
wearing, so unsuitable for a child of God and a person of your
years ! '

" After his return from college, Thoreau held fast to Con-
cord, with the exception of a few months (in 1843) spent at
Staten Island, New York, as tutor of the sons of William
Emerson, Ralph Waldo's brother, and his absences on long
walking excursions. No Concordiah was more intimately asso-
ciated with the town. He fitted for Harvard at the ' Concord
Academy ' (now extinct), and afterward taught in the academy.
He attended lectures at the Concord Lyceum ' when a boy,
and himself lectured there in the regular winter courses almost
every season for twenty years, beginning the year following

SUDEUBY AND CONCORD. 373

his graduation, which was in 1837. His acquaintance with
nature about Concord was of the earliest. He knew the coun-
try, Emerson has said, ' like a fox or a bird, and passed through
it as freely by paths of his own.' When on his walks as
Emerson pictured him :

" ' Under his arm he carried an old music-book to press plants ; in his
pocket his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife,
and twine. He wore straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave
scrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk's or squirrel's nest.
He waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no
insignificant part of his armor. His intimacy with animals suggested what
Thomas Fuller records of Butler the apiologist, ** that either he had told
the bees things or the bees had told him." Snakes coiled round his leg,
the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water. He
pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under
his protection from the hunters. '

" Iii these explorations, and also in his extended foot-jour-
neys among the mountains and along the seashore of New
England, Sauborn tells us, ' his habits were those of the expe-
rienced hunter, though he seldom used a gun in his years of
manhood/ On this point he himself wrote in < Walden ' : < As
for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my
excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only
new or rare birds. But I am now inclined to think there is a
finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so
much closer attention to the habits of the birds that, if for that
reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.' * He knew
how,' said Emerson, * to sit immovable, a part of the rock he
rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired
from him, should come back and resume its habits, nay,
moved by curiosity, should come to him and watch him/

"Thoreau's close relations with Emerson began the year
of his return from college, and continued lifelong. For two
years, from 1841 to 1843, he was an inmate of Emerson's
household, managing the garden and doing other hand-work
for his friend, as Sanbom states ; and again in 1847-'48 he

374 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

had charge of the household affairs during Emerson's absence
in England. His earlier publications, apparently, were under
Emerson's direction.

" He contributed to nearly every number of the J>lal t both
verses and essays written originally in his l journal/ which he
began keeping in 1837 and continued to the end of his days.
His ' Walk to Wachusett ' first appeared in the Boston Miscel-
lany in 1843. The ' Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Rivers ' was his first book published ; portions of it having
been first printed in the Dial. The editing of this book was
his principal occupation during his life in the hermitage on the
Walden shore. It was not brought out, however, till 1849,
some months after he had left the hut. It was published at
his own expense, and involved him in debt which took the
labors of several years to cancel. It was to earn money to
meet these costs that he became a surveyor. The book did not
sell, but he took its failure philosophically. When more than
half of the edition of one thousand copies came back to him
unsold, he said gayly to his friend Sanborn'that he had added
seven hundred volumes to his library, all of his own compo-
sition !

" < Walden,' published in 1854, was a record of the life at
the hermitage, or, as Channing puts it, the log-book of the
woodland cruise. This hermit's life covered about two years
and a half, from the summer of 1845. The hut was a plain
and comfortable affair of lumber hewn by Thoreau from
Emerson's woods. It was convenient, says Channing, for shel-
ter, sleep, and meditation. * It had no lock on the door, no
curtain to the window, and belonged to nature nearly as much
as to man.' Thoreau's life here was not the life of a misan-
thrope ; nor was it that of a world-hating recluse. He came to
the woods, he said, because he wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if he could not
learn what it had to teach ; also to * transact some private busi-
ness with the fewest obstacles.' This private business was his

8UDBURT AND CONCORD.

375

studies and his writings ; when it was completed he abandoned
his hut. He was strong in his convictions and uncompromis-
ing. He cheerfully spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his
tax to the town tax-gatherer, because it ' went to support slavery
in South Carolina.'

" Thoreau's fame came after his death. During his life only
a small world knew him, and his income from authorship was

HOUSE OF FRANK B. SANBORN.

not half enough in most years, Sanborn estimates, to supply
even his few wants. With the publication of his < Excursions '
the year following his death, 'The Maine Woods' in 1864,
< Cape Cod ' in 1865, < A Yankee in Canada ' in 1866, and the
later Thoreau books, his name became known in widening cir-
cles, and his unique place in American literature was at length
established."

This Main-Street house, I added, as we turned to our next
subject, became in later years the last Concord home of the
Alcotts. It was purchased by the eldest daughter, Anna
Bronson (Alcott) Pratt, and Louisa. Here Mrs. Alcott, the

376 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

mother, died; and here Bronson Alcott spent his declining
years.

Our next subject was naturally Thoreau's friend Sanborn,
whose house I had said is near by.- We came to it a few rods
off Main Street, on Elm Street, by a bend of Sudbury River.
In its architecture and setting, a red house, large and sym-
metrical, vine-clad and umbrageous, it has, like its master,
an air and aspect which distinguishes it among its fellows, and
arrests the passer's eye. Within, the best room is the work-
room, the author-journalist's study packed with books. Here
were written the biographies of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott,
and of John Brown of Osawatomie.

" Mr. Sanborn's Concord life," I related in answering Percy's
questions, " began immediately after his graduation from Har-
vard -in 1855, when he came here, at Emerson's suggestion, to
open a private school in the higher branches. He took rooms
first in Channing's house across the way from Thoreau's, and
soon his acquaintance with Thoreau, begun when he was in
college, through the publication of a review of * Walden '
and the < Week ' in the college periodical which he was at the
time editing, ripened into a lasting friendship. For two
years or more, he has told us, he dined with Thoreau almost
daily, and often joined in his walks and river voyages, or swam
with him in Concord waters.

" Sanborn was an accomplished and successful Concord
schoolmaster, but his chief interest was centered in the anti-
slavery cause, into which he threw himself with almost reck-
less zeal. In 1856 he was secretary of the Free Kansas
Committee of Massachusetts. He took up the cause of John
Brown, and was one of the handful of Massachusetts men
whom Brown took into his confidence when planning the raid
on Harper's Ferry in 1859. It was at his house that Brown
spent a portion of his last day in Concord, and thence started
off at noon for the fatal Virginia campaign. In April of the
following year Sanborn was summoned by the United States

KUDBURY AND CONCORD.

377

Senate to appear before its committee to testify, as a possible
accessory before the fact in that raid. He refused to go, and
a deputy marshal with assistants appeared to arrest the Con-
cord schoolmaster. By a ruse they got him outside his house,
and, handcuffing him, would have carried him off in a waiting
carriage, had not his sister attacked them and their team, and
by her outcries summoned a crowd of infuriated townspeople
to his defense. A writ of habeas corpus quickly issued by his
neighbor Judge E. Rock-
wood Hoar, brought him
before the Massachusetts
Supreme Court at Boston,
and he was released on the
ground that the warrant
was not served by the per-
son to whom it was di-
rected, the sergeant-at-
arms of the Senate. When
he came back to town he
was received with a salute
of cannon, and a public
meeting at which T. W.
Higginson, one of his as-
sociates in Brown's confi-
dence, and others,
made congratula-
tory remarks. ^2

" Besides his
literary and jour-
nalistic work Mr. Sanborn has contributed much to the advance-
ment of State charities and prison reform, upon which his
writings in reports and other papers are voluminous. He was
one of the founders of the American Social Science Association
in whose development he has had a constantly leading hand.
He was a founder, also, if not the chie'f instigator of that unique

F. B. SANBORN.

378 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

institution, the Concord School of Philosophy, which flour-
ished, largely through his skillful conduct of its affairs as
secretary, for the decade between 1878 and 1888. He was one
of the lecturers before the school; and he has lectured on
learned topics at Cornell and Wellesley colleges. His journal-
istic work has appeared in the editorship of a political and
literary journal in Boston, the Commonwealth, during the
latter part of the Civil War, and in the independent Springfield
Republican for upward of thirty years. He wields a bold and
pungent pen."

Returning to Main Street we strolled on toward the village
center, passing, about an eighth of a mile beyond, the Public
Library embellished within with portraits and busts of Con-
cord authors ; and nearly opposite, the old mansion house of
that good and beloved citizen of Massachusetts "Squire"
Samuel Hoar (born 1778 died 1856), in which were born
his eminent sons, Judge E. Rock wood Hoar (born 1816
died 1895), and United States Senator George F. Hoar (born
1826).

From the center, where Percy felt at home since he recalled
its historic features over which we had lingered when here
before, we proceeded at once to the Emerson house. At the
turn from the square to the old Boston, or Lexington, road, he
noticed a new structure in place of the historic church behind
the tablet near the site of the meeting-house in which the
Provincial Congress sat ; and I told of the burning of the old
church in April, 1900 ; adding a word of commendation of the
work by the builders in faithfully reproducing the old struc-
ture, rather than creating a modern affair, which Percy heartily
approved.

He was much pleased to find the Emerson place and its
immediate surroundings unchanged. We passed as before
through the gate and along the flagged-walk, between the
groups of lofty chestnuts, to the entrance porch. The front
room at the right of the long hall running through the middle

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 379

of the house, which was Emerson's principal indoor study, was
as of old, pleasant with pictures and books. On the mahogany
center-table still lay his pen by the side of his morocco writing-
pad. On either side of the ample fire-place doors opened to
the south parlor, with its old-fashioned furnishings. On the
opposite side of the hall were the library room and the dining-
room. Above stairs, over the study, was the room in which
Emerson died. Back of the house, at the south, was the garden
once so bright with old-fashioned flowers, hollyhocks, roses,
and shrubs. In the distance beyond the brook and fields, lay
the greater garden, the pines on the shores of Walden, and
the woodland on the farther shore running up to a rocky
pinnacle, of which the poet wrote :

" My garden is a forest ledge

Which older forests bound ;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.

Self-sown my stately garden grows ;

The wind, and wind-blown seed,
Cold April rain and colder snows

My hedges plant and feed."

These woodland ranges, as his son says in the affectionate
memoir of "Emerson at Concord," were to him a temple
visited almost daily, and "there he waited for the thoughts,
the oracles, which he was sent into the world to report." The
woods were his real study. Sometimes he took his note-book
with him, but more often he carried in his mind the thoughts
which came to him there, till he had returned to the house study
and recorded them in his journal. " Even in the winter
storms," Dr. Emerson, the son, adds, " he was no stranger
to the woods, and the early journals show that - he liked to
walk alone at night for the inspiration he ever found in the
stars."

These details were imparted to Percy as we strolled about

380 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the place after our call. Then we reviewed Emerson's life
here.

" He was but a year past thirty," I said, " when he estab-
lished himself permanently here in Concord, the home of his
ancestors. This was in the autumn of 1835, after having
boarded some time at the old Manse with his step-grandfather's
family. He had just married Miss Lydia Jackson, of Plym-
outh, his second wife, and their wedding journey had been
the ride up from Plymouth to the new home the day after the

nuptials, in the chaise in
which he had driven down
from Concord, alone, on the
wedding-day.

"He had closed his
career as a minister be-
cause of the unreadiness of
the churches to accept his
conditions that public
prayer in the pulpit should
not be expected of him as
a regular act of devotion,
but only when he was
moved to it ; and that the
form of the Communion
service be modified. He
had already begun the work

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, I 845. Qf the ^^ ^ ^ larger

and freer field, which he followed with scarcely a season's
interruption for nearly half a century. He had written his
first book, ' Nature,' the year before, and had fully entered
upon the scholar's life. He had spoken as the orator of the
town at its celebrations. He had spent nearly a year in Europe
(1832-'33), whither he went to < see in the- flesh ' Coleridge,
Wordsworth, and others whose works he had hung over in his
chamber at home, but most especially to seek out Thomas

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 381

Carlyle among the Scottish moors, inspired to this pilgrimage
by reading in English reviews the writings of that man of let-
ters, then new and slightly recognized.

" This was a genuine scholar's pilgrimage, and from it sprung
the ardent friendship between these two original characters
which lasted to the end of their lives. Upon his return home
ensued their life-long, intimate correspondence which fills two
thick volumes. Emerson welcomed and introduced Carlyle' s
works to America before they had become much known in
England. He repeatedly urged Carlyle to visit the United
States, and to come and live with him at this Concord home.
Soon after he and his wife had become settled here he wrote :
' The house is not large, but convenient and very elastic. The
more hearts (specially great hearts) it holds, the better it looks
and feels. ... So know now that your rooms in America
wait for you, and that my wife is making ready a closet for
Mrs. Carlyle/ Fourteen years after their first meeting they
met for the second and last time, when Emerson went to Eng-
land to lecture in 1847. Immediately upon his landing he
hastened to the Carlyles' house, then in Chelsea, reaching it at
ten at night. 'The door was opened by Jane Carlyle/ his
journal records, ' and the man himself was behind her with a
lamp in the hall. They were very little changed from their
old selves of the year before when I left them at Craigenput-
tock. " Well," said Carlyle, "here we are shoveled together
again."' They had a 'wide talk' that night till nearly one,
and at breakfast next morning.

" Emerson chose this spot for his home because of its close-
ness to the stage route to Boston (it was before the first railroad
was cut through the country town), whither he had to journey
to his lecture engagements ; and because of its retired and rural
situation, on the edge of the village, backed by the meadows
and the distant woodland ranges of Walden. The estate in-
cluded the house, newly built, and two acres of land. He soon
enlarged it by the purchase of the grove of pines extending to

382 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the pond, and the woodland tract with its rocky pinnacle on the
farther shore. He never regretted this choice of a dwelling-
place, his son says. It proved ' exactly fitted for his purpose ;
gave privacy and company enough, and the habit of the town
favored the simple living which he valued. 7

" Emerson was a good neighbor and a good citizen, holding
it l a privilege to bear his part of civic duties and neighborly
relations.' He was interested in the public schools, and served
for several years as a school-committee man. He fostered the
Concord Athenaeum, the village reading-room open to the
citizens for a small fee. He was a helpful member of the vil-
lage Social Circle. He attended the town meetings, and took
pleasure in watching the plain men of the town manage its
affairs. He went to political meetings, * partly for the rough
training good for a scholar/ ( always as a learner, . . . but only
as to details, for even his modesty did not accept the doctrine
that the scholar . . . must learn his duty from the callous
politician or man of affairs.' He early joined the fire associa-
tion, and went ' in the neighborly fashion of those days to fires
in the woods, and fought fire with his pine bough . . . side by
side with his neighbors.' He liked to talk with the farmers, and
with horsemen and stage-drivers whose ' racy vernacular and
picturesque brag ' he enjoyed l as much as the cautious under-
estimate ' of the former. < On his walks he fell in with pot-
hunters and fishermen, wood-choppers and drivers of cattle,
and liked to exchange a few words with them, and he always
observed the old-time courtesy of the road, the salutation to
the passer-by, even if a stranger. 7 In the village < he looked
sometimes with a longing eye at the group of village worthies
exchanging dry remarks round the grocery stove ; but he knew
it was of no use for him to tarry, for the fact that he was a
scholar and clergyman would silence the oracles/

" All of his relations to the town were pleasant. ' The
people of the village felt his friendly and modest attitude to
them and were always kind,' such is his son's testimony.

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 383

When in his latter years, in the summer of 1872, his house was
nearly destroyed by a fire, they showed their affection for him,
and their solicitude, in countless ways. Upon his return from
abroad, where generous friends had sent him with his daughter
Ellen, while the house was rebuilding, they welcomed him home
with a demonstration that touched the old scholar's heart. The
bells of the town were joyously rung while the townspeople in
a great throng greeted him as he stepped from the train, and
escorted him under a triumphal arch to the restored house.
' He was greatly moved/ runs the son's brief account, ' but with
characteristic modesty insisted that this was a welcome to his
daughter and could not be meant for him. Although he had
felt quite unable to make any speech, yet seeing his friendly
townspeople, old and young in groups watching him enter his
own door once more, he turned suddenly back and going to the
gate said : " My friends, I know that this is not a tribute to
an old man and his daughter returned to their house, but to the
common blood of us all one family in Concord."'

" Emerson's life of forty -eight years here moved on placidly.
Though dwelling apart, as his occupations required and his
tastes dictated, he was never out of touch with the world.
Those lines so often quoted

"'Good-by, proud World, I'm going home;

Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine;'

were written in his youth, when he was a schoolmaster in his
brother William's ' finishing school ' for girls, in Boston ; they
are sometimes assumed to be his note of renunciation, but had
no such significance. Through his discourses before literary
societies, and his lectures in lyceums all over the country,
he was brought into a contact with minds and work of all
sorts of men and women, which, his son says, he highly
valued.

"Most of his published work issued from this house.
< Nature ' was published during his first year here. In 1837

384 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

he wrote here those immortal lines of the ' Battle Monument '
dedication hymn :

" 'By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmer stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.'

" The same year he wrote the inspiring Phi Beta Kappa
oration, ' Man Thinking ' (which appears in his collected works
as 'The American Scholar'), with its call to the American
intellect to throw off its foreign shackles and assert its intel-
lectual freedom. The delivery of this oration at Cambridge in
August made a great commotion in our then contracted literary
circles. Lowell thirty years after characterized it as ' an event
without any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to
be always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and
its inspiration.' Holmes called it 'the declaration of inde-
pendence of American literature.'

"Then came Emerson's leadership in the Transcendental
movement, with his declaration of the doctrine in his address
before the Harvard Divinity School in 1838, which aroused a
roar of criticism from the conservatives. Then the * Tran-
scendental Club,' evolved from ' The Symposium,' which was
started in Boston shortly before by Alcott and others, devel-
oped here, and resulted in those famous gatherings in Emerson's
library of the humorously termed < Apostles of the Newness.'
Meanwhile The Dial, mainly sustained by Emerson, and in
good part edited here, ran its glowing and costly career of four
years. In 1841 Emerson's second book the first series of
the 'Essays' came out from this study; three years after-
ward, the second series appeared. Now the ' Concord group,'
Emerson being the loadstar, had ripened, and in his library
were held those ' Monday evenings,' one of which George Wil-
liam Curtis, then a youthful Concordian, described in this
rollicking fashion," and I read this account from Curtis's
" Homes of American Authors " :

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 385

" * It was in the year 1845 that a circle of persons of various ages, and
differing very much in everything but sympathies, found themselves in
Concord. Toward the end of the autumn Mr. Emerson suggested that
they should meet every Monday evening through the winter in his library.
"Monsieur Aubepine," "Miles Coverdale," and other phantoms, since
generally known as Nathaniel Hawthorne, then occupied the Old Manse ;
the inflexible Henry Thoreau, a scholastic and pastoral Orson, then living
among the blackberry -pastures of Walden Pond ; Plato Skiinpole [Alcott],
then sublimely meditating impossible summer-houses in the little house on
the Boston road ; the enthusiastic agriculturist and Brook Farmer already
mentioned [George Bradford], then an inmate of Emerson's house, who
added the genial cultivation of a scholar to the amenities of a natural
gentleman ; a sturdy farmer-neighbor [Edmund Hosmer], who had bravely
fought his way through inherited embarrassment to the small success of a
New England husbandman ; . . . two city youths [Curtis, and his brother
Burrill] ready for the fragments from the feast of wit and wisdom ; and
the host himself composed this club. Ellery Channing, who had that
winter harnessed his Pegasus to the New York Tribune, was a kind of
corresponding member. The news of this world was to be transmitted
through his eminently practical genius, arid the club deemed itself com-
petent to take charge of tidings from all other spheres.

" * I went the first evening, very much as Ixion may have gone to his
banquet. The philosophers sat dignified and erect. There was a con-
strained but very amiable silence, which had the impertinence of a tacit
inquiry, seeming to say, " Who will now proceed to say the finest thing
that has ever been said ? " It was quite involuntary and unavoidable, for
the members lacked that fluent social genius without which a club is
impossible. It was a congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious
listeners upon the other. I vaguely remember that the Orphic Alcott
invaded the Sahara of silence with a solemn u saying," to which, after due
pause, the honorable member for Blackberry Pastures responded by some
keen and graphic observation ; while the Olympian host, anxious that so
much material should be spun into something, beamed smiling encourage-
ment upon all parties. But the conversation became more and more
staccato. Miles Coverdale [Hawthorne], a statue of might and silence,
sat, a little removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably
upon the group ; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and eyes and
suit of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which
he weaves into his stories, while the shifting presence of the Brook Farmer
played like heat lightning around the room.

" ' I recall little else but the grave eating of russet apples by the phi-
losophers, and a solemn disappearance into the night. The club strug-

386

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

gled through three Monday evenings. Plato [Alcott] was perpetually
putting apples of gold in pictures of silver ; for such was the rich ore of
his thought, coined by the deep melody of his voice. Orson [Thoreau]
charmed us with the secrets won from his interviews with Pan in the
Walden woods ; while Emerson, with the zeal of an engineer trying to
dam wild waters, sought to bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse
into a web of clear good sense. ... I have known clubs of fifty times its
number whose collective genius was not more than that of either one of
the Dii Majores of our Concord coterie. The fault was its too great
concentration. It was not relaxation, as a club should be, but tension.'

" In 1847," I continued, " Emerson ventured his first vol-
ume of poems. Then came e Representative Men/ in 1850,
after the return from the memorable lecturing tour in England,

where his fame had long
been established ; in 1856,
< English Traits ' ; in 1860,
1 Conduct of Life'; in
1867, 'May Day/ the sec-
ond volume of poems;
1870, 'Society and Soli-
tude ' ; 1874, his selections
of English poetry in < Par-
nassus ' ; and in 1875 the
final volume of his last
years, ( Letters and Social
Aims/ The f Lectures and
Biographical Sketches/
and the 'Miscellanies'
were published after his
death. Almost all of his
essays were his lectures
reconstructed, and the lectures were drawn from his journals
in which his thoughts were first transcribed as they came, in
chronological order only, but indexed.

" Of Emerson's personal appearance in his prime we have
this portrait drawn from his son's description : six feet in his

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1858.

SUDBUKY AND CONCORD.

387

shoes, and erect ; neither very thin nor stout in frame ; shoul-
ders rather narrow and unusually sloping ; neck long ; head
well poised ; eyes very blue ; hair dark brown ; complexion clear
with good color; features pronounced but refined; face very
much modeled. His smile, David Macrae, the Scotchman,
from whom I have before quoted, described as ' effervescing
. . . into a silent laugh that runs up into his eyes and quivers
at the corners of his eyebrows, like sunlight in the woods.' As

THE " ALCOTTS' ORCHARD HOUSE."

pictured by Curtis, it was a ' slow, wise smile that breaks over
his face like day over the sky.' "

Our steps were now directed down the Lexington road along
which we had ridden on our previous pilgrimage ; and soon we
were at the " Orchard House," a former home of the Alcotts,
and the chapel-like buildings in the yard, set up for the

888 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Concord School of Philosophy. These we inspected leis-
urely, while our talk turned upon the Alcott family.

" This 'Orchard House," I remarked, " was the third settled
home of the Alcotts in Concord, and it is the most interesting
of their numerous landmarks, they were a wandering family.
Their life here covered a longer period than anywhere else ; and
during this period Louisa produced the work which brought
fortune with fame, enabling her to realize the ambition of her
girlhood, to bring comfort and ease to the household, through
her own earnings.

" The Alcotts were a remarkable family, and the story of
their life is unique in our literary annals. The father, Amos
Bronson Alcott (born in Wolcott, Conn., 1799 died in Bos-
ton, 1888), came of a Connecticut family of old English ancestry,
with the surname Alcox, earlier Alcock, which he changed to
the present spelling. He was an Idealist, a peripatetic philoso-
pher ; and during the larger part of his life, he delivered, for
small and uncertain fees, his Sayings on lofty themes in cities
and towns over the country in the form of l Conversations,' often
above the heads of his audiences. Earlier he traveled as a Con-
necticut pedler among plantations in the South in ante-bellum
days, picking up much learning along the way in the planters'
libraries. He was a schoolmaster with reform ideas, most of
them excellent, but all ahead of his times, accordingly inviting
criticism, some ridicule, and disaster; a reformer, ardent in
every cause for humanity, and drawn to every New England
'ism' in the < fermenting' period between the thirties and six-
ties ; a pioneer Transcendentalist, a non-resistant, a vegetarian ;
an unworldly man, soaring serenely above the commercial world,
incapable of earning money from his pen or his speech in or-
dinary way ; a ' majestic soul,' Emerson, his faithful friend,
called him, the only one whom the greater seer had ever met
who could l read Plato without surprise,' and upon whose tomb-
stone he would write ' Here lies Plato's Reader.'

" The mother, Abigail (May) Alcott (born in Boston, 1800

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 389

died in Concord, 1877), was a woman of rare character and
mental powers. She was the youngest daughter of a Boston
merchant and gently reared, sister of one of the most constant
of the antislavery leaders, the Kev. Samuel J. May, and
allied to sterling old New England families, on the maternal
side descending from the famous Sewall family of judges.
Though she published nothing, Sanborn, Alcott's biographer,
gives her the credit of having been the best writer of the family,
as her letters displayed. It was her encouragement and in-
terest in Louisa's literary efforts from the start that inspired
the author's best work. Her married life was full of hardship
till the strain was relieved through Louisa's earnings. She did
not always share her husband's theories of living ; but she was
ever loyal and hopeful. That pathetic little story which Louisa
related in her diary, of the home-coming of the dreamy philoso-
pher from one of his * Conversation ' tours, forlorn and almost
penniless, well illustrates the mother's fine character : " and
I read from my notebook :

" 4 In February [1854] Father came home. [The family were then
living in Boston, in the Pinckney-street house.] Paid his way, but no
more. A dramatic scene when he arrived in the night. We were waked
by hearing the bell. Mother flew down, crying, ' My husband ! ' We
rushed after/ and five white figures embraced the half-frozen wanderer
who came in hungry, tired, cold, and disappointed, but smiling bravely
and as serene as ever. We fed and warmed and brooded over him, long-
ing to ask if he had made any money ; but no one did till little May said,
after he had told all the pleasant things, " Well, did the people pay you ?"
Then, with a queer look he opened his pocket-book and showed one dollar,
saying, with a smile that made our eyes fill, "Only that ! My overcoat
was stolen, and I had to buy a shawl. Many promises were not kept, and
traveling is costly ; but I have opened the way, and another year shall do
better. ' ' I shall never forget how beautifully Mother answered him, though
the dear, hopeful soul had built much on his success ; but with a beaming
face she kissed him, saying, "I call that doing very well. Since you are
safely home, dear, we don't ask anything more."

"Louisa May Alcott (born in Germantown, Pa., 1832
died in Roxbury district, Boston, 1888) was the second of the

390

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

four daughters. She began writing when a child, and before
she was through her teens she had become an industrious
writer of stories. Her earliest verses were some lines ' To the
First Kobin/ composed when she was eight years old ; her first
story was published when she was sixteen, and it brought her
five dollars. That story was written in this Orchard House.

She had her full share of the
family anxieties and hard-
ships. At one time she kept
a little school in Emerson's
barn, having for pupils her
playmates the Emerson chil-
dren, and those of other neigh-
bors. From sixteen to twenty-
three she engaged in numer-
ous occupations, still steadily
continuing her writings. She
taught children in Boston,
earned money with her nee-
dle, and in domestic service.
Some of these experiences
were afterward detailed in her
novel, 'Work/

" Her first book was pub-
lished when she was twenty-
two. This was 'Flower

(From the Bust by F. E. Elwell, in the Fables,' a SCnCS of little tales
Missouri State University.) wMch . ^ ^^ wr itten, in her

seventeenth year, for Emerson's daughter Ellen, some years her
junior. It brought her thirty-two dollars, and, what was most
important, the attention of publishers ; so that instead of seek-
ing, her wares were now sought. Accordingly she wrote many
stories for various newspapers and periodicals through the fol-
lowing years ; tried her hand at play writing ( she had a strong
inclination to the stage, and would have become an actress

LOUISA M. ALCOTT.

SUDBURY ANT) CONCORD. 891

had not circumstances prevented ) ; and began her first novel,
< Moods.'

" It was, however, not till the Civil War period that Miss
Alcott obtained really wide recognition as an author ; and not
till 1868 that fame and fortune together came. She was then
thirty-six, and had been publishing for twenty years. The
wider recognition was achieved by her ' Hospital Sketches/
These were made up from her letters to the home-circle" during
her service as an afmy nurse in the Union Hospital at George-
town, in 1862, an experience which nearly cost her her life.
The fame and fortune were won by her ' Little Women/ This
was founded on the family history and adventures, in which
she and her sisters stood for the chief characters. ' Jo ' was
herself; 'Beth,' her younger sister, Elizabeth, who died just
before the family moved into the Orchard House ; ' Meg,' her
eldest sister, Anna Bronson, who became Mrs. Pratt, and whose
boys were the ' Little Men'; and 'Amy/ her youngest sister,
Abby May, the artist. May married a young Swiss, M. Nie-
ricker, while pursuing her art in Paris, and died there in
December, 1879 ; for her infant girl, left as a legacy to Louisa,
the stories of ( Lulu's Library ' were spun. Between the ' Hospi-
tal Sketches' and 'Little Women,' the novel 'Moods' was
published ; and after ' Little Women/ t The Old Fashioned
Girl.'

" In 1872, Miss Alcott was enabled to record in her journal,
' Twenty years ago I resolved to make the family independent
if I could. At forty this is' done. Debts all paid, even the
outlawed ones, and we have enough to be comfortable. It has
cost me my health, perhaps ; but as I still live, there is more
for me to do, I suppose/ Not only had this large-hearted
woman cleared the family of debt and made them comfortable,
but she had aided the artist-sister May to her art education,
and had helped others over the rough road of professional
apprenticeship. Her labors had indeed cost her her health, and
she was an invalid through the remainder of her life ; but her

392 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

work went on almost unceasingly to the end, and with it her
benefactions.

" In 1871 ' Little Men ' was written begun in Rome, when
she was abroad seeking rest, upon hearing of the death of
' Meg's ' husband, < that John's death may not leave A[nna]
and the dear little boys in want/ she recorded in her diary.
In 1872-'73 came Shawl Straps ' recounting her journeyings
through Prance, her novel l Work,' and ten or a dozen tales ;
through 1874-'76, many tales ; in 1877, her first successful
attempt at an adult novel in ' The Modern Mephistopheles ' ;
the same year, among other stories, ' My Girls ' and ' Under
the Lilacs,' the one written, and the other finished, to distract
her mind while watching at the bedside of her mother, who
died that year. 'Jack and Jill,' into which Concord scenes
and folk are worked, and ' Jo's Boys,' were among the produc-
tions of her last years. Her books in the alcove of the Concord
library filled with the works of Concord authors, number about
thirty.

" Miss Alcott was a rapid writer, and some of her most popu-
lar books were produced in remarkably quick time. ' Little
Women ' was thought out and written in less than three months.
She had no regular study, but wrote where she could ; any pen
or paper would do, and an old atlas on her knee served as desk.
She often carried a dozen plots in her head, and thought them
out when in the mood. When she got down to a book or a
story she was absorbed by it. She has said that she used to
sit fourteen hours a day at one time, eating little, and unable
to stir until a certain amount was done. A passage in her
diary telling of a 'turn* at her first novel, 'Moods,' is an illus-
tration of this frenzy in writing :

"' February. Another turn at "Moods," which I remodeled.
From the 2d to the 25th I sat writing, with a run at dusk ; could not
sleep, and for three days so full of it I could not stop to get up. . . .
Mother wandered in and out with cordial cups of tea, worried because I
couldn't eat. Father thought it fine, and brought his reddest apples and

SUDBURY AND CONCORD.

393

394 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

hardest cider for my Pegasus to feed upon. All sorts of fun was going
on ; but I didn't care if the world returned to chaos if I and nay inkstand
only u lit " in the same place. 1 '*

" That was { plain living and high thinking ' with a venge-
ance ! " Percy exclaimed.

" True ; happily it was not common even in those rigorous
days. And she paid the penalty for it, as we have seen.

" The Alcotts came first to live in Concord in 1840, their
advent being thus noted in Emerson's Journal : ' A. B. Alcott,
who is a great man if he cannot write well, has come to Concord
with his wife and three children, and taken a cottage and an
acre of ground to get his living by the help of God and his own
spade.' Mr. and Mrs. Alcott had then been married ten years.
The Idealist had been through his hard experiences, all end-
ing dismally from a financial point of view, as a schoolmaster
with his philanthropic scheme of redeeming mankind by re-
forming the education of children, as Sanborn succinctly states
it. Before his marriage he had taught his new system in seve-
ral Connecticut towns, in common and private schools, and
in Boston ; after his marriage, in Germantown (then a suburb
of Philadelphia), also in Philadelphia, and again in Boston.
Finally he instituted in the latter city his famous ' Temple
School/ where he had as assistants Elizabeth Peabody, who
published its annals in her ' Record of a School,' and, for
a short time, Margaret Fuller. It was in this school that he
carried his theories of spiritual culture to their extreme, and
ultimately failed through the newspaper criticisms of his
methods, especially the reports of his * Conversations with
Children on the Gospels,' and his subsequent admission of a
colored pupil to the school. Meanwhile he had delved into
metaphysics, and had begun his travels as a peripatetic philoso-
pher ; but with all he had retained no money in his purse.
When they had determined upon the removal to the country,
with what was left qf their household goods after the Boston
experience, brave Mrs. Alcott wrote in one of her letters to her

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 395

kindred, ' We go to Concord for another experiment in the art
of living.'

"This first Concord home was the 'Hosmer Cottage/ on
the west side of the village, overlooking the Concord Eiver,
with a garden and a big barn, which figure in 'Little Women.'
The rental of the little estate was but fifty dollars a year.
The Idealist began zealously to work upon his one-acre farm,
and tried to let his spade to neighboring farmers. * But/ says
San born, 'he toiled with a divided mind; his heart was still
upon his true mission in the world, to inspire thought, and
to share the spiritual tasks of the time. He must still go to the
Symposium, must take part in Non-Resistance meetings and
Bible conventions. With a little capital and an unsolicited
attention, he could have prospered ; for he had bodily vigor,
frugal habits, and an earnest purpose. Success in this two-
fold allegiance could not befall him ; and his eyes soon turned
toward England, where for years he had been gaining friends/

" These English friends were reformers who had been drawn
to him through the story of his ' Temple School/ and his
' Conversations on the Gospels/ which had gone abroad ; and
some of them had established a similar school at Ham
Common, near Richmond, to which they had given the name
of * Alcott House ' in his honor. At length, largely through
the generosity of his constant friend Emerson, passage was
secured for him, and in May, 1842, < with ten sovereigns in his
red pocket-book and a bill of exchange for twenty pounds/ he
sailed off, leaving the family at the Hosmer Cottage with his
brother in charge. In October he returned accompanied by
two of his English friends, enthusiastically intent upon plant-
ing in rugged New England a < new Eden ' where man might
< untempted by evil, dwell in harmony with his Creator, with
himself, his fellows, and all external natures.' Then followed
the tragic ' Fruitlands Community ' experiment, the comic side
of which was later on presented in Louisa's story of l Transcen-
dental W f ild Oats.'

396 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

' This Utopian enterprise was at length begun in the early
summer of 1843, when the Hosmer Cottage was abandoned and
the family was removed to the 'New Paradise.' The spot
selected was a hillside farm, amid rural surroundings, over-
looking a river and distant mountains, in the country beyond
the village of Harvard where Emerson's father had been
settled as minister at the close of the eighteenth century,
about twenty miles from Concord. The Community was to be
' rooted in a reliance on the succors of an ever-bountiful Provi-
dence, whose vital affinities being secured by this union with
uncorrupted fields and unworldly persons, the cares and in-
juries of a life of gain' would be avoided. One of his English
associates furnished the means to set it going, but Alcott was
the head of the Community. A lively description of it, drawn
from Alcott' s own story to the narrator many years after, runs
in this wise :

" ' Only a vegetable diet was allowed, for the rights of animals to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness formed a fundamental principle in
their constitution. This not only cut them off from beef, but from milk
and eggs. The milk belonged to the calf ; the chicken had a right to its
existence as well as the infant. Even the canker-worms that infested the
apple-trees were not to be molested. They had as much right to the
apples as man had. Unfortunately farm operations were not started
until well into June, and the only crop raised that was of value as de-
pendence was barley ; but the philosophers did not flinch at the thought
of an exclusively barley diet. Now and then they gave a thought as to
what they should do for shoes when those they now had were gone, for
depriving the cow of her skin was a crime not to be tolerated. . The
barley crop was injured in harvesting, and before long actual want was
staring them in the face. This burden fell heaviest upon Mrs. Alcott, for,
as housewife, it was her duty to prepare three meals a day. They
remained at Fruitlands till midwinter in dire poverty, all the guests
having taken their departure as provisions vanished.'

" Finally Mr. Alcott put his wife and their four little
women on an ox-sled, and so reached a friendly shelter in the
village. Thence they made their slow way back to Concord.

SUDBURT AND CONCORD. 397

To the Idealist this failure, which even his Transcendental
friends foresaw, was most bitter. As Louisa recounted in her
story (in which only the names of the characters are fictitious),
he had 'reveled in the Newness, firmly believing that his
dream was to be beautifully realized, and in time not only little
Fruitlands, but the whole earth be turned into a Happy Valley.
He worked with every muscle of his body, for he was in earn-
est. He taught with his whole head and heart ; planned and
sacrificed, preached and prophesied, with a soul full of the
purest aspirations, most unselfish purposes, and desires for a
life devoted to God and man, too high and tender to bear the
rough usage of this world.' The Community numbered at its
fullest only about fifteen persons. Among them was Isaac T.
Hecker of New York, afterward the widely famed Father
Hecker, editor of the Catholic World.

" The recovery of the family from this disaster was painful.
But after a season of grave illness and despair the Idealist
wrote his little poem < The Return,' and emerged again into the
ordinary world. He tried to get one of the town schools to
teach, but was unsuccessful, probably because of the Fruit-
lands affair, which remained for some time a subject of ridicule
and discredited the enthusiast among l practical ' men. After
a while, however, he was able to resume his public * Conversa-
tions/ and henceforward, as Sanborn notes, he came to be
known as the <Socratic talker of his time.' Meanwhile he
pursued horticulture, helped Thoreau build his hut by Walden,
read much, wrote out his Orphic thoughts in his ponderous
journal (which ultimately filled many volumes), and educated
his children, ' in the wise way/ Louisa afterward wrote, ' which
unfolds what lies in the child's nature, as a flower blooms,
rather than crammed it, like a Strasburg goose, with more than
it could digest.' He continued very poor, but 'full of high
thoughts and cheerful hopes.'

" The home during this period was the place next beyond
the Orchard House, which afterward became Hawthorne's

398 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

1 Wayside.' When the Alcotts purchased it with means from
a little legacy of Mrs. Alcott's, it was a rough place, embracing
about thirty acres at the foot of the wooded hill, and a shabby
little house with two peaked gables, a century or more old. Its
previous occupant had been a ' pig driver/ who herded his stock
in the front yard. Alcott, with skillful hand, refashioned the
house, adding a central peak, a front porch, and piazzas at each
end, and painted it a rusty olive hue. He also gave the grounds
a quaint picturesqueness by the irregular planting of varieties
of trees, the building of a terraced garden against the hillside,
and the construction of arbors and summer houses out of rough
stems, branches, and boughs, with a pleasaunce by the brookside
for the girls. He called the place * The Hillside/ It was here
that much of the girlish life chronicled in ' Little Women ' was
passed. Here Louisa began her verse-making and story-writing.
It was at this time that she kept her little school in Emerson's
barn, and wrote the fairy stories, ' Flower Fables.' She had
the run of Emerson's library ; browsing over it one day she fell
upon Goethe's ' Correspondence with a Child,' which fired her
imagination ; then she chose Emerson for her ' Master,' and he
remained ever after her idol.

" Though the life at < The Hillside ' was to a degree idyllic,
Poverty lived with the family, and after four years, late in
1848, they gave up the house, and returned again to Boston
in the hope of bettering their fortunes. There Mrs. Alcott got
a position through friends as a visitor among the poor ; Louisa
toiled as we have seen ; and Anna, the eldest daughter, taught
school. Meanwhile the serene Idealist continued his i Conver-
sations,' first in the city at a ' Town and Country Club ' of his
own establishing, made up of other prophets and disciples of
the < Newness'; later 'on the road,' with various ups and downs,
as is disclosed in that pathetic story which we have recalled of
his home-coming from one of the * downs.' The Boston experi-
ences were succeeded by two years of country life on a farm
of one of Mrs. Alcott's kinsmen in New Hampshire ; and then,

SUDBUKY AND CONCORD. 399

ten years ^after their departure from The Hillside, they made
their final return to Concord, and in the autumn of 1858 were
permanently established here in the Orchard House.

" The Orchard House remained their home for twenty years.
It was purchased by Mrs. Alcott and some of her friends, Em-
erson, ever the ' good angel ' of the family, contributing the
larger share. It was an old New England farmhouse which had
stood for two centuries. In the spring before they occupied it
the family suffered sore affliction in the death of the third
daughter, Elizabeth, after a long illness at their temporary
home in the village. Their incoming was thus chronicled in
Louisa's diary ;

"'July. Went into the new house and began to settle. Father is
happy ; Mother glad to be at rest ; Anna is in bliss with her gentle John
[John Pratt, her future husband, to whom she was then engaged] ; and
May busy over her pictures. I have plans simmering [for stories], but
must sweep and dust and wash my dish-pans a while longer till I see my
way.'

" The house was freshened and adorned by the united work
of father and daughters. The girls papered the walls, and by
degrees the nooks and corners were filled with panels upon
which May had painted birds and flowers ; over the fireplaces
were also painted mottoes in ancient English characters, and
on the chimney-piece of the study this epigram written by El-
lery Channing :

"'The hills are reared, the valleys scooped, in vain,
If Learning's altars vanish from the plain. 1

"'Nan's' wedding, on May day in 1860, was an event in
the quaint old house. There was a wedding feast to which
the neighbors were invited ; the old folk danced round the
bridal pair on the lawn, in the German fashion ; and Emerson
kissed the bride, an honor which Louisa thought l would make
even matrimony endurable.' After the execution of John
Brown of Ossawatomie, in whose cause Alcott was enlisted,

400 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

Brown's daughters came to board with the family for a time.
The Concord home had been a haven for runaway slaves, and
there is a tradition that one was once secreted in the big oven
of the Hillside house.

"As things improved through Louisa's achievements, the
placid seer occasionally gave his l Conversations ' to little gath-
erings in the library here. Continuing his western tours he
found himself most heartily welcomed as ' the grandfather of
the Little Women,' and talk about his daughter was more
popular than his metaphysical discourses. On the strength
of Louisa's successes he ventured again his own work in book
form. In 1868, when < Little Women ' was bounding along its
prosperous way, he brought out his l Tablets.' In 1872, ' Con-
cord Days ' appeared ; in 1877, ' Table Talk.' Then two years
after, when he was eighty, came the realization of his dream
of years in the establishment of the ' Concord Summer School
of Philosophy and Literature.'

" Of this unique institution Alcott was the dean, and him
it glorified above all others. It was started in his old library
of the Orchard House, which was reopened for the purpose,
the family home then being the Main-street ' Thoreau house '
as we have seen. Later it occupied the little chapel which
was built from a fund contributed by a friend of the school.
It drew throngs to Concord from all parts of the country every
summer through its nine years of existence. Some were drawn
by curiosity, more by interest in the oral teachings of the phi-
losophers and the formal lectures or conversations of others
after the Alcott pattern. Some took it humorously, more most
seriously.

" Louisa saw both its humorous and serious sides : and took
a practical view of it. On the day before the opening she
chronicled in her diary : < The philosophers begin to swarm,
and the buzz starts to-morrow. How much honey will be
made is still doubtful, but the hive is ready and the drones
also.' The day of the opening : ' Father has his dream realized

SUDBURY AND CONCO11D. 401

at last, and is in glory, with plenty of talk to swim in. People
laugh, but will enjoy something new in this dull old town ; and
the fresh Westerners will show them that all the culture of
the world is not in Concord/ A month later : < The town
swarms with budding philosophers, and they roost on our steps
like hens waiting for corn. Father revels in it. ... If they
were philanthropists I should enjoy it ; but speculation seems
a waste of time when there is so much real work crying to be
done. Why discuss the " unknowable " till our poor are fed
and the wicked saved ? ' Later on, at the opening of the third
year's session : ' School of Philosophy opens ... in full force.
I arrange flowers, oak branches, etc., and then fly before the
reporters come. Father very happy. Westerners arrive, and
the town is full with ideal speculators. Penny [driver of the
" depot carriage "] has a new barge ; we call it the " Blue Plato "
(not the " Black Maria ") and watch it rumble by with Margaret
Fullers in white muslin and Hegels in straw hats, while stout
Penny grins at the joke as he puts money in his purse. The
first year Concord people stood aloof, and the strangers found
it hard to get rooms. Now every one is eager to take them,
and the School is pronounced a success because it brings money
to the town. Even philosophers can't do without food, beds,
and washing ; so all rejoice, and the new craze flourishes. If
all our guests paid we should be well off ; several hundred a
month is rather wearing.'

"When Alcott was eighty-one he niade his last journey
West, traveling over five thousand miles, and delivering < Con-
versations,' or addresses, at the rate of more than one a day ;
and he returned none the worse, apparently, from the strain,
with one thousand dollars in his purse as profit. His last
book, * Sonnets and Canzonets,' was brought out in his eighty-
third year. He died in his eighty-ninth year, at Louisa's Boston
home, the Louisburg-Square house ; and on the very day of
his funeral she died, away from him (at the home of her physi-
cian in Roxbury), unaware of his death. Her last illness was

402

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

the result of exposure in the harsh March weather after an
anxious call upon him a few days before. Both were brought
to Concord for burial, Louisa's ' boys ' attending her body to
the grave as a l guard of honor.' We saw their graves marked
by the little white tablets, when we were here before, in
< Sleepy Hollow,' in the lot opposite Hawthorne's. They are

beside the others of
the family, with the
exception of ' Nan/
who lies at her hus-
band's side in the
Pratt family lot."

The "Wayside"
we found preserved
much as in Haw-
thorne's time by its
present owner, herself
a woman of letters,
pleasantly known to
a world of young
readers through her
pen-name of " Mar-
garet Sidney" (Mrs
Margaret Lothrop ) .
Percy revelled in the
picturesque interior.-
The low-studded
room, at the left of

the little entrance hall, he was told had been Hawthorne's
library. The secluded "tower-study" was the top room of
the back wing of three stories, rising above the irregular
roofs of the main structure, thus producing the tower effect.
Had our visit been made in the romancer's lifetime and the
good fortune been ours to have followed him up the narrow
stairs into this sanctuary, we would have seen by the en-

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE IN MIDDLE LIFE.

AND CONCORD. 403

trance, in either corner, the little bookcases with the mottoes
above them : " Abandon Care All Ye Who Enter Here," and
" There is no Joy but Calm " ; and on the window-casing be-
tween the book-shelves the word " Olympus," in Greek letters.
Our glance would have included a cheerful room finished in
red-stained pine, with a vaulted plaster ceiling, with windows
on all sides looking out upon the tree-tops and rural landscapes,
with simple furnishings, a few pictures on the walls, and a few
ornaments on the mantel-shelf. There was the plain writing-
table of walnut wood, having a sloping desk on one side and
some drawers on the other ; upon it the Italian bronze inkstand
surmounted by the little figure of "The Boy Strangling the
Swan " ; the gold pen ; and the large, square manuscript bound
in covers. Against the wall, near one of the windows, was the
hinged shelf for use as a standing-desk. By the writing-table
were two chairs, one a comfortable New England rocker.

In this study, Percy learned, Hawthorne wrote his last
works after his final return from Europe, four years before
his death. The writing included the English sketches collected
in "Our Old Home"; "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," the first
scheme of which appeared as " The Ancestral Footstep " ;
" Septimius Felton," into which " Dr. Grimshawe's Secret "
was merged; and the unfinished " Dolliver Komance," for
which " Septimius Felton " was the preliminary study. " The
manuscript of this fragmentary romance," I added, " lay upon
Hawthorne's coffin during the funeral services in the historic
old church in the village, when James Freeman Clarke, who
had performed his marriage ceremony, conducted the simple
service; and when Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes,
Whipple, Hillard, and Agassiz were of the company who
walked with heads bared in 'the procession to the grave at
Sleepy Hollow. This manuscript was not buried with him,
as some have said, but is preserved in the Concord Public
Library/'

Percy was also interested to learn that the scenes of " The

404

L 1 TERA R Y PIL GRIN A GES.

Dolliver Romance " and " Septimius Felton " were about The
Wayside and Alcott's Orchard House. He was told that a
tradition respecting The Wayside which Thoreau had related
to Hawthorne when he first came to live here in 1852, that
it had been inhabited a generation or two before by a man who
believed he should never die, revived the idea of a deathless
man which had long been in the romancer's mind ; and it was
this legendary person whom he embodied in Septimius Felton.
It was at the foot of one of the large pines on the hilltop be-
hind the house, which was Hawthorne's outdoor study when
he was thinking out the tragedy, that Septimius Felton in the
romance buried the young English officer.

HAWTHORNE'S WALK ON THE RIDGE.

We now mounted the hill to the " outdoor study." Haw-
thorne used to ascend it by various climbing paths under the
larches and pines and scraggy apple-trees, and his tall form
pacing up and down the long height could be seen through the
trees from the house lawn. " His daughter Rose, who became
the wife of the late George Parsons Lathrop (editor of the

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 405

Kiverside Edition of Hawthorne's works),'' I said, "has given
the truest description of this t study,' in her ' Memories of
Hawthorne.' " And I read the passage as follows :

" ' We could catch sight of him going back aiid forth up there, with
now and then a pale blue gleam of sky among the trees against which his
figure passed clear. At one end of the hilltop path [made by his own steps
only] was a thicket of birch and maple trees ; and at the end toward the
west and the village was the open brow of the hill, sloping rapidly to the
Lexington road and overlooking meadows and distant wood-ranges, some
of the cottages of humble folk, and the neighboring huge owlet-haunted
elms of Alcott's lawn. Along this path in spring huddled pale blue vio-
lets, of a blue that held sunlight, pure as his own eyes. Masses also of
sweetfern grew at the side of these abundant bordering violets, and spa-
cious apartments of brown-floored pine groves flanked the sweetfern, or
receded a little before heaps of blackberry branches and simple flowers.
My father's violets were the wonder of the year to us. We never saw so
many of these broad, pale-petaled ones anywhere else, until the year of
his death, when they greeted him with their celestial color as he was borne
into Sleepy Hollow, as if in remembrance of his long companionship on
The Way side hill.'"

"Was there any special reason for calling this place 'The
Wayside?'" Percy asked, as we resumed our walk, now shap-
ing our course in the direction of the " Old Manse."

" Hawthorne chose this name," I replied, " as more ' morally
suggestive,' so Ire wrote in describing it, than Alcott's name of
' The Hillside,' because of its secluded situation amidst trees
and shrubs, close upon the traveled high road. Lathrop has
suggested that the name may also have recommended itself to
him by some association of thought like that which appears in
his preface to ' The Snow Image,' where, alluding to the years
immediately following his college days, he says * I sat down
by the wayside of life like a man under enchantment, and a
shrubbery sprung up around me, and the bushes grew to sap-
lings, and the saplings became trees until no exit appeared
possible through the entangling depths of my obscurity.'

" When Hawthorne bought the place from Alcott, and came

406 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

here to live in the early summer of 1852, the rural embellish-
ments which Alcott had made had fallen into picturesque decay.
Against the hillside were the locust trees of his planting inter-
mixed with young elms, white pines, and infant oaks, and in
their shade Hawthorne wrote that he spent delectable hours
< stretched out at my lazy length, with a book in my hand and
an unwritten book in my thoughts.' By degrees he readorned
the grounds in accordance with his own taste, adding firs, Scotch
larches, birches and other trees to the thicket, setting out the
low hedge on the sidewalk line, and training rose-vines and

HAWTHORNE'S WEST NEWTON HOME.

woodbine over one end of the house. The larger part of this
work was done after his return from Europe, when the enlarge-
ment of the ancient house, by the f tower ' addition, was made.
He went abroad to take up the consulship at Liverpool in the
summer of 1853, and was absent seven years. ' The Wayside '
life, therefore, covered only five years. When he came here he
had just published * The Blithedale Romance,' which was writ-
ten in the winter of 1851-'52 at West Newton, near Boston, in
the home of his brother-in-law, Horace Mann, the educator, who
was then abroad. Hawthorne had removed thither, tempo-
rarily from Lenox."

8UDBURY AND CONCORD. 407

The Old Manse was of all the Concord literary landmarks
most familiar to Percy, from his previous visit when he had been
graciously shown over the ancient house by its occupant at that
time. He thoroughly enjoyed, however, renewing his acquaint-
ance with it. We sat again in the ground floor room which had
been the study of the country parson, good Dr. Ezra Ripley ;
we looked again into the ten-foot-square apartment in the south
gable where Emerson had written, and afterward Hawthorne ;
and peered into the garret where Hawthorne found a chestfull
of Parson Ripley's sermons. Meanwhile our talk sped on.
First was recalled Emerson's early association with the place ;
then the four years' life of the Hawthornes here in the forties,
begun with their honeymoon.

Percy remembered what had been told him, when we were
here before, of the history of the Manse and the relationship
of the Emersons and the Ripleys, that our Emerson's grand-
father, William Emerson, the patriot minister in the Concord
Fight, built the Manse in 1765, when he became the Concord min-
ister and had married his predecessor's daughter, Phebe Bliss ;
and that Ezra Eipley, William Emerson's successor in the
church and the parsonage, marrying his widow, became our
Emerson's step-grandfather. But, although these facts were
clear in Percy's mind, he did not realize how closely the
Manse, as the ancestral home, was connected with Emerson, till
he had absorbed more of the story of Emerson's boyhood and
youth.

" Emerson first came here to live," I related, " when he was
a boy of eight. His father, the Boston minister, died in the
spring of 1813, leaving the mother with five little boys, the
oldest but ten, to provide for. Toward the close of the next
year the family, still living in Boston, began to feel the pinch
of poverty. -Then the good Dr. Ripley gathered them into the
Manse, and this was their home for nearly a year. Ralph
Waldo went to a public school, wrote boyish verses, and enter-
tained his earliest Concord audiences with occasional recita-

408

LITER A R Y PIL GRIN A GHS.

tions of poetry, being set up on a sugar barrel for a platform,
in the village grocery. When the family returned to Boston,
and the mother took the little house on Beacon Hill to ( keep

boarders,' Dr. Kip-
ley sent them a
Concord cow ; and
one of the < chores '
of the youthful
Ralph Waldo was
the driving of this
cow over Beacon
Street to her pas-
turage on Boston
Common. Boston
continued the fam-
ily home through
the next ten years,
but the brothers
were often in Con-
cord on visits to
their grand-par-
ents. Ralph Waldo
was wont to accom-
pany his step-
grandfather in the
chaise on the min-
ister's pastoral vis-
its. So he came to
learn < the histories

ENTRY TO THE OLD MANSE.

of the families who

lived on the scattered farms of the river town, many of whom
in the sixth generation still tilled the holdings originally
granted their ancestors;' while at the parsonage he saw the
leading townspeople who called there, for the old minister was
4 both shepherd and judge of the people.'

SUDBUBY AND CONCORD. 409

"Emerson entered Harvard College at fourteen, following
his elder brother William. As ' President's Freshman/ he
carried official messages for the president to the students and
officers, in return for a room in the president's house, the
old Wadsworth House on the college grounds. His way
through college was helped along by earnings in teaching
through the vacations, and in other ways. In his sophmore
year he waited on the juniors' table at Commons, and so offset
part of the price of his board. Winning the five dollars at the
Boylston prize declamation, he sent the money home, hoping
that his mother would buy a shawl with it; but the brother,
William, then the head of the house, used it to pay off the
family baker's bill. When he was in his senior year his
younger brother, Edward, entered the college as freshman.
So three sons were put through college by the noble mother,
and a fourth, Charles, was bred for the law.

" After his graduation Ralph Waldo spent some years in
teaching at intervals, in his brother William's school for
young women in Boston, where some of the pupils were of the
same age as the shy assistant teacher, later at the academy in
Chelmsford, at a subsequent period in his brother Edward's
school in Roxbury, and lastly in a school of his own in Cam-
bridge. Meanwhile he studied at the Divinity School at
Cambridge, when able, but ill health repeatedly broke his
studies and other occupations. He preached his first sermon
in his Uncle Ripley's pulpit in Waltham while he was a
divinity student ; and after he was regularly ' appropriated to
preach ' he supplied the Concord pulpit for a brief season dur-
ing a visit of his step-grandfather to Washington.

" His return to the Old Manse to live was in the autumn of
1834, two and a half years after the death of his first wife,
Ellen Tucker, of Concord, New Hampshire, who died of con-
sumption a short year and a half after their marriage. He
had then finally withdrawn from the pulpit ; and he came with
his mother to board here, and to devote himself uninterruptedly

410

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

to literary work. He established his study in the south gable,
from a window of which his grandmother had looked out upon
the Fight at the Bridge; and there he wrote his < Nature.'
When finally settled he wrote in his journal: 'Hail to the
quiet fields of my fathers. Not wholly unattended by super-
natural friendship and favor let me come hither. Bless my

purposes as they are sim-
ple and virtuous. . . .
Henceforth I design not
to utter any speech, poem,
or book that is not en-
tirely and peculiarly my
work. I will say at pub-
lic lectures and the like,
those things which I have
meditated for their own
sake, and not for the first
time with a view to that
occasion.' "

Turning to the Haw-
thorn es, I remarked that
their life in the Old
Manse was most idylic.
When Hawthorne first
visited the place, a month
before their marriage,
with the purpose of hir-
ing it for their home, the
ancient house was empty, the aged minister ' having died a
while before ; and it showed all the " dust and disarray that
might be supposed to have gathered about him in the course
of sixty years of occupancy." The walls and panels of the
rooms, and the huge cross-beams had a venerable tinge of
brown. The furniture consisted of " high-backed, short-legged,
rheumatic chairs, small, old tables, bedsteads with lofty posts.

HAWTHORNE AND HIS PUBLISHERS.

SUDBURY AND CONCORD. 411

stately chests of drawers, looking-glasses in antique black
frames." Upon taking possession the Hawthornes transformed
the interior into what the bride termed " Our Paradise " and
shutting out the rougher world they gave themselves up to its
enjoyment. The old minister's sleeping-room on the ground
floor was converted into a parlor, and by the aid of cheerful
paint and paper, a gladsome carpet, pictures and engravings,
new furniture, bijouterie, and a daily supply of flowers/' Haw-
thorne noted in his journal, it became " one of the prettiest and
pleasantest rooms in the whole world." " The shade of our
departed host will never haunt it," he added, " for its aspect
has been changed as completely as the scenery of a theater :
probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and
vanished forever."

The ancient furniture, however, was not banished from the
house. The guest chamber, on the second floor, contained the
most presentable of it. Hawthorne makes the observation,
which many of us to-day would echo, that " after all, the mod-
erns have invented nothing better, as chamber furniture, than
these chests of drawers which stand on four slender legs, and
rear an absolute tower of mahogony to the ceiling, the whole
terminating in a fantastically carved summit. Such a venera-
ble structure adorns our guest chamber."

Into the study, which had been Emerson's, was brought the
furniture of Hawthorne's bachelor-room in Boston ; but with a
happier disposal of things here than there. A vase of flowers on
one of the bookcases betokened the woman's touch, and a larger
bronze vase of graceful ferns surmounting the bureau. Haw-
thorne liked the smallness of this study, for he could never, he
said, compress his thoughts sufficiently to write in a very
spacious room. Two of its three windows were shaded by a
large and beautiful willow tree which swept against the over-
hanging eaves. From these windows he had a view into the
orchard at the back of the house, and, beyond, a glimpse of the
river. The other window was the one from which Emerson's

412

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

grandmother looked out upon the Fight at the Bridge. Upon
one of the western windows the Hawthornes cut these in-
scriptions with a diamond in their last spring here: "Nath 1
Hawthorne. This is his study. 1843." "Inscribed by my
Husband at Sunset, April 3 d 1843, in the Gold Light. S. A.
H." " Man's Accidents are God's Purposes. Sophia A. Haw-
thorne, 1843."

These and other changes made by them in the interior of
the house Hawthorne pronounced to be in perfectly good taste,

though the heavy old beams
and high wainscoting of
the walls spoke of ages
gone by. " The cheerful
paper-hangings have the
air of belonging to the old
walls," he wrote ; " and
such modernisms as astral
lamps, card-tables, gilded
cologne-bottles, silver taper-
stands, and bronze and
alabaster flower-vases," did
not seem "at all imperti-
nent." "It is thus," he
mused, " that an aged man
may keep his heart warm
for new things and new

friends, and often furnish himself anew with ideas : though it
would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his exterior to
the passing fashions of the day." So the exterior, with its sober,
grayish hue, was left unchanged. To repaint its venerable face,
he declared, would be a real sacrifice. " It would look like old
Dr. Ripley in a brown wig."

How their life glided on in and about the old house Mrs.
Hawthorne disclosed in her home letters : and I read these
picturesque extracts ; -

EZRA RIPLEY.

SUDBUKY AND CONCORD. 413

" ' December. ... In the afternoon aud evening I sit in the fctudy
with him. It is the pleasantest niche in our temple. We watch the
sun, together, descending in purple and gold, in every variety of magniii-
cence, over the river. Lately, we go on the river, which is now frozen ;
my lord to skate, and I to run and slide, during the dolphin-death of day.
1 consider my husband a rare sight, gliding over the icy stream. For,
wrapped in his cloak, he looks very graceful ; perpetually darting from
ine in long, sweeping curves, and returning again again to shoot
away. . . . Often other skaters appear, young men and boys, who
principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of
nature, loses all shyness, and moves regally like a king.

" 'One afternoon Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down
the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring
dithyranibic dances and Bacchic, leaps on the ice very remarkable, but
very ugly, methought. Next him, followed Mr. Hawthorne who, wrapped
in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave.
Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect,
pitching headforemost, half lying iii the air.

" ' In the evening we are gathered together beneath our luminous star,
in the Study, for we have a large hanging astral lamp, which beautifully
illumines the room, with its walls of pale yellow paper, its Holy Mother
over the fireplace, and pleasant books, and its pretty bronze vase, on one
of the secretaries, filled with ferns. Except once Mr. Emerson, no one
hunts us out in the evening. Then Mr. Hawthorne reads to me. . . .
Mr. Hawthorne writes all the morning.

" ' August Mr. Hawthorne has written a little, and cultivated his
garden a great deal. . . . I planted flowers which grow pretty well. We
have voyaged on the river constantly, harvesting water-lilies and lately
cardinal -flowers, which enrich the borders with their superb scarlet
mantles in great conclaves.' "

With the villagers Hawthorne had little or no intercourse,
and in his walks he avoided the town as much as possible.
Callers at the Manse were rare, except a chosen few who were
welcomed across its threshold. Of one call by Emerson and
Thoreau upon the shy and reserved recluse, I quoted this droll
account given by Curtis :

"They were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue and Haw-
thorne presently entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair
like a Roman senator. To them Hawthorne seemed like a Dacian king.

414 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

The call went on, but in a most melancholy manner. The host sat per-
fectly still, or occasionally propounded a question which Thoreau
answered accurately, and there the thread broke short off. Emerson
delivered sentences that only needed the setting of an essay to charm the
world. . . . Had they all been lying idly by the river-bank, or strolling
in Thoreau 1 s blackberry pastures the result would have been utterly
different. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild
man in his way, with a necessity of talking inherent in the nature of
the occasion, there was only a waste of treasure."

The principal work of Hawthorne in this old house was
the preparation for publication, of his Mosses from an Old
Manse," which appeared just before his removal back to
Salem. Five or six of its sketches were also written here.
They were first published in the Democratic Review, Hawthorne
receiving only a pittance for them. While here in 1844,
upon the election of Polk to the Presidency, his thoughts
were turned toward another government position, for the
security which it would give him in a regular salary, as he
had found in his earlier service of two years in the Boston
Custom House. But it was not till 1846 that the place was
finally obtained, in the surveyorship at the Salem Custom House
of which we heard in our pilgrimage to " Hawthorne's Salem."
Una, his first child, named from " The Faerie Queen," was
born in the Manse.

It was dusk when we made our leisurely way to the
station on the upper railroad near by the Old Manse, for our
return journey through Lexington to Boston. .

XX.

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

Along the way from Boston to Springfield. Landmarks on connecting
lines. Birthplace of Hannah Adams. Story of the first native
American woman to make books. Kate Sanborn and her "Aban-
doned Farm." Birthplace and early life of George Bancroft. Long-
fellow's poem on "The Arsenal at Springfield." Landmarks of
Dr. Josiah G. Holland. His "Timothy Titcomb" Letters and his
popular poems. Samuel Bowles, the early independent editor.
Edward Bellamy's home at Chicopee Falls. His "Looking Back-
ward " and later works. Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan metaphy-
sician. Timothy Dwight and the Dwight family. Smith College
for Women. The Round Hill School of Bancroft and Cogswell.
Bancroft's Northampton and later life. George W. Cable at " Tarry-
awhile."

HAVING covered eastern New England according to our
schedule, our course was now westward. Since Percy was not
to return to Boston, but was to leave me at New Haven, where
our pilgrimages were to end, he expressed his heavier baggage
" traps " was his word to that city, and we started off for
the longest continuous railroad ride of all our journeyings thus
far, encumbered only with the few things we had carried on
our shorter trips. This ride was from Boston to Springfield in
the Connecticut Valley. Thence we were to proceed to North-
ampton, where, after our sight-seeing, we were to spend the
night.

We took an early forenoon train on the Boston and Albany
Railroad, and secured chairs in the parlor car that we might
enjoy the lookout from the broad windows, and be as comfort-
able as possible, for the day was warm. For this journey of
two and a half hours I took along a special note-book con-

415

416 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

taining data about the few literary landmarks in the region
through which we should pass, but which we could not afford
the time to visit, since that would involve " stopping over " at
one or two stations.

Our train was " express " with few stops between Boston
and Springfield. At South Framingham, the first stop, we
were not far from two interesting landmarks reached by con-
necting railway lines. They were landmarks, I observed, a
century apart, one ancient, the other modern.

BIRTHPLACE OF HANNAH ADAMS, MEDFIELD.

The first one to which I referred was in the pastoral town
of Medfield, within twenty miles of Boston. It was the birth-
place of the first native American woman to publish a book
under her own name, and the first, probably, to devote herself
distinctly to a literary life. " She was Hannah Adams (born,
1775 died in Brookline, near Boston, 1831)," I went on to
give her story, " and her pioneer work was a sort of history or
cyclopaedia of religions, entitled < A View of Religious Opin-
ions/ Later and enlarged editions were subsequently published
under different titles, and the work was reproduced in England.
' A History of New England ' followed the first history by an

CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 417

American woman ; and later a ponderous < History of the
Jews.' Born in * humble obscurity ' in a remote country town,
in part self-educated, living at a time when a learned woman
in New England was a rarity, almost a thing unique, with ill-
health and many cares, often poor and obliged to resort to
various occupations for her sustenance, while doggedly pur-
suing her studies and diligently working her pen, what this
woman accomplished was really astonishing. Though she left
no permanent mark on our literature, she won a place close up
to her best literary contemporaries, and the fellowship of
learned men of her day.

"Her birthplace was an ancestral farm which came to her
father from her grandfather, in his time one of the largest
landholders in the township, of which his ancestor was one of
the founders. The father was an educated man, a graduate of
Harvard College, and more student than farmer. Yielding
to his father's desire that he should remain on the farm, he
appeased his disappointment by opening a shop in the village
for the sale of English goods and books. Fortunately for his
daughter, books constituted the larger part of his stock ; and
also fortunately for her, some young divinity students for a
time boarded with the family. The books she devoured ; while
from the students, whose offer to teach her was eagerly grasped,
she acquired Latin, Greek, geography and logic. Her father
was her first teacher, and from him she learned the three
R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Her reading through
her girlhood was of wide range, including history, biography,
novels, and the English poets, Milton, Thomson, and Young
being her favorites, much of whose works she committed to
memory. Of the novels, she afterward thought, gentle soul !
she read more than was good for her, since they gave her ' a
false idea of life,' the { world which her imagination made
being not what the real world was.'

" When she was eleven her mother died, leaving five chil-
dren ; and two years afterward her father failed in business.

418

LITERARY

Then she went to work to help support the family by sewing,
knitting, spinning, and weaving bobbin lace. Prom the lace-
making she derived the most profit, and when, after the Revo-
lution, this resource failed, lace then being imported, she fell
into narrow straits. Opportunity, however, soon came for her
to apply her learning to advantage. She tutored three young
men of her neighborhood in Latin and Greek ; and so well was
this work done that one of them afterward said that her tuition
principally fitted him for college.

" Hannah Adams's first literary work was the result, as her
autobiography indicates, of her dissatisfaction with the prej-
udice of most writers on the
various religious sects. Her
mind had been turned to the
subject by reading a manu-
script from Broughton's Dic-
tionary giving an account of
some of the most common of
the sects. The publication
of ( A View of Religious Opin-
ions ' was ventured in 1784, in
accordance with the custom
of the time, after subscriptions
had been obtained to the ' pro-
posal' of the work, sufficient
in number to warrant its issue.
It was fairly profitable, but
owing to a bad bargain with
the printer the author's re-
turns were slight. A second edition with additions, secured
by copyright, then newly established by law, was published in
1791, at the instance of influential Boston friends whom the
first issue had made for her. This edition was dedicated to
John Adams, then Vice-President of the United States, who
had headed its list of subscribers, which included such leading

HANNAH ADAMS.

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 419

names as Samuel Adams, John Hancock, President Willard of
Harvard College, Kt. Kev. John Carroll, D.D., the Eoman
Catholic Bishop of Baltimore, the Rev. Henry Ware, and the
Rev. Adoniram Judson, father of the missionary. Her old
father was a most enthusiastic seller of the book, traveling
about the country on horseback with saddle-bags filled with the
volumes. He must himself have been an interesting character.
He had found solace in books through his ill fortunes, and was
happiest when making trips to the Harvard College Library.
Once upon entering the building, it is related, he lifted up his
hands and exclaimed with great fervor, * I'd rather be libra-
rian of Harvard College than emperor of all the Russias ! '

" Hannah Adams's second work, her ' Summary History of
New England,' was written after an experience in country
school-teaching, and was published in 1799. In 1801 a third
edition of her first work, further enlarged, was brought out.
Next she prepared a volume of selections from various
authors under the title of ' Truth and Excellence of the
Christian Religion/ working up her material in the Boston
bookshops, since she was unable to purchase or borrow the
books she desired to consult. In 1805 appeared an abridgment
of the history of New England, which brought her into con-
flict with the Rev. Jedidiah Morse, author of the first geog-
raphy of the United States (father, by the way, of Samuel
F. B. Morse, the inventor of the magnetic telegraph), who had
published a similar work. A sharp controversy ensued in
which the woman's side was championed by several friends,
chief among them being William S. Shaw, one of the Anthol-
ogy Club men of whom we talked when in Boston.

" The material for her History of the Jews ' was largely
gathered in the Boston Athenaeum, liberty of which was given
her by Mr. Shaw. She also found a friend and helper
in young Mr. Buckminster, minister of the Brattle-Square
Church, another of the Anthology Club group, who gave her
the freedom of his study and library. President John Adams,

420 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

too, gave her the use of his library, then in his home in
Quincy. While this history was progressing she was obliged
to work at straw braiding for her support. But at length,
through the energy of some Boston women of station, a small
annuity was subscribed for her which rendered her closing
years comfortable. A fourth edition of her first work,
with further additions, appeared in 1817, under the broader
title of ( A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denomi-
nations/ Jared Sparks gave it his stamp of approval.
Her last book, l Letters on the Gospels/ was written when she
was seventy. She drifted cheerfully into old age. She enter-
tained the friends who gathered in her little parlor with
recitations of the poetry which she learned in girlhood.
She could repeat these verses 'for three months together/
although she was ( troubled continually by forgetting where
she had laid a pencil or a pen.' ( An interesting story this, of
the first professional American woman of letters, is it not ? "

The other landmark in the neighborhood of South Framing-
ham was " Breezy Meadows," the unique home of a literary
woman of to-day Katherine Abbott Sanborn (born in Han-
over, N. H., 1839 ), or Kate Sanborn, as her pen-name is,
" the literary woman who adopted an abandoned farm."
" Breezy Meadows " lies within the precincts of the old town
of Holliston, at Metcalf, distant about fifteen minutes by
a branch railroad from the South Framingham station.

" Metcalf/ 7 I remarked, " is a rural place, ( with no tele-
graph office, and but one mail a day, which brings the letters
of day before yesterday/ Miss Sanborn tells us. Here, from a
forlorn abandoned farm, such as some country parts of New
England to-day abound in, she has through her own efforts
and cleverness produced a seat of beauty and of profit in
contentment. The house, a century old, has been furbished in
colonial fashion. In tearing off the worn wall-papers, curious
hand-painting was revealed ; one paper, put on before the in-
vention of rolls of paper and made in small squares, has been

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

421

preserved. The front hall has. large chimney recesses. The
great dining-room has a huge fireplace, burning logs four feet
long in the twelve-foot chimney, with a steaming kettle sus-
pended from an ancient crane. Above the fireplace you read

the inscription : -

'To sit

in the presence of my cottage fire and
listen to the flapping of the flame or
kettle whispering its faint Undersong.'

The library, with great easy-chairs and mahogany desk, is
lined with books, and the stairway walls on either side are

THE ABANDONED FARM BEAUTIFIED.

covered with pictures and portraits. The deep attic is trans-
formed into a billiard-room. All over the house are scattered
antique treasures. In the barns and pastures are fine live
stock, and on the place are a half-dozen magnificent dogs,
splendid St. Bernards and handsome Yorkshire terriers.

"The farm has been intelligently worked by its mistress
for all sorts of crops, with results equalling if not excelling

422 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

other farms in the vicinity. Every variety of farming has
been entered into, testing both the capacity of women for such
undertaking, and the profitableness of it; and the conclusion
that Miss Sanborn has reached is that 'a woman must be
sharper than a razor to farm and not become bankrupt/ There
are compensations, she admits, which almost balance the hostile
forces that a woman must meet, but they are only to be found
by the genuine lover of country life.

" One practical outcome of her experiment and observations
is her movement for reform in woman's life on the farm. She
puts what exists yet to a large degree, and what might be, in
this fashion :

" ' Women on the farms as I know them have too much work and too
little recreation : a steady, treadmill grind, and few outings ; few chances
to exchange ideas and courtesies with women that are not on farms. . . .
They should have horses to drive ; should belong to granges and women's
clubs, and take part in the exercises with voice and pen. They should be
interested in the county fairs, the poultry shows, church sociables, and
sewing societies ; should have at least a yearly trip^to some city ; plenty of
good papers and magazines, to be had now for almost nothing, considering
their value ; and should belong to a book club, to enjoy the newest publi-
cations. Neighborhood meetings of young and old should be held once a
fortnight, to talk over what has been thus enjoyed. . . . As to women's
work on the farm, I would aim to have it simplified. I would have dish-
washing machines for the wives, as men have machines to simplify their
labor. Laundry work should be done in some cooperative way that is
feasible. ... I should like to bring the city nearer the quiet country
life, and would suggest an occasional long trip suclTas the teachers are
now taking in their vacations and they have less to spend than does the
average farmer. I believe in women having time to adorn themselves and
beautify their homes ; and they will always do this unless crushed in spirit
by never-ending toil.' "

" All that about the hardship of farm-life may be true of
New England, but it isn't of the West," observed Percy, loyal
to his own ; " Miss Sanborn ought to take a trip among our
Western farms."

"I dare say," I acquiesced, "in such a journey she would

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 423

find much to engage her vivacious pen, and would profit while
entertaining her public.

Investigation into farm-life, real and ideal, however," I
chatted on, " has been only an incident in Kate Sanborn's liter-
ary career. That her abandoned farm experiment has carried
her name so far afield is due, doubtless, to the novelty of it,
together with the originality, humor, and sensibleness of the
rambling essays which go to make up her books upon it. She has
among other distinctions that of having been a pioneer woman
lecturer on literary themes, discoursing to classes of women in
drawing-rooms long before parlor lecturing by women to classes
of women became common. For a number of years she held
the professorship of literature in Smith College for Women at
Northampton. She has written on many subjects and pub-
lished numerous books of essays, a novel, and a system of
labor-saving literature lessons. Miss Sanborn is the daughter
of a Dartmouth College professor, and granddaughter of Daniel
Webster's brother Ezekiel, the school-teacher. Brought up in
the fresh-water college town and in the literary atmosphere of
her father's home, and loving books, she turned naturally to
literary work as her avocation. I am told that she earned her
first money from her pen before she had reached her teens."

At Worcester, as our train rolled into the station and came
to a standstill for a few moments, I remarked that this city
was interesting as the birthplace of George Bancroft, the histo-
rian (born 1800 died 1891, in his ninety-first year). "He
was the son," I related, " of the first minister of the Second
Parish of Worcester, the Kev. Dr. Aaron Bancroft, who
held this pastorate for more than half a century, till his death
at eighty -four. The historian's Worcester life was only a boy's
life, for he left home in his eleventh year to go to Phillips
(Ex,eter) Academy, and remained there, through vacations as
well as term time, till his entrance at Harvard College.
Though never returning to his native place to live, he retained
a love for it all through his eventful life, and in his latter

424 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

years in Washington selected it as his place of burial.' The
site of his birthplace, on Salisbury Street, is marked, and his
grave in the Rural Cemetery is distinguished by a simple
monument. His father, the minister, was a man of ripe schol-
arship, and Bancroft has been quoted as saying that he would
have been an eminent historian if he had had material at his
command. He published a Life of Washington, and a large
number of volumes of sermons, one of which, i On the Doc-
trines of the Gospels,' John Adams (who when a youth taught
school and studied law in Worcester) commended in his old
age with exuberant fancy as < a chain of diamonds set in links
of gold.'"

From Worcester to Springfield was a long pull, and we be-
guiled the time with much gazing at the country landscapes
from the car windows, and with a little talk about Bancroft's
life between his college days and his coming to Northampton,
where he began his history-writing.

In this talk I spoke of Bancroft's determination to devote
himself to historical pursuits, formed when he. was a student
in the University of Gottingen, under the influence of the histo-
rian Heeren, to whom, of all his instructors there, he was most
drawn. This professor's " Politics of Ancient Greece " he
afterward translated and published on this side of the water.
" But before he began actually to write on his history," I ob-
served, " he had indulged his poetic fancy, and had published
a thin volume of poems. He had also made translations of
poems of Goethe, Schiller, and other German poets ; and had
published philosophical essays.

" He graduated from Harvard when he was only seventeen,
and was immediately sent abroad for further study in Ger-
many, a friend of his father providing the means, with the
purpose especially of qualifying him for a college professor-
ship. He studied first in the University of Gottingen and
received his degree of Ph.D. before he reached his twentieth
birthday. Soon after he went to Berlin, where he was well

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 425

received by Wilhelm von Humboldt and other scholars, and
attended lectures on Biblical interpretation and Oriental lan-
guages. Later, at Heidelberg, he studied some time with the
German historian Schlosser. Then followed a season of ex-
tended travel on the continent, when he made the acquaintance
of the Italian poet Manzoni, Alexander von Humboldt, and
Byron, visiting the latter at Monte Nero. At Weimar he
visited Goethe, with whom he had first become acquainted
during his student days at Gottingen. Thus cultivated by
wide study, travel, and contact with scholars, he returned to
America, and took up the teaching of Greek as a tutor in Har-
vard College. A year later he removed to Northampton, and,
in association with his friend Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell (afterward
the distinguished superintendent of the Astor Library, New
York), established the famous Round Hill School for boys,
meanwhile getting his ' History of the United States ' under
way."

Arrived at Springfield, we dined at the old Massasoit
House, although it was early, hardly the luncheon hour,
indeed, in order to follow the custom of the old days, I ex-
plained to Percy, when "dinner at the Massasoit" was a
feature of the journey over the railroad, looked forward to by
" through passengers " with pleasant anticipations. Then we
engaged a carriage and enjoyed a drive over the beautiful city,
our route so planned as to include the United States Arsenal
which inspired Longfellow's poem, " The Arsenal at Spring-
field," and the grave of Dr. Josiah Gilbert Holland (born in
Belchertown, Mass., 1819 died in New York City, 1881), edi-
tor, poet, essayist, and novelist.

Along the way the story of Longfellow's poem was recalled.
When on the wedding journey with his second wife, in the
summer of 1843, they visited the Arsenal among other places
of interest in this city. With them was Charles Sumner.
While Mr. Sumner was endeavoring to impress upon the atten-
dant who was showing them about that the money expended

426 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

upon the weapons of war here would have been better spent
upon a great library, Mrs. Longfellow pleased her husband by
remarking how like an organ the shining gun-barrels ranged
against the walls looked, and suggesting what mournful music
Death would bring from them. "We grew quite warlike
against war," she afterward wrote, " and I urged H. to write a
peace poem." The poem in which the ideas of Mrs. Longfel-
low and Sumner were blended was written some months later.

Holland's grave was seen in the Springfield Cemetery amid
beautiful trees. The granite monument, which marks it, bears

on its face a bronze medallion
of him an excellent like-
ness and beneath this, his
name and dates, with these
words quoted from his will:
"For the great hereafter, I
trust in the Infinite Love as
it is expressed to me in the
life and death of my Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ."
The paragraph from which
the sentence is taken ex-
pressed his gratitude for the
blessings he had enjoyed. " I
am thankful," it ran, "for
having enjoyed the privileges

of labor and influence, thankful for wife and children, thank-
ful for all my successes. I have intentionally and consciously
wronged no man, and if I know my heart, I have forgiven all
my enemies." Then follow the words quoted.

" Holland," I said, " began his literary career in Springfield,
and here met his first successes. He was educated for a doctor,
and practiced a little, but the years before he took up the pen
professionally were devoted largely to school-teaching, the lat-
ter part of the time in the South, in Richmond and Vicksburg.

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 427

His literary career really began with his connection with the
Springfield Republican, as associate editor of that paper, being
engaged by Samuel Bowles, its then young chief, upon his re-
turn from the South. He had previously sent the Republican
some 'Sketches of Plantation Life/ which he had written
while in Vicksburg, and had earlier edited a country paper.

" Two years after he joined Mr. Bowles, Holland bought an
interest in the Republican, and his intimate association with it
extended through seventeen years. During this period the
work was done which made his name familiar in thousands of
American homes. His earliest writings, which began to appear
in book form in the mid-fifties, were first published in the
columns of the Republican. The * Timothy Titcomb's Letters
to Young People,' familiar talk over the conduct of life and on
home topics, sprang from a suggestion of his chief. Holland
had been writing a series on social topics, when Mr. Bowles
suggested trying his hand at other series in a similar vein.
'Without premeditation/ he afterward said, ' I made a dash at
another line of subjects, and wrote that forenoon the first of
the Timothy Titcomb Letters.' They ran through many issues
of the paper, growing steadily in popularity ; and when they
were brought out between covers in 1858, they established
Holland's reputation with the average American reader- whom
he particularly addressed. His first work of fiction, ( The Bay
Path/ set in the time of colonial Springfield, also first ran
through the Republican as a serial; then 'Gold Foil'; and
later the second series of Titcomb papers, < Letters to the
Joneses.'

" Holland's editorial writings were often short lay sermons,
and he has been called the pioneer in using the newspaper's
power to serve the preacher's purpose. He was a writer rather
than an editor. Bowles was a born editor. The two supple-
mented each other.

" * Bitter Sweet' was Holland's first extended poem. This,
more, perhaps, than any of his other writings, gave him his lit-

428

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

erary rank. It appeared in 1858, the same year that the first
* Timothy Titcomb ' book came out. Lowell called it as genuine
a product of the New England soil as a golden rod or an aster.
It was reproduced in succeeding years in illustrated editions,
and had a long vogue. < Miss Gilbert's Career/ his third novel,
published in 1860, was written in his cottage on High Street.
'Kathrina/ his second narrative poem (1867), was written

at < Brightwood,' the later
Springfield home that he
built for himself as he was
growing prosperous. This
was pleasantly placed a
mile north of the business
center of the city. The
house was fashioned after
his own ideas, and set in
rural grounds, picturesque
with tall pines, lawns, a
brook, and rustic bridges.
1 Brightwood ' is now a
station on the Connecticut
River railway line, by
which we are to continue
our journey to Northamp-
ton.

" Holland's Springfield
life practically closed in

1868, when he started off for his two years' travels abroad ; for
when he returned it was only to remove his home to New York,
where he was engaged with Koswell Smith and the Messrs.
Scribner in launching the first Scribner's Magazine. He was
the editor of the first Scribner 's throughout its career, for after
his death it was transformed into the present Century. In its
pages his later novels ' Seven Oaks/ ' Arthur Bonnicastle,'
and < Nicholas Minturn ' ran successively as serials."

SAMUEL BOWLES, the Independent Editor.

IN TUE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 429

The grave of Samuel Bowles (born in Springfield, 1826
died there, 1878), the pioneer, independent editor, was also
seen in this cemetery ; and " down town " we saw his best
monument in the home of the still independent newspaper
which he created.

On our way through the present business parts, the site of
the Springfield home of George Bancroft was indicated. Here
the historian lived from two to three years, moving over from
Northampton in 1835. During this period he was engaged upon
his history, and took part in politics on the Democratic side.

We left for Northampton by a mid-afternoon train. It was
a little journey and a pleasant one, occupying about half an
hour. At Chicopee Junction allusion was made to the home of
Edward Bellamy (born in Chicopee Falls, 1850 died there,
1898), in the Chicopee Falls section of the city of Chicopee.
Here Bellamy wrote his Utopian " Looking Backward : 2000-
1887," which carried his name round the world. Percy sug-
gested a side-visit to this landmark, but I contented him with
a photograph of it which I produced from my black bag. The
house, I told him, was pleasantly situated on Church Street,
one of the principal streets of Chicopee Falls. It had been the
home of Bellamy's father before him, a Baptist clergyman long
settled in the village.

Then we talked of Bellamy's personality and his work.
" He was of clerical lineage on both sides," I remarked.
" Among his paternal ancestors was Dr. Joseph Bellamy (born
1719 died 1790), a native of Connecticut, minister for fifty
years of the church in Bethlehem, that state, and author of
several weighty theological works. His maternal grandfather
was a minister settled many years in Springfield, the Rev.
Benjamin Putnam. The religious trait which he thus inherited
marked his social views with a strongly anti-materialistic and
spiritual cast, as his friend Sylvester Baxter notes in his tribute

430

L I TERA R Y PIL GRIM A GES.

to him, which prefaces the memorial edition of < Looking Back-
ward.' This cast appeared more conspicuously in his later
work. His earlier productions consisted of romances and
stories, written apparently in the vein of the author aiming
rather to entertain than to reform the world.

"' Looking Backward/ too, 'was at first received as only the
clever fancy of a clever writer. But when its scheme was once
comprehended, and it was understood that, instead of a fanciful
romance merely, it was, to quote Bellamy's own words, * In-

HOME OF EDWARD BELLAMY.

tended in all seriousness as a forecast, in accordance with the
principles of evolution, of the next stage in the industrial and
social development of humanity, especially in this country,' it
became the most popular book of its kind, bounding into a great
circulation in a short time. Within ten years of its first ap-
pearance, in 1888, nearly a million copies had been sold in this
country and in England, while translations had been brought
out in French, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Bulgarian, and
other languages and dialects. Through this book Bellamy be-
came the recognized spokesman of ' nationalism.' His theories

72V THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

431

were further advanced through The New Nation, a weekly
journal which he started in Boston, and conducted for a few
years, and in his last work, ( Equality/ Of his other books,
1 Miss Ludington's Secret : a Romance of Immortality/ brought
out before < Looking Backward,' and ' Dr. Heidenhoff's Process/
had the largest popularity. Howells, in his prefatory notes to
the posthumous volume of Bellamy's shorter stories, ( The
Blindman's World/ con-
cludes that 'one cannot
acquaint one's self with
his merely artistic work,
and not be sensible that in
Edward Bellamy we were
rich in a romantic imagi-
nation surpassed only by
that of Hawthorne.' The
1 Duke of Stockbridge/ a
romance of Shay's Rebel-
lion of 1786, his later pos-
thumous volume, published
in 1900, displays the same
touch that is observed in
the book of stories. It is,
moreover, as an historical
novel, exceptional in that
it follows the real facts
of history. These were ascertained through careful research
among the documents bearing on the episode, and family tradi-
tions of western Massachusetts, the Berkshire hills country
toward which we are bound, the scene of the farmers'
< rebellion.' This romance was written before < Looking 'Back-
ward,' and published as a serial in a local newspaper, but
Bellamy withheld it temporarily from book-form while l Look-
ing Backward' was performing its mission. Shortly before
his death he had determined to bring it out.

EDWARD BELLAMY.

482 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

" Bellamy was trained for the law, and was admitted to the
bar ; but he never practiced. He chose instead literature for a
vocation, with journalism as a way to it. He was educated in
Union College, Schenectady, New York, and abroad, in Ger-
many. Never robust, he died of consumption, after a season in
Colorado vainly seeking cure of his malady. He was a gentle,
lovable reformer, shrinking from notoriety or blatant leader-
ship."

In the " Meadow City," as Northampton has picturesquely
been called, the landmarks we had come to visit were all within

THE OLD JONATHAN EDWARDS HOUSE, NORTHAMPTON.

the compass of easy and charming walks. The little tree-
embowered city itself, set upon the hill slopes and bluffs above
the river, called forth expressions of admiration f rdm Percy ;
and he declared that these authors selected well, when I ob-
served that Henry Ward Beecher took it for " Norwood," the
scene of his New England story, and Holland chose it for the
opening scene of his " Kathrina " :

" Queen village of the meads
Fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned,
With jeweled homes around her lifted brow
And coronal of ancient trees :
Northampton sits, and rules her pleasant realm."

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 433

First of all we visited the landmarks of Jonathan Edwards
(born in East Windsor, Conn., 1703 died in Princeton, N. J.,
1758), the great eighteenth century metaphysician, who has
been called " the last and finest product of the old Puritanism
of America." On old King Street, but a short distance from
the station, we saw the site of his home, under the shadow of
the venerable survivor of the two elms which tradition says he
planted. Then, entering the First Congregational Church,
nearby on Main Street, the successor of the meeting-house in
which he preached, his figure in relief on a bronze tablet
framed in oak was seen, with this inscription:

"In memory of
Jonathan Edwards
minister of Northampton
From Feb. 15, 1727 to June 22, 1750.
The law of truth was in his mouth and
unrighteousness was not found in his lips.
He walked with me in peace and uprightness
And did turn many away from iniquity."

This memorial was placed only two years ago (in June, 1900)
on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Edwards's
dismissal from the Northampton church. Its erection was
intended, we were told, not as a reflection upon that act, but
as a tribute to the intellectual powers and the far-reaching
moral influence of Edwards.

" He that would know the workings of the New England
mind in the middle of the [eighteenth] century and the throb-
bings of its heart, must give his days and nights to the study
of Jonathan Edwards," I quoted from Bancroft as we contem-
plated the fine, expressive face of the figure. Percy said with
a smile that he couldn't give quite so much time as that to this
one study, but he would endeavor to comprehend its significance
if he could have an ^outline of Edwards's story. In furnishing
this I could do no better than to paraphrase Oliver Wendell

434

LITER A R Y PIL GRIM A GES.

Holmes's sketch of the divine, with some added notes of more
detailed biography, in effect as follows.

" He came of a line of ministers, and his ancestors had < fed
on sermons so long that he must have been born with scriptural
texts lying latent in his embryonic thinking-marropr like the
undeveloped picture in a film of collodion/ His father, the

Rev. Timothy Edwards,
was minister of East
Windsor, Connecticut,
for sixty-four years, and
noted as a scholar. His
maternal grandfather, the
Eev. Solomon Stoddard,
was his predecessor in
the Northampton church,
and was also a scholar of
standing. He was bred
in the Connecticut min-
ister's home, in a town
where religious revivals
were of remarkable fre-
quency. During one of
these, when he was a boy
of seven or eight, he
built a booth in a retired
spot outdoors, for secret
prayer with some of his
little schoolmates. His
mother, described as a
woman of superior force
of understanding and refinement, chiefly found him in brains.

" At six he was studying Latin with his father. At thirteen
he was a student at Yale College. He graduated with the high-
est honors, receiving almost the sole and accumulated honors
awarded to his class. He remained at the college two years

MEMORIAL TABLET TO JONATHAN EDWARDS.

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 435

longer to study theology. In his nineteenth year he began to
preach. Before he was twenty he compiled a series of seventy
resolutions as the guiding principles of his life, and it was his
custom ever after to read. these over once a day. Among them
were resolves ' to live with all my might while I do live ' ; < in
narrations never to speak anything but the pure and simple
verity ' ; ' that I will act so, in every respect, as I think I shall
wish I had done, if I should at last be damned.' After a brief
period of preaching, first in New York, he returned to Yale
and spent two years more there as tutor. Then his Northamp-
ton ministry began, as colleague of his then venerable grand-
father. Upon Mr. Stoddard's death in 1729, he became sole
pastor.

" He was a constant student and a prodigious reader. It
was his habit to read with pen in hand, to think and write as
he read. It was not unusual for him to devote nearly two-
thirds of the day to study. His favorite exercise was horse-
back riding. He always carried pen and paper with him, and
often dismounted to write down the thoughts which came to
him. He was by nature a poet and a philosopher. In his
youthful < meditations ' was this passage :

" ' The soul of a true Christian appeared like such a little white flower
as we see in the spring of the year ; low and humble on the ground, open-
ing its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory ; rejoicing,
as it were, in a calm rapture, diffusing around a sweet fragrancy ; stand-
ing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about ; all
in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun.'

" But the most exquisite thing from his pen was his descrip-
tion, when a youth of twenty, of the maid of thirteen who
afterward became his wife, reminding the reader of Dante's

when he first saw Beatrice :

" ' They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of
that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain
seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible,, comes

436 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly
cares for anything, except to meditate on him that she expects, after a
while, to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world, and
caught up into heaven ; being assured that he loves her too well to let her
remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him
and to' be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, if you
present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she dis-
regards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction.
She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affec-
tions ; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct ; and you could
not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all
the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful
sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind ; especially after
this Great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes
go about from place to place, singing sweetly, and seems to be always full
of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone,
walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have someone invisible
always conversing with her.'

" She was Sarah Pierrepont, daughter of a clergyman, one
of the founders of Yale College. They were married in Ed-
wards's first summer at Northampton, when she was eighteen,
and it proved an ideal union.

"Two great revivals happened during Edwards's ministry
here, one in 1735, the other in 1740, of both of which he pub-
lished accounts, written probably in his house on King Street.
One of them, entitled, ' A Narrative of Surprising Conversions/
was reprinted in England with a preface by Dr. Watts. His
preaching was largely devoted to an awakening of religious
zeal and the highest standard of morals. His ' faith in the lit-
eral inspiration of the Old and the New Testaments was im-
plicit; it was built on texts as Venice and Amsterdam are
built on piles. He was surrounded with believers like himself
who held the doctrines of Calvinism in all their rigor. But on
the other hand, he saw the strongholds of his position threat-
ened by the gradual approach or the actual invasion of laxer
teachings and practices, so that he found himself, as he
thought, forced into active hostilities, and soon learned his

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

437

strength as a combatant, and felt the stern delight of the war-
rior as champion of the church militant/

" The catastrophe at length came, impelled by his efforts to
discipline the young people of his flock, among whom evil
ways had crept,
and by the excite-
ment occasioned
by prominent
families from
fear of exposure.
It culminated
finally over the
question of the
admission of
unconverted per-
sons to the com-
munion table,
against which he
declared himself,
reversing the
practice main-
tained by his
predecessor.
There was much
controversial cor-
res pondence ;
public meetings
were held by the
townspeople ; an

ecclesiastical council deliberated on the issue and pronounced
the minister's dismissal ; and the church ratified it by an over-
whelming vote.

" Thus cast out after a service of twenty -four years, Jona-
than Edwards went to Stockbridge, where he was minister of
that town, and a missionary to the Indians for six years.

THE EDWARDS ELM.

438

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

FACSIMILE OF JONATHAN EDWARDS'S WILL.

While living in Stockbridge he wrote his famous l Essay on the
Freedom of the Will,' published in 1754, through which came
his widest reputation with metaphysicians. On the death of
President Aaron Burr of Princeton College, his son-in-law and

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY 439

father of Aaron Burr, he was chosen to succeed him. He was
installed in January, 1758, and only a few months later he
died from a fever following inoculation for the smallpox, then
prevailing in the college town. Shortly before his father had
died at the age of eighty-nine. A fortnight after his own
death his daughter, the widow of President Burr, died; and
about six months later his widow followed him to the grave.

u Dr. Holmes reminds us that of all the scholars and philos-
ophers that America produced before the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, only Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards
established a considerable and permanent reputation in the
world of European thought.

" Jonathan and Sarah Pierrepont Edwards reared a family
of ten children. One son, Pierrepont, became Judge of the
United States Circuit Court for Connecticut, and his son be-
came a governor of the state. Another of their sons, Jonathan
Edwards 2d, was the second president of Union College, Sche-
nectady, New York. One of their daughters, as we have seen,
was the wife of a college president. Another was the mother
of one, Timothy Dwight (born in Northampton, 1752 died
in New Haven, 1817), eighth president of Yale College, 1797-
1817. Timothy Dwight's father was a graduate of Yale, and
afterward a merchant in this town. From his mother he re-
ceived his early education at home. Like his grandfather Ed-
wards, he entered Yale at thirteen, and a few years after his
graduation became a tutor there. While a tutor he began his
long poem of the i Conquest of Canaan,' published after the
Revolution, over which the critics made merry because of its
'epic failures. 7 His more famous Revolutionary song of
* Columbia/ with its opening lines

"'Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,

The queen of the world, and child of the skies ! '

was written when he was a chaplain in the army.

" Timothy Dwight was an uncle of Theodore Dwight Wool-

440

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

sey (born in New York, 1801 died in New Haven, Conn.,
1881), tenth president of Yale, 1846-1871, the latter's mother
being President Dwight's sister. His son, Sereno Edwards
Dwight (born in Greenfield Hill, Conn., 1786 died in Phila-
delphia, Penn., 1850), the editor of Jonathan Edwards's works
and his first biographer, was president of Hamilton College,
Clinton, New York, 1833-1835. Timothy Dwight's brother,

Theodore Dwight
(born 1765 died
1846), also a native
of this town, was an
essayist, political
writer, and editor ;
and his son, Theodore
Dwight, was the his-
torian of Connecti-
cut."

In the Forbes Li-
brary, where we next
called, we saw an in-
teresting manuscript
letter of Jonathan
Edwards's, written in
1740 to the Eev.
Eleazer Wheelock,
founder of Dartmouth
College, but at that
time minister of

Lebanon, Connecticut. It refers to an approaching visit to
Northampton of George Whitefield, the English revivalist.

The beautiful grounds of Smith College (dating from 1871)
being close at hand, we strolled over the shaded paths, and by
the building and " cottages " which constitute this fine institu-
tion established through the noble liberality of a single woman,
Miss Sophia Smith of the neighboring town of Hatfield, who

SOPHIA SMITH, FOUNDER OF SMITH COLLEGE.

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 441

gave the bulk of her large fortune for its foundation. Then
we bent our steps up Round Hill, where Bancroft and Cogs-
well had their ideal Bound Hill School for boys three-quar-
ters of a century ago. They were well-favored boys who
found instruction here, mixed judiciously with recreation, a
novel feature then, for the Round Hill School was one of the
earliest to include wholesome training of the body with the
culture of the mind. The school was modeled after foreign
boys' schools, particularly German, which the two literary
principals had observed during their travels abroad; and it
aimed, above all, to make true gentlemen. It continued for
nearly ten years, 1823-1832. Although successful for the
first half of its existence, it ended with a loss to its projectors.
In the roll of Round Hill pupils were, a number of boys whose
names in after years became known in the world. They came
from all parts of the country, many from the Southern States ;
and others were from Mexico, Brazil, and the West Indies.
Like the boys of the famous English schools, they wore a uni-
form costume ; and Percy imagined their appearance as they
gamboled over the hill or strolled about the village, each clad
in ' roundabout ' and trousers of blue-gray broadcloth with
bright buttons, and waistcoat of light blue kerseymere ; or in
the summer uniform of blue nankeen, or the holiday suit of
blue silk or bombazine roundabout or coat, white jacket, and
trousers of drill or niarseilles.

Reverting to Bancroft, I remarked, " He withdrew from the
school two years before the end, and devoted himself more
sedulously to the writing of his history. He was enabled to
see the first volume published in 1834, while Northampton was
still his home. The year after his removal to Springfield he
was a candidate for Congress, but was defeated at the polls.
Two years later he' removed to Boston, when Van Buren
appointed him collector of that port. It was under him that
Hawthorne held his place as weigher and ganger in the Boston
Custom House. Both went out with the incoming of the

442

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

A GLIMPSE OF SMITH COLLEGE.

IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 443

Whigs in 1841. Bancroft, however, continued his political
activity, and was returned to office with the opening of Folk's
administration in 1845, meanwhile having stood the year be-
fore as the candidate of the Democratic minority in Massachu-
setts for governor. He was in Folk's cabinet as secretary of
the navy till the autumn of 1846, when he was appointed min-
ister to England, in which position he remained through Folk's
administration. While in this service he prosecuted his his-
torical researches in the government archives in London and
Paris. Upon his return to this country he took up his resi-
dence in New York City, spending the summers and autumns
at his country seat in Newport, where, as the years went on,
his beautiful garden of roses developed. During the latter
part of his long life his winter home was in Washington."

Our day now closing, we sought our hotel, and after a late
supper and a quiet evening we retired, reserving for the next
morning a stroll to the neighborhood of the home of George
W. Cable (born in New Orleans, La., 1844 ), with which this
pilgrimage was to finish.

The morning's walk to " Tarryawhile," as Cable hospitably
calls his pleasant seat, was made before the sun had scarcely
more than risen. It took us toward "Paradise," a region of
woods and river winding for a mile from town to country, so
named by Jenny Lind, who was moved by its beauty as she
saw it when visiting Northampton years ago. The way lay
down "Paradise Koad," through "the Glen," and along "Dryad's
Green," on the bluffs above Mile Kiver.

" Tarryawhile " we found to be one of a succession of homes
on the nearly level surface of the bluffs, " whose well-ordered
lawns merge by pleasant gradations into the freer graces of
the woods." The house in design and arrangement pleased
Percy's eye. The broad entrance porch opens upon a hall of
stately proportions, with tall pillars giving to it a Southern

444 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

air, and furnishings in bright hues. The library, the parlor,
and the dining-room wear the same cheerful aspect. From the
dining-room one may step out through the low French windows
upon the beautiful grounds, stretching back to the bluff which
slants abruptly to the river. Here are giant pines, fine oaks
and elms, shrubs and flowers. Several of the younger trees
were planted at various times by Mr. Cable's literary visitors,
and each tree, we were told, is called by its planter's name.
In the thick of a grove is the " den," Mr. Cable's retired study,

a little house of rough
stone and shingles, and
attractively fashioned in-
terior, with broad fireplace,
deep window-seats, and the
writing-table so placed as
to receive the best light.

Percy was interested to
know which of Cable's
novels were written at
" Tarryawhile." All pub-
lished during the past fif-
teen years were sent out
from Northampton, he was
told. Cable established his
home here in 1886. From

GEORGE W. CABLE. . . A , . ^ T

his mother, who was a New-

Englander, he inherited a love for the Northern country, while
through his father, a Southerner, he is devotedly attached to
the South. Although he has planted himself so firmly in the
North, fixing his home for the remainder of his life here, he is
quite as much a Southerner to-day as he ever has been, " feel-
ing with the South in most things, especially things artistic,"
he has been quoted as saying. " His place in our literature,"
I ventured, " is as the master writer of the purely Creole story.
" His reputation came instantaneously with his first ^novel,

Itf THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 445

1 Old Creole Days.' When that was running as a serial in
Scribner's Monthly Dr. Holland's Srribner's in 1879, his
name was unknown in literature. He was then a clerk in a
cotton house in New Orleans, and had written his story at
odd moments in his leisure hours. He had been a New
Orleans newspaper reporter for a few months ; before that, a
civil engineer, self-taught; earlier, a clerk in a mercantile
house, having begun work at fourteen, when his father died
leaving the family in narrow circumstances. He had served
in the Confederate army as a private in a Mississippi cavalry
company, during the Civil War. He got his education in
New Orleans schools, and through studies which he pursued
after he had begun to work. In camp, when a soldier, he
studied Latin and mathematics. While a clerk he read
English literature, composed somewhat, and studied various
subjects.

" The success of ' Old Creole Days ' determined him to
abandon trade and take up writing as a profession. l The
Grandissimes ' appeared soon after * Old Creole Days ' ; then
followed those masterpieces ' Madame Delphine,' < Dr. Sevier,'
and the rest. His ' History of New Orleans ' and < The
Silent South ' are among his few works outside the class of
fiction. In his ' John March, Southerner ' one or two of the
scenes are set in the neighborhood of < Tarry awhile.' He pro-
duces slowly and carefully, letting only his most finished
work pass from his hands to the printer. He writes always
in the forenoon hours."

Keturned from " Paradise," and again at the railway station,
we took train connecting with an early " express " on the
Boston and Albany for Pittsfield.

XXI.

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.

Pittsfield. Birthplace of William Allen, maker of the first American
biographical dictionary. The former Gold mansion, scene of " The
Old Clock on the Stairs." Holmes's ancestral country seat.
Scenes of u Elsie Venner." " The Plowman." The original
"One Hoss Shay." " Broadhall." The two Majors Melville.
Herman Melville and Hawthorne. -- Melville's sea stories. -
Lenox. Catherine M. Sedgwick's stories. Mrs. Charles Sedg-
wick's school and some of her pupils. Maria Cuminings, author of
"The Lamplighter." Frances Anne Kemble. Hawthorne in
the "little red cottage." Stockbridge. "Edwards Hall."
Jonathan Edwards' s life here. The Sedgwick mansion and the
Sedgwick family. The famous brothers Field. Birthplace of
Mark Hopkins. Great Barrington. Scenes of Bryant's favorite
poems. The poet's earlier life in Cummington. A glance- at
Sheffield.

IN Pittsfield we were in the heart of the Berkshires and of
the region of their chief literary landmarks. Most of these, I
remarked as we stepped from the train, are to be found in this
beautiful hill city and within an afternoon or a day's ride from
it over country roads. The route that we should follow would
embrace Pittsfield, Lenox, Stockbridge, and Great Barrington.

I should have liked to include in our itinerary a visit to
Cummington, the birthplace of William Gullen Bryant, but
this would necessitate a special journey to a single point, tak-
ing us quite out of our course. The little town lies, indeed,
as Percy saw by the map which we had with us, outside of
Berkshire, though close against the eastern edge of the hill
country. It may best be reached from Dalton, the station on
the railroad below Pittsfield. I promised to recall the poet's

446

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILL R.

447

448 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

boyhood there when we should reach the Bryant homestead
in Great Barrington, the place in which his young manhood
was spent, and in and about which he found the inspiration
and the themes for the poems which are counted among his
best. Meanwhile I produced from my black bag a photograph
of the Cuminington homestead, showing its appearance on the
occasion of the celebration of the poet's centenary in the sum-
mer of 1894.

Another interesting point beyond our reach, as our plans
were arranged, was the town of Lanesborough, north of Pitts-
field, whence came that philosophical humorist known as
" Josh Billings," in private life Henry Wheeler Shaw (born
1818 died at Monterey, Cal., 1885). There also in the early
eighties, Horace E. Scudder had a literary workshop with
Arthur Gilman, another author-editor of Cambridge, in a little
schoolhouse near Constitution Hill, and there he wrote the
Bodley Books.

We reached Pittsfield early in the afternoon, and luncheon
at the Maplewood House first engaged us. That finished, we
strolled about the pleasant, tree-lined streets of the neighbor-
hood, visiting the nearest points of literary interest. In the
Berkshire Athenaeum we saw the desk upon which Hawthorne
wrote " The House of the Seven Gables " while living in the
" little red cottage " at Lenox. Near by the Athenaeum was
pointed out the birthplace of the Kev. William Allen (born
1784 died in Northampton, 1868), compiler of the first
biographical dictionary published in America, and president
of Bowdoin College (1819-1839) when Longfellow, Haw-
thorne, and the Abbott brothers were students there. He was
the assistant librarian of Harvard College when he began his
dictionary and when the first edition was published in 1808:
The second edition, much enlarged, came a quarter of a cen-
tury after, during his presidency of Bowdoin.

Not far away we saw the house which was the scene of
Longfellow's "The Old Clock on the Stairs," still standing

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 449

" somewhat back from the village street," with the " tall pop-
lar-trees " throwing their shadows over it. The house is now
the " Plunkett mansion," and within the ancient clock occupies
its old station half-way up the hall stairs. At the time of the
writing of the poem it was the " Gold house," homestead of
Mrs. Longfellow's maternal grandfather. Thomas Gold was
a leading lawyer in Pittsfield, and a man of wide influences.
It was during his occupancy, as the poem relates, that

** In that mansion, used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality ;
His great fires up the chimney roared ;
The stranger feasted at his board ;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased,
' Forever never.
Never forever. 1 "

" You will recall," I reminded Percy, " that the wedding
journey of the Longfellows in the summer of 1843, to which
we alluded in Springfield, included a visit to Mrs. Longfellow's
relatives here. The idea of the poem was evidently suggested
to the poet at that time ; but he did not write it till the early
winter of 1845, when at home in Cambridge. In his diary
appears this note, under date of Nov. 12, that year : < Began a
poem on a clock with the words " Forever, never " as the bur-
den ; suggested by the words of Bridaine, the old French mis-
sionary, who said of eternity " C'est une pendule dont le
balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le
silence des tombeaux, Toujours, jamais f Jamais, toujours !
Et pendant ces effrayables revolutions, un reprouve s'ecrie,
* Quelle heure est-il ? ' et la voix d'un autre miserable lui repond,
' L'Eternite: " ' "

Returning to the hotel we engaged a carriage for the drive
over to Lenox, and thence to Stockbridge. To Lenox it is six
miles by the direct road ; but as we traveled, with occasional
excursions into by-ways, it was somewhat longer.

450 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

First we drove to Oliver Wendell Holmes's ancestral coun-
try seat, " Canoe Meadow," where, and in the neighboring
South Mountain, were laid scenes of " Elsie Vernier." We had
Dr. Holmes's own account of its history in this extract from a
letter given by his biographer, Morse :

"The place in which I lived during seven summers, 1849-1856, was
in Pittsfield on the road leading to Lenox. The place contained two hun-
dred and eighty acres, and was the residue of a section six miles square
bought of the State or Province, more properly by my great-grand-
father, Jacob Wendell. The Province held it directly from the Indians.
All of the present town of Pittsfield, except one thousand acres, was the
property of my great-grandfather, whose deed used to hang in the entry
of my house. It was dated in 1738."

Dr. Holmes built the house in which he passed those
" seven blessed summers," which afterward stood in his mem-
ory " like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision
of the holy dreamer." The trees also about the place were
almost all of his planting. " Look at them," he wrote a friend
who had fixed his summer home in Pittsfield years after, " look
at them as you pass my old place, and see how much better I
have deserved the gratitude of posterity than the imbecile who
only accomplished a single extra blade of grass ! " In " Elsie
Venner " he wrote, " From these windows at Canoe Meadow
among the mountains we could see all summer long a lion ram-
pant, a Shanghai chicken, and General Jackson on horseback,
done by Nature in green leaves, each with a single tree." This
tree was the " glorious Pine " still standing on the estate. The
old place long ago passed into other hands, but its features are
well preserved, while it retains a flavor of the Autocrat in its
present name of " Holmesdale." During his first summer here
Dr. Holmes wrote and read his poem " The Plowman," for the
country cattle show. The following season he wrote the poem
for the dedication of the Pittsfield Cemetery, in which is pic-
tured the lovely scenery of the region :

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 451

Spirit of Beauty ! let thy graces blend
With loveliest Nature all that Art can lend.

Come from the forest where the beech's screen
Bars the fierce noonbeam with its flakes of green ;
Stay the rude axe that bares the shadowy plains,
Stanch the deep wound that dries the maple's veins.

Come with the stream whose silver-braided rills
Fling their unclasping bracelets from the hills,
Till in one gleam, beneath the forest's wings,
Melts the white glitter of a hundred springs.

Come from the steeps where look majestic forth
From their twin thrones the Giants of the North
On the huge shapes, that, crouching at their knees,
Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees.
Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain,
Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain ;
There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes
On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies,
Nature shall whisper that the fading view
Of -mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue."

The stream is the beautiful Housatonic ; the Giants of the
North are the double peaks of Gray lock.

Judge Oliver Wendell, Dr. Holmes's grandfather, was a
summer resident here before the Doctor, and his chaise was the
original of " The Deacon's Masterpiece."

Some distance below was the old Melville Farm where
Longfellow spent his summer vacation in 1848, and thought
out " Kavanagh." Then, as he pictured the place in his diary,
was here " a fine old house, with broad, echoing hall, built by a
Dutchman, Henry Van Schaack of Kinderhook, some seventy
or eighty years ago ; . . . a quaint portico in front, and elms,
and sycamores ; and in the rear, a kind of stoop, or verandah,
with blinds, for smoking." " This was < Broadhall,' " I ex-
plained, " formerly the Major Melville place. The Dutchman
who built the house, in 1781, was a loyalist, and came to Pitts-
field when he was hurried out of New York, in Revolutionary

452

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

times. The Melville who gave it its later name, was Major
Thomas Melville, Jr., a son of Major Melville of Boston, the
original of Holmes's < The Last Leaf.' This first Major Mel-
ville had been one of the < Boston Tea Party/ and was a soldier
of the ^Revolution. He was the last of the cocked hats ' in
Boston ; that is, the last to adhere to the old fashion of small
clothes, shoe buckles, and three-cornered hat. The second
Major Melville came to Pittsfield during the War of 1812,
assigned to the charge of the commissary department of the
, military station then estab-
lished here. He purchased
Broadhall shortly after the
close of the war, and settled
down to a peaceful agricultural
life. Some years after the
Major's day Broadhall became
a summer boarding place, fa-
vored mostly by literary folk.
Holmes spent one season here.
Other guests included Charles
Sumner, Catherine M. Sedg-
wick, and Herman Melville,
nephew of the second and
grandson of the first Major.

" The later home of Herman
Melville (born in New York,
1819 --died there, 1891) was about a quarter of a mile south-
west of Broadhall. It was given the name of ' Arrowhead '
from the numerous Indian relics found about the place. The
site was chosen because of its beauty, commanding a fine view
of Graylock Peak and the nearer hills.

"Melville came here to live," I continued, passing to his
story, " in 1850, when his fame was fresh, ' Typee,' his first
book, still being widely read, and ' White Jacket, or the World
in a Man-of-War,' just out. Arrowhead remained his home for

HERMAN MELVILLE.

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 453

thirteen years, the period of his best literary work. Here he
wrote 'Moby Dick, or the White Whale/ < Pierre,' 'Israel Pot-
ter,' the ' Piazza Tales,' written on his piazza looking out upon
the hills; and' ' October Mountain/ named for the neighboring
hill.

" He became Hawthorne's most intimate friend while the
romancer was at Lenox. To him is given the credit of having
first discovered to the world the quality of the ' Mosses from
an Old Manse.' Mrs. H. M. Plunkett, the Pittsfield author of
to-day (the biographer of Dr. Holland, from whom we have
quoted), has pleasantly recalled the circumstance. Melville
read the book for the first time the year that Hawthorne came
to Lenox, when it had been out four years ; and thereupon,
with the * wild witch-voice ' of the author ringing in him, he
made it the subject of a fervid philosophical essay for the
Literary World of New York, then the most authoritative
literary journal of the country, published by the Duyckincks.
Summing up with a commendation of Hawthorne to American
readers as an excellent author of their own flesh and blood,

* an uniinitating, arid perhaps in his own way an inimitable,
man/ in his enthusiasm he wrote :

" ' The smell of your beeches and hemlocks is upon him ; yo*ur own
broad prairies are in his soul. Give not over to future generations the
glad duty of acknowledging him for what he is ; and by confessing him
you brace the whole brotherhood. For genius all over the world stands
hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
There are things in the " Twice Told Tales " and " The Scarlet Letter "
which had they been written in England a century ago, Hawthorne
had utterly displaced many of the bright names we now revere on
authority.'

The publication of this review in the acknowledged arbiter
of literary claims created a profound sensation among] dis-
criminating readers, says Mrs. 'Plunkett, and straightway the

* Mosses ? climbed to four thousand.

u Melville, like Hawthorne, was resejved and shy. Though

454 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

drawn to each other from their first introduction, the two came
together intimately only .through a chance close association.
As J. E. A. Smith, ' the poet of Pittsfield ' and its historian, has
related, one day both were guests at a picnic excursion origi-
nated by some of the resident literati. A thunderstorm coming
up, they were compelled to take shelter in a recess of Monu-
ment Mountain. This enforced proximity lasted more than
two hours, and their intercourse, which grew familiar as the
time wore on, did the work. An enduring friendship between
them was thus laid. It lasted to the end of Hawthorne's life ;
and one of the most cherished treasures of the Melville family
are several first editions of Hawthorne's books inscribed to
Mr. and Mrs. Melville by Hawthorne and his wife."

Reverting to Melville's career, I remarked, "Its beginning
was romantic. When a boy the tales of adventure told him by
his father, who was a merchant engaged in foreign trade, and
by a sea-faring uncle, inspired in him a love for the sailor's
life ; and in his eighteenth year he shipped as cabin-boy on a
Liverpool packet. Upon his return home he took up the more
prosaic occupation of country school teaching. But the sea-
fever was still on him, and this was heightened by reading
Dana's 'Two Years Before the Mast,' when that fascinating
book first came out, in 1840. So he shipped again, this time
on a New Bedford whaler bound for the Pacific whale-fishery.

"After a cruise of sixteen months the ship put in to the
island of Noukahiva, in the Marquesas group of the South
Pacific. Harsh treatment during the cruise tempted him and
a shipmate, ' Toby,' to escape ; they hid in a forest, and the
ship sailed off without them. In attempting to reach the set'
tlement of a peaceful tribe of natives they lost their way, and
after three days of wandering in forest and over mountain
range, they found themselves in the hostile Typee valley. For-
tunately they had picked up "a few words of the native lan-
guage, and chancing to express friendly words, they were
detained in < indulgent captivity. 7 This lasted four months,

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 455

Melville meanwhile having lost sight of his mate. He had
begun to despair of ever getting back to civilization, when a
Sidney whaler appeared ; and, after a brisk fight between the
natives and a boat's crew which had come ashore, he was res-
cued. Taking a sailor's hand on this whaler, he was .next
landed at Tahiti of the Society Islands, on the very day that
the French took possession of these islands. He tarried there
awhile and then sailed for the Hawaiian group, where he
remained several months, studying the islands and the people.
In the autumn of 1843 he shipped as a seaman on the frigate
United States, and started on his homeward way. A stay of
some time was made by the frigate at one of the Peruvian
ports, and finally, a year after the departure from the Sand-
wich Islands, Boston was reached.

"The book 'Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life during a
Four Months' Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas,' was a
narrative of his adventure. It was told with such spirit and
freshness and charm of style, and came at such an opportune
time, when popular interest in the Pacific islands was first
awakening, that it captivated the public. It was written dur-
ing the winter following his return, in Lansingburg, New York,
on the east bank of the Hudson, his boyhood home, where he
had first taught school. Published simultaneously in New
York and London, and receiving warm praise from both Eng-
lish and American critics, it established Melville's reputation
instantly."

" Was the fate of his shipmate on the island ever known ? "
" Yes. Curiously enough, Melville met him in New York,
on Broadway, when < Typee ' was just out. He had escaped
from the island in a no less dramatic way than Melville, after
vain efforts to rejoin his mate. His story was made a supple-
mentary chapter to a later edition of ' Typee.'

" < Omoo : a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas,'
giving a lively account of the experiences at Tahiti, followed
the next year. Two years later Maidi, and a Voyage Thither,'

456 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

a philosophical romance, appeared ; and the same year 4 Ked-
burn/ relating the ' sailor-boy confessions and reminiscences of
the son of a gentleman in the merchant service.' Then fol-
lowed < White Jacket,' and the books written here in Pittsfield,
of which 'Moby Dick' has been called the most dramatic and
imaginative of all his works. In his later writings he was
much given to speculative philosophy, and his popularity
waned.

"The latter years of Melville's life were spent in New
York, where he had a place in the Custom House which for a
long time escaped the politicians. His retiring habits grew
upon him as he advanced in years, and he fought shy of all
publicity. Notwithstanding his remarkable adventures and
his sea-faring life, there was nothing of the jovial, breezy air
of the sailor about him. He had more the gentle carriage of
the student, the manner of the man of books. He was more
than Dana a pioneer of our sea-story writers, and in his best
works set a pace not easy for his successors to follow. His
picturesque style came through his excellent training in Eng-
lish composition, to which he showed an aptitude in his youth,
and from his early reading of the masters of English literature.
Melville married a daughter of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of
the Massachusetts Supreme Court> the year following the
appearance of ''Typee,' which he dedicated to the chief
justice."

Now in Lenox, we sought first the Lenox home of the
Sedgwicks, the author, Catherine Maria Sedgwick (born in
Stockbridge, 1739 died near Boston, 1869), her brother
Charles, and Mrs. Charles. This home was a choice literary
center in their day, bringing celebrity to the village long before
it became renowned as a place of fashionable country seats.
Their identification with Lenox, we were told, began in the
twenties, when Charles and his wife moved over here from
the Stockbridge home, Miss Sedgwick joining them in the early
thirties. Here Miss Sedgwick wrote her later stories, "The

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 457

Linwoods," " The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man,"
" Live and Let Live," " The Morals of Manners," " The Boy
of Mt. Rhigi," "Married and Single," those homely tales,
mostly of rural New England life, with the scenes often set in
these Berkshire Hills, which had a great vogue sixty and more
years ago.

" Here also," I added, " was Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's
1 school for young ladies,' as famous in its way as the ' Round
Hill School' at Northampton, and longer lived, continuing
from the twenties to the sixties. Among the earlier pupils
were Harriet G. Hosuier, the sculptor ; Charlotte Cushman,
the actress; and Maria Cummins, author of 'The Lamp-
lighter,' a simple domestic tale published in 1854, which won
the popular heart and ran through successive editions, a total
of seventy thousand copies, in less than a- year. Mrs. Sedg-
wick wrote much for children, and her < The Beatitudes' was
especially popular. She was a frequent contributor to Lydia
Maria Child's Juvenile Miscellany, a pioneer juvenile maga-
zine flourishing in the twenties and thirties."

Near the home of the Sedgwicks, it was remarked in pass-
ing, was the summer place of Frances Anne Kemble, the
actress-author, between whom and Miss Sedgwick a life-long
friendship existed. Her home was in Lenox for more than
thirty years, and her best work in prose and verse was done
here.

Hawthorne's " little red cottage " was off the main
thoroughfare, on a winding by-road, now a street bearing his
name, on the edge of Stockbridge. We could see only its site,
for the house burned down some years ago. It was a story -
and-a-half cottage, painted red, not prepossessing, indeed Haw-
thorne called it an " ugly little house," but comfortable ;
while its situation, on a slope north of Lake Mahkeenac, or
Stockbridge Bowl, as Miss Sedgwick called it, overlooking
the valley of the Housatonic and surrounded by mountains,
was superb. " Poor as the place was," I quoted from Lathrop's

458

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

sketch of Hawthorne, " it soon became invested by its occu-
pants with something of a poetic atmosphere." Mrs. Haw-
thorne brightened the interior, and among other touches

" ornamented an entire
set of plain furniture,
painted a dull yellow,
with copies from Flax-
man's outlines, executed
with great perfection."
The study, I added, was,
as usual, an upstairs room.
Here after the completion
of "The House of the
Seven Gables," Haw-
thorne wrote the " Won-
der Book," in the closing
chapter of which fanciful
allusion is made to his
literary companions dur-
ing the Lenox life; and
I read this passage :

HAWTHORNE'S DESK, USED IN THE "RED
COTTAGE."

" ' For my part, I wish I
had Pegasus here, at this
moment,' said the student.

4 1 would mount him forthwith, and gallop about the country, within
a circumference of a few miles, making literary calls on my brother-
authors. Dr. Dewey [the Rev. Orville Dewey] would be within my
reach, at the foot of Taconic [Mountain]. In Stockbridge, yonder,
is Mr. James [G. P. R. James, the English novelist], conspicuous
to all the world on his mountain-pile of history and romance. Long-
fellow, I believe, is not yet at the Ox-bow, else the winged horse would
neigh at the sight of him. But here in Lenox, I should find our most
truthful novelist, who has made the scenery and life of Berkshire all
her own [Miss Sedgwick]. On the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman
Melville, shaping out the gigantic conception of his " White Whale,"
while the gigantic shape of Graylock looms upon him from his study-

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 459

window. Another bound of my flying steed would bring me to the door
of Holmes, whom I mention last, because Pegasus would certainly un-
seat me, the next minute, and claim the poet as his rider.'

" ' Have we not an author for our next neighbor ? ' asked Primrose.
'That silent man who lives in the old red house, near Tanglewood
Avenue, and whom we sometimes meet with two children at his side, in
the woods or at the lake [himself]. I think I have heard of his having
written a poem, or a romance, or an arithmetic, or a school-history, or
some other kind of a book.'

" The Hawthornes lived here only a year and a half,
from the early summer of 1850 to December 1851," I remarked
as we drove away from the picturesque spot. " They came to
Lenox with two children, and left with three, for in May of
the latter year the daughter Rose was born. She was the
last of their children. She became the wife of George Par-
sons Lathrop (born in*0ahu, Hawaiian Islands, 1851 died in
New York City, 1898), author, and the editor of Hawthorne's
collected works. Her < Memories of Hawthorne,' composed of
the letters of her mother interspersed with delicate biographical
notes of her own, gives clearer and more intimate glimpses of
the life of the romancer and his wife, than the more formal
biography can afford."

Again on the main road, I indicated in a general way, with
a sweep of the hand in a southeasterly direction, the locality
of Henry Ward Beecher's Lenox summer home, the scenery
about which he sketched or discoursed upon in his " Star
Papers." This was on a hill toward the town of Lee, which
afterward was called Beecher Hill.

We drove into Stockbridge as the sun was about setting,
and the beauty of the town, lying in the river valley, nearly
surrounded by mountains, enchanted Percy. We found its
natural attractions much as Bryant first saw them as he
passed through the town when coming from Cummington to
Great Barrington to live, eighty-six years ago : except that the

460

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

foliage was green instead of golden. "I well remember,"
Bryant wrote half a century after, " as I passed through
Stockbridge, how much I was struck by the beauty of the
smooth green meadows on the borders of the lovely river
which winds near the Sedgwick mansion, the Housatonic, and
whose gently flowing waters seemed tinged with the gold
and crimson of the trees which overhung them. I admired no
less the contrast between this soft scene, and the steep craggy
hills that overlooked it, clothed with their many colored for-
ests." The meadows, the winding river, the overhanging

trees, the forest-
clad hills above,
were all here,
while added
charms were the
bowery streets and
pleasant mansions,
round about the
town center.

Our drive
ended at the Eed
Lion Inn, which
was to be our
home for this

night. After refreshing ourselves with a late dinner we
strolled out into the soft night air, and enjoyed an evening
view of the embowered town.

The next morning we again made an early start, since for
this day we had also arranged an extensive schedule.

Of the village landmarks, mainly of interest to us were
" Edwards Hall," the Stockbridge home of Jonathan Edwards,
and the Sedgwick mansion. Edwards Hall, we learned, was
originally the home of John Sergeant, the predecessor of
Edwards as missionary to the Indians, having been built for
him in 1737, when Stockbridge was a sparsely settled frontier

THE SEDGWICK MANSION HOUSE.

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 461

town. When Edwards came in 1751, he erected an addition
to the already capacious house, to make room for his growing
family. His study was a closet, six by fifteen feet, built
against the huge chimney, with one little window looking
toward the west. The desk at which he wrote here is still
preserved.

It was in this closet-study, with his scant working library
near at hand, that he wrote besides the "JFreedom of the Will,"
his " God's End in Creation," and The Nature of Virtue."
At the same time his missionary labors were conscientiously
performed, and his regular preaching went on in the Stock-
bridge church. In these metaphysical speculations and clerical
labors the good man was completely absorbed, while his effi-
cient wife skilfully managed the temporal affairs of the
steadily increasing household. In illustration of his preoccu-
pation, I quoted the following incident related by the local
historian. At one time as he was riding on horseback, he came
to a pasture, inclosed by a gate, which was opened by a boy
who respectfully lifted his hat. Asking the lad whose son he
was, and being told, he thanked him and rode on. He returned
not long after, and the boy, still at the gate, repeated the
favor. The good minister, roused from his meditations by the
act, thanked him, and again asked whose son he was. " Why,
sir/' the astonished lad replied, " I am the same man's son I
was fifteen minutes ago."

The Sedgwick mansion, shaded by ancient lindens, is of the
pattern of the New England mansion house of the late eighteenth
and early nineteeth centuries, spacious, square-roofed, with
broad hall running through the middle, large rooms, high ceil-
ings, carved cornices and mantels. "This was Catherine M.
Sedgwick's home," I observed, "till her removal to Lenox;
and accordingly here were written those earlier tales which,
established her name in the young American literature of the
time. Before she began to write she had received an unusual
mental training for a woman in her day. To her school educa-

462

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

tion, rounded out in l young ladies' finishing schools ' away from
her home, was added the instruction gained from reading stand-
ard literature in her father's library. Hers was an exception-
ally cultivated home. Her father, Judge Theodore Sedgwick,
was a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1802

till his death in
1813. Her eldest
brother, Theo-
dore, a Yale grad-
uate of 1799, be-
came an eminent
member of the
bar, and a writer
on economics.
Her second
brother, Henry
Dwight, graduat-
ing from Wil-
liams College,
became a leading
member of the
New York bar, a
frequent contrib-
. utor to the North
American Review,
and a litterateur
of note. The
third brother, Charles, was also a man of letters. The elder
brothers especially encouraged the development of her literary
powers.

Miss Sedgwick's first story, < A New England Tale,' was
begun as a religious tract, and was expanded to the propor-
tions of a novel at the earnest solicitation of her brothers and
friends who saw possibilities in the sketch. It was published
in 1822, anonymously, and its flattering reception induced her

CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK,

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 463

to engage seriously in literary pursuits. ' Redwood,' a novel
of the then conventional two-volume order, followed, also pub-
lished anonymously. This met larger success than the first
effort. It was reprinted in England, and translated into four
foreign languages : quite remarkable, when you remember the
time of its issue, the mid-twenties, when American writers
were of small account in the book world. ' Hope Leslie,' her
Indian story, and < Clarence,' were the last of her books pub-
lished while she was living here. * Hope Leslie ' brought her
widest celebrity. Stockbridgians point out a neighboring
mountain crag as the scene of the Indian maiden < Maga-
wisca's' sacrifice in the rescue of . ' Everell ' ; and other places
described in this tale are identified hereabouts. Miss Sedg-
wick's grave is in the village graveyard, marked by a plain
monument simply inscribed.' 7

In the old Stockbridge church are tablets to the memory of
John Sergeant, Jonathan Edwards, and David Dudley Field.
Dr. Field, who was minister of the church from 1819 to 1837,
was the father of those eminent brothers, David Dudley Field,
the jurist, Stephen Johnson Field, the justice of the United
States Supreme bench, Cyrus West Field, promoter of ocean
telegraphy, and Henry Martyn Field, clergyman, editor, and
author; and their sister, Emelia (Field) Brewer, wife of an
American missionary in Turkey, and mother of another
United States Supreme Court justice. Cyrus and Henry were
born here, the former in 1819, the latter in 1822 ; David and
Stephen were born in Haddam, Conn., in 1805 and 1816 respec-
tively, where the father was settled before coming to Stock-
bridge. Dr. Field himself was locally distinguished as an
historical writer. Ketiring from the ministry in the fifties, he
spent his remaining years in literary occupations here. He
died in 1867. We saw his old home on the site of the second
home of John Sergeant, on Prospect Hill ; and the former
country seats of the sons David and Henry " Eden Hall "
and " Windermere " commanding beautiful views,

464

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

The ride of eight miles to Great Barrington was full of
beauty. The road crossed the river, skirted Monument Moun-
tain, coursed through woods and along the open, revealing
lovely vistas and far-spreading landscapes. About a mile out
from Stockbridge center a side road was indicated which led
toward " Cherry Cottage," birthplace of the learned Mark Hop-
kins (born 1802 died in Williamstown, 1887), fourth presi-

THE OLD HOME OF BRYANT, GREAT BARRINGTON.

dent of Williams College, 1837-1872, whose treatises in the
field of moral science gave him first rank among scholars of
his theological tenets.

At the entrance to the village stood the old Bryant home-
stead on the broad main street. Here, it was remarked, the
poet was married, in 1821, to Frances Fairchild of Great Bar-
rington, whom he apostrophized in his verses, Oh, Fairest of
the Rural Maids."

She became his " confidant, counselor, and partner " through
nearly half a century ; his best critic, whose approval the verses
written after their union had first to receive before he would

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 4G5

permit them to meet the public eye. In the village the place
of his law office was pointed out to us. In the town house
were shown the records which he kept during his several years'
service as town clerk ; among them the record of his own mar-
riage, and that of the birth of his first child.

As we moved among these landmarks, incidents of the
poet's life in the town, extending from his twenty -second to his
thirty-first year (1816-1825), were related to Percy. " During
this period of nine years," he was told, " the poet practiced his
profession as a lawyer with a fair degree of success, interested
himself wholesomely in local affairs and somewhat in politics,
and composed more than thirty poems. These verses included
1 A Winter Piece/ < The West Wind/ < June/ < The Kivulet/
' Monument Mountain/ ' A Walk at Sunset/ ' The Hymn to
Death/ < Green River/ < After a Tempest/ and <A Forest
Hymn/ the poems upon which rests the fame which has
been accorded him as the ' most American of our poets ' and
the skillfullest painter of the scenery of his native land. Most
of these poems describe points in the region about this town
and the poet's more rural birthplace of Cummington. Green
River lies a mile west of Great Barrington village, with its
waters

" ' . . . winding away from sight

Darkened with shade or flashing with light,
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings,
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings.'

It was in the poem on this theme that the poet expressed his
longing to escape from the drudgery of his profession :

" 'Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,

466 LI TEH A EY PILGRIMAGES.

And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years.'

" * The Rivulet ' depicts a little stream which threads
through the grounds of the homestead at Cummington. The
scene of l The Forest Hymn,' with that familiar opening line,
' The groves were God's first temples/ was also in Cumming-
ton. < The Death of the Flowers,' beginning with the much-
quoted ' The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the
year,' was inspired here in Great Barrington."

Percy now asked for the promised story of Bryant's earlier
life at his birthplace.

"Cummington," I accordingly related, "is one of those
Massachusetts hill towns, remote from railways, which have
retained their unchanging pastoral aspect through the chang-
ing years. Its rural features and its surrounding scenery,
which have been immortalized by Bryant's pen, all remain.
The region about his birthplace is to-day much as when he
wrote :

" * I stand upon my native hills again,

Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky
With garniture of wavy grass and grain,

Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.'

" Bryant was as fortunate in his parentage as in the place
of his birth. His father, Dr. Peter Bryant, of a line of physi-
cians, has been described as a genial, scholarly, poetic, broad-
minded man ; his mother, Sally Snell Bryant, as plodding, per-
sistent, energetic, < scrupulous as the laws of light.' She was
of Pilgrim stock, being a descendant of John Alden, while Dr.
Bryant was also of Old Colony ancestry. Her father, Squire
Snell, moved up to Cummington with his family from Eastern

AMONG TdE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 4G7

Massachusetts, and Dr. Bryant, of the same town, following,
married Sally Snell there in 1792. William Cullen was their
eldest son, born in November, 1794. He was named for Dr.
William Cullen, a renowned Scotch physician and medical
teacher, who had died four years before. His poetical aspira-
tions developed very early, and were encouraged by his father,
who directed his studies and guided his reading. < Lying be-
fore the evening birch fire,' Parke Godwin, his son-in-law and
biographer has said, ' he read the Bible and Shakspere, Homer
as Pope gives him, and Cowper and Wordsworth. Out-of-doors,
among the thickets, ... he shouted to his brothers grand lines
from the " Iliad " or the " (Edipus Tyrannus." '

" When only nine years old the boy began writing verses,
and at twelve he first appeared in print. This first printed
piece was a poem published in the county paper, the Hampshire
Gazette, prefaced by an editor's note stating that it was ( com-
posed by a lad twelve years old, to be exhibited at the close of
the winter school, in presence of the master, the minister of
the parish, and a number of private gentlemen/ The next
year, stirred by the political spirit which he had absorbed at
his father's hospitable fireside, and from the village Solons, he
wrote a satire on Jefferson's embargo, with the title, < The Em-
bargo; or, Sketches of the Times,' which was published in
Boston. This elicited from the Monthly Anthology a flattering
notice, the critic concluding that 'the young bard certainly
bids fair, should he continue to cultivate his talent, to gain a
respectable station on the Parnassian mount.' In his fifteenth
year he had some patriotic verses in the Hampshire Gazette on
* The Genius of Columbia.' Early in his sixteenth year he was
a student at Williams College. After two terms he withdrew,
hoping to continue his studies at Yale ; but his father could
not afford the expense, and accordingly he turned to the study
of law.

" Meanwhile he had written < Thanatopsis,' which he kept
a secret ; and it was only discovered after he had left the home-

468 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

stead to come here to Great Barrington, his father finding it
among some papers left behind in the boy's room. You re-
member the story of its publication in the North American
Review, which was told when we were talking about the elder
Richard Henry Dana's career, during our walk in the West End
of Boston. The circumstances under which the poem was
written are found detailed in the ' Bryant Homestead Book "
and I read the following extract :

" It was here in Cummington while wandering in the primeval forests,
over the floor of which were scattered the gigantic trunks of fallen trees,
moldering for long years, and suggesting an indefinitely remote antiquity,
and where silent rivulets crept along through the carpet of dead leaves, the
spoil of thousands of summers, that the poem . . . was composed. The
young poet had read the poems of Kirke White, which, edited by Southey,
were published about that time ; and a small volume of Southey 's miscel-
laneous poems ; and some lines .of those authors had kindled his imagina-
tion, which, going forth over the face of the inhabitants of the globe, sought
to bring under one broad and comprehensive view, the destinies of the
human race in the present life, and the perpetual rising and passing away
of generation after generation who are nourished by the fruits of its soil,
and find a resting-place in its bosom."

" Under a somewhat similar mood," I suggested, " ' To A
Waterfowl,' which many regard as his best poem, was written.
As Parke Godwin relates, the poet was on his walk to the
neighboring town of Plainfield, having left home to open his
first law office there. It was toward the close of a December
day in 1815. His heart was despondent, and as he was climb-
ing the hill into the hamlet he turned round and looked back
over the darkening landscape. ' The sun had already set, leav-
ing behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal
which often flood the New England skies ; and while he was
looking at the rosy splendor, with rapt admiration, a solitary
bird made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched
the lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking him-
self whence it had come and to what far home it was flying.
When he went to the house where he was to stop for the night

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.

469

his- mind was full of what he had seen and felt,' and the poem
came easily from his pen."

Returning to Bryant in Great Barrington, I remarked that
his first little volume of collected poems, published in 1821,
was the means of drawing him from the law into editorial life.
Henry D. Sedgwick, who had become his warm friend, and
Gulian C. Verplanck, at the time a literary authority in New
York, interested them-
selves in procuring an
editorial position for
him in that city. As
a result he was ap-
pointed assistant
editor of the New York
Review and Athenceum
Magazine, started in
1825, whereupon he
closed his law office
forever, and removed
to the city. Thereafter
he was identified with
New York, and with
journalism there. The
Review was not profit-
able, though excellent
in its matter, having
as contributors, besides
himself, the best
among the little group of American writers of the time.
Halleck's ' Marco Bozzaris ' was published in an early number.
After struggling for about a year it was merged in one of its
rivals, which was in turn swallowed by another a few months
later.

" Three years after his coming to New York Bryant became
editor of the New York Evening Post, with which he continued

BRYANT AT THE AGE OF 40.

470 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

through the remainder of his long life, making it a power in
the discussion of public questions, and a credit to American
journalism. His second collection of verse, published in 1832,
included the poems first printed in the periodicals with which
he was connected, or in various ' Annuals.' The other volumes
which make up his works appeared at intervals through the
succeeding thirty or forty years. His translation of the 'Iliad '
and the ' Odyssey,' rounding out his work, appeared in
1870-1871. Bryant died in New York City in May, 1878,
suddenly, after delivering an address at the unveiling of the

statue to Mazzini in Central
Park ; and his grave is at
' Cedarmere,' his beautiful
country seat for thirty-five
years in Koslyn, Long Island.
"His striking appearance
in his latter years has often
been pictured, but by none
with finer touch than Haw-
thorne has given in this out-
line : ' A long white beard,
such as a palmer might have
worn as the growth of his
long pilgrimages; a brow al-

most entirely bald, and what hair he had, quite heavy ; a fore-
head impending, yet not massive ; dark, bushy eyebrows, and
keen eyes, without much softness in them ; a dark and sallow
complexion ; a slender figure bent a little with age, but at once
alert and firm/ "

We now took a train on the picturesque Housatonic railway
for Canaan, Connecticut, where we changed to another line
along which we pursued our way to Hartford. Between Great
Barriugton and Canaan we passed through Sheffield, as beau-

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 471

tiful as the other Berkshire towns, the birthphiiv of I>r. Fred-
erick A. P. Barnard (born 1809 died in New York City, 1880),
president of Columbia College, 186-41889; and of the Rev.
Dr. Orville Dewey (born 1794 died in Sheffield, 1882), the
early exponent of Unitarianism.

XXII

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN.

Writers identified with the " Charter Oak City. 1 ' From the " Hartford
Wits" to the modern set. The grouped homes of Harriet Beech er
Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and "Mark Twain." Clemens's
unique apprenticeship to literature. Warner's earlier home of " My
Summer in a Garden." Mrs. Sigourney. Catherine Beecher's
celebrated Academy. Emma Willard. The trio of Hartford
literary editors : Brainard, Prentice, and Whittier. Productions
of the " Hartford Wits." The " City of Elms." Literary men as
Yale students. The Trumbull Gallery. Distinguished graves in
the Old Burying Ground. The poets Hillhouse and Percival.
Theodore Winthrop. Donald G. Mitchell at " Edgewood."

UPON arriving at Hartford we sought at once the land-
marks which gave the " Charter Oak City " its distinction
through a succession of years as the home of the later " Hart-
ford group " of authors. The leaders of these were Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and " Mark Twain."

Writers earlier identified with Hartford, as Percy had been
informed, were Lydia Huntley Sigourney (born in Norwich,
Conn., 1791 died in Hartford, 1865), Emma Hart Willard
(born in Berlin, Conn., 1787 died in Troy, K Y., 1870),
George D. Prentice (born in Preston, Conn., 1802 died in
Louisville, Ky., 1870), John Gardner Calkins Brainard (born
in New London, Conn., 1796 died there, 1828), and John G.
Whittier the latter through his work of a few years as a
newspaper editor. Before these flourished " The Hartford
Wits," - - John Trumbull (born in Watertown [then West-
bury], Conn., 1750 died in Detroit, Mich., 1831), Dr. Lemuel
Hopkins (born in Waterbury, Conn., 1750 died in Hartford,

472

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN. 473

1801), Joel Barlow (born in Reading, Conn., 1755 died in
Paris, France, 1812), Theodore Dwight, the elder (born in
Northampton, Mass., 1764 died in New York City, 1846),
and Colonel David Humphreys (born in Derby, Conn., 1753 -
died in New Haven, 1818). These men together formed a
club of satirists, in literary association through a number of
years following the Revolution, who, as Professor Henry A.
Beers affirms in the " Memorial History of Hartford County,"
" represented a concentration of talent such as had not hitherto
existed in any American town." Noah Webster (born in West
Hartford, 1785 died in New Haven, 1843), the lexicog-
rapher, also spent a few of his active years in Hartford, and
here published, in 1783, his famous spelling book, the first part
of the " Grammatical Institute of the English Language."

The homes of the later Hartford group were in close
neighborhood, in the pleasantest of the residential parts of the
city, occupying the hill to the west of the railroad round
which winds the Park River. We reached the quarter by
trolley car from the railroad station.

The vine-embowered house built for " Mark Twain," which
Hartford visitors are wont first to seek because of its fame
through repeated descriptions, stands on a knoll well back
from the street, beside an oak grove. Like most of the resi-
dences of this quarter it is a brick house, but so constructed,
of different colored bricks in fanciful courses, and so original
in design, as to be unique among its neighbors, as is the
author among his fellows. It was Cleinens's second Hartford
home, built for him a few years after he had made this city
his permanent abiding-place. When he occupied it the beauty
and comfortableness of its interior were much discoursed
upon, and many imagined it to be an ideal working-place. The
wide hall, with its carved furniture, easy-chairs, and cushioned
recesses ; the library, similarly furnished, v/ith crowded book-
shelves, closed at one end by the conservatory, and with its
windows looking out upon the attractive grounds ; the fully

474

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

equipped study, all seemed to the uninitiated to invite to lit-
erary labor under the most delightful conditions. But Clemens
found it distracting, and when he had work in hand he went
up to the billiard room at the top of the house a.nd took his
seat at a table so placed that he " could see nothing but the
wall and a few shelves of working books before him." At
other times, when particularly absorbed by a piece of work,
he abandoned the house altogether, and locked himself into a

THE "MARK TWAIN HOUSE," HARTFORD.

little room in an office building down town. He has been
quoted as saying that when he has once begun an extended
work it is necessary to keep steadily at it from day to day
without changing his surroundings.

"'Mark Twain' (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in
Florida, Mo., 1835 )," I remarked, came to Hartford to live
in 1871, after the publication of his < Innocents Abroad/ and
here were written some of his famous books. You know the
origin of his nom de plume, that it was reminiscent of his

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN.

475

life as a Mississippi River pilot, when the call e mark twain ! '
in the navigation of the river became most familiar to his ears ?
Clemens's literary success, which has carried him to the head
of his class of writers in this age, has been truly called one of
the romances of American life and letters. He was nearing
thirty before he had written a line for publication, or had
seriously thought of authorship. His training, moreover, was
quite foreign to letters.
At twelve he was through
with school, and working
for his living. His father
died at this time. Soon
afterward the boy was ap-
prenticed in a printing-
office for three years. He
became a pilot on the
Mississippi at seventeen.
This calling he pursued
for seven years, sailing up
and down the river be-
tween St. Louis and New
Orleans, meeting many
adventures, and coming in
contact with the rough
and ready characters en-
countered in the river
traffic before the Civil
War, all of which furnished him material for his after writ-
ings. At twenty-four he was in Nevada as private secretary
for his brother, then the Territorial Secretary. Soon, however,
this clerical work was dropped, and he became a miner. Two
or three years were spent in the mines without profit except
in experience. Then he became a newspaper reporter in
Virginia City.

u With this work his first attempts at humorous writing

MARK TWAIN.

476 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

were made, and at the outset he adopted his signature of < Mark
Twain.' His paragraphs and sketches were copied in other
journals, and after a while he got a better place on a San Fran-
cisco paper. In 1866 he was sent to the Sandwich Islands te
write up the sugar industry for his paper. Upon his return
he took to the lecture platform with a lecture on Hawaii. In
this effort sober history and description of the islands and the
people were so cheerfully interwoven with humorous note and
comment, and the whole so phrased, in homely, rugged English,
often with witty turns of gravely started sentences, that popu-
lar audiences were captured by it, and he found himself with
a growing reputation on the Pacific coast. Coming East with
this lecture he met similar success.

" When in New York, in 1867, he published his < Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras,' and the same year he sailed on
the Quaker City expedition to the Orient. From this journey
came his ( Innocents Abroad,' written out in California after
his return. Its publication made him instantly famous. He
continued lecturing with increasing favor, wrote constantly,
and in 1871, when Hartford became his permanent home, his
next book, < Roughing It,' appeared. Two years later came
' The Gilded Age,' written in collaboration with Charles Dud-
ley Warner, in which figures ' Colonel Sellers,' who stands for
the optimistic American speculator proclaiming for every < wild-
cat ' venture ' there's millions in it ! ' Then followed at inter-
vals of a year or two the succession of productions including
'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' 'The Prince and the
Pauper,' < Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,' * Pudd'nhead
Wilson,' < The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' and ' A Con-
necticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,' which added luster
to his fame.

"As his reputation was expanding, Clemens pursued a sys-
tematic course of study in English language, literature, and
history, and acquainted himself with the works of the mas-
ters, his readings taking a wide range j thus grandly did he

IIARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN.

477

478 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

make up for his youthful shortcomings in literary culture.
Then he set himself determinedly to the acquisition of the
French and German languages, although he had passed the age
when foreign languages are comfortably acquired, and the
strange words and idioms tangled on his elderly tongue."

Mrs. Stowe, in her slate-colored cottage set among trees,
back from a shrub, and flower-bedecked lawn, was Mark Twain's
next-door neighbor, their estates adjoining, though hers faced
another street. The Stowe family came here to live in the
early seventies, we were told, and the place remained their
Northern home till Mrs. Stowe's death in 1896. This also was
their second home in Hartford. The earlier house built for
Mrs. Stowe, after her own plans, in 1865, was in the eastern
part of the city. It stood in the midst of an extensive grove
of oaks, which had been one of the favorite resorts of her
girlhood, and on the spot where, early in her married life, she
had declared that if she should ever be able to build a house
of her own, it should be placed. The site was on another bank
of Park River, near the junction of this wandering stream
with the Connecticut, and it was then a beautiful situation
beyond the business limits. In course of time, however, fac-
tories encroached upon the neighborhood, the city reached out
to it, and its charm was dispelled. Then Mrs. Stowe bought
this Forest-Street place, and the once picturesque gabled dwell-
ing among the oaks degenerated, as the oaks were shorn, into
a tenement for factory hands, and, in its last stage, into a fac-
tory storage place.

The Forest-Street estate was agreeably adorned, and the
hospitable home became the Mecca of admirers who came from
many quarters to pay homage to the author during her last
quiet years here. The library, with its tall panels painted
with flowers in the wall spaces between the windows, was also
the family sitting-room, and here the more intimate guests were
received. A feature of the parlor was a secretary filled with
editions of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " and other popular works of

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN.

479

480

LITERACY PILGRIMAGES.

Mrs. Stowe, iu various foreign languages. Mrs. Stowe had no
special study in the house, but wrote sometimes in the library,
more frequently in her own room over the parlor. Of her later
works, written in Hartford, " We and Our Neighbors " was
finished here. " Oldtown Folks " and " Pink and White Tyr-
anny " were written in the other house.

Charles Dudley Warner (born in Plainfield, Mass., 1829
died in Hartford, 1900) was the other next-door neighbor of
Mark Twain, on the south side; and a foot-path well worn by

LATER HOME OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

the two friends passed between their places. The beautiful
woodland estate was Warner's last home. His earlier home,
the little red brick cottage embowered in green, with the
garden at the back which inspired his first book, was near by.
There also Saunterings," Backlog Studies/' Baddeck and
That Sort of Thing," were written.

He bought this larger and architecturally handsomer house
with its bays, verandas, gables, and dormers, and refashioned
it to his taste, after his wide journey ings abroad, from which

HARTFOED AND NEW HAVEN. 481

came "My Winter on Ilie Nile" and u In the Levant." The
interior a friendly and gracious hand has described as " full of
light and comfort, and an easy informality both in its appear-
ance and its atmosphere." On the walls hung " relics of the
journeyings about the world, gathered in Nubia, Egypt, North-
ern Africa, Spain, and all over the continent of Europe."
There were " portieres and rugs of interesting Oriental work-
manship " ; pictures, choice bits of china, porcelain, and much
other bric-a-brac, each object having a history and associations
of its own. Books were everywhere. The study was a room
high up in a gable, plainly furnished, with a generous open
fireplace, and an outlook over the tree-tops to a mountain
height. Here it was long Warner's custom to work and write
through the forenoons ; then in the afternoon he walked down-
town to the Courant office to take up his editorial work. He
wrote rapidly, never employing the typewriter, or dictating to
a stenographer.

" Though literature was Warner's chosen vocation from the
beginning," I continued, " he was not able definitely to devote
himself to it till he was past forty. He was country bred, born
on a farm in that Massachusetts hill town where Bryant first
began to practice law, and he used to declaim ' Thanatopsis '
while milking the cow. The apple orchard of his father's
farm was in sight of the Bryant homestead in Cummington.
When he was five his father died. Till he was thirteen he
went to a district school in the neighboring town of Charle-
mont. The family then removing to Cazenovia, in. central
New York, he attended a seminary there. Afterward he
entered Hamilton College, and was graduated in 1851. While
he was a student he composed sketches which were accepted by
the old Knickerbocker, and during his senior year he wrote the
English prize essay. Subsequently his work occasionally ap-
peared in Putnam's Magazine. Not long after leaving college
he went west with the expectation of becoming connected with
a projected monthly magazine in Detroit, Michigan. The pro-

482 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ject falling through, he joined a surveying party on the Mis-
souri frontier. After about a year of this experience he
returned to the East, and took up the study of law. He re-
ceived his diploma from the University of Pennsylvania, and
was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1856. Meanwhile
he had supported himself mainly by writing for newspapers
and periodicals. He practiced as a lawyer in Chicago for four
years. Then, in 1860, he was induced by Joseph K. Hawley,
afterward general, governor, and senator, with whom he had
become acquainted in Cazenovia, to come to Hartford and join
him in the editorship of the Press. So ended Warner's career
at the bar. When he had got well into the editorial harness,
Hawley enlisted in the army, leaving him alone in the conduct
of the paper. Some time after the Civil War the owners of
the Press, of whom Warner had become one, acquired the
older Courant, and the two papers were united, the Press drop-
ping its name. Warner continued his association with the
Courant through the remainder of his life, gradually withdraw-
ing, in his latter years, from active editorial service as he
became engrossed in literary work and book-making.

" l My Summer in a Garden ' was first published in the
Courant as a series of light essays running through some
months. They were originally written with no thought of
ultimate issue ' between covers,' merely as pleasant 'copy'
to lighten the pages of the sober newspaper ; but their buoy-
ancy, with their dashes of wit, philosophy, and gentle satire,
evidently so charmed the newspaper readers that the making
a book of them was urged by Warner's associates. When this
was prepared, however, it languished for a publisher. Two
Boston publishers in turn declined it. It was too slender,
there was too little of it, they thought. When after its un-
happy travels it had finally returned to the author, he happened
one evening to meet Henry Ward Beecher at Mrs. Stowe's house.
The little book and its fate became one of the subjects of their
talk. Mr. Beecher was interested, and wanted to see it ; so a

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN.

483

messenger was sent over to Warner's for the manuscript. Mr.
Beecher skimmed through several of the sketches. Then he
exclaimed, * It shall be published ; you have the real stuff in
you.' He would write a preface to it, he said, and would him-
self take it to a publisher, who would not refuse him. The
promise was kept, and before long the book was born. Its
reception was immediate and flattering. Ten thousand copies
were quickly sold, and it
continued to sell. War-
ner's place was estab-
lished, and he remained a
favorite of the reading
public to his last publica-
tion.

" The Garden essays
appeared in 1870. There-
after his books came at
intervals of a year or
two, while his pen was
otherwise much employed,
and his work as editor of
series of publications was
not inconsiderable. < Saun-
terings,' which had vainly
sought a publisher before
the appearance of 'My
Summer in a Garden,' fol- CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

lowed, helped on by its popularity. Then came the sparkling

< Backlog Studies,' < Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing ' ; the
pleasant books on foreign travel ; later, < A Koundabout
Journey/ < The Pilgrimage/ < A Little Journey in the World,'
which the critics agree is his best work ; ' Studies in the South
and West,' ' As We were Saying,' and so on. Of his editing,
the most elaborate work, as you are aware, is the standard

< Library of the World's Best Literature.' "

484 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

While we were thus chatting, we had left the neighborhood,
and were strolling by a roundabout way toward " down-town."
At length in Main Street and the business center, we called at
the Wadsworth Athenaeum, where Percy saw some interesting
literary relics. He also noticed here a bust of Mrs. Sigourney.
Continuing our walk we sought the site of her home, the pil-
lared mansion, ample and imposing, which stood northward
of Main Street, while I discoursed lightly on her career.

" Mrs. Sigourney," this relation ran, " was a lady of fine
qualities, cultivated mind, and talent, given through her life to
good deeds in the community in which she lived. She was
one of the most voluminous of the women writers of her time,
and in the number of volumes issued made a record surpassing
that of many of her contemporaries of the opposite sex. Her
writings had a devout, often a definitely religious, always a pro-
nounced moral tone, and she had a great vogue in her day, for
which, we must agree with Professor Beers, the present genera-
tion finds it hard to account. All of her sixty odd volumes
were widely circulated, and three volumes of her poems were
published in London. Ardent admirers sometimes called her
< the Hemans of America.' Her first book, ' Moral Pieces in
Prose and Verse/ was published in 1815 ; her last, ' Letters in
Life,' appeared posthumously in 1866.

" She came to Hartford in 1814 when she was Miss Huntley,
and opened a high grade seminary for young women, which she
conducted till her marriage five years later. She had been
gently reared, and had received a broader education than was
at the time accorded girls ; while her tendency to versification,
which was displayed when she was in pinafores, was encouraged
by her elders. The lines on the tablet near her pew in Christ
Church were written by Whittier, long after her death :

*' She sang alone, ere womanhood had known
The gift of song which fills the air to-day ;
Tender and sweet, a music all her own

May fitly linger where she knelt to pray.' "

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN. 485

In another part of the business section we came to the site
of the girls' academy kept by Catherine Esther Beecher (born
in East Hampton, L.I., 1800 died, in Elmira, N.Y., 1878) from
1822 to 1832, where her younger sister, Harriet (Mrs. Stowe),
studied and afterward taught.

Other landmarks which we sought were vague or obliterated.
We could find no trace of the home of that other learned Hart-
ford woman and long-time school-teacher, Emma Willard,
who wrote verses along with graver things. She came to Hart-
ford in the late thirties, after she had passed middle life. She
compiled numerous manuals on geography and history, and
interested herself especially in the advancement of the educa-
tion of women. As a poet she is chiefly to be remembered for
her ocean hymn, the familiar " Rocked in the Cradle of the
Deep." As a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of
Hartford, she belonged naturally to this town.

Traces only were to be found of the habitations or working
places of that trio of Hartford literary editors, Brainard, Pren-
tice, and Whittier, in the twenties and early thirties. " Brainard
was the first of them in order of time," I remarked. " He came
here in 1822 to edit the Connecticut Mirror, having tried the
law unsuccessfully ; an odd, over-sensitive, unambitious young
man of twenty-seven. He made a poor editor, but a good poet.
He was essentially the poet of the Connecticut valley. The
few poems of his which have survived the longest are on themes
of this region. His work was uneven and not extensive, for he
wrote hastily, and died at thirty -three ; but it endeared him to
many readers of his time. Most of it was done for the weekly
press, unstudied and without revision. Whittier, in his memoir
of the poet accompanying his collected poems published shortly
after his death, declared that the verses thus written from week
to week < would have done honor to the genius of Burns or
Wordsworth.'

" Prentice's Hartford career was brief, covering only about
two years, between 1828 and 1830. It was brilliant and dash-

486 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

ing, and paved the way for his success in Kentucky with the
Louisville Journal (now the Courier- Journal), which he
founded. He was not long out of college he graduated from
Brown University when he took up the editor's work here.
He made his Hartford paper, the New England Literary
Review, popular on the literary side, and spirited on the po-
litical side. In its columns his earliest and some of his best
poems first appeared. Whittier succeeded him in the editorial
chair at his own suggestion, a friendship having sprung up
between the two through correspondence resulting from
Whittier's contributions to the paper from the ^Amesbury
farm. Whittier's engagement was at first temporary, to serve
during Prentice's absence in Kentucky, whither he went in the
summer of 1830 to write the life of Henry Clay for the Presi-
dential campaign of 1832. But although Prentice returned to
Hartford and published his book here, he did not again take
up the Review ; and soon afterward he went back to Kentucky
and started his Louisville Journal.

" The shy Quaker in homespun was in marked contrast to
his worldly and elegant predecessor, but he performed quite as
satisfactory, and, in its different way, as brilliant editorial
work. Prentice in his farewell editorial introduced him to
the readers of the Review in a gallant fashion : ' I cannot do
less than congratulate my readers,' he wrote, ' on the prospect
of the more familiar acquaintance with a gentleman of such
powerful energies, and such exalted purity and sweetness of
character.' Whittier was here for eighteen months, and we
have seen how extensive and varied were his contributions to
the Review during that time. Among his many poems first
published in it was the ( Christ in the Tempest,' which became
a favorite in the < First Class Keader.' While here, too, as
we have noted, he prepared his first book, ' Legends of New
England in Prose and Verse,' and it was printed in the office of
the Review. In his writings and letters he has given glimpses
of his Hartford life. He has told us that he boarded first at

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVtiN. 48?

the ' Old Luut Tavern/ and afterward in the family of Jonathan
Law, sometime postmaster of Hartford, whose house was on
Main Street, by the corner of Grove Street. It was his Hart-
ford life that the poet recalled in the opening lines of the
dedication of ' Miriam/ to his friend of those days, Frederick
A. P. Barnard, who in his young manhood wrote for the
Review :

" * The years are many since, in youth and hope
Under the Charter-Oak, our horoscope
We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.' "

" By the way," Percy here interjected, " isn't some relic of
the Charter Oak preserved ? " Only its site is marked, by a
tablet, he was told.

Of the Hartford Wits no definite landmarks were to be
traced, while of their work, it was remarked, only the lines of
Truinbull's " M'Fingal " -

"No man e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law "

survive among our most "familiar quotations." Percy had
heard this couplet quoted, but he knew nothing of " M'Fingal,"
he said. Accordingly this epic of the Revolution, after the
manner of Hudibras, with its shafts of ridicule against the
British and their Tory allies, was recalled for his benefit.
Its object, he was told, was, as Trumbull himself stated it, to
express " in a poetical manner a general account of the Amer-
ican contest, with a particular description of the character and
manners of the times, interspersed with anecdotes, which no
history could probably record or display ; and with as much
impartiality as possible, satirize the follies and extravagances
of my countrymen as well as of their enemies." Its principal
characters were "M'Fingal," a type of the old-time country
squire, who stood for the Tory interests, and "Honorius,"
representing the Whigs. It was finished and published in
Hartford in 1782, and its popularity was great. Several edi-

488 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

tions were published in England as well as in this country.
Professor Beers classes it as the best of American political
satires in verse " with the possible exception of the * Biglow
Papers.' "

Trumbull was the chief of the Hartford Wits. Of the
others, Dr. Lemuel Hopkins was called the " bludgeon satirist."
His verse mostly appeared in " The Anarchiad," a descriptive
poem by the Wits, in a series of twenty-four numbers published
in the newspapers. He also contributed to similar produc-
tions, " The Echo," and " The Political Green House," subse-
quently issued in book form. Theodore Dwight's work was
largely in "The Echo." Joel Barlow's principal effort was
" The Vision of Columbus," published in Hartford in 1787,
and twenty years later expanded into " The Columbiad,"
brought out in Philadelphia. Colonel Humphreys's hand was
in " The Anarchiad." Humphreys earlier wrote his pictur-
esque life of General Israel Putnam, upon whose staff he served
as major at the beginning of the Revolution. Later he was
on Washington's staff, and became closely attached to the great
captain, who inspired his animated battle-pieces and patriotic
verse. He was the first American ambassador to Lisbon.

Our walk finished at the Allyn House, where we spent
this night, going on to New Haven the next morning.

Arrived in the " City of Elms " we made our pleasant way
along the leafy streets first of all to the Yale College buildings,
west of the beautiful Green in the city's heart. We strolled
about the elm-studded Campus ; viewed the famous Fence, the
gathering place of Yale men from the college's early days ;
and made a little tour of the buildings, including " South Mid-
dle," the one spared monument of the historic " Old Brick
How."

As we rambled from point to point, here and there was
noted a room or a quarter identified with the college life of

1IARTFORD AND NEW UAVEN. 489

after poets and authors, while Percy was told of their student
days. The brilliant list began chronologically with James
Fenimore Cooper (born in Burlington, N.J., 1789 died in
Cooperstown, N.Y., 1851), who entered the college at thirteen
in 1802, and was rusticated before the end of his junior year,
when he went to sea as a midshipman in the Navy. Next
was James Abraham Hillhouse (born in New Haven, 1789 -
died here, 1841), poet and orator, a college mate of Cooper's,
entering at sixteen, who early won a reputation among college
men from his Master's oration on " The Education of the Poet,"
and his subsequent Phi Beta Kappa poem, " The Judgment."
To him Fitz-Greene Halleck alluded in his lines " To the
Kecorder "

" Hillhouse, whose music, like his themes,
Lifts earth to heaven "

Graduating as Hillhouse entered was John Pierpont, the
poet and hymn writer (about whom we had heard when in
Eastern Massachusetts, in Newburyport), a fine scholar in col-
lege, stimulated to high endeavor perhaps by reason of his
descent from the minister, John Pierpont, one of the Yale
founders ; whose " Airs of Palestine," published a dozen years
after his graduation, fixed his literary rank. Then came
James Gates Percival (born in Berlin, Conn., 1795 died in
Hazel Green, Wis., 1856), poet and man of many talents and
idiosyncrasies, of the class of 1815, graduating at its head,
with his tragedy of " Zamor" a part of the Commencement
exercises. Ten years later N. P. Willis was here, in his senior
year (1827) rooming on the third floor of Old North, in the
same entry with Horace Bushnell, who was his classmate.

Donald G. Mitchell (born in Norwich, Conn., 1822 ),
genial, philosophic " Ik Marvel," whose " Reveries of a Bach-
elor " retains perennial charm, was of the class of 1841. Three
years after, in the class of 1848, entered the scholarly and
heroic Theodore Winthrop (born in New Haven, 1828 killed

490 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

in the Battle of Great Bethel, Va., 1861), novelist, story writer,
and poet, a direct descendant from that second John Winthrop
and first governor of Connecticut, whose career we had traced
when in " The Heart of Essex j " on his mother's side in line
from Jonathan Edwards, whose great-granddaughter she was,
and through her connected with seven presidents of Yale ; who
himself, had his health permitted, would have followed in his
ancestors' footsteps, and might have become a college president.
Of the class of 1853 was our poet of to-day, Edmund Clarence
Stedman, son of a poet, Mrs. E. C. (Stedman) Kinney, -
born in Hartford, 1833, but "brought up" from infancy in
Norwich, who entered the college at fifteen, and at seventeen
was suspended for some irregularities, though in later years
restored to his class and given a master's degree.

Note also was made of some of the renowned eighteenth
century students : among them Timothy Dwight, graduated in
1769 ; Jonathan Edwards, 1721 ; Noah Webster, 1778, in the
same class with Joel Barlow of the Hartford Wits and Oliver
Wolcott, their intimate, whose grandfather, Koger Wolcott, was
the earliest Hartford poet ; Jedidiah Morse, " the father of
American Geography," of the class of 1783 ; and Benjamin
Sillirnan, our " Nestor in Science," class of 1796. Thirty-three
years after Noah Webster, the other dictionary maker, Joseph
Emerson Worcester (bora in Bedford, N.H., 1784 died in
Cambridge, Mass., 1865), was here in the class of 1811.
Shortly after his graduation he went to Salem, Mass., and set
up his school, where, as we had learned, the boy Nathaniel
Hawthorne was once a pupil. His " Dictionary of the English
Language" made its first appearance in 1860, after several
years had been devoted to its compilation.

In the School of Fine Arts building Percy found much en-
joyment in looking over the historical paintings of Colonel John
Trumbull, Connecticut's early and most distinguished painter,
which constitute the " Trumbull Gallery." He made a copy of
the inscription over Trumbull's tomb beneath the building,

UABTFO1W AND NEW HAVEN. 491

which read : " Colonel John Trumbull, Patriot and Artist,
Friend and Aid of Washington, lies beside his wife beneath
this Gallery of Art. Lebanon [Conn.], 1750 New York,
1843."

" Yes," I replied to Percy's question, " the poet John
Trumbull was of the same family. The great-grandfathers of
the poet and the artist were brothers. The artist was the son
of the first Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut,
Washington's close friend throughout the Re volution, and
brother of the second Governor Jonathan Trumbull, who served
from 1798 till his death in 1809."

A short walk along High Street to Grove Street brought
us to the old bury ing-ground, a quiet spot behind stone walls,
"separating college halls on the one hand from the stir of
business on the other," as a local writer pictures it, which
Percy desired to visit when told that more distinguished per-
sons are said to be here entombed than in any similar enclos-
ure in the country.

Wandering along the serene paths we passed graves of
presidents of the college; of Benjamin Silliman, and his son,
the second Professor Silliman ; of Noah Webster ; of Jedidiah
Morse ; of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, father of the eminent
Beecher family of brothers and sisters ; of the Rev. Leonard
Bacon (born in Detroit, Mich., 1802 died in New Haven,
1881), the leading Congregationalist editor and writer in his
day, and minister of the First Church of New Haven for
fifty-seven years ; and of his gifted sister Delia Bacon (born
in Talmadge, Ohio, 1811 died in Hartford, 1859), writer
of historical tales, but wider known as the prophet of the
Baconian theory of the authorship of the Shaksperian plays,
disclosed in her "Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere
Unfolded," the publication of which in Boston and London
in 1857, two years before her death, made a commotion which
did not subside after it became known that the writer's mind
in her later years was affected. Also were seen the tombs of

492 LITERAEY PILGRIMAGES.

William Dwight Whitney (born in Northampton, Mass., 1827

died in New Haven, 1894), the eminent philologist and

Sanskrit scholar ; of James Dwight Dana (born in Utica, N.Y.,
1813 died in New Haven, 1895), the geologist and writer of
authoritative treatises on mineralogy ; of the poet Hillhouse ;
and of Theodore Winthrop. The grave of the latter was
marked by a plain granite cross, simply inscribed with names
and dates only. A friend with us recalled that when Winthrop
was buried he was followed to the grave by the students of
the college in a body, by whom he was universally beloved.

The building of the Historical Society being near, opposite
the opening of beautiful Hillhouse Avenue, we made a brief call
there, and found much to interest us in its literary museum.
Then we strolled up Hillhouse Avenue beneath the arching
elms, toward the fine old pillared mansion at its head which
was the latter home of the poet Hillhouse, in his time called
" Sachem Wood." The place was built by his father, the states-
man Hillhouse, member of both branches of the Federal Con-
gress in periods following the Eevolution. He also laid out the
avenue through his ancestral farm, himself planting its lines
of trees, helped in this admirable work by a young man who
in after years had the satisfaction of walking beneath them
as President Day of the college. And to the taste and public
spirit of the elder Hillhouse is mainly due the planting of the
older New Haven streets and The Green with elms, a century
and more ago, from which the college city got its name of the
" City of Elms." Of the poet's earlier compositions written in
New Haven, the most important was his " Demetria, Percy's
Masque." This he carried to London in 1819 and first pub-
lished there ; immediately after, however, it was reprinted in
this country. His drama of " Hadad," which gained him 'most
repute, was written at " Sachem Wood."

The birthplace of Theodore AVinthrop was in another part of
the city, some distance east of The Green, on Wooster Street.
As described by Winthrop' s sister, in her biography of him,

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN.

493

it was a roomy house of old-fashioned New England type, with
hall running through the middle, four rooms on a floor, and a
great garret. Winthrop here browsed in an excellent library,
and had the good fortune of companionship with a scholarly
father and lover of nature, who took long walks with him into
the beautiful country around their home. " He wrote nothing
of note here, however," I added, " beyond the theses which won
him prizes during his college term. For some time after his
graduation he was abroad in search of health/ making pedes-
trian tours about
Scotland, into
France and Ger-
many, in Switzer-
land, and in Italy
and Greece.

"In Kome he
made the acquaint
ance of William H.
Aspinwall of New
York, one of the
founders of the
Panama Kailroad
on the Isthmus,
and was engaged
as tutor of Aspin-

walPs boy. Later ^ THEODORE

h"e was employed in the New York counting-house of Mr.
Aspinwall. Soon afterward he went to Panama, in the interest
of the Pacific Steamship Company, where he spent two years.
The return was by a roundabout way overland. He traveled
through California and Oregon, generally in the saddle, when
traveling it was in the early fifties in those regions was
more romantic and more difficult than now, and fuller of adven-
ture. On the way he was smitten with smallpox. Before he
had fully recovered he resumed his journey, and on the Plains

494 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

was taken ill again. He lay down to die ; but his strength re-
turning, he renewed the struggle and managed to pull through-
Back in New York he took up his old work in the counting-
house, but shortly was oft again, having joined the expedition
of the gallant Lieutenant Isaac G. Strain, of the Navy, to
survey the Isthmus of Darien. In this undertaking he ex-
perienced many hardships. Again in New York he turned to
the study of law, and in 1855 was admitted to the bar.

"At this time Winthrop's home was on Staten Island,
where he was a near neighbor of George William Curtis.
Between the two a warm friendship sprang up, and Curtis
fostered his literary activity. He had written much,
sketches of travel, a novel or two, and numerous poems, but
had published nothing. In 1857 he went to St. Louis to prac-
tice law there ; but his health was too precarious, and he soon
returned East. His first publication was a glowing description
of Church's great painting of ( The Heart of the Andes/ which
he had watched develop on the canvas in the artist's studio.
His novel of ' Cecil Dreeme ? was offered first to one publisher,
then to another in the spring of 1860. The second publisher
accepted it, but put it aside because of the unsettled state of
public affairs. 'Love and Skates,' his best short story, was
sent to the Atlantic Monthly in the spring of 1861. It so
captivated Lowell, then the editor, that, upon learning of
Winthrop's enlistment in the Army, he engaged him to write
a series of war sketches for the magazine.

" He enlisted in the artillery corps of the New York Seventh
Regiment in April, 1861 ; and his graceful, dashing sketch of
the ' March of the Seventh Kegiment of New York to Wash-
ington,' which appeared in the Atlantic of the following June,
made his reputation at once. His active military career cov-
ered three short months. At Fortress Monroe he was made
acting military secretary and aid of General Benjamin F. But-
ler. He was killed in the disastrous affair at Great Bethel,
while standing on a log nearest the Confederate battery, wav-

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN. 495

ing his sword and cheering his fellow soldiers to the advance.
<On the 19th of April,' wrote Curtis, <he left the armory
door of the Seventh with his hand upon a howitzer ; on the
21st of June his body lay upon the same howitzer at the same
door, wrapped in the flag for which he gladly died/

" The works which have made Winthrop's reputation endurr
ing < Cecil Dreeme,' < John Brent,' < Edwin Brothertoft,' 'The
Canoe and the Saddle,' < Life in the Open Air ' were all pub-
lished posthumously ; and none except ' Love and Skates,' and
the ' March of the Seventh,' received his final revision. His
poems are collected in the ' Life and Poems ' prepared by his
sister twenty years after his death."

South of the Green, not far from the college, was the quar-
ter in which the poet Percival lived in the forties a hermit's
life in bachelor rooms. These rooms were in the upper story of
the old State Hospital. Very few, even of his near friends,
were admitted to them. If others came to see him, he would
open his entry door by untying a rope which fastened the
outer knob to the wall, and come out into the entry, where
he would stand and talk for any length of time, or take his
caller below to the reception-rooms of the hospital. One of his
rooms contained his valuable library and collection of minerals,
another was his study, the third his bedroom. His bed was a
cot, and a block of wood placed under the mattress served for
a pillow. The floors, evidently never swept, were covered with
a thick mass of rolling lint, and through the lint was a beaten
path from the bed to the stove, the writing table, the library,
and the entry door. He had previously occupied two rooms
over a bookstore in the busy part of Chapel Street, which were
more crowded than these, with his books piled in double tiers
against the walls, and in heaps about the floors, leaving scarce
space for his sleeping-cot, his chair, and the writing-table. His
dress was careless and of the simplest. One suit sufficed him
through summer and winter, till worn threadbare. His only
outer garment for years was a brown camlet cloak, scant and

496 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

thinly lined. Above this cloak peered his head covered with a
shabby glazed cloth cap.

"Such are the pictures of the poet and his hermitage,"
I remarked, "which his biographer, Julius H. Ward, gives.
Donald G. Mitchell remembers him, at the same period, as
< thin, haggard, and unkempt, with a wild look in his eye, scud-
ding through the streets with an uneasy, swift pace, his shoes
unblacked untied perhaps, other garments dilapidated and
rusty : ' with his ' scant old camlet cloak in chilling weather
drawn close around him.' He was *a cantankerous man,'
Mitchell says, ' taking life hard, taking everything hard except
the minutise of learning, most contented and easy when writing
till midnight on etymologies, and on recondite phrases and
philologic puzzles.' Yet he wrote verses, lyrics, and songs
which became household things.

" Percival was obliged to resort to various sorts of literary
drudgery to get his living, since the practice of his profession
of medicine was distasteful to him. He was much devoted to
the pursuit of geology, botany, and other sciences, in which he
was a master, but poetry was his best love. All of his poetical
work was done easily and rapidly. When a boy of fourteen he
wrote a mock-heroic poem on the times, which extended over
two thousand lines, with a preface of nearly two hundred lines,
in which he invited the Muse. In college he was repeatedly
writing verses. In 1820, a few years after his graduation, he
published his first volume of poems, more varied in character
than had previously appeared from any other native poet. It
included the first part of his i Prometheus,' his longest and most
elaborate poetical work, written in the Spenserian measure,
which later on, when completed with the second part, Whittier
so warmly praised in his Hartford paper. ' God pity the man,'
this fellow poet exclaimed, e who does not love the poetry of
Percival ! He is a genius of Nature's making ! '

" In the spring of 1822 he published the first number of his
1 Clio ' series, after the fashion of Irving's ' Sketch Book/ and

IIAUTFORD AND NEW HAVEN. 497

Dana's * Idle Man/ This was brought out in Charleston,
South Carolina, whither he had gone the previous autumn as
partner with a lecturer on botany. The partners soon separat-
ing, Percival was without resources. Putting out his doctor's
sign, he devoted himself to verse-making for the Courier,
then the first literary journal of the South, while waiting
for patients. But very few came, indeed, it is said only
one came, troubled with sore lips, for whom he prescribed a
dose of salts, gratis, for his reputation as a poet had pre-
ceded him, and, as he explained, < when a person is really ill,
he will not send for a poet to cure him : ' " which reminded
Percy of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's early experience as a
practitioner with the reputation of a wit.

" The second number of < Clio ' was brought out here in
New Haven in the summer of 1822. Two years later Perci-
val's collected poems in two volumes, upon which his reputa-
tion as a poet largely rests, were issued in New York and
London, principally through the agency of Samuel G. Goodrich,
who was one of his steadfast friends. The third and last
<Clio' appeared in 1827. His last poetical volume, 'The
Dream of a Day, and Other Poems,' was published in 1843.
His patriotic odes and campaign songs, the latter on the Whig
side and most popular in the campaign of 1840, are ranked
among the best of their kind ; while his ballads long survived
his day. His uplifting lines, ' 0, it is great for our country to
die, where ranks are contending ! ' became one of the familiar
and stirring battle songs of the Civil War.

" Percival's most important literary work outside of poetry
was his scholarly assistance on Webster's Dictionary. His
contributions to science included his reports upon the geology
of Connecticut in 1842, and the later reports as state geologist
of Wisconsin, which position he was holding at the time of his
death in 1856."

A little journey to "Edgewood," the home of Donald G.
Mitchell, was the finishing touch to these pilgrimages. This

498

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

lay to the west of the city, and southwestward of towering
West Rock, in a yet semi-rural region, though not far re-
moved from the city's life. We made the trip by carriage,
preferring to drive out rather than to take the trolley car, that
we might loiter by the way, if so minded, or turn aside
from main thoroughfares to explore inviting street openings
or seek picturesque views. The route we chose took us

along shaded
avenues, through
Edgewood Park,
across West River,
and over the river
plain to the old
"Coddington road"
on which is the
Edgewood Ridge.
We had with us a
description of
Edgewood which
Professor Beers
gave some years
ago in the Critic,
and from this we
easily recognized
the place, time's
changes in its as-
pect having been
comparatively
slight.

From the line of evergreen hedge along the roadway, sloped
up the grassy bank upon which the picturesque vine-mantled
house was set, with shrubs and flowers brightening the turf.
Behind rose the steep hill, with overhanging woods, which
gave the place its name. The house of stone and wood, with
rustic porch and veranda, high-pitched roof and dormer win-

" EDGEWOOD," HOME OF DONALD G. MITCHELL.

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN. 499

dmvs, was built by Mr. Mitchell after his own fancy, in place
of the old farmhouse, the " grayish-white farmhouse " stand-
ing behind " the great purple spikes of lilacs " as depicted in
" My Farm at Edge wood ,"- which he first occupied when he
came into possession of the place, back in the fifties. The
stone for the lower story came mainly from old stone walls
found on the farm. Within the house a comfortable spacious-
ness characterizes the rooms. On the south side of the gener-
ous entrance hall open double drawing-rooms, with French
windows giving upon the veranda, which fronts a soft lawn
framed in evergreen and other trees ; on the north side of the
hall is the library with broad fireplace, full-stocked bookshelves
lining the walls, book-laden tables, and the genuine bookish
atmosphere ; at the rear is the dining-room, extending across
the house from north to south, with family portraits gazing
down from the walls, the windows looking out upon the hill-
side. North of the house is a vegetable and old-fashioned
flower garden, with box-edged paths, back of a hemlock hedge.
Here Mr. Mitchell has lived his serene life of a literary
country gentleman, with occasional excursions into the world, for
nearly half a century. " He was only a few years past thirty
when he purchased Edgewood, and settled down to country
life," I related, " but he had already made ' Ik Marvel's ' repu-
tation secure. He had published his ' Reveries of a Bachelor ' ;
' The Battle Summer/ being vivid notes from his observations
in Paris during the revolution days of 1848 ; ' Dream Life ' ;
and * Fresh Gleanings ? ; all marked by a delicate touch, a
light fancy, dashes of gentle satire, kindly philosophy, and
much sentiment, which captivated the leisurely thoughtful
reader. ' Fresh Gleanings/ treating in a light vein of foreign
scenes and experiences, was his first book, brought out in 1847,
after his return from long journeyings in Europe. He had
gone abroad for his health, which was delicate all through his
earlier years, and had spent half a winter in Jersey, the other
half in tramping about England visiting every county, and a

500

LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

year and a half on the Continent. Meanwhile he wrote letters
to the Albany Cultivator, afterward the Country Gentleman,
which formed the basis of his book. The < Eeveries of a
Bachelor' had its beginnings in an essay contributed to the
Southern Literary Messenger. This was ultimately expanded
into the little book which, first published in 1850, possessed
a fascination that none of its numerous imitators has attained.

Its revival a genera-
tion after the first
issue found its charm
undimmed.

<Ik Marvel's'
second foreign trip,
which resulted in ' The
Battle Summer,' was
also taken in part for
his health, which had
been impaired by the
confinement of a New
York office in which
he had been studying
law. Upon his return
he began in New York
under an assumed
name the periodical
publication of < The
Lorgnette : or Studies
of the Town by an
Opera-Goer,' composed of freehand satirical sketches of men
and things about the city, the authorship of which piqued
curiosity, as the matter provoked much comment. It was later
acknowledged, when published in book form in 1850.

" Before he came to Edgewood Mr. Mitchell had spent two
years in Venice as the American consul (1853-1854), during
which service he collected material for a contemplated history

DONALD G. MITCHELL.

tTARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN. 501

of the Venetian republic. This plan was not carried out, but
the notes were to some extent utilized in his later works.
His airy Edgewood books, < My Farm at Edgewood/ and
' Wet Days at Edgewood,' first appeared in the sixties. His
( Dr. Johns ' was also of this period. The ' English Lands,
Letters, and Kings/ and ' American Lands and Letters,' the
reminiscent works of his latter years, have the old charm and
touch, and have found their place among the lighter literary
histories.

" In what may perhaps he termed his specialty landscape
gardening, the refinement of farming, and the aesthetic aspects
of rural life, Mr. Mitchell's work has been that of a sort of
pioneer. It began in his youth, when, while working on his
grandfather's farm near Norwich after his graduation from
college, he won a silver cup from the New York Agricultural
Society as a prize for a plan of farm buildings. His ' Rural
Studies,' published in 1867, and reissued seventeen years after
in his Out of Town Places, with Hints for their Improvement/
became a standard book of its class. His interest in art has
been constant, pen and speech being employed in its behalf.
He has been a member of the council of the Yale Art School
since its establishment, and has occasionally given lectures
there. At one time he had a plan fully formed for establish-
ing a critical literary journal to be called The Examiner, but,
for some reason, it was abandoned ; in later years, however, his
editorial hand was shown in the conduct of Hearth and Home,
a magazine of a more popular order. He is a genuine New
Englander, being the son of a long time Connecticut Congrega-
tional minister, and grandson of a Connecticut chief justice."

Back in town we dined at the New Haven House, after
which we rode to the railway station, where Percy found his
" traps " forwarded from Boston, awaiting his order ; and we
parted, he taking a train for New York whence he was to

502 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES.

journey homeward to the West, I returning Eastward. As we
were exchanging good-byes, I expressed my regret that our
itinerary could not have been so arranged as to embrace the
entire range of New England literary landmarks, the homes of
the few other writers whom we had been obliged to pass by
unnoticed, or places celebrated by them ; but this would have
involved more time than Percy had at his disposal, and tangled
our routes. My buoyant friend, however, cheered me with his
hearty assurance that he was going back with a multitude of
pleasant impressions and a pretty fair idea, he thought, of the
hand which New England had had in the development of our
American literature.

" Come again," I cried, as with a final hand-grasp he sprang
up the Pullman steps ; " come again, and perhaps we'll con-
coct another scheme of pilgrimages into broader fields."

" Depend upon it, I shall," the fine fellow responded, and
the train was off.

INDEX.

Abbot Academy, Andover, Mass., 5.

Abbot, Samuel, a founder of Andover
Theological Seminary, 7.

Abbott, Gorham Dummer, brother of
Jacob and John S. C. Abbott, 167, 168,
448.

Abbott, Jacob, student at Bowdoin Col-
lege, 166, 167, 448 ; sketch of, 167-169 ;
his " Rollo Books," 166, 168-169 ; " Lucy
Books," 169; "Jonas Books," 169;
" Marco Paul Series," 169 ; " Francouia
Stories," 166, 169 ; " Florence and John
Stories," 169 ; " Harper Story Books,"
169 ; " Fewacres," country home of, 169.

Abbott, John Stephen Cabot, student at
Bowdoin College, 158, 448 ; sketch of,
167-169 ; his " Young Christian Series,"
168 ; " Mother at Home," 169 ; Life of
Napoleon Bonaparte, 167, 169 ; Life of
Napoleon III., 169 ; last home of, at
Fair Haven, 170.

Abbott Institute, New York, school of
the Abbott brothers, 168.

Adams, Abigail (Smith), wife of President
John Adams, 221 ; " Letters " of, 254.

Adams, Charles Francis, 1st, Boston
home of, 253 ; birthplace of, 254 ; works
of, 254.

Adams, Hannah, birthplace of, 416, 417 ;
sketch of, 416-420; her pioneer work,
" A View of Religious Opinions," 416,
418, 420 ; "A Summary History of New
England," 416, 419 ; " History of the
Jews," 417, 419 ; " Truth and Excellence
of the Christian Religion," 419 ; " Let-
ters on the Gospels," 420.

Adams, Prof. Herbert Baxter, 306.

Adams, John, Diary of, quoted, 176 ; 221,
250, 253, 254, 418, 419 ; schoolmaster and
law student in Worcester, Mass., 424.

Adams, John Quincy, law student in
Newburyport, Mass., 71 ; 253.

Adams, Phineas, founder of The
Monthly Anthology, 220.

Adams, Samuel, 144, 419.

Adams, Thomas, father of Hannah
Adams, 417 ; anecdotes of, 419.

Agassiz, Elizabeth (Gary), her Cambridge
School, 304 ; 305,

Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 217; home
of, Cambridge, Mass., 304; life and
work of, 304-306; initial Lowell In-
stitute lectures of, 1846-47, 305 ; works
of : " Contributions to the Natural
History of the United States," " Meth-
ods of Study in Natural History,"
" Geological Studies," 305 ; death and
grave of, 306 ; Longfellow's lines to,
305 ; Lowell's eulogy on, 354 ; 403.

Agassiz house, Cambridge, Mass., 304,
305,306.

Agassiz School for Young Ladies, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 304.

Agawam (Ipswich, Mass.), 173.

Albany Cultivator, Donald G. Mitchell's
Letters to, 500.

Alcott, Abby May, see Niericker.

Alcott, Abigail (May), wife of A. B.
Alcott, 375 ; sketch of, 388-389 ; 392,

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 264; in Boston,
267, 301, 394, 398, 402; his "Temple
School," 301. 394,395; of the Trascen-
dental Club, 302, 384, 388 ; in Concord,
Mass., 375, 384-386, 394, 395, 397-401 ;
376 ; sketch of, 388, 394-402 ; his public
" Conversations," 389, 397, 398, 400, 401 ;
in Philadelphia, 394 ; his experiment of
" Fruitlands," 396-397, 405, 406; Dean
of the School of Philosophy, 400, 401 ;

503

504

INDEX.

his books : " Conversations with Chil-
dren on the Gospels," 301, 394, 395;
" Tablets," 400 ; " Concord Days," 400 ;
"Table Talk," 400 ; " Sonnets and Can-
zonets," 401.

Alcott, Anna Bronson, see Pratt.

Alcott, Elizabeth, 391, 399.

Alcott, Louisa May, in Boston, 264, 267 ;
in Concord, 375, 388, 389, 390, 392, 394,
395, 397-101 ; sketch of, 389-394 ; an
army nurse, 391 ; 395, 397, 398, 399, 400,
401 ; grave of, 402 ; books of : " Flower
Fables," 390, 398 ; " Hospital Sketches,"
391; "Moods," 391, 392; "Little
Women," 391, 392, 395, 398, 400 ; " The
Old Fashioned Girl," 391; "Little
Men," 391, 392 ; " Shawl Straps," 392 ;
" Work," 390, 392 ; " The Modern Meph-
istopheles," 392; "My Girls," 392;
" Under the Lilacs," 392 ; " Jack and
Jill," 392 ; " Jo's Boys," 392 ; " Lulu's
Library," 391; "Transcendental Wild
Oats," 395.

Alcott family, in Concord, Mass., 375,
387-102; in Boston, 267, 389, 398, at
" Fruitlands," 396-397.

" Alcott House," Ham Common, England,
395.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, birthplace of,
Portsmouth, N.H., 89,93-94, 254 ; 91, 93 ;
sketch of, and mode of work, 94-96, 255,
256; editor of Every Saturday, 96;
editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 96, 338 ;
103, 152, 153 ; Boston home of, Mt.
Vernon Street, 254, 276; 255, 256; the
" little house in Pinckney Street," 274,
275, 276 ; earlier home in Charles Street,
276; Ponkapog, 277, 370; books of:
"The Bells, a Collection of Chimes,"
95; "Daisy's Necklace," 95; "The
Ballad of Babie Bell," 94, 95 ; " The
Course of True Love Never did Run
Smooth," 95 ;" Pampinea," 95 ; " Out
of his Head," 95 ; " Poems," a new col-
lection, 95 ; " The Story of a Bad Boy,"
93, 94, 96, 275 ; " Marjorie Daw," 96 ;
" Prudence Palfrey," 86 ; "A River-
mouth Romance," 96 ; " The Queen of
Sheba," 96 ; " The Stillwater Tragedy,"
96 ; " Mercedes," 96 ; " From Ponkapog
to Pesth," 96, 277 ; " Windham
Towers," 96; "The Sister's Tragedy,"

96 ; " The Old Town by the Sea," 89,
103, 275 ; " Unguarded Gates," 96 ;
" Judith and Holofernes," 96 ; " Flower
and Thorn," 255.
Alice Eliot " (Sarah Orne Jewett), 132.

Allen, Rev. William, president of Bow-
doin College, 1819-1839, birthplace of,
Pittsfield, Mass., 448 ; his biographical
dictionary, 448.

Allston, Ann (Chauning), first wife of
Washington Allston, 261, 296 ; death of,
in England, 297.

Allston, Martha Remington (Dana),
second wife of Washington Allston,
296.

Allston, Washington, 242, 248, 261 ; Cam-
bridge homes of, 295, 297 ; sketch of,
296-298 ; his friendship with Washing-
ton Irving and with Coleridge, 296;
with Wordsworth, Southey, and Lamb,
297 ; Lowell's picture of, 297 ; death of,
298; his "The Sylphs of the Seasons
and Other Poems," 296, 328 ; " Mo-
naldi," 297 ; his painting " Belshazzar's
Feast," 298.

"American First Class Book, The," 73-
486.

American Manufacturer, Whittier editor
of, 53.

American Monthly Magazine,^. P.Willis's
Boston periodical, 148, 157.

" American Scholar, The," Emerson's
Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1837, 302
384.

Amesbury, Mass., 37, 43, 48, 55 ; Whittier
landmarks in, 59-64 ; 486.

Amherst College, Jacob Abbott tutor,
afterwards professor, at, 167-168.

" An Old Bachelor," nom de plume of
William Lloyd Garrison, 81.

Andover, Mass., literary landmarks of,
4-21 ; 24, 25, 27.

Andover Hill, 4, 34, 167.

Andover Theological Seminary, 5, 7, 8, 9,
16, 17, 25, 34, 167.

Androscoggin River, 155, 165.

Annuals, The, 204.

Anthology Club, The, of 1804, Boston,
219 ; literary founders of, 221, 222 ; 419,

Anthology, the Monthly, see Monthly
Anthology.

Anti Slavery Annual, 100.

INDEX.

505

Anti-Slavery Standard, The, Lowell's con-
nection with, 348, 349 ; his poems pub-
lished in, 350.

Appian Way, Cambridge, Mass., 319, 321.

Appledore Island, Isles of Shoals, 110,
112, 114, 116, 117, 119, 122, 124.

Appleton Chapel, Harvard University,
Longfellow's funeral at, 336 ; Lowell's
funeral at, 356.

Appleton, Frances Elizabeth, see Long-
fellow.

Appleton, Nathan, 230, 329, 330.

Appleton, Gen. Samuel, the Puritan, 175.

Appleton, Thomas Gold, 229, 230, 231, 329.

Arbella, the ship, 207.

Arlington, Mass., 357.

" Artemus Ward," see Browne, Charles
Farrar.

Ash Street, Cambridge, Mass., 321.

Aspinwall, William H., 493.

Astor Library, New York, 425.

Athenaeum, Liverpool, model for Boston
Athenaeum, 223.

Atlantic Monthly, Lowell's editorship of,
60, 69, 125, 353 ; 69, 71 ; Aldrich's editor-
ship of, 96 ; Fields's editorship of, 98 ;
125, 132, 197, 261, 264, 282; birthday
breakfast of, tc- Holmes, 288 ; 289, 294 ;
Scudder's editorship of, 337, 338 ; 494.

" Attic Nights, The," 271.

Bachelor, Rev. Stephen, 45-46.

Bacheler, Theodate, 45.

Back Bay, Boston, 276, 285, 288.

Bacon, Delia, prophet of the Bacon-

Shakspere theory, grave of, 491 ; her

"Philosophy of the Plays of Shak-

speare Unfolded," 491.
Bacon, Rev. Leonard, grave of, 491.
Bailey, Gamaliel, editor of the National

Era, 59, 182.
Bailey, Rev. John, first minister of

Watertown, Mass., 144.
Bailey, Sarah Loring, 23.
Bancroft, Rev. Dr. Aaron, father of

George Bancroft, 423 ; his scholarship,

424 ; his Life of Washington, 424.
Bancroft, George, 217, 301 ; birthplace of,

423, 424 ; grave of, 424 ; sketch of, 424-425 ;

association with foreign scholars, 425 ;

Round Hill School at Northampton,

Mass., 425, 441 ; his " History of the

United States," 425, 429, 441, 443; in
Springfield, 429 ; 443.

Bar Harbor, Me., 10.

Barlow, Joel, 473, 490.

Barnard, Elizabeth, see Phillips.

Barnard, Frederick Augustus Porter,
birthplace of, 471 ; 487.

Barnard, Rev. Thomas, early minister of
Andover, Mass., 6, 25.

Bartlet, William, a founder of Andover
Theological Seminary, 8.

Bartlett, John, 356.

Bartol, Rev. Cyrus Augustus, 198; summer
home of, at Manchester-by-the-Sea,
Mass., 198-199; Boston home of, 252-
253 ; portrait-eulogies by, 252 ; essays,
253 ; sketch of, 253; 278 ; member of the
Transcendental club, 302.

Bass River, 185.

Bates, Arlo, home of, 252 ; his " The
Philistines," " The Puritans," and
" Under the Beech Tree," 252.

Baxter, Sylvester, 429.

Bay Colony, 173, 174.

Beacon Hill, Boston, 219, 242, 247-275 ; 276,
408.

Beacon Street, Boston, 219, 223, 228, 233,
235, 276, 285, 290, 408.

Bedford Street, Boston, 239.

Beecher, Catherine Esther, 153; her
"Young Ladies' Seminary" at Hart-
ford, Conn., 153, 485.

Beecher, Rev. Charles, 19.

Beecher, Rev. Edward, 158, 160.

Beecher, Mrs. Edward, 159, 160.

Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, 432 ; his sum-
mer home at Lenox, Mass., 459, 482,
483.

Beecher, Rev. Lyman, grave of, 491.

Beers, Prof. Henry Augustin, 145, 146, 152,
153, 473, 484, 498.

Bellamy, Edward, home of, Chicopee
Falls, Mass., 429 ; his "Looking Back-
ward," 429, 430, 431 ; personality and
work of, 429-432 ; his The New Nation,
431 ; " Equality," 431 ; " Miss Ludding-
ton's Secret," 431 ; " Dr. Hiedenhoff's
Process," 431; " The Blindman's World,"
431 ; " The Duke of Stockbridge," 431.

Bellamy, Dr. Joseph, 429.

Bellamy, Rev. Rufus K., father of Edward
Bellamy, 429.

506

INDEX.

Benjamin, Park, 148, 231 ; editorship of
The mw World, New York, 329.

Bennington, Vt., Wm. Lloyd Garrison an
editor in, 81.

Berkeley Street, Cambridge, Mass., 322.

Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass.,
448.

Berkshire Hills, Mass., 205, 431, 446, 451,
452, 454, 457, 458, 471.

Beverly, Mass., 184 ; literary landmarks
of, 185-198.

" Beverly-by-the-Depot," 198.

Beverly Bridge, 198, 200 ; scene of " The
Toll Gatherer's Day," 200.

Beverly Farms, Mass., 198, 199.

Beverly Historical Society, 187.

Bigelow, George Tyler, class of 1829,
Harvard, 285.

" Blackboard," the pirate, at Isles of
Shoals, 118.

Elaine, James Gillespie, 183.

Bliss, Dr. Daniel, early minister of Con-
cord, Mass., 180.

Bliss, Phebe, see Emerson.

Blythe, Capt. Samuel, of the British brig
" Boxer," War of 1812, 140.

Boston Athenaeum, 219, 220, 221, 223, 271,
419.

Boston Daily Advertiser, 283, 291.

Boston Latin School, N. P. Willis a pupil
in, 147 ; Edward Everett Hale, a pupil
and a teacher in, 290.

Boston, literary landmarks of, 219-294.

Boston Miscellany, 7%e,374.

Boston Post, 197.

Boston Public Library, George Ticknor's
library in, 228 ; 271, 290.

Boston Radical Club, 253.

Boston Recorder, founded by Nathaniel
Willis, 144 ; N. P. Willis's poems in, 147.

Boston Tea Party, 144.

Bowdoin College, 9, 17, 136, 137; Long-
fellow at, 142, 155, 157-158, 161, 162 ; Haw-
thorne at, 142, 155, 162 ; 163, 164, 165 ; the
Abbott brothers at, 166-167 ; Cyrus A.
Bartol at, 253 ; 448.

Bowles, Samuel, editorship of the Spring-
field Republican, 427 ; grave of, 429.

Bow Street Theatre, the old, Portsmouth,
N.H., 106.

Boylston Place, Boston, 288.

Bradford, George, of Concord, Mass., 385.

Bradstreet, Anne, 4, 6, 21 ; home of, in
North Andover, Mass., 22-25, 40, 41;
sketch of, 26-32 ; works of, in Prose and
Verse, 23, 30, 31, 32 ; grave of, 34 ; in
Ipswich, Mass., 173, 175, 178.

Bradstreet, Dudley, sketch of, 24-25.

Bradstreet, Governor Simon, 23, 24, 26, 27,
32, 175; grave of, in Salem, 210; site of
house of, 215.

Bradstreet, Rev. Simon, 30.

Bradstreet homestead, the ancient, North
Andover, Mass., 22,23, 25, 31.

Brainard, John Gardner Calkins, 472;
sketch of, 485.

Braintree, Mass., 71.

Brattle Square Church, Boston, 222 ; John
G. Palfrey and Edward Everett, minis-
ters of, 312 ; Joseph S. Buckminster min-
ister of, 419.

Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass., 321, 332,
337, 340 ; formerly the " Old Road," 342.

Brazil, " Hillard's Readers " in schools
of, 265.

Brewer, Emelia (Field), 463.

Bridge, Commodore Horatio, 158; his
"Personal Recollections of Haw-
thorne," 164 ; the " Snow Image " dedi-
cated to, 164 ; 165.

Briggs, Charles Frederick, 344, 350, 351.

" Brightwood," J. G. Holland's later
Springfield home, 428.

Brock, Rev. John, early missionary at
Isles of Shoals, 119.

Brocklebank, Capt. Samuel, of Rowley,
Mass., in the Sudbury Fight, King
Philip's War, 364, 369.

Brook Farm, Hawthorne at, 266; 294;
George Ripley, founder of, 302.

Brooks, Rev. Charles Timothy, 200; sketch
of, 200-201.

Brooks, Rev. Edward, 244.

Brooks, Mary Ann (Phillips), mother of
Phillips Brooks, 7.

Brooks, Rev. Phillips,?; his country
home in the Phillips Manse, North
Andover, Mass., 22, 34.

Brooks, William Gray, father of Rev.
Phillips Brooks, 7.

Brown, Alice, 275 ; her " The Day of his
Youth," 275 ; Meadow Grass," 275.

Brown, J. Appleton, 126.

Brown, John of Osawatomie, F. B. San-

INDEX.

507

bora's enlistment in the cause of, 376-
377 ; Alcott's interest in, 399 ; daughters
of, with the Alcotts in Concord, Mass.,
400.

Brown, Moses, a founder of Andover
Theological Seminary, 8.

Brown University, George D. Prentice at,
486.

Browne, Charles Farrar ("Artemus
Ward"), 102; sketch of, 170-172; "Ar-
temus Ward: His Book," 171; "The
Babes in the Woods," 171 ; " Among the
Mormons," 171 ; " Sixty Minutes in
Africa," 171 ; " Great Moral Show," 171.

Brunswick, Maine, 17, 18, 155, 160, 162, 163,
170.

Bryant, Frances (Fairchild), wife of W. C.
Bryant, 464.

Bryant, Dr. Peter, father of W. C.
Bryant, 249, 466, 467.

Bryant, Sally (Snell), mother of W. C.
Bryant, 466, 467*

Bryant, William Cullen, 99, 142 ; a con-
tributor to Dana's " The Idle Man," 247,
248; story of " Thanatopsis," 248-250,
467-468 ; of " The Fragment," 249 ; " The
Ages," Phi Beta Kappa poem, 1821, 249 ;
250 ; birthplace of, Cummington, Mass.,
446, 448, 4!5 -4I5U ; 459, 460; in Great
Barrington, Mass., 464, 465; scenes of
his favorite poems, 465, 466, 468 ; his first
published poem, 467 ; his youthful sat-
ire, " The Embargo," 467 ; story of " To
a Waterfowl," 468 ; assistant editor of
the New York Review, 469 ; editor of the
New York Evening Post, 469-470; his
second collection of poems, 470; trans-
lation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, 470 ;
his death and burial place, 470 ; as pic-
tured by Hawthorne, 470 ; 481.

Buckingham Street, Cambridge, Mass.,
337. .

Buckingham's Boston Monthly, see New
England Magazine, Buckingham's.

Buckminster, the Rev. Joseph of Ports-
mouth, N.H., 222.

Buckminster, Rev. Joseph Stevens, of the
Anthology Club of 1804, 222, 419.

" Bulfinch Front," State House, Boston,
102.

Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, first minister of
Concord, Mass., 179.

Bull, Ole, 125 ; the " Musician " in " Tales
of a Wayside Inn," 368.

Bunker Hill, Battle of, 234, 341; 285, 286, 314.

Burnett, Mabel (Lowell), 352.

Burr, President Aaron, of Princeton Col-
lege, 438, 439.

Burr, Aaron, 178, 439.

Burroughs, John, 191.

Burroughs, Capt. William, of the U. S.
brig " Enterprise," War of 1812, 140.

Bushnell, Rev. Horace, a student at Yale,
489.

Byfield, Mass., 71, 86.

Bynner, Edwin Lassetter, sketch of, 293-
294 ; his " Agnes Surriage," 293, 294 ; his
other books : " Penelope's Suitors,"
"Nimport," "The Tritons," "The
Begum's Daughter," and " Zachary
Phips," 294.

Cable, George Washington, "Tarry-
awhile," Northampton home of, 443,
444 ; sketch of, 444-445 ; his books : " Old
Creole Days," " The Grandissimes,"
"Madame Delphine," "Dr. Sevier,"
" History of New Orleans," " The Si-
lent South," " John March, Southern-
er," 445.

Cabot, James Elliot, biographer of Emer-
son, 180.

Cambridge, Mass., literary landmarks of,
295-356.

Cambridge Common, 316, 319.

Cambridge Port Private Grammar School ,
Holmes and Margaret Fuller pupils in,
296.

Campbell, Margaret Wade, see Deland.

"Canoe Meadow," Holmes's ancestral
country seat, Pittsfield, Mass., 450.

Carleton, James H., 38.

Carlyle, Jane, 381.

Carlyle, Thomas, correspondence of, with
Emerson, 311 ; Emerson's friendship
with, 380-381.

Carpet Bag, The, 102, 170.

Carroll, Prof. Charles C., 328.

Carroll, Rt. Rev. John, D.D., 419.

Gary, Alice, contributor to The National
Era, 59.

Gary, Elizabeth, see Agassiz.

Gary, Phoebe, contributor to The National

508

INDEX.

Catholic World, The, 270 ; Father Hecker
editor of, 397.

Cedar Island, Isles of Shoals, 110, 114.

Central Court, Boston, 290.

Century Magazine, 69, 428.

Chain-bridge, Newburyport, Mass., 65.

Channing, Edward Tyrrel, an editor of
the North American Review, 249.

Channing, Ellen Kilshaw (Fuller), wife
of W. E. Channing, the poet, 371.

Channing, Mary Elizabeth, see Higginson.

Channing, William Ellery, 32, 137, 217,
250; Boston home of, 256, 258, 259;
personality and methods of work, 258-
259 ; sketch of, 258-261 ; 285, 296, 301, 371.

Channing, William Ellery, 2d, the poet,
home of, Concord, Mass., 371, 376 ; 374,
385,399.

Channing, William Henry, biographer of
William Ellery Channing, 258 ; class of
1829, Harvard, 284.

Chapel Street, New Haven, Conn., 495.

Charles River, Mass., 278,285, 297, 326,327,
332.

Charles Street, Boston, 276, 285.

Charleston (S.C.) Courier, James G. Perci-
val's poems in, 497.

Charter Oak, Hartford, Conn., 487.

Charter-Street Burying-ground, Salem,
Mass., 206; Hawthorne's sketches of,
209-210 ; 222.

Cheever, Ezekiel, the Puritan school-
master, house of, in Ipswich, Mass., 178.

Cheever, Rev. Dr. George Barrell, 158 ; his
" Deacon Giles's Distillery," 158.

Cherry Street, Cambridge, Mass., 299.

Chestnut Street, Boston, 228, 239, 240, 242,
247, 248, 252, 253, 259.

Chicopee Falls, Mass., 429.

Child, Prof. Francis James, home and
study of, Cambridge, 307-309 ; his " Eng-
lish and Scottish Popular Ballads," 308,
310 ; sketch of, 309-310 ; British Poets
edited by, 310 ; 352 ; anecdote of Lowell
and, 354 ; 356.

Child, Lydia Maria, 100, 301 ; her Juvenile
Miscellany, 457.

" Children's Chair," gift of Cambridge

school children to Longfellow, 332.
Choate Bridge, Ipswich, Mass., 179.
Christ Church, Cambridge, Mass., 319.
Christ Church, Hartford, Conn., 484.

Civil War, John S. C. Abbott's history of,
169 ; 232, 254, 268, 289, 292 ; T. W. Higgin-
son's service in, 318 ; 319, 351, 353, 360,
378, 391, 445, 475, 482, 494, 497.

Clarke, Rev. James Freeman, 217, 265, 266 ;
class of 1829, Harvard, 284; 288, 289;
member of the Transcendental Club,
302; 403.

Cleav eland, P,rof . Parker, of Bowdoin Col-
lege, 164.

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne ("Mark
Twain "), 472 ; second Hartford home
of, 473-474 ; sketch of, 474-478 ; his " In-
nocents Abroad," 474, 476 ; other books
of: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras," " Roughing It," " The Gild-
ed Age," "The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer,"" The Prince and the Pauper,'
" Personal Recollections of Joan of
Arc," " Pudd'nhead Wilson," " The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," " A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court," 476.

Cleveland, Henry Russell, one of the
" Five of Clubs," 325.

Cleveland Plaindealer, 171.

Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., 102.

Cobbett, Rev. Thomas, the Puritan minis-
ter, of Ipswich, Mass., 174, 177.

Coffin, Joshua, Whittier's schoolmaster,
49, 72; homestead of, Newburyport,
Mass., 86.

Cogswell, Dr. Joseph Green, 425, 441.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 247 ; Washing-
ton Allston's friendship with, 296, 297 ;
his portrait of, 297 ; 330, 380.

College Library, Harvard University, 306,
329.

Columbia University, 193, 198, 471.

Commonwealth The, F. B. Sanborn's edi-
torship of, 378.

Concord, Mass., literary landmarks of,
370-414.

Concord Academy, Concord, Mass., 372.

Concord Athenaeum, Concord, Mass.,
382.

Concord Fight, the, 134, 180, 367, 407, 410.

Concord Lyceum, Concord, Mass., 372.

Concord River, 395.

Concord Sohool of Philosophy, 378, 388 ;
sketch of , 400 ; Louisa M. Alcott's hu-
morous description of, 401.

INDEX.

509

Concord Social Circle, Emerson's interest
in, 382.

Congress, U.S., 54, 55 ; Webster in, from
Portsmouth, N.H., 105; Stephen Long-
fellow in, from Portland, Me., 137 ;
Timothy Fuller in, 300 ; John G. Pal-
frey in, 312 ; 441 ; James Hillhouse in,
492.

Connecticut Mirror, J. G. C. Brainard
editor of, 485.

Connecticut River, 245, 266, 478.

Connecticut Valley, the, 415, 425-145, 485.

" Constitution," U. S. frigate, 141, 283.

Continental Congress, 7.

Conway, Moncure Daniel, biographer of
Hawthorne, 205.

Coolidge, John Templeman, Jr., 109.

Cooper, James Fenimore, 99 ; a student at
Yale, 489.

Copley Sqtfare, Boston, 290.

Corsair, The, N. P. Willis's connection
with, 151.

Cotton, Rev. John, the Puritan minister,
of Boston, 27, 244.

Cotton, Rev. Rowland, son of Rev. John
Cotton, 244,

Council of Safety, Massachusetts Bay
Colony, 25.

Country Brook, Haverhill, Mass., 38, 43.

Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky., 53, 486.

Craigie, Andrew, apothecary general to
the American Army of the Revolution,
326; of the Craigie house, Cambridge,
Mass., 326-327.

Craigie, Madam, in the Craigie house,
Cambridge, Mass., 325, 326 ; sketch and
anecdotes of, 326-327 ; death of, 329.

Craigie house, Cambridge, Mass., see Long-
fellow (Craigie) house.

Craigie Street, Cambridge, Mass., 322, 327,
337.

Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 356.

Crayon, The, New York, 187, 188

Cummins, Maria, "The Lamplighter,"
457 ; pupil at Mrs. Sedgwick's school in
Lenox, Mass., 457.

Cummingtou, Mass., birthplace of William
Cullen Bryant, 446, 448, 459 ; 465 ; the
poet's early life here, 466-469 ; 481.

Curtis, Judge Benjamin Robbins, 225;
class of 1829, Harvard, 285.

Curtis, Burrill, 385,

Curtis, George Ticknor, 225.

Curtis, George William, 99, 311, 356, 384 ;
his sketch of a " Monday evening" at
Emerson's quoted, 385-386; 387, 413,494,
495.

Clashing, Caleb, 54 ; his " Reminiscences
of Spain," 72 ; 77 ; house of, 86.

Cushman, Charlotte, pupil at Mrs. Sedg-
wick's school, in Lenox, Mass., 467.

Custom House, Boston, Matthew Whit-
tier in, 47 ; Wilson Flagg in, 192 ; Haw-
thorne in, 414, 441 ; Bancroft collector
in, 441.

Custom House, New York, Herman Mel-
ville in, 456.

Custom House, Salem, Mass., 202 ; Haw-
thorne's office in, 206 ; 208, 212, 414.

Dana, Edmund Trowbridge, 222.

Dana, Chief Justice Francis, 248, 250.

Dana, James Dwight, tomb of, 492.

Dana, Martha Remington, see Allston.

Dana, Richard, 250.

Dana, Richard Henry, the poet, 32, 153 ;
" old gray mansion " of, at Manchester,
Mass., 198, 250 ; 217, 222 ; Boston home
of, 247-248 ; sketch of, 247-250 ; his " The
Idle Man," 247, 248, 497 ; " The Buc-
caneer," 247, 248 ; his Shaksperean lec-
tures, 248; editorship of the North
American Review, 249 ; 296, 468, 497.

Dana, Richard Henry, jr., his "Two
Years Before the Mast," 247, 250-251,
454 ; " The Seaman's Friend," 251 ; " To
Cuba and Back." 251 ; defends fugitive
slaves, 251 ; grave of, in Rome, 252 ; 456.

Dana mansion, the old, Cambridge, Mass.,
299.

Dante Club, The, meeting in Longfellow's
house, 335.

Dartmouth College, 20, 224 ; George Tick-
nor a student at, 225 ; 423 ; founder of,
440.

Day, Jeremiah, president of v Yale College,
1817-1846, 492.

De Normandie, Rev. James, 126.

Deer Island, Newburyport, Mass., 66, 67,
68, 69, 70.

Deer-field, Mass., 71.

Deering, Nathaniel, 142 ; his tragedies,
" Cantbasset," and " Bozzaris," 142.

Deeriug Woods, 139,

510

INDEX.

Deland.Margaret, home of, 261-262 ; sketch
of, 263-264; her " John Ward Preacher,"
261, 264 ; other books : " The Old Gar-
den and Other Verses," "Sidney,"
" Philip and His Wife," 264.

Democratic Journal, The, 59.

Democratic Review, 414.

Denison, Maj. Gen. Daniel, 175.

Denison, Patience (Dudley), 175.

Detroit Free Press, The, 102.

Dewey, Rev. Orville, 458 ; birthplace of,

471.

Dial, The, Margaret Fuller first editor of,
301 ; some of its contributors, 302, 374 ;
Emerson's editorship of, 302, 384.

Diary of John Adams, 176, 253.

Dickens, Charles, 189 ; original manu-
scripts of, in Fields's Library, 278 ; a
guest of Jas. T. Fields, 278 ; at Long-
fellow's rooms, 330 ; 338.

Dodge, Mary Abigail (" Gail Hamilton "),
home of, 181, 184 ; sketch of, 181-183 ; her
books : " Country Living and Country
Thinking," " Gala Days," " A New At-
mosphere," 182; "Whittier's "Lines"
011, 182 ; 358.

Dorchester Heights, Boston, 312.

Downing, Emanuel, 32.

Downing, Sir George, 34.

Duck Island, Isles of Shoals, 110, 114, 116,
119.

Dudley, Mercy, 29, 175.

Dudley, Governor Thomas, 26, 27, 175.

Dunbar, Cynthia, see Thoreau.

Dunlap, Frances, see Lowell.

Dwight, Sereno Edwards, biographer of
Jonathan Edwards, 440.

Dwight, Theodore, 440, 473.

Dwight, Theodore, son of above, 440.

Dwight, Timothy, president Yale College,
1797-1817, sketch of, 439-440 ; his Revolu-
tionary song " Columbia," and " Con-
quest of Canaan," 439 ; Student at Yale
College, 490.

"Earl of Halifax" tavern, Ports-
mouth, N.H., 92, 93.
East Haverhill, Mass., 36.
East India merchants, old time, 317.
East Meadow Brook, Haverhill, Mass. ,43.
East Parish, Haverhill, Mass., 36, 44.
Eastern Argus, 144.

Easton, Nicholas, 175.

" Edgewood," home of Donald G. Mitchell,
New Haven, Conn., 497, 498,^00.

Edrehi, Israel, the " Spanish Jew," in
the " Tales of a Wayside Inn," 367.

Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, site of home of,
Northhampton, Mass., 433 ; memorial to,
433 ; sketch of, 434-440, 460-461 ; tribute
of, to Sarah Pierrepont, 435 ;" A Narra-
tive of Surprising Conversions" by, 436 ;
" Essays on the Freedom of the Will,"
438, 461 ; manuscript letter of, 440 ;
" Edwards Hall," Stockbridge home of,
460-461 ; anecdote of, 461 ; other books of,
written at Stockbridge : " God's End in
Creation,*' and " The Nature of Vir-
tue, " 461; tablet to, 463 ; student at Yale
College, 490.

Edwards, Jonathan, 2d, second president
of Union College, 439.

Edwards, Judge Pierrepont, 439.

Edwards, Sarah (Pierrepont), wife of Jona-
than Edwards, 435, 436; death of,
439.

Edwards, Rev. Timothy, father of Jona-
than Edwards, 434, 439.

Eliot, Anna, see Ticknor.

Eliot, Charles William, president of Har-
vard University, 356.

Eliot, Samuel, 227.

Eliot Congregational Church, Roxbury,
Mass., Jacob Abbott pastor of, 168.

" Ellen Louise " (Louise Chandler Moul-
ton), 102.

Ellery Street, Cambridge, Mass., 299.

Ellery, William, of Rhode Island, 250.

Elm Street, Concord, Mass., 376.

" Elmwood," Cambridge Mass., 83 ; sketch
of, 340-344 ; 352 ; Lowell's love of, 356 ;
Lowell pictured among his books here,
356-357.

Embargo, The, 134, 317 ; Bryant's youthful
satire on, 467.

Emerson, Charles, brother of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, 409.

Emerson, Edward, of Newbury, Mass.,
179-180.

Emerson, Edward, brother of R. W. Emer-
son, student in Harvard College, 409 ; his
school, in which R. W. Emerson taught,
409.

Emerson, Dr. Edward, son of R. W r

INDEX.

511

Emerson, 379; his "Emerson at Con-
cord," 379, 383, 386.

Emerson, Elizabeth (Bulkeley), 179.

Emerson, Ellen, daughter of R. \V. Emer-
son, 383, 390.

Emerson, Ellen (Tucker), first wife of
R. W. Emerson, 409.

Emerson, Rev. Joseph, son of Thomas
Emerson the emigrant, pioneer minister
of Meudon, Mass., 179.

Emerson, Rev. Joseph, early minister of
Maiden, Mass., 180.

Emerson, Lydia (Jackson), second wife of
R. W. Emerson, 301, 380.

Emerson, Mary (Moody), wife of Rev.
Joseph Emerson, of Maiden, Mass.,
180.

Emerson, Mary, R. W. Emerson's " Aunt
Mary," 372.

Emerson, Phoebe (Bliss), grandmother of
R. W. Emerson, 180; married to Ezra
Ripley, 407 ; 408 ; witness of the Concord
Fight, 410, 412.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, minister in Bos-
ton, 26 ; 147 ; " Parnassus," 150, 386 ; 174 ;
ancestry of, 179-181 ; 198, 217, 220, 253,
254, 300, 301 ; in the Transcendental
movement, 302, 384 ; association with
The Dial, 302, 384 ; the Emerson-Carlyle
Correspondence, 311 ; 318, 320, 330. 372,
373,374, 376 ; house of, in Concord, Mass.,
378-379, 381, 383 ; sketch of, 380-387, 407-
410; home of, in the " Old Manse," 380,
385, 407-410 ; " Nature," 380, 383, 410 ;
intimacy of, with Carlyle, 380-381 ; intro-
duction of Carlyle's works to America,
381 ; the " Battle Monument " hymn,
384 ; Phi Beta Kappa oration of, 1837,
384; "Essays," second book of, 384;
other books of : " Representative Men,"
" English Traits," " Conduct of Life,"
" May Day," " Society and Solitude,"
" Letters and Social Aims," " Lectures
and Biographical Sketches," "Miscel-
lanies," 386; personal appearance of,
386-387; 388, 390, 394, 395, 396, 398, 399, 403,
411,413,414.

Emerson, Rebecca (Waldo), wife of
Edward Emerson, of Newbury, 180.

Emerson, Ruth (Haskins), mother of
R. W. Emerson, 181, 407, 408.

Emerson, Thomas, the emigrant, of Ips-

wich, Mass., first American ancestor of
R. W. Emerson, 174, 179.

Emerson, Rev.William, of Concord, Mass.,
grandfather of R. W. Emerson, 180, 407.

Emerson, Rev. William, 2d, father of
R. W. Emerson, minister in Harvard,
Mass., 180; minister of First Church,
Boston, 181 ; member of the Anthology
Club of 1804, 220, 221; 254, 396, 407.

Emerson, William, brother of R. W.
Emerson, 372; his school for girls in
which R. W. Emerson taught, 383, 409.

Endicott, Governor John, 175, 177.

" Enterprise," U. S. brig, 140.

Essex Bridge, see Beverly Bridge.

Essex County, Mass., 173.

Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 212.

Essex Street, old, Boston, 225, 230.

" Ethan Spike of Hornby," See Whittier,
Matthew F.

Evening Mirror, New York, 95, 152.

Evening Post, New York, Bryant's editor-
ship of, 469-470.

Everett, Alexander, 226.

Everett, Edward, 222, 226, 291, 312, 316.

Everett, Rev. Oliver, 222.

Everett, William, home of, in Cambridge,
Mass., 316.

Every Saturday, 96.

Fair-child, Prances, see Bryant.

Fairfield Street, Boston, 289.

Fairfields," Wenham, Mass., 184.

" Fanny Fern " (Sara Payson Willis), see

Parton.
Farnum, Charles Haight, biographer of

Parkman, 241.
Farnham, Martha, early friend of the

Garrison family, 79.
Federal-Street Church, Boston, Win. E.

Channing minister of, 260.
"Fellows, Ma'am," Longfellow's first

schoolmistress, 137.
Felton, Cornelius Conway, birthplace of,

72 ; in Cambridge, 325 ; one of the " Five

of Clubs," 325 ; 326, 330.
"Fewacres," Farmington, Me., country

home of Jacob Abbott, 169.
Field, Cyrus West, birthplace of, 463.
Field, Rev. David Dudley, of Stockbridge,

Mass., tablet to, 463.

512

INDEX.

Field, David Dudley, the jurist, in Stock-
bridge, Mass., 463.

Field, Emelia, see Brewer.

Field, Rev. Henry Martin, birthplace of,
463.

Field, Judge Stephen Johnson, 463.

Fields, Annie (Adams), 123, 125, 126, 277.

Fields, James Thomas, 15, 60, 69, 70, 89 ;
sketch of, 97-99 ; books of : " Yesterdays
with Authors," " Underbrush," " The
Family Library of British Poetry," 98 ;
"Ballads and other Verses," 99; 102,
109, 166, 199 ; " Thunderbolt Hill," sum-
mer home of, 199; 215, 271; Boston
home of, 276, 277-278 ; 281, 365.

First Church, Boston, 181.

First Church, Ipswich, Mass., 176.

First Church, of New Haven, Rev. Leon-
ard Bacon minister of, 491.

First Church, Newburyport, Mass., 68, 73,
83.

First Congregational Church, Northamp-
ton, Mass., Jonathan Edwards tablet
in, 433 ; 434.

First Parish Church, Cambridge, Rev.
Abiel Holmes's ministry in, 316.

First South Carolina Volunteers, Col.
Higginson's regiment of freed slaves in
the Civil War, 318.

Fiske, John (Edmund Fiske Green), 239 ;
homes of, in Cambridge, 321, 322 ; sketch
of, 322-324; books of: "Outlines of
Cosmic Philosophy," " The Unseen
World," " Darwinism," " Excursions of
an Evolutionist," and "The Destiny
of Man," 323 ; " The Idea of God,"
" The Doctrine of Evolution," "' Through
Nature to God," " The Critical Period
of American History," "The Begin-
nings of New England," " The Ameri-
can Revolution," "The Discovery of
America," "Old Virginia," "The
Mississippi Valley in the Civil War,"
and " Myth and Myth Makers," 324.

Fiske, John, great-grandfather of John
Fiske, 322.

" Five of Clubs, The," 325.

Flagg, Wilson, 191; sketch of, 192-193;
books of: "Studies in the Field and
Forest," "Halcyon Days," "A Year
with the Trees," and " A Year with the
Birds," 192.

Fletcher, Grace, see Webster.

Folsom, Charles, 223.

Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass.,
440.

Forest City, see Portland, Me.

Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, 83.

Fort Constitution, Portsmouth, N.H.,
124.

Foxcroft, Phebe, see Phillips.

Francis, Rev. Convers, of Watertown,
Mass., 302.

Franklin Academy, Andover, Mass., 5.

Franklin, Benjamin, 75, 144, 439.

Free Church, Worcester, Mass., T. W. Hig-
ginson minister of, 318.

"Freemasons' Arms" tavern, Portland,
Me., 139.

Friends' Meetinghouse, Amesbury,Mass.,
61 ; Whittier's pew in, 62.

Fruitlands Community, 395; Louisa M.
Alcott's story of, in "Transcendental
Wild Oats," 395 ; 396-397.

Fuller, Ellen Kilshaw, see Channing.

Fuller (Ossoli), Sarah Margaret, 296, 298 ;
birthplace of, 299 ; sketch of, 299-304 ;
" Conversations " of, in Boston, 301, 302 ;
association of, with The Dial, 301 ; be-
comes Countess Ossoli, 303 ; her pro-
jected " History of the Roman Repub-
lic," 303, 304 ; " Life Within and Life
Without," 303; her translations, 304;
" Women in the Nineteenth Century,"
304; her tragic death, 303-304; 339,371,
394.

Fuller, Timothy, father of Margaret
Fuller, 300.

"Gail Hamilton," see Dodge, Mary
Abigail.

Gardiner, Rev. John Sylvester John, first
president of the Boston "Anthology
Club " of 1804, 221 ; classical school in
the " study" of, 221, 225 ; George Tick-
nor and William H. Prescott pupils of,
221, 225 ; 226, 228, 235.

Gardiner, William H., 235.

Gardner, Anne Downing, 32, 34.

Gardner, Capt. Joseph, 32.

Garrison, Abijah, father of William Lloyd
Garrison, 79.

Garrison, William Lloyd, Whittier's first
poem published by, 50, 51, 52 ; 55 ; birth-

INDEX.

513

place of, 73, 78 ; sketch of, 79-83 ; grave
of, 83 ; statues of, 83 ; 230, 350.

Gay, Sidney Howard, editor of the Anti-
slavery Standard, 348.

Gazette, The Portland, Me., 138.

" Gazette of the Upper Ten Thousand,
The," 152.

Genius of Universal Emancipation, of
Baltimore, Md., Garrison editor of, 81.

Gerry, Elbridge, 341.

Gilman, Arthur, 448.

Gilman, Edward, 131.

Gloucester, Mass., 16, 215, 328.

Godwin, Park, 467,468.

' Gold house," the, Pittsfield, Mass., 449.

Gold, Thomas, 449.

Goodell, Abner Cheney, 214 ; historic house
of, Salem, Mass., 214-215 ; editor of the
" Acts and Resolves of the Province of
Massachusetts Bay," 214.

Goodrich, Samuel Griswold (" Peter Par-
ley "), the "Peter Parley Books" of,
100, 169 ; the " Token," 148 ; 497.

Goold, William, 143.

Gorham, Lydia, see Phillips.

Gorham, Judge Nathaniel, 7.

Gorham, N.H., home of Judge Longfellow,
the poet's grandfather, 134, 137.

Gosport, Isles of Shoals, 111.

Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 86, 184.

Gould, Elizabeth Porter, 86, 184.

Gould, Hannah Flagg, 73, 77 ; home of, 84 ;
sketch of, 86 ; her " The Veteran and the
Child," " The Scar of Lexington," and
" Gathered Leaves," 86.

Gould, Thomas R., 98.

Granary burying-ground, Boston, 219, 281.

Grant, Judge Robert, 218.

Graylock Mountain, of the Berkshires,
Mass., 451, 452, 458.

Great Barrington, Mass., 446, 448, 459 ; lit-
erary landmarks of, 464-466; Bryant
homestead in, 464 ; 468, 469, 470.

Great Boar's Head, Hampton, N.H., 70.

Green, The, New Haven, Conn., 488, 492,
495.

Green, Edmund Brewster, father of John
Fiske, 322-323.

Green, Edmund Fiske, see John Fiske.

Green, Mary Fiske (Bound), 323.

Green, Ruth, seeWhittier.

Greenleaf , Sarah, see Whittier.

Greenwood, Grace, a contributor to the
National Era, 59.

Grinnell, Joseph, 153.

Groton, Mass., Fuller family in, 300.

Grove Street, New Haven, Conn., 491.

" Guerriere," British frigate, 141.

Guiney,Louise Imogen, books of : "Songs
at the Start," " The White Sail," " A
Roadside Harp," " England and Yester-
day," " The Martyr's Idyl," and " Pa-
trins,"268; 270.

Guiney, Gen. Patrick R., 268.

Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, birth-
place and boyhood homes of, 290 ; sketch
of, 290-293 ; his " Story of a New England
Boyhood," 290; "The Man Without a
Country," 291, 292; "My Double and
How He Undid Me," 291 ; " Ten Times
One is Ten," 291-292 ; " In His Name,"
" The Ingram Papers," and " Philip
Nolan's Friends," 292 ; " Lend a Hand "
clubs instituted by, 293 ; house of, 293,
294.

Hale, Rev. John, minister of Beverly,
Mass., in witchcraft times, 187.

Hale, Nathan, father of E. E. Hale, 291.

Hale, Capt. Nathan, 291.

Haley, Samuel, of the Isles of Shoals,
112, 113.

Haley's Island, Isles of Shoals, 110, 112,
114.

Half- Way Rock, Isles of Shoals, 116.

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 95, 99, 469 ; poetical
allusion of to Hillhouse, 489.

Hallowell, Me., Academy, 167.

Halpin, Charles Graham ("Miles
O'Reilly"), 102.

Hamilton, Mass, 181-184.

Hamilton College* Sereno Edwards
Dwight president of, 1833-1835, 44p ;
Charles Dudley Warner at, 481.

Hampshire Gazette, in which Bryant's
first poem was published, 467.

Hampton, N.H., 45, 70.

Hampton River, 70.

Hancock, John, 92, 419.

" Harley College," 165.

Harper 's Monthly, 13, 69, 169.

Hartford, Conn., 20, 53, 54, 153; -"Gail
Hamilton " teacher at, 182 ; 470 ; literary
landmarks of, 472-488.

514

INDEX.

Hartford Courant, Charles Dudley War-
ner editor of, 481, 482.

Hartford Press, 482.

Hartford Wits, The : John Trumbull, 472,
487, 491 ; his " M'Fingal," 487 ; Dr.
Lemuel Hopkins, 472, 488 ; contributor
to " The Anarchiad," " The Echo," and
" The Political Greenhouse," 488 ; Joel
Barlow, 473, 488, 490; his "Vision of

Columbus," 488 ; Theodore Dwight, the
elder, 473, 488 ; contributor to " The
Echo," 488 ; Col. David Humphreys, 473,
488 contributor to " The Anarchiad,"
his life of Gen. Israel Putnam,
on Washington's staff, 488; first
American ambassador to Lisbon ,488; 490.

Harvard Advocate, The, 194.

Harvard College or University, Samuel
Webber, president of, 1806-10, 8 ; 34 ;
C. C. Felton president of, 1860-62, 72,
325; 88, 94, 122, 137, 148; Longfellow
professor in, 162, 325 ; Nathaniel Rogers
president of, 1683-84, 175 ; 193, 194, 217,
220; John T. Kirkland president of,
1810-28, 222 ; George Ticknor professor
in, 227 ; Josiah Quincy president of,
1829-45, 228 ; 229, 237, 244, 246, 250, 253,
260, 265, 271 ; Dr. Holmes professor in
the Harvard Medical School, 279, 280;
290, 295, 296, 304 ; Jared Sparks presi-
dent of, 1849-53, 306 ; Francis J. Child
professor in, 307,.309 ; Charles Eliot Nor-
ton professor in, 311 ; 312, 316, 323, 337,
345 ; J. R. Lowell professor in, 353, 354 ;
Charles W. Eliot president of, 1869- ,
356 ; Benjamin Wadsworth president of,
1725-34, 369 ; 372, 376, 384, 409, 417, 419,
423, 424, 425, 448.

Harvard College Library, The " Parkman
Collection " in, 241 ; 419.

Harvard Divinity School, 311, 384, 409.

Harvard Law School, 244, 316, 325, 346.

Harvard Medical School, 271, 279.

Harvard Observatory, 326.

Harvard University, class of 1829 cele-
brated by Holmes, 9, 284.

Hassam, Childe, 126.

Hastings, Jonathan 1st, 316.

Hastings, Jonathan 2d, steward of Har-
vard College, 316.

Hathorne, Capt. Daniel, grandfather of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 206, 207.

Hathorne, Elizabeth Clarke (Manning),
mother of Hawthorne, 202 ; death of,
204 ; 207, 214.

Hathorne, Elizabeth Manning, sister of
Hawthorne, 202, 207.

Hathorne, Col. John, of Salem, Mass., the
" witch judge," 207 ; grave of, 210.

Hathorne, Maria Louisa, sister of Haw-
thorne, 202, 207.

Hathorne, Capt. Nathaniel, father of
Hawthorne, 207.

Hathorne, William, the emigrant, of
Salem, first American ancestor of Haw-
thorne, 207.

Haverhill, Mass., Whittier landmarks in,
34-55 ; 60, 81.

Haverhill Academy, 36.

Haverhill (Mass.) Gazette, 50 ; Whittier's
early poems published in, 52 ; Whittier
editor of, 53.

Haverhill home of Whittier, see Whittier
homestead.

Haverhill Whittier Club, 38.

Hawley, Gen. Joseph Roswell, 482.

"Hawthorne Brook," Brunswick, Me.,
165.

Hawthorne, Julian, 202.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, " The Great Stone
Face," by, 59 ; 114, 124, 142 ; student life
of, at Bowdoiu College, 155, 158, 162, 163-
166 ; " The Snow Image," 164, 202, 405 ;
" Fanshawe," 165,204, 208 ; " Twice Told-
Tales," 200, 204, 208, 453 ; life and work
of, in Salem, 200-214 ; " The Scarlet Let-
ter," 200-205, 278, 453 ; " Mosses from an
Old Manse," 204, 414, 453 ; the English
Note Book, 204; "Dr. Grimshawe's
Secret," 206, 209, 403 ; " The House of
The Seven Gables," 206, 210, 212-213,
448,458; "American Notes," 207, 210,
223, 233 ; " Tales of My Native Land,"
208; marriage of, in Boston, 209, 265;
" The Gentle Boy," 209 ; " The Deliver
Romance," 210, 403, 404 ; " Tales of
Grandfather's Chair," 213 ; life and
work of, in Lenox, 213, 406, 448, 453,
457-459 ; 223,224, 265 ; at " Brook Farm,"
266; "The Blithedale Romance," 266,
294, 406 ; 278, 294, 330, 332-333, 346, 347 ;
" My Kinsman, Major Molineux," 366 ;
life and work of, in Concord, 385, 397-
406, 410-414; at "The Wayside," 398,

INDEX.

515

402-406; "Our Old Home," 403; "The
Ancestral Footstep," 403; " Septimius
Felton," 403 ; consulship at Liverpool,
406 ; in the " Old Manse," 407, 410-414 ;
431, 441 ; intimacy with Herman Mel-
ville, 453-454; "The Wonder Book,"
458 ; 470, 490.

Hawthorne, Rose, see Lathrop.

Hawthorne, Sophia Amelia (Peabody),
203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 214, 265, 412, 454,
4J>8

Hawthorne, Una, 202, 208, 414.

Hawthorne's class at Bowdoin College,
158, 164.

" Heartbreak Hill," Ipswich, Mass., 181.

Hecker, Rev. Isaac Thomas, 397.

Hedge, Rev. Dr. Frederick Henry, 302.

Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard Uni-
versity, 314.

Herald, Newburyport, Mass., William
Loyd Garrison's connection with, 81.

Hesperus, the schooner, 328, 329.

Hickling, Thomas, of Salem, 215.

Higginson, Rev. Francis, progenitor of
the Higginson family in America,
317.

Higginson, Francis, father of T. W. Hig-
ginson, 316; steward of Harvard Col-
lege, 316 ; 317.

Higginson, Louisa (Storrow), mother of
T. W. Higginson, 317.

Higginson, Mary Elizabeth (Channing)
first wife of T. W. Higginson, 319.

Higginson, Mary Potter (Thacher), second
wife of T. W. Higginson, 319 ; the " Aunt
Jane" of " Malbone," 319.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 68; in
Newburyport, 73, 83 ; Life of Margaret
Fuller (Ossoli) by, 300, 301, 339 ; birth-
place of, 314 ; sketch of, 316-319
"Cheerful Yesterdays" by, 316, 339;
" Thalatta," 318 ; " Malbone," " Young
Folks' History of the United States,'
" Larger History of the United States,'
and "Oldport Days," 319; later Cam
bridge home of, 337, 338-339; "Con
temporaries," " Concerning All of Us,'
and " Old Cambridge," 339 ; 377.
High Street, New Haven, Conn., 491.
High Street, Springfield, Mass., 428.
Highland Street, Roxbury district, Bos
ton, 293.

lildreth, Richard, his "History of the
United States," 71 ; 148.

Hillard, George Stillman, 105 ; Boston
homes of, 264, 265 ; sketch of, 264-265 ;
his intimacy with Hawthorne, 265-266 ;
" Hillard's Readers," and "Six Months
in Italy," 265; one of the "Five of
Clubs," 325 ; 403.

fcttllhouse A venue, New Haven, Conn., 492.

Hillhouse, James, father of the poet, 492.

tollhouse, James Abraham, a student at
Yale College, 489 ; master's oration of,
on "The Education of a Poet," 489;
Phi Beta Kappa poem of, " The Judg-
ment,'' 489 ; Fitz-Greene Halleck's allu-
sion to, 489 ; home of, 492 ; " Demetria,
Percy's Masque," and " Hadad," 492 ;
tomb of, 492.

"Hillside, The," home of the Alcotts,
Concord, Mass., 398,399, 400, 405.

Hilton, Martha, 92, 108.

Hiram, Me., home of Gen. Wadsworth,
Longfellow's grandfather, 134, 136.

Hoar, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood, 377;
birthplace of, Concord, Mass., 378.

Hoar, George Frisbie, 293 ; birthplace of,
Concord, Mass., 378.

Hoar, Samuel, old mansion house of,
Concord, 378.

Hog Island, see Appledore Island.

Holland, Dr. Josiah Gilbert, grave and
monument of, 425, 426; sketch of, 426-
428 ; connection of, with the Springfield
Republican, 427 ; " Sketches of Planta-
tion Life " by, 427 ; the " Timothy Tit-
comb Letters," 427, 428 ; " The Bay
Path," "Gold Foil," "Letters to the
Joneses," and " Bitter Sweet," 427 ;
Springfield homes of, 428 ; editorship of
the first Scribner's Monthly, '428 ; " Miss
Gilbert's Career," " Seven Oaks,"
" Arthur Bonnicastle," and " Nicholas
Minturn," 428; " Kathrina," 428, 432;
445,453.

Holliston, Mass., 420.

Holmes, Rev. Abiel, father of O. W.
Holmes, 316 ; in " The Old Gambrel-
roofed House," 316 ; " Annals of Cam-
bridge," 316 ; ministry of, in Cambridge,
316.

Holmes, Amelia (Jackson), wife of O. W.
Holmes, 280.

516

INDEX.

Holmes, John, 319 ; characterization of,
320; his sketches of Old Cambridge,
320, 356.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 5, 9, 32 ; tribute
of, to Whittier, 64; 99, 142, 147, 153;
" The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,"
198, 199, 281, 282 ; summer home of, at
" Beverly-by-the-Depot," 198, 199; 229,
231 ; Boston home of, in Charles Street,
276, 279-281, 282 ; " The Professor at the
Breakfast Table," "The Guardian
Angel," " My Hunt After the Captain,"
and " Dorothy Q," 279 ; " Elsie Venner,"
279, 450 ; professorship of, in the Harvard
Medical School, 279, 280; earlier home
of, in Montgomery Place, 281-282 ; " The
Promise," " The Chambered Nautilus,"
and " The Living Temple," 282, 283 ;
" Contentment," 282, 285 ; " The Dea-
con's Masterpiece," 282, 285, 451 ; " Par-
son Turell's Legacy," " The Old Man's
Dream," and "Old Ironsides," 283;
" The Last Leaf," 283, 452 ; " The
Mother's Secret," "St. Anthony the
Reformer," " Under the Violets," " The
Crooked Path," and "The Boys,"
Harvard Class of 1829, 284; last home
of, in Beacon Street, 285 ; "No Time
Like the Old Time," 285 ; " The Poet at
the Breakfast Table," "Over the Tea
Cups," and " Our Hundred Days in
Europe," 286 ; "A Ballad of the Boston
Tea Party," " Grandmother's Story of
the Bunker Hill Battle," and "The
Iron Gate," 287 ; the Birthday Break-
fast on the seventieth anniversary of,
288 ; " The Broomstick Train," 288 ;
death of, 288 ; 289, 290, 293, 296, 298 ;
the " old gambrel-roofed house," 314 ;
319, 320, 356, 384, 402, 434, 439 ; Canoe
Meadows, the ancestral country seat of,
450 ; " The Ploughman," 450, 451; 459, 497.

Holmes, chief justice Oliver Wendell,
279, 280.

Holmes, Sarah (Wendell), mother of O. W.
Holmes, 320.

Holmes Farm, Cambridge, 314, 316.

Holmes Field, Harvard University, 314.

Home Journal , Willis's, 95, 152.

Hooker, Thomas, 485.

Hooper, Lucy, 72.

Hopkins, Dr. Lemuel, 472, 488.

Hopkins, Mark, birthplace of, 464.
Hopkins, Rev. Dr. Samuel, a promoter of

Andover Theological Seminary, 7.
Hosmer Cottage, the first Concord home

of the Alcotts, 395, 396.
Hosmer, Edmund, of Concord, Mass., 385.
Hosmer, Harriet Grant, 457.
Housatonic River, Holmes's description

of, 451 ; 457, 460.
Howe, Julia Ward, 149; homes of, in

Boston, 253, 288 ; her " Battle Hymn of

the Republic," 253, 288, 289 ;" Reminis-
cences," 288.
Howe, Lyman, the "Landlord" in the

" Tales of a Wayside Inn," 366, 369.
Howe, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 149.
Howells, William Dean, Boston home of,

264 ; 267, 308, 320, 356, 431.
Howes, the, of the " Wayside Inn : "

Lyman, 366, 369; Col. Ezekiel, and

Adam, 369.
Hubbard, Rev. William, of Ipswich, Mass.,

173 ; house of, 178.
" Hugh Percival," early nom de plume of

J. R. Lowell, 346.
Hughes, Thomas, his introduction of

the English edition of " The Biglow

Papers," 349.

Humphreys, Colonel David, 473.
Hunt, William Morris, 125, 248.
Huntley, Lydia, see Sigourney.
Hussey, Christopher, 45.
Hussey, Mercy Evans, Whittier's " Aunt

Mercy," 46.
Hussey, Samuel, 45.

" Idle Man, The," 247, 248, 497.

" Idlewild," 153.

" Ik Marvel," see Mitchell, Donald G.

" Ike Partington," 101.

Independent Chronicle and Universal Ad-
vertiser, 144.

Ingalls, Mary, heroine of Whittier's " The
Countess," 47.

Ingersoll, Susan, association of, with "The
House of the Seven Gables," 213.

Ipswich, Mass., 27, 29, 31 ; literary land-
marks of, 173-181 ; 311.

Ipswich River, 173, 175, 176, 178.

Irving, Washington, in Boston, 99 ; 162,
222 ; Allston's intimacy with, 296 ; 496.

Isles of Shoals, 89, 109, 110-127, 316, 352.

INDEX.

517

Jackson, Amelia, see Holmes.

.Jackson, .Judge Charles, 280.

Jackson, Lydia, see Emerson.

Jail in Salem, the, of witchcraft times,
215.

James, George Payne Rainsford, at Lenox,
Mass., 458.

James, Henry, on " The Scarlet Letter,"
205.

Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard
University, 314.

Jewett, John Punchard, first publisher of
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," 160.

Jewett, Sarah Orne, home of, South Ber-
wick, Me., 128, 129; sketch of, 129-132;
"A Country Doctor" by, 131; "Deep-
haven," 132 ; 275 ; Boston home of,
277.

Jewett, Dr. Theodore Herman, father of
Sarah O. Jewett, 129, 131.

Job's Hill, Haverhill, Mass., 38, 57.

Johnson, Edward, his early history of
New England, 174.

Johnson, Mary, see Phelps.

" Josh Billings," see Shaw, Henry W.

Journal, Louisville, Ky., see Courier-
Journal.

Journal of the Times, edited by William
Lloyd Garrison, 81.

Judson, Rev. Adoniram, 419.

Juvenile Miscellany, conducted by Lydia
Maria Child, 457.

Kellogrg, Clara Louise, 188.

Kellogg, Rev. Elijah, 143.

Kemble, Frances Anne, at Lenox, Mass.,

457.
Kidd, Captain William, at the Isles of

Shoals, 117.
King Philip's War, 178, 179 ; Wadsworth

and Brocklebank in the Sudbury Fight,

364,369.

King Street, Northampton, Mass., 433,436.
Kirkland, Rev. John Thornton of the

Boston Anthology Club of 1804, 222.
Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Mass., 307,

314 ; Professors' Row in, 307, 325.
Kittery, Me., 92, 109.
Knapp, Isaac, associate with Garrison in

The Liberator, 82.

" Knickerbocker Magazine," T. B. Aid-
rich's early poems in, 95 ; " Hannah

Binding Shoes," first published in, 187,
188 ; " The Oregon Trail " first published
in, 245 ; The Psalm of Life " first pub-
lished in, 328 ;" The Skeleton in Armor "
first published in, 329; "Threnodia"
first published in, 346 ; Warner's contri-
butions to, 481.
Knox, General Henry, 92.

Laighton, Albert, 89.

Laighton, Ctedric, 122.

Laighton, Eliza (Rymes), 122, 123.

Laighton, Oscar, 122.

Laighton, Thomas, 120, 122, 123.

Laighton's Isles of Shoals, 112, 122, 126.

Lake Mahkeenac (Stockbridge Bowl), 457.

Lamb, Charles, Washington Allston's
friendship with, 297.

Langton, Governor, house of, Portsmouth,
N.H., 103.

Langdon, Samuel, president of Harvard
College, 1774-1780, 314.

Lanesborough, Mass., birthplace of Henry
W. Shaw (" Josh Billings "), 448.

Larcom, Capt. Benjamin, father of Lucy
Larcom, 185, 186.

Larcom, Emeline, her literary journal,
for Lowell mill-hands, 189.

Larcom, Lucy, 59, 62, 65 ; association with
Our Young Folks, 183, 191 ; birthplace
of, 185-187 ; sketch of, 185-191 ; " A New
England Girlhood " by, 185, 189 ; early
contributions of, to the Lowell Offering,
the factory girls' journal, 186 ; " Hannah
Binding Shoes," 186, 187, 191 ; " Skipper
Ben," "On the Beach," "A Sea
Glimpse," " The Light Houses," " Peggy
Blight's Voyage," " Wild Roses of Cape
Ann," " My Mariner," "On the Misery,"
and " Mistress Hale of Beverly," 187 ;
" Child's Life " and " Songs of Three
Centuries," compiled by, with Whittier,
190 ; " Similitudes," first book of, 190.

Larcom family, 186, 189.

Lathrop, George Parsons, 255, 256, 404,
405, 457, 459.

Lathrop, Rose (Hawthorne), 404 ; her
" Memories of Hawthorne," quoted, 405 ;
referred to, 459 ; birthplace of, 459.

Latin book, first published in America,
174.

Law, Jonathan, 487.

518

INDEX.

Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard Uni-
versity, 305, 314.

Leavitt, Christopher, first European on
the Isles of Shoals, 111, 117.

Lee, Richard Henry, sons of, at Phillips
(Andover) Academy, 5.

Legendary, The, 148.

Legislature, Massachusetts, Whittier
mem her of, 55; Stephen Longfellow
member of, 137 ; Timothy Fuller mem-
ber of, 300 ; John G. Palfrey member of,
312.

" Lend-a-Hand " clubs, 293.

Lenox, Mass., 446, 449, 450 ; literary land-
marks of, 456-459 ; 461.

Leslie, Charles Robert, 223.

Lewis, Charles Bertrand, " M. Quad," 102.

Lexington, Mass., 86, 220, 244, 358, 371, 378,
387, 405, 414.

Liberator, The, 55, 82.

Lind, Jenny, at Northampton, Mass.,
443.

Linzee, Capt. John, the British bearer of
one of "the crossed swords," 234, 235.

Literary World, the Duyckincks', 453.

Little Harbor, Portsmouth, N.H., 92, 102,
106, 109.

"Little Red Cottage" of Hawthorne at
Lenox, Mass., 448, 457-458.

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 218.

London Punch, 171 ; tribute to Holmes,
283-284.

Londoner's Island, Isles of Shoals, 110,
114, 116,

Longfellow, Anna, see Pierce.

Longfellow, Anne (Sewall), 86.

Longfellow, Frances Elizabeth (Apple-
ton), second wife of H. W. Longfellow,
329 ; original of " Mary Ashburton " of
Longfellow's "Hyperion," 330; death
and burial of, 335 ; 353, 425, 426, 449.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, " Tales of
a Wayside Inn " by, 70, 269, 335, 336, 362-
369 ; 71, 92 ; " Lady Wentworth," 92, 102,
106-108, 109 ; birthplace of, 132-134 ; boy-
hood home of, 136-138 ; first published
poem of, " The Battle of Lovell's Pond,"
138, 142-143 ; statue of, 139 ; " My Lost
Youth," 139, 334; "The Ropewalk,"
141 ; "Keramos," 141, 336 ; 142, 147, 151,
153 ; student life of, at Bowdoin College,
155, 157-158, 160 ; professorship of, 155,

161-162 ; first marriage of, 161 ; " Foot-
steps of Angels," 161 ; " Outre-Mer,"
162, 326 ; " Morituri Salutamus," 162;
professorship of, at Harvard, 162, 325,
334 ; 165, 167 ; " The Song of Hiawatha,"
217, 333-334, 336 ; 231, 260 ; " The Hanging
of the Crane," origin of, 274 ; 278, 305 ;
lines " To Agassiz," 305 ; " Midnight
Mass to the Dying Year," 318,328 ; ' The
Village Blacksmith," 321, 332; life and
work of, in the Longfellow-Craigie
house, 324-327 ; associates in the " Five
of Clubs," 325 ; journal of, quoted, 328,
329, 332, 336 ; " Voices of the Night," first
published volume of, 328 ; " The Psalm
of Life," and " The Reaper and the
Flowers," 328 ; " The Wreck of the Hes-
perus," and " The Skeleton in Armor,"
328, 329 ; " Excelsior," first draft of, in
the Harvard College Library, 329 ; " The
Belfry of Bruges," 329 ; the poet's second
marriage, 329 ; " Hyperion," 330 ; " The
Old Clock on the Stairs," 332, 448, 449 ;
" Evangeline," begun as "Gabrielle,"
332; Hawthorne's suggestion of the
poem, 332-333 ; " The Bridge Across the
Charles," " Birds of Passage," and " The
Day is Done," 332 ; " The Building of
the Ship," " The Golden Legend," " The
Two Angels," " The Courtship of Miles
Standish," and "Paul Revere's Ride,"
334 ;" Kavanagh," 334, 451 ; tragedy of
the poet's life, 335 ; " The Divine
Comedy of Dante Alighieri," 335, 336;
" Flower-de-luce," and " New England
Tragedies," 335; " Christus," "Three
Books of Song," " Aftermath," " Masque
of Pandora," "Poems of Places," and
" Ultima Thule," 336 ; death and funeral
of, 336 ; 353, 369, 403 ; " The Arsenal at
Springfield," 425^26 ; 448, 451, 458.

Longfellow, Mary (Potter), first wife of
H. W. Longfellow, death of, 162.

Longfellow, Rev, Samuel, brother of the
poet, 136, 157, 318 ; his Life of Longfellow
quoted, 326, 328, 335 ; 336.

Longfellow, Stephen (1), son of William,
the emigrant, 88.

Longfellow, Stephen (2), son of Stephen,
schoolmaster, first of the Longfellows
in Portland (Falmouth), Me., 88.

Longfellow, Stephen (3), son of Stephen

INDEX.

519

(2), judge, grandfather ot the poet, 88,
134, 137 ; sketch of, 138.

Longfellow, Stephen (4), son of Stephen
(3), lawyer and statesman, father of the
poet, 88, 133, 136 ; sketch of, 137 ; 138, 140,
160.

Longfellow, Stephen (5), brother of the
poet, 133, 137, 157.

Longfellow, William, of Byfield, Mass.,
the emigrant, progenitor of the Ameri-
can Longf ellows, 86, 88.

Longfellow, Zilpah (Wadsworth), 137, 140,
141, 369.

Longfellow family, 88, 134.

Longfellow Garden, Cambridge, Mass.,
330.

Longfellow homestead, Bytield, Mass., 86.

Longfellow (Vassal-Craigie) house, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 307, 321, 324-337; Long-
fellow's description of, in Madam
Craigie's time, 326 ; sketch of, 330-332 ;
340.

Longfellow mansion, Portland, Me., 132;
sketch of, 134-136 ; 137, 141, 161.

Longfellow's class at Bowdoin College,
158.

Loring, Dr. George Bailey, 204, 346.

Lothrop, Margaret (" Margaret Sidney "),
402.

Lothrop family, 233.

Louisburg Square, Boston, 264, 400.

Louisville Journal, see Courier-Journal.

Lovejoy, Rev. Elijah Parish, 158.

" Lovewell's Fight," 138.

Lowell, Rev. Charles, son of John, the
jurist, father of J. R. Lowell, 84, 253 ; at
" Elmwood," 341, 345, 347.

Lowell, Frances (Dunlap), second wife of
J. R. Lowell, 354.

Lowell, Francis Cabot, the manufacturer,
son of John, the jurist, 84.

Lowell, Harriet (Spence), mother of J. R.
Lowell, 345.

Lowell, James Russell, editorship of the
Atlantic Monthly, 60, 69, 125, 353 ; 71 ;
"Elmwood," birthplace and life-long
home of, 83, 340-357 ; 84 ; " Pictures
from Appledore," 116, 352; 123; "A
Fable for Critics," 145, 350, 351 ; 151, 153,
194, 243, 253, 269; "Cambridge Thirty
Years Ago," 297, 342 ; 301, 303, 311 ; " To
John G. Palfrey, " 313, 350 ; " Fireside

Travels," 319; 320, 334, 335, 337, 338;
sketch of, 342-357 ; first poems of, pub-
lished over a nom de plume, 346 ;
" Threnodia," 346; " A Year's Life," first
volume of, 347 ; " Legends of Brittany,"
second volume of, 347; magazine of,
The Pioneer, 347 ; antislavery writings
of, 347-350; first marriage of, 348; the
" Biglow Papers," 348-349, 350, 351, 353 ;
"Euridyce," "The Changeling," "To
Lamartine," " A Parable," " The Part-
ing of the Ways," " Beaver Brook,"
" The First Snow Fall," " Stanzas to
Freedom," and " To W. L. Garrison,"
350 ; " The Vision of Sir Launfal," 350,
351-352; " The Courtin'," 351; the pro-
posed " The Nooning," 352 ; " Under the
Willows," and "Leaves from my Journal
in Italy and Elsewhere," 352; Lowell
Institute lectures of, 353 ; editorship,
with Norton, of North American Review ,
353 ; professorship of, at Harvard, 353,
354; "The Washers of the Shroud,"
353 ; The Commemoration Ode, 353, 354 ;
second marriage of, 354 ; eulogy on
Agassiz, 354 ; diplomatic service of, 354 ;
" Literary and Political Addresses,"
355 ; " Last Poems," edited by Norton,
355 ; death and burial of, 356 ; 384, 403,
428, 494.

Lowell (or Lowle), John of Newbury, the
first in America, ancestor of the Lowells,
83.

Lowell, Rev. John, great-grandfather of
James Russell Lowell, first minister of
Newburyport, 83 ; his motto, 83.

Lowell John, the jurist, son of Rev. John,
grandfather of J. R. Lowell, 83, 84.

Lowell, John, the pamphleteer, son of
John, the jurist, 84.

Lowell, Mabel, see Burnett.

Lowell, Maria (White), first wife of J. R.
Lowell, 123, 301, 334, 347.

Lowell family, 83, 84.

Lowell, Mass., 84, 189.

Lowell house, Newburyport, Mass., 83.

Lowell Institute, Boston, 305; J. R.
Lowell's lectures at, 353.

Lowell Offering, 186, 190.

Lowle John, see Lowell John.

Lunt, Adaline Treadwell (Parsons), 271.

Lunt George, poems of, and novel, " East-

520

INDEX.

ford," 72; contributor to Willis's
American Monthly, 148 ; 271.

Lynde, Chief Justice Benjamin, of Massa-
chusetts Bay Province, grave of, 210, 222.

Lynn, Mass., 79, 81, 217.

" M. Quad," see Lewis, Charles B.

McCabe, Chaplain, 289.

McGill University, honors to Parkman,

246.

M'Lellan, Isaac, 5, 142, 148.
Macrae, David, 279 ; his description of

Holmes, 280 ; of Emerson's smile, 387.
Magazine Street, Cambridge, Mass., 295,

297.
Main Street, Concord, Mass., 370, 371 , 375,

376, 378, 400.

Main Street, Hartford, Conn., 484, 487.
Main Street, Northampton, Mass., 433.
Maine Historical Society, 136.
Maine's chief college town, 155-170.
Malaga Island, Isles of Shoals, 110, 114.
" Mall," the, Newburyport, Mass., 79.
Manchester-by-the-sea, Mass., 198, 199,

250.

Mann, Horace, 208, 312, 406.
Mann, Mary (Peabody), 208.
Manning family, 207.
Manning homestead, Salem, Mass., 166

206.

Manning, Richard, 207.
Manning, Robert, 166, 207.
" Margaret Sidney," see Lothrop, Mar-
garet.

" Mark Twain," see Clemens, Samuel L.
Massachusetts Bay Colony, 317.
Massachusetts Bay Side, 185-198 ; 271.
Massachusetts Bill of Rights, 83.
Massachusetts Historical Society, 235 ;

house of, 290.

Mason, Jeremiah, 105, 158, 164.
Mason, Dr. Lowell, 8.
Mason, William, 126.
Mather, Rev. Cotton, 26 ; his " Magnalia,'

29,210; 177,211,212.
Mather, Rev. Increase, 26, 221.
Mather, Nathaniel, grave of, 210 ; sketch

of, 211.

Mather, Rev. Samuel, 26, 211.
May, Abigail, see Alcott.
May, Rev. Samuel Joseph, 389.
Mead, Edwin Doak, 266, 267 ; sketch of

266-267; his "Martin Luther," "Out-
line Studies of Holland," and "Repre-
sentative Government," 267.
Mead, Larkin Goldsmith, 266.
Mead, William Rutherford, 266.
Meadow City " the (Northampton,
Mass.), 432.

Medfield, Mass., 416, 417.
Medford, Mass., 73.
Mellen, Frederick, 138, 158.
Mellen, Grenville, his " Glad Tales and

Sad Tales," 142 ; 158.
Mellen, Judge Prentiss, 138, 142, 158.
Melville, Herman, 452 ; "Arrowhead,"
Pittsfield home of, 452, 453; his sea
and other stories written here, 452-453 ;
" Typee," 452, 455, 456 ; " White Jacket,"
452, 456 ; " Pierre," " Israel Potter,"
" Piazza Tales," and " October Moun-
tain," 453 ; " Moby Dick," 453, 456 ;
friendship with Hawthorne, 453-454 ;
sketch of, 454-456 ; " Omoo," and " MaidS,
and a Voyage Thither," 455; "Red-
burn," 456 ; 458.

Melville, The Majors Thomas, 451, 452 ;
the first Major Melville, original of
Holmes's " The Last Leaf," 452.
Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 316.
Memphremagog, Lake, 245.
Menotomy, Indian name of Arlington,

Mass., 358.
Mercantile Library Association, Boston,

97, 98, 271.

Merrimac River, 35,43, 44, 64, 65, 70.
Merwin, Henry Childs, home and work of,
252; his "Road, Track, and Stable,"
252.

Metcalf, Holliston, Mass., 420.
Mile River, Northampton, Mass., 443.
" Miles O'Reilly," see Halpin, Charles G.
Milton, Mass., 230, 231.
Mitchell, Donald Grant (" Ik Marvel "),
a student at Yale College, 489 ; his
" Reveries of a Bachelor," 489, 499, 500 ;
" Edgewood," home of, 497-499 ; sketch
of, 499-501 ; " Dream Life" and " Fresh
Gleanings," 499 ; " The Battle Sum-
mer," 499, 500; "My Farm at Edge-
wood," 499, 501 ; " The Lorgnette,"
500; "Wet-Days at Edgewood," "Dr.
Johns," " Rural Studies," " English
Lands, Letters, and Kings," and

INDEX.

521

" American Lands and tetters," 501 ;
editor of Hearth and Home, 501.

Molineux, Major, rhymes by, on a win-
dow-pane of the " Wayside Inn," 366.

Montgomery Place, Boston, 281-282.

Monthly Anthology, The, 220, 222, 467.

Monti, Luigi, 365 ; " The Young Sicilian"
in the " Tales of a Wayside Inn," 365.

Monticello Female Seminary, Lucy Lar-
com a teacher in, 190.

Monument Mountain, The Berkshires,
Mass., 454, 464.

Moody, Rev. Samuel ( Father Moody"),
anecdotes of, 180.

Moore, Thomas, souvenir of, in Long-
fellow's study, 330.

Morris, George Pope, 148, 149.

Morse, Prof. Edward Sylvester, 143.

Morse, Rev. Jedidiah, 419, 490 ; grave of,
491.

Morse, John Torrey, Jr., biographer of
Holmes, 280, 285, 288, 450 ; home of, 289.

Morse, Royal, the " R. M." of Lowell's
" Fireside Travels," 319.

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 419.

Motley, John Lothrop, 139, 142, 148, 217 ;
last Boston home of, 228; boyhood
home of, 228-230 ; sketch of, 231-233 ;
novels of, " Morton's Hope," and " Mer-
rymount," 231 ;" The Rise of the Dutch
Republic," " The History of the United
Netherlands," and " Life and Death of
John of Barneveld," 232 ; foreign life
of, 233 ; grave of, in London, 233 ; 246,
285.

Motley, Mary (Benjamin), wife of J. L.
Motley, 231.

Motley, Thomas, grandfather of J. L.
Motley, 139.

Motley, Thomas, father of J. L. Motley,
229,230.

Moulton, Louise Chandler, 102.

Mount Auburn, Cambridge,' Mass., grave
of N. P. Willis, 153 ; grave of W. E.
Channing, 261 ; "285 ; grave of Agassiz,
306 ; 335 ; graves of Longfellow and
Lowell, 356.

Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, Mass.,
earlier the " New Road," 342.

Mount Vernoii Street, Boston, 253, 254,
256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 276.

M Mrs. Partington," see SMUaber, B. P.

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard

University, 305.
" Mutual Admiration Society," 325.

Nahant, Mass., 17.3, 217, 218, 232, 250,
334.

Nation, The, 194, 197.

National Era, The, " Uncle Tom's
Cabin" first published in, 19, 160;
Whittier's poems and prose writings in,
59; 182.

National Philanthropist, The, Garrison
editor of, 52, 81.

National Press, The, 152.

Navy Yard, Kittery, Me., 92.

Neal, John, 140 ; his " Battle of Niagara,"
142.

New England Courant, 144.

New England Literary Review, Prentice's
editorship of, 53, 486 ; Whittier's editor-
ship of, 53, 486 ; Whittier's poems pub-
lished in, 53, 486 ; 496.

New England Magazine, 266.

New England Magazine, Buckingham's,
162, 231, 282.

New Hampshire Gazette, 122.

New Haven, Conn., 415, 435; literary
landmarks of, 488-501 ; 497.

New Nation, The, 431.

New South Church, Boston, 222.

New York Ledger, The, " Hanging of the
Crane " first published in, 274.

New York Mirror, N. P. Willis's connec-
tion with, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152.

New York Review and Athenaeum Maga-
zine, Bryant assistant editor of, 469.

New York Tribune, Margaret Fuller a
writer on, 302, 385.

New World, the " Wreck of the Hes-
perus " first published in, 329.

Newbury, Mass., 9, 43, 64, 71, 72, 83, 86.

Newburyport, Mass., 7, 8, 51, 63, 64 ; liter-
ary landmarks of, 65-88 ; 318, 489.

Newburyport (Mass.) Free Press, Whit-
tier's first published poem in, 50, 52, 81.

Newburyport (Mass.) Herald, association
of W. L. Garrison with, 81, 82.

Newcastle, N.H., 109, 123.

"Newe Towne " (Cambridge), 27,31, 175.

Newport, R.I., 319, 443.

Newton, Mass., 16.

Niericker, Abby May (Alcott), 391,,399.

522

INDEX.

Norman's Woe, scene of the " Wreck of
the Hesperus," 328, 329.

Norris, John, a founder of Andover Theo-
logical Seminary, 8, 25.

North American Review, 72; William
Tudor, founder of, 221 ; Richard H.
Dana 1st and Edward T. Channing
editors of, 249 ; Jared Sparks editor of,
307 ; John G. Palfrey editor of, 313 ; C.
E. Norton and J. R. Lowell editors of,
353 ; 462, 468.

North Andover, Mass., 4, 21, 22.

North Andover, First Parish, 25, 29.

North Parish, Andover, Mass., 6.

North Shore, Massachusetts Bay, 173, 215.

Northampton, Mass., 415, 423, 424, 425, 428,
429 ; literary landmarks of, 432-445.

Norton, Andrews, the biblical scholar,
310, 312.

Norton, Prof. Charles Eliot, 268, 270;
" Shady Hill," home of, 310 ; Harvard
professorship of, 311 ; literary work of,
in the editorship of various volumes,
311 ; translations of Dante, 311, 335 ;
" Historical Studies in Church Building
in the Middle Ages," 311 ; 353, 355, 356.

Norton, Rev. John, 174, 177, 178,311.

Norton family, 311.

Norton house, Ipswich, Mass., 177.

" Norton's Woods," Cambridge, Mass.,
310.

Observatory Hill, Cambridge, 326.

" Old Bab," the pirate-ghost, Isles of
Shoals, 117.

Old Bay Road of the Puritans, 181.

Old " Church of Federal Street," The,
Newburyport, Mass., 73, 75, 76, 77.

"Old Corner Bookstore," Boston, 97;
Fields's " curtained corner in," 99 ; 267.

" Old gambrel-roofed house," the, birth-
place of Holmes, 314, 316, 319, 320.

Old Ironsides " (U. S. frigate " Consti-
tution "), 141 ; Holmes's poem on, 283.

" Old Manse," the, Concord, Mass., 180.
209, 266, 345, 380, 385, 405, 407-414.

Old Newbury, see Newbury, Mass.

Old North Church, Portsmouth, N.H., 97.

Old South Church, Ipswich, Mass., 176.

Old Town church, Newburyport, Mass.,
86.

" Orchard House," the Alcotts', Concord,

Mass., 387, 388, 390, 391, 397, 399, 400,

404.

Ossipee River, 134.

Ossoli, Giovanni Angelo, Marquis, 303, 304.
Ossoli (Margaret Fuller), Countess, see

Fuller.

Otis, James, 221.
Our Young folks, 132, 183, 191, 358.

"P. Philander Doesticks," see
Thomson, Mortimer.

Packard, Prof. Alpheus Spring, 158, 163,
165.

Paine, Prof. John Knowles, 125, 196.

Paine, Robert Treat, Jr., law student in
Newburyport, 71; his song "Adams
and Liberty," 71.

Palfrey, John Gorham, home of, 311 ;
public and literary life of, 311-314 ; his
" History of New England," 313 ; Low-
ell's lines to, 350.

Palfrey Place, The, Cambridge, Mass., 311.

Park, Prof. Edwards A., 9, 10.

Park River, Hartford, Conn., 473, 478.

Park Street, Boston, 223, 224, 228.

Park-Street Church, Boston, "America"
first sung in, 9 ; 149.

Parker, Rev. Theodore, 122, 301, 302, 318.

Parker River, 86.

Parkman, Rev. Ebenezer, of Weslbor-
ough, Mass., great-grandfather of
Francis Parkman, 243, 244.

Parkman, Elias, of Dorchester, Mass.,
first ancestor of the Parkmans in
America, 243.

Parkman, Rev. Francis, of Boston, father
of Francis Parkman, 243.

Parkman, Francis, 109 ; " Montcalm and
Wolfe " by, 109, 240, 241, 242 ; A Half-
Century of Conflict," 109, 240, 241, 242 ;
Boston homes of , 239-240,246 ; sketch of,
and methqds of work, 239-246; "The
Pioneers of France in the New
World," "The Jesuits," "The Dis-
covery of the Great West," "The Old
Regime," and " Count Frontenac," 240 ;
birthplace of, 242 ; boyhood home of,
243 ; " The Oregon Trail," 245, 246 ;
"History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac,"
246; "Vassal Morton," only novel by,
246 ; professorship of, at Harvard, 246 ;
honors conferred upon, in Canada, 246.

INDEX.

523

Parkman, Samuel, grandfather of Fran-
cis Parkman, 243, 244.

Parkman, William, 244.

Parkman family, 242-244.

Parsonage, The, Newburyport, Mras.,
where Whitefield died, 77, 78.

Parsons, Adaline Treadwell, see Lunt.

Parsons, Rev. Jonathan, of "The Par-
sonage " where Whitefield died, 76.

Parsons, Judge Theophilus, 71, 157.

Parsons, Theophilus, 2d, 157, 312.

Parsons, Dr. Thomas William, 268 ; trans-
lations of Dante by, 269, 270,335 ; sketch
of, 269-271 ; the "Poet " in " Tales of a
Wayside Inn," 269, 368; "The Old
House in Sudbury Twenty Years After-
wards," 269 ; volumes of poems by :
"The Ghetto di Roma," " The Mag-
nolia," "The Old House at Sudbury,"
and " The Shadows of the Obelisk," 270;
365.

Parton, Ethel, 73.

Parton, James, home of, 73, 152, 153.

Parton, Sara Payson (Willis) ("Fanny
Fern"), 153; "Ruth Hall," "Fern
Leaves," " Fresh Leaves," and " Rose
Clark," 153.

" Paul Creyton," see Trowbridge, JohnT.

Paulding, James Kirke, 99.

Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, 205, 208, 302 ;
" Record of a School " (Alcott's " Tem-
ple School ") by, 394.

Peabody family, 205, 208, 266.

Peabody house, Salem, Mass., 206, 208 ;
Hawthorne's model for "Dr. Grim-
shawe's " house, 209.

Peabody mansion, Salem, Mass., 215.

Peabody, Dr. Nathaniel, 208, 210.

Pearson, Prof. Eliphalet, 7, 8, 9, 316.

Peasley, Joseph, early Quaker of Haver-
hill, 44.

Peasley, Mary, great-grandmother of
Whittier, 44.

Pennsylvania Freeman, The, Whjttier
editor of, 59 ; Lowell contributor to, 348.

Pentucket, Indian name of Haverhill,
Mass., 35.

Pepperell house, Kittery, Me., 109.

Pepperell, Sir William, 67.

Percival, James Gates, a student at Yale
College, 489, 496; his tragedy of
"Zamor" a Commencement part, 489;

sketch of, 495-497 ; " Prometheus," 496 ;

the "Clio" series, 496, 497; "A Dream

of a Day," 497 ; ballads by, 497.
Perkins, Mary Beecher, 19.
" Peter Parley," see Goodrich, Samuel G.
Peters, Rev. Hugh, 175 ; " Peter's Pulpit,"

184.
Phelps, Prof. Austin, 10 ; " The Still

Hour " by, 12, 14.
Phelps, Elizabeth (Stuart) ("H. Trusta"),

10 ; " Sunnyside," " The Angel Over the

Right Shoulder," and " Peep at Number

Five "by, 12.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, see Ward.
Phelps, Mary (Johnson), 12.
Phelps, Mary (Stuart), 12.
Phi Beta Kappa addresses, 230, 249, 265,

302, 489.
Phillips (Andover) Academy, 4, 5, 6, 7, 17,

34, 142, 147, 230.

Phillips (Exeter) Academy, 5, 193, 423.
Phillips, Ann, wife of Wendell Phillips,

230, 231.
Phillips, Elizabeth (Barnard), wife of

Samuel Phillips, 2d, 6.
Phillips, George, first minister of Water-
town, Mass., first ancestor of the

Phillipses in America, 6.
Phillips, John, son of Rev. Samuel, a

founder of the Phillips Academies, 5. 6.
Phillips, Col. John, son of Samuel, 3d, a

founder of Andover Seminary, 7.
Phillips, John, father of Wendell Phillips,

230.
Phillips, Lydia (Gorham), wife of Col.

John Phillips, 7.
Phillips, Madam Phebe (Foxcroft), wife

of Samuel Phillips, 3d, 7, 34.
Phillips, Rev. Samuel, founder of the

Phillips family of Andover, Mass., 6.
Phillips, Samuel, 2d, son of Rev. Samuel,

a founder of Phillips (Andover)

Academy, 5, 6, 7.
Phillips, Samuel, 3d, son of Samuel, 2d,

proposer of Phillips (Andover) Academy,

5, 7, 34.
Phillips, Wendell, 32 ; birthplace of, 228,

229, 230 ; grave of, 230, 231 ; character-
ization of, 230-231 ; 233, 318,
Phillips, Judge Willard. 249.
Phillips, William, son of Rev. Samuel. 6.
Phillips, William, 2d, son of William, 6.

524

INDEX.

Phillips family, 5, 6, 230.

Phillips manse, North Andover, Mass., 22,

34.

Phips, Sir William, 88.
Pickard, Samuel Thomas, biographer of

Whittier, 36, 42, 43, 56, 88.
Pierce, Anna (Longfellow), 136.
Pierce, Benjamin, class of 1829, Harvard,

284.

Pierce, Franklin, 105, 124.
Pierpont, John, 73; a student at Yale

College, 489; "Airs of Palestine" by,

489.

Pierrepont, Sarah, see Edwards.
Pike, Albert, 148.
Pilgrims at Plymouth, 117.
Pinckney Street, Boston, 264, 265, 266, 267,

268, 271, 274, 275, 276.
Pinkerton Academy, Derry, N.H., 68.
Pioneer, The, Lowell's periodical of 1842,

347.

Piscataqua River, 90, 109, 124.
Pittsfield, Mass., 445 ; literary landmarks

of, 446-453;. 458.
Plainfield, Mass., 468, 481.
Pleasant Street, Arlington, Mass., 357.
Plunkett, Mrs. H. M., 453.
"Plunkett Mansion," Pittsfield, Mass.,

scene of Longfellow's " Old Clock on

the Stairs," 449.
Plymouth, Mass., 380.
Po Hill, Amesbury, Mass., 57.
_Poe, Edgar Allan, 152, 195 ; " Works of,

with Memoir and Notes," by George E.

Woodberry, 197 ; 283, 347.
Ponkapog, Milton, Mass., 276, 370.
Porter, Dr. Timothy Olcott, 151.
Portland, Me., 47, 88, 127; literary land-
marks of, 128-154 ; 161.
Portland (Me.) Academy, 137, 167.
Portland Library, 136.
Portland Theatre, 142.
Portsmouth, N.H., literary landmarks of,

89-109 ; 120, 124, 127, 128, 215, 222, 254.
Portsmouth Athenaeum, 97.
Portsmouth (N.H.) Chronicle, 105.
" Portsmouth Flying Stage-Coach," 93,

100.

Portsmouth Harbor, 123.
Portsmouth Light, 109.
Potter, Judge Barrett, 161.
Potter, Mary, see Longfellow.

Powow River, Amesbury, Mass., 43, 64.

Pratt, Anna Bronson (Alcott), 375, 391,
392, 398, 399 ; wedding of, 399 ; grave of
402.

Pratt, John, 392, 399, 402.

Preble, Commodore Edward, 140, 141, 154,
158.

Prentice, George Denison, 53 ; in Hart-
ford, Conn., 472, 485-486.

Prescott, Catherine Greene (Hickling),
mother of William H. Prescott, 215.

Prescott, Harriet Elizabeth, see Spoft'ord.

Prescott, Susan (Amory), wife of William
H. Prescott, 239.

Prescott, Col. William, commander at
Bunker Hill, 215 ; the American bearer
of one of " the crossed swords," 234, 235.

Prescott, Judge William, father of Wil-
liam H. Prescott, 215, 239.

Prescott, William Hickling, birthplace
of, 215 ; 217, 221, 227 ; Boston homes of,
233-236, 239 ; sketch of, and methods of
work, 233, 235-239; the "crossed
swords " alluded to by Thackeray, 234,
235, 239; his "Conquest of Peru,"
" Philip the Second," and " Conquest of
Mexico," 325 ; the " History of the Reign
of Ferdinand and Isabella," and its re-
markable reception, 235-236; Ticknor's
Life of, 228, 237.

Prescott house, Boston, description of,
233, 234, 236 ; 239.

Prince, Rev. Joseph, 77.

Princeton College, 438, 439.

Professor's Row, see Kirkland Street,
Cambridge.

Prospect Street, Cambridge, Mass., 295,
299.

Providence, R.I., 9, Margaret Fuller a
teacher in, 301.

Public Library, Concord, Mass., 378, 403.

Public Library, Portsmouth, N.H., 102.

Putnam, Rev. Benjamin, grandfather of
Edward Bellamy, 429.

Putnam, Simeon, School of, in Old Brad-
street homestead, 25, 26.

Putnam's Magazine, 95, 344, 481.

Quakers, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 55, 61.
Quincy, Josiah, the elder, 5, 219, 220;

Boston house of, 228.
Quincy, Mass., 71, 420.

INDEX.

525

Quincy Square, Cambridge, Mass., 295, 304.
Quincy Street, Cambridge, Mass., 304.

Badcliffe College, 304.

Red Horse Tavern, see Wayside Inn.

Reed, Nathan, 215.

Reserve, George, 105.

Reserve, Sally, 105.

Revolution, The American, 104 ; poetry

of, 106 ; 117, 119, 134, 144, 207, 219, 234, 243,

250, 291, 306, 312,314,322,326, 327, 341,364,

369, 418, 439, 473, 488, 491, 492.
Revolutionary period, The, 117, 131, 250.
Rhodes, James Ford, Boston home of,

289 ; his " History of the United States

from the Compromise of 1850," 289.
Ripley, Dr. Ezra, 345; in the " Old Manse,"

Concord, Mass., 407, 408 ; 412.
Ripley, George, founder of the Brook

Farm community, 294, 302.
Ripley, Rev. Samuel, of Waltham, Mass.,

409.
Jiiverside Magazine for Young People,

132,338.
Robbins, Rev. Chandler, 26 ; class of 1829,

Harvard, 284.
Rogers, Rev. John, of Ipswich, president

of Harvard College, 1682-1684, 29, 175,

178.

Rogers the Ranger, 244.
Rolfe, Henry, 43.
Rolfe, John, 43.
Round Hill School, Northampton, Mass.,

425 ; sketch of, 441 ; 457.
Rowlandson, Joseph, of Ipswich, Mass.,

175.

Roxbury district, Boston, 27.
Rural Cemetery, Worcester, Mass., Ban-
croft's grave in, 424.

Saco, Me., 132.

Saco River, 132, 134.

Salem Athenaeum, Salem, Mass., 15, 216.

Salem-Street Church, Boston, 158.

Salem, Mass., 7, 8, 24, 32, 166, 199, 200-217,

222, 271, 317, 490.

Salisbury Beach, Salisbury, Mass., 70.
Salisbury, Mass., 43, 72.
Saltonstall, Muriel (Gurden), 175.
Saltonstall, Richard, 175, 178.
Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 175.
Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin, home of,

371, 376 ; 372, 373,374, 375 ; his biographies
of Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and John
Brown of Osawatomie, 376 ; sketch of,
376-378 ; 389, 394, 395, 397.

Sanborn, Katharine Abbott (" Kate San-
born"), 420; the "abandoned farm,"
experiment of, 420-423 ; sketch of, and
her work, 423.

Saturday Press, 95.

School Street, Boston, 290.

" Scourge," U. S. Schooner, 141.

Scribner's Magazine, (the first), 69 ; J. G.
Holland, editor of, 428 ; 445.

Scudder, Horace Elisha, home of, 337;
sketch of, 337-338; his life of Lowell,
337, 338 ; " Dream Children," and the
"Bodley Books," 337,338; editorship
of the Atlantic Monthly, 337, 338 ; " His-
tory of the United States," " Men and
Letters," "The Dwellers in Five Sis-
ters 'Court," " Stories and Romances,"
biographies of David Coit Scudder and
Noah Webster, " Life and Letters of
Bayard Taylor," and " Recollections of
Samuel Breck," 338 ; summer literary
workshop of, at Lanesborough, Mass.,
448.

Seaflght, the, between the "Enterprise"
and " Boxer," 140-141.

Sebago Lake, 166.

Sedgewick, Catharine Maria, 452 ; home
of, in Lenox, Mass., 456 ; her tales of New
England life : " The Linwoods," " The
Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man,"
" Live and Let Live," " The Morals of
Manners," " The Boy of Mt. Rhigi,"
and " Married and Single," 457 ; 458 ;
home of, in Stockbridge, 461 ; sketch of,
461^63 ; "A New England Tale," 462 ;
" Redwood," " Hope Leslie," and " Clar-
ence," 463.

Sedgwick, Charles, 456, 462.

Sedgwick, Elizabeth Buckminster, 456 ;
her Lenox school, and notable pupils
of, 457; "The Beatitudes," and other
children's books by, 457.

Sedgwick family, 452, 456 ; home of, in
Lenox, Mass., 456, 457 ; in Stockbridge,
Mass., 456, 457, 460 ; Sedgwick mansion,
Stockbridge, 460, 461.

Sedgwick, Henry Dwight, 462, 469 1 .

Sedgwick, Judge Theodore, 462.

526

INDEX.

Sedgwick, Theodore, Jr., 462.

Senate, Massachusetts State, Peter Bry-
ant in, 249.

Sergeant, Rev. John, 460 ; tablet to, in old
Stockbridge church, 463.

Sewall, Anne, see Longfellow.

Sewall, Jonathan Mitchell, his lyrics of
the Revolution, 106; epilogue to the
" Tragedy of Cato," 106.

Sewall, Judge Samuel, 72 ; Diary of, 176.

Sewall family, 389.

Sewall place, Newburyport, Mass., 86.

'Shady Hill," home of Prof. Charles
Eliot Norton, 310.

Shaw, Henry Wheeler (" Josh Billings "),
448.

Shaw, Chief Justice Lemuel, of Massa-
chusetts, 456.

Shaw, Quincy Adams, 245.

Shaw, William Smith, of the Boston An-
thology Club of 1804, 221, 419.

Shays' Rebellion, 43.

Sheffield, Mass., 470.

Shepard Congregational Church, Cam-
bridge, 316.

Shepley, Rev. Dr. David, 163.

Shillaber, Benjamin Penhallow ("Mrs.
Partington"), 89; sketch of, 99-102;
"Sayings of Mrs. Partington," and
"Experiences During Many Years,"
100 ; " Life and Sayings of Mrs. Par-
tington," 100, 102 ; " Ike and His
Friends," 102 ; The Carpet Bag, 102, 170.

Sigourney, Lydia Huntley, 54, 472 ; sketch
of, 484 ; her " Moral Pieces in Prose and
Verse," and "Letters in Life," 484 ;
Whittier's tribute to, 484.

Silliman, Benjamin, student at Yale Col-
lege, 490 ; grave of, 491.

Silliman, Benjamin, Jr., grave of, 491.

Silsbee, Edward A., 200.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Mass.,
graves of the Alcotts in, 402; Haw-
thorne's grave in, 402, 403, 405.

Smith, Abigail, see Adams.

Smith College, 423; founded by Sophia
Smith, 440.

Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, 143.

Smith, Captain John, 111, 112,114.

Smith, Joseph Edward Adams (" Godfrey
Greylock "), 454.

Smith, Dr. Samuel Francis, his hymn*

"America," when written and first
sung, 8 ; " The Morning Light is Break-
ing," 9 ; class of 1829, Harvard, 285.

Smith, Seba (" Major Jack Downing "),
142, 143.

Smith, Sophia, founder of Smith College,
440.

Smith's Islands, see Isles of Shoals.

Smutty Nose Island, see Haley's Island.

Snell, Sally, see Bryant.

Snell, " Squire," 466.

Society of Friends, see Quakers.

Society for Propagating the Gospel Among
Indians, The, 120.

Sons of Liberty, 104.

South Berwick, Me, 128, 129.

South Berwick Academy, 129.

South Church, Ipswich, Mass., tablet in
front of, 178.

South Congregational Church, Boston,
Edward Everett Hale minister of, 291.

South Framingham, Mass., 416, 420.

South Mountain, Pittsneld, Mass., and
scenes of " Elsie Venner," 450.

South Parish, Andover, Mass., 6.

South Sudbury, Mass., 362, 369.

Southern Literary Messenger, 500.

Southey, Robert, George Ticknor's friend-
ship with, 227; Washington Allston's
friendship with, 297.

Souvenirs, 204.

Sparks, Jared, home of, 306; sketch of,
306-307 ; the Sparks manuscripts in
Harvard College Library, 306 ; " Diplo-
matic Correspondence of the American
Revolution," 306, 307 ; " Writings of
General Washington," " Library of
American Biography," and Franklin's
Works, 307; editorship of the North
American Review, 307; 312, 420.

Spence, Harriet, see Lowell.

Spofford, Harriet Prescott, home of, 65-
67, 70; sketch of, 67-70; first story of,
" In a Cellar," 69 ; " Sir Rohan's
Ghost," "The Amber Gods," "Aza-
rian," " The Thief in the Night," " New
England Legends," " The Marquis of
Carabas," " Hester Stanley at St.
Mark's," "In Titian's Garden and
Other Poems," and "Priscilla's Love
Story," 69 ; 72, 131, 132.

Spofford, Richard S., 69.

INDEX.

527

Spring, Rev. Dr. Samuel, a projector o

Andover Theological Seminary, 7.
Springfield, Mass., 415, 41C>, 424 ; literary

landmarks of, 425-4'.*.) ; 441, 449.
Springfield, Mass., Cemetery, J. G. Hoi
land's grave in, 426; Samuel Bowles'f
grave in, 429.

Springfield Republican, The, 378; Samne
Bowles's editorship of, 427 ; J. G. Hoi
land's connection with, 427.
Spy Pond, Arlington, 357.
Stamp Act of 1765, 105.
Star Island, Isles of Shoals, 110, 111, 114

119.

State House, Boston, 249, 271.
Staten Island, N.Y., Theodore Winthrop's

home on, 494.
Stavers, Bartholomew, of the " Ports-
mouth Flying Stage-Coach " line, 93.
Stavers, John, landlord of the " Earl of

Halifax," Portsmouth, N. H., 92.
Stearns, Frank Preston, 125.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 197, 269, 270 ;

a student at Yale College, 490.
Stephen, Leslie, his sketch of Lowell

at " Elmwood," 356.
Stephens, Mrs. Anna S. (Winterbotham),
143 ; her " Fashion and Famine " and
other novels, 143.

Stephenson, Capt. Samuel, 133, 134.
Stockbridge, Mass., Jonathan Edwards
at, 437, 438, 446, 449, 456, 457, 460-461 ;
literary landmarks of, 459-463 ; 464.
Stockbridge Bowl, see Lake Mahkeenac.
Stoddard, Rev. Solomon, 434, 435.
Storrow, Louisa, see Higginson.
Story, Judge Joseph, 137 ; mansion of,

Salem, Mass., 202.

Story, William Wetmore, 202 ; his " Roba
di Roma," " Fiametta, A Summer
Idyl," " Conversations in a Studio,"
and " Excursions in Art and Letters,"
202.

Story street, Cambridge, Mass., 321.
Stowe, Prof. Calvin Ellis, 17 ; professor at

Bowdoin College, 18, 158, 159, 160 ; 20.
Stowe, Charles, 20.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, home of, in Ando-
ver, Mass., 17-20 ; sketch, 17-20, 478-480 ;
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," 17, 18, 19, 59, 143,
155 ; its origin and composition, 158-160 ;
" Key " to " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 17 ;

"Dred," 17, 19, 20; "The Minister's
Wooing," and " The Pearl of Orr's
Island," 17 ; " Agnes of Sorrento," 17,
20 ; grave of, in Andover, 20, 21 ; home
of, in Brunswick, Me., 155, 158-159 ; first
book of, 160; "The Mayflower," 160;
472 ; Hartford, Conn., homes of, 478-480;
"We and Our Neighbors," "Oldtown
Folks " and " Pink and White Tyranny,"
480 ; 482, 485.

Stowe, Henry, 19, 20, 21.

Stuart, Elizabeth ("H. Trusta"), see
Phelps.

Stuart, Mary, see Phelps.

Stuart, Prof. Moses, 10, 12.

Sudbury, Mass., 364, 369, 370.

Sudbury River, 376.

Summer Street, Boston, 290.

Sumner, Charles, Senator, 232, 265, 304 ;
one of the "Five of Clubs," 325; 329,
330, 425, 426, 452.

Sumner, Horace, 304.

Swift, Lindsay, 195, 197, 198, 294.

Swinnerton, Dr. John, 210.

Symmes, Rev. Dr. William, 25.

Symmes, Zachariah, 25.

Symonds, Rebekah, 175.

Symonds, Dep'y-Gov. Samuel, of the
Massachusetts Colony, 175.

Symonds' Hill, Cambridge, Mass., 342.

Symposium, The, see Transcendental
Club.

Taconic Mountain, The Berkshires,

Mass., 458.

' Tarryawhile," Northampton home of
George W. Cable, 443, 444.

Taunton, Mass., 71.

Taylor, Bayard, 70, 146, 338.
Temple School," Boston, A. Bronson
Alcott's, 301 ; Elizabeth Peabodj 's
Record of, 394; model for "Alcott
House," Ham Common, England, 395.

Thackeray, William Makepeace, Paris
letters of, to Willis's Corsair, 151-152 ;
204 ; reference of, to Prescott's " crossed
swords," 234, 235 ; manuscripts of, in
James T. Fields's library, 278.

Thaxter, Celia (Laighton), 89, 94, 102, 110,
112 ; " The Spaniards' Graves," by, 113 ;
115, 119 ; home of, in the White Island
light-house, 120-121 ; " The Wreck of the

528

INDEX.

Pocahontas," 121; sketch of, 122-126;
cottage and garden of, on Appledore,
123-124 ; " An Island Garden," and " My
Garden," 124; "Among the Isles of
Shoals," and "Land-Locked," 125;
grave of, 126 ; 181, 316.

Thaxter, Levi Lincoln, 122, 123, 124, 125,
318.

Thayer, Abijah W., 50.

Thayer, Prof. James Bradley, 316.

Theological School of the New Jerusalem
Church, Cambridge, Mass., 306.

Theological Seminary, Andover, See An-
dover Theological Seminary.

Thompson, George, 55.

Thomson, Mortimer ("P. Philander
Doesticks "), his " E. Pluri Buster," a
parody on " Hiawatha," 333.

Thoreau, Cynthia (Dunbar), mother of
Henry D. Thoreau, anecdote of, 372.

Thoreau, Henry David, 191, 192 ; Concord,
Mass., homes of, 371 ; birthplace of, 371 ;
" hermitage " of, by Walden Pond, 371,
374-375, 397; sketch of, 371-375; "Wal-
den," 373, 374, 376 ; " Walk to Wachu-
sett," 374 ; " Week on the Concord and
Merrimac Rivers," 374, 376 ; " Excur-
sions," " The Maine Woods," " Cape
Cod," and " A Yankee in Canada," 375 ;
376, 385, 386, 404, 413-414.

Thoreau, John, grandfather of Henry
D. Thoreau, 371, 372.

Thoreau, John, father of Henry D.
Thoreau, 372.

Thoreau, Sophia, sister of Henry D.
Thoreau, 372.

Thoreau family, 371 ; home of, on the
village square, Concord, Mass., 371, 372.

"Thoreau house," Concord, Mass., home
of Thoreau, 371 ; later, home of the Al-
cotts, 375 ; 376, 400.

Thoreau Street, Concord, Mass., 371.

Ticknor, Anna (Eliot), wife of George
Ticknor, 227.

Ticknor, Elisha, father of George Ticknor,
224 ; his " English Exercises," 225 ; 226.

Ticknor, George, 162, 221, 222 ; house of,
223, 224 ; library of, 223, 224, 228 ; sketch
of, 224-228 ; his " History of Spanish
Literature," 224, 227 ; professorship at
Harvard College, 227 ; Life of Prescott,
228,237, 238; 236,261,323,

Ticknor and Fields, 60, 98, 267.

Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 98.

Todd, Capt. Francis, 82.
Token, The, 148.

" Tory How," Cambridge, 327.

" Town and Country Club," A. Bronson
Alcott's, 398.

Transcendental Club, Boston, 253, 302;
evolved from " The Symposium," 384 ;
Emerson's association with, 302, 384;
395.

Tread well, Prof. Daniel, 365 ; the " Theo-
logian," in " Tales of a Wayside Inn,"
368.

Tremont Place, Boston, 290.

Tremont Street, Roston, 290.

Trinity Church, Boston, 221.

Trowbridge, John Townsend, writings of,
as " Paul Creyton," 102, 359 ; editor of
Our Young Folks, 183, 358 ; home of, 357,
358; story of "Neighbor Jackwood,"
357, 359 ; " Jack Hazard," " A Chance
for Himself," "Doing His Best,"
" Lawrence's Adventures," " The Young
Surveyor," and " The Tide Mill Stories,"
358; "The Vagabonds," 358, 359;
"Martin Merrivale : his + mark," and
"Father Brighthopes," 359; "Coupon
Bonds," "Cudjo's Cave," and "The
Winnower," 360; Sketch of, 360-361;
first poem of in print, 360.

Trumbull, John, of the " Hartford Wits,"
472 ; " M'Fingal " by, 487 ; 491.

Trumbull, Col. John, 490, 491.

Trumbull, Governor Jonathan, 491.

Trumbull, Governor Jonathan (the 2d),
491.

" Trusta, H." (Elizabeth Stuart), 12.

Tucker, Ellen, see Emerson.

Tudor, William, founder of the North
American Review, 221, 249.

Underwood, Francis Henry, 48.

Union College, 432, 439.

Union Hospital, Georgetown, Louisa M.

Alcott a nurse in, 391.
Unitarian Church, Newburyport, Mass.,

see First Church, Newburyport, Mass.
United States Arsenal, Springfield, Mass.,

425.

" United States," the frigate, 455.
United States Literary Gazette, 157.

529

University of Nebraska, 194.
University of Pennsylvania, Charles Dud-
ley Warner at, 482.

Van Schaack, Henry, of Kimlerhook,

451.
Vassal house, Cambridge, see Longfellow

(Craigie) house.

Vassal, Col. John, of Cambridge, 327.
Verplanck, Gulian Crommelin, 469.
Very, John, birthplace of, 216 ; sketch of,

217 ; Essays and Poems by, 217.
Vipart, Count, 47.
" Virginia road," Concord, Mass., 371.

Wads-worth, Lieut. Alexander Scan-

nel, 141.
Wadsworth, Rev. Benjamin, president of

Harvard College, 1725-1734, 369, 370.
Wadsworth, Christopher of Duxbury,

Mass., first ancestor of the Wadsworths

in America, 369.
Wadsworth, Lieut. Henry, 140; grave

of, 141.

Wadsworth, Lucia, 137.
Wadsworth, Gen. Peleg, grandfather of

Longfellow, builder of the " Longfellow

mansion," Portland, Me., 134, 136, 137,

138, 141.
Wadsworth, Capt. Samuel, of Milton,

Mass., in King Philip's War, 364 ; in

the " Sudbury Fight," 369 ; monument

to, near the battle-ground, 370.
Wadsworth, Zilpah, see Longfellow.
Wadsworth, Athenaeum, Hartford, Conn.,

484.

Wadsworth family, 369.
" Wadsworth Grant," 134.
" Wadsworth Hill," Milton, Mass., 369,

370.
Wadsworth House " (old President's

house), Harvard University, 369, 409.
Walden Pond, Concord, Mass., 371, 374,

379, 381, 385, 397.

Walden Woods, Concord, Mass., 379, 386.
Waldo, Cornelius, 180.
Wales, Henry Ware, the "Student" in

the " Tales of a Wayside Inn," 367.
Walnut Street, Boston, 228, 229, 253.
Walter, Arthur Maynard, 221.
War of 1812, 317.
Ward, Gen. Artemas, 314.

Ward, Elizabeth Stuart (Phelps), Amlover
home of, 10, 1C; sketch of, 10-16; first
publication of, " A Sacrifice Consumed,"
13 ; story of her " Gates Ajar," 13-15,
16 ; " The Gates Between," and " Hedged
In," 15 ; 17, 329.

Ward, Herbert Dickinson, 16.

Ward, Julius Hammond, 496.

Ward, Rev. Nathaniel, of Ipswich, Mass.,
the " Simple Cobler of Aggawam " by,
29, 173, 178 ; the Body of Liberties,"
173 ; site of house of, 178.

Ware, Rev. Henry, 8, 419.

Warner, Charles Dudley, 472, 476 ; Hart-
ford, Conn., homes of, 480-481 ; " My
Summer in a Garden " by, 480, 482-483 ;
" Saunterings," " Backlog Studies," and
"Baddeck and That Sort of Thing,"
480, 483 ; "My Winter on the Nile," and
"In the Levant," *81 ; sketch of, 481-
483 ;" A Roundabout Journey," " The
Pilgrimage," " A Little Journey in the
World," "Studies in the South and
West," "As We Were Saying," and
"Library of the World's Best Litera-
ture," 483.

Warner, Jonathan, house, Portsmouth,
N.H.. 104.

Washington, George, nephews of, at
Phillips (Andover) Academy, 5 ; 71, 92,
296; headquarters of, in the Vassal
(Craigie-Longfellow) house, 307, 336;
312, 323, 327, 344, 364, 488, 491.

Washington Street, Boston, 290.

Waterford, Me., 170, 171.

Waters, Lieut. Kerwin, of U. S. brig
" Enterprise," 141.

Watertown, first minister of, 6 ; 347.

" Wayside, The," Hawthorne's last Con-
cord home, 398; sketch of, 402-406;
work done in the "Tower study,"
403-J04; the outdoor study on "The
Ridge," 404-405.

"Wayside Inn, The," South Sudbury,
Mass., 70, 269, 270, 362 ; as pictured in
Longfellow's "Tales" of, 362, 363;
earlier days of, as the "Red Horse
Tavern," 364, 369 ; " Landlord Howe "
of, 365, 369 ; connection of the Howe
family with, 365, 369.

Webber, Samuel, president of Harvard
College, 1806-1810, 8.

530

INDEX.

Webster, Daniel, 45, 46; in Portsmouth,
N.H., 104-105 ; 225, 236, 346, 423.

"Webster, Ezekiel, schoolmaster, 225, 423.

Webster, Grace (Fletcher), 105.

Webster, Noah, the lexicographer, Scud-
der's Life of, 338 ; in Hartford, Conn.,
473 ; his spelling-book, 473 ; 490 ; grave
of, 491.

Weiss, Rev. John, 122, 125.

Weld, Elias, the "wise old doctor" of
" Snow Bound," 49.

Wendell, Jacob, great-grandfather of
O. W. Holmes, 450.

Wendell, Judge Oliver, grandfather of
O. W. Holmes, site of Boston house of,
290 ; in " the old gambrel-roofed house,"
Cambridge, 316 ; at Pittsfield, 451 ; his
chaise "The Deacon's Masterpiece,"
451.

Wendell, Sarah, see Holmes.

Wenham Lake, 184.

Wenham, Mass, 184.

Wentworth, the three royal governors of
New Hampshire, 92, 102, 104, 119, 317.

Wentworth, Governor Benning, 92, 102'
104, 108.

Wentworth, Governor John, house of,
Portsmouth, N.H., 104; 119.

Wentworth, Judge, grandson of the first
royal Governor Wentworth, 317.

Wentworth, Michael, 108, 109.

Wentworth " Great House," 92, 102, 103 ;
sketch of, 106-108 ; 109.

West Church, Boston, 253, 341.

West Newbury, Mass., 44.

West River, 498.

Whale Back Lighthouse, 124.

Wheaton Female Seminary, Lucy Larcom
a teacher at, 190.

Wheelock, Rev. Eleazar, founder of Dart-
mouth College, 440.

Whipple, Edwin Percy, 97, 99 ; sketch of,
215, 271-274 ; Boston home of, 271, 273-
274; "Essays and Reviews," "Litera-
ture and Life," " Character and Char-
acteristic Men," " Literature of the Age
of Elizabeth," " Success and its Condi-
tions," and "American Literature and
Other Papers " by, 272 ; " Recollections
of Eminent Men," 273 ; 403.

White Island, Isles of Shoals, 110, 112,
114, 116, 120, 121, 122.

White Island Lighthouse, 112, 120, 121, 122.

White, Maria, see Lowell.

Whitefield, George, the evangelist, in
Newburyport, Mass., 74-76; tomb of,
" under the church of Federal Street,"
73, 74, 76 ; 77, 78, 83, 440.

Whitney, William Dwight, tomb of, 492.

Whittier Club, Haverhill, Mass., 38.

Whittier Elm, 55.

Whittier Hill, 65.

Whittier, Abigail (Hussey), mother of
J. G. Whittier, sketch of, 44-45 ; 56.

Whittier, Amy de Poyen, 47.

Whittier, Elizabeth, sister of J. G. Whit-
tier, 47, 56, 57, 190.

Whittier, John, father of J. G. Whittier,
42, 43 ; sketch of, 44 ; 48, 50, 52, 53.

Whittier, John Greeuleaf, first printed
poem by, " The Exile's Departure," 35,
50; "The Bridal of Pennacook," "The
Norseman's Ride," and " Pentucket,"
35,59; "Kenoza Lake," 36; called the
"shoemaker poet,*' 36; the Whittier
homestead, birthplace of, 36-55, 57 ;
sketch of, 36, 47-55, 59-61, 132 ; " The
Sycamores," 36, 60 ; " The Fish I Didn't
Catch," 38 ; " The Barefoot Boy," and
"Telling the Bees," 39; "Yankee
Gypsies," 40 ; " Snow Bound," 40 ; the
family group pictured in, 42-47, 49, 55,
61, 63, 71 ; " Literary Recreations," 40,
58, 59 ; " Justice and Expediency," 41,
55; "The Countess," 47, 49; "The
Deity," 50 ; first meeting of the poet and
Garrison, 50-51 ; editor of a Henry Clay
organ in Boston, 53 ; editor of the Haver-
hill Gazette, 53 ; editor of the New Eng-
land Literary Heview, Hartford, Conn.,
53, 54, 472, 485-487 ; " Legends of New
England," 53, 486 ; early activity of, in
politics, 54 ; member of the Legislature,
and proposed for Congress, 55 ; "In
School Days," 55 ; the Amesbury Whit-
tier home, 56-61 ; " Old Portraits,"
"Leaves from Margaret Smith's Jour-
nal," and " In War Time," 58, 60 ; " The
Fainilist's Hymn," " Cassandra South-
wick," " Hampton Beach," "The New
Wife and the Old," "Randolph of
Roanoke," "Barclay of Ury," "The
Drovers," " The Huskers," " Calef in
Boston " " The Hill Top," " Tauler,"

INDEX.

531

" Burns," " Maud Muller," " A Lady of
Old Time," "The Last Walk in Au-
tumn," and " The Pipes of Lucknow,"
59 ; " The Gift of Titemius," " Skipper
Iresou's Ride," and " Barbara Friet-
chie," 60 ; Laus Deo," 62 ; " The Wreck
of Rivermouth," 70 ; " The Tent on the
Beach," scene of, 70, 71 ; " To My School-
master," 72, 86 ; " The Preacher," lines
quoted from, 73; 81, 82, 125; "The
Falls of the Saco," 132; 138, 176, 178;
" Lines" to " Gail Hamilton," 182-183 ;
" The Witch of Wenham," 184 ; 190, 278,
484 ; " Miriam," 487 ; 496.

Whittier, Joseph, great-grandfather of
J. G. Whittier, 41, 43, 44, 54.

Whittier, Joseph, 2d, grandfather of J. G.
Whittier, 43, 44.

Whittier, Mary, sister of J. G. Whittier,
46, 48, 50, 51.

Whittier, Mary (Peasley), great-grand-
mother of J. G. Whittier, 44.

Whittier, Matthew Franklin ("Ethan
Spike of Hornby"), brother of J. G.
Whittier, 47, 64, 102.

Whittier, Moses, uncle of J. G. Whittier,
46,48.

Whittier, Ruth (Green), wife of Thomas
Whittier, the emigrant, 43.

Whittier, Sarah (Greenleaf), grandmother
of J. G. Whittier, 44.

Whittier, Thomas, the pioneer emigrant,
ancestor of J. G. Whittier, 42, 43, 44, 45.

Whittier's country, 35-55, 70.

Whittier's grave, 61, 63, 64.

Willard, Emma Hart, 472 ; " Rocked in
the Cradle of the Deep," by. 485.

Willard, Joseph, president of Harvard,
1781-1804, 419.

William Pitt tavern, see " Earl of Hali-
fax " tavern.

Williams College, 337, 462, 464, 467.

Willis, Cornelia (Grinnell), second wife of
X. P. Willis, 153.

Willis, Hannah (Parker), mother of X. P.
Willis, 144.

AVillis, Mary (Stace), first wife of N. P.
Willis, 150, 151, 153.

Willis, Nathaniel, grandfather of X. P.
Willis, 144.

Willis, Deacon Nathaniel, father of N. P.
Willis, 144.

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, pupil at Phil-
lips (Andover) Academy, 5, 147 ; editor
of the Home Journal, 95, 152, 153 ; 142 ;
"Saturday Afternoon," by, 143, 148;
sketch of, 144-153 ; " Absalom," and
" The Sacrifice of Abraham," 147 ; bis
American Monthly Magazine, 148, 231 ;
" Peucillings by the Way," the " Philip
Slingsby Papers," in " Inklings of Ad-
venture," " Loiterings of Travel," and
" Lines on Leaving England," 150 ; " A
PAbri," and " Letters from Under a
Bridge," 151 ; The Corsair, and Thack-
eray's letters to, 151, 152; "Dashes at
Life With a Free Pencil," and " Letter
to the Unknown Purchaser and Next
Occupant of " Glenmary," 152 ; " Invalid
Letters," and " Paul Fane," 153 ; a stu-
dent at Yale College, 489.

Willis, Richard Storrs, brother of N. P.
Willis, 153.

Willis, Sara Payson, sister of H. P. Willis,
see Parton.

Winthrop, Elizabeth (Reade), second wife
of John Winthrop of Ipswich, 175.

Winthrop, John, of Ipswich, first gov-
ernor of Connecticut, 174, 175, 178, 490.

Winthrop, Governor John, of Massachu-
setts, 174, 176, 206.

Winthrop, John Fitz, second Gov. Win-
throp of Connecticut, 175.

Winthrop, Laura, see Johnson.

Winthrop, Martha (Painter), first wife of
John Winthrop of Ipswich, 175.

Winthrop, Theodore, student at Yale
College, 489 ; sketch of, 490, 492, 493-495;
birthplace of, 492-493; grave of, 492:
" Life and Poems " of, 492, 495 ; " Cecil
Dreeme," "Love and Skates," and
"March of the Seventh Regiment of
New York to Washington," 494, 495;
"John Brent," "Edwin Brothertoft,' :
" The Canoe and the Saddle," and " Life
in the Open Air," 495.

Witchcraft delusion, 25, 34, 206, 215.

Wolcott, Oliver, 4%.

Wolcott, Roger, the earliest Hartford
poet, 490.

Woodberry, George Edward, birthplace
of, 193 ; sketch of, 193-197 ; " The Xorth
Shore Watch " by, 193, 195 ; " Makers of
Literature," and " Heart of Man," 193,

532

INDEX.

197 ; " Verses from the Harvard Advo-
cate," 194 ; " Life of Edgar Allan Poe,"
195 ; " My Country," passages quoted
from, 195-196 ; " Studies in Letters and
Life," Shelley's Works, with memoir,
and "Wild Eden," 197; "National
Studies in American Letters," 197, 294.

Woodbridge, Rev. Benjamin, 29.

Woodbridge, Rev. John, 27, 29.

Woodbury, Levi, 105.

Woods, Rev. Dr. Leonard, first head of
Andover Theological Seminary, 9.

Woods, Rev. Dr. Leonard, 2d, fourth presi-
dent of Bowdoin College, 9.

Woodworth, Samuel, the " Old Oaken
Bucket" by, 148.

Woolsey, Theodore D wight, tenth presi-
dent of Yale College, 439.

Woolson, Abba (Goold), 143.

Wooster Street, New Haven, Conn., 492.

Worcester, Mass., 423, 424.

Worcester, Joseph Emerson, the lexi-
cographer, 214, 329 ; a student at Yale
College, 490.

Wreck of the " Sagunto," 112.

Yale College, 96, 147, 434, 435, 436, 439,
440, 462, 467, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493,
495, 496, 501.

Youth's Companion, 13, 144, 147.

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