done. You feel you must go in to see what
these lovely houses are like inside; and the first thing you know, you
are buying Queen Anne mirrors, japanned trays, braided mats, and even
serpentine fronted bureaux, which you don't know what to do with but die
rather than do without!

Everything else that we saw was a "star" place after that, for we were
coming back into Massachusetts, and to the Berkshire Hills which Thoreau
loved, and Hawthorne, and Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Williamstown is as celebrated in its smaller way as Harvard or Yale, for
a university's fame needn't consist in size, I suppose! I hardly ever
saw a place where every building was so perfectly suited to every other
building, without one jarring note; and though it's more important than
a village now, the lovely description Hawthorne wrote suits the town as
well as ever. He said: "I had a view of Williamstown from Greylock
summit: a white village and a steeple in a gradual hollow, with huge
mountain swells heaving up, like immense subsiding waves far and near
around it."

Do you remember "Ethan Brand" and "The Unpardonable Sin?" I hadn't
realized till Jack reminded me, as we looked up to "Old Greylock," that
the lime kiln was there. I'm going to read Hawthorne all over again
now--when I have time!

"Greylock" was the translated name of a brave Indian chief who used to
fight with the French against the English. I wonder what he would say
nowadays when they are Allies? If he were as intelligent as his mountain
is beautiful, he'd be glad.

The Berkshire Hills are the small brothers of the Green Mountains, for
they are all of the same family, but they have their own
characteristics. It seems as if the men who engineered the wonderful
roads must have loved the hills and planned each mile of the way so as
to show off some favourite feature. For instance, you could never for a
minute miss Greylock's long, dove-coloured streak which justifies his
name!

If Williamstown is the gate of the Berkshires, Pittsfield is their
heart; and so it's right that the place should be the literary landmark
it is. Longfellow came on his honeymoon to the "hill city," and wrote
the "Old Clock on the Stairs" in the very house where the clock was--and
is now. South Mountain is close by, where "Elsie Venner" scenes were
laid; and "Elsie's" author lived for years at a place between Pittsfield
and Lenox. It's still there, and is called "Holmesdale."

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