ck upon my early days, one of the images that rises most
vividly to my mind's eye is that of Miss Molly ----, or Aunt Molly, as
she was called by some of her little favorites, that is to say, about
a dozen girls, and (not complimentary to the _un_fair sex, to be sure)
one boy. There was one, who, even to Miss Molly, was not a torment and
a plague; and I must confess he was a pleasant specimen of the
genus. At the time of which I speak, the great awkward barn of a
school-house on the Common, near the Appian Way, had not reared its
imposing front. In its place, in the centre of a grass-plot that was
one of the very first to look green in spring, and kept its verdure
through the heats of July, stood the brown, one-storied cottage which
she owned, and in which the aged woman lived, alone. Her garden and
clothes-yard behind the house were fenced in; but in front, the
visitor to the cottage, unimpeded by gate or fence, turned up the
pretty green slope directly from the street to the lowly door.

As I have started for a walk into the old times, and am not bound by
any rule to stick to the point, I will here digress to say that the
Episcopal Church (_the Church_, as it was simply called, when all the
rest were "meeting-houses"), that tells the traveller what a pure and
true taste was once present in Cambridge, and, by the contrast it
presents to the architectural blunders that abound in the place, tells
also what a want of it there is now,--this beautiful church stood most
appropriately and tastefully surrounded by the green turf, unbroken by
stiff gravel walks or coach sweep, and undivided from the public walk
by a fence. Behind the church, and forming a part of its own grounds,
(where now exist the elegances of School Court,) was an unappropriated
field; and that spot was considered, by a certain little group of
children, of six or seven years old, the most solitary, gloomy,
mysterious place in their little world. When the colors of sunset had
died out in the west, and the stillness and shadow of twilight were
coming on, they used to "snatch a fearful joy" in seeing one of their
number (whose mother had kindly omitted the first lesson usually
taught to little girls, to be afraid of every thing) perform the feat
of going slowly around the church, alone, stopping behind it to count
a hundred. Her wonderful courage in actually protecting the whole
group from what they called a "flock of cows," and in staking and
patting the "mad