ith harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with
fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast
territory of four or five acres around it to give a child the sense that
he was born to a noble principality. It has been a great pleasure
to retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the
natural course of things it must at length pass into other hands, it
is a gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new
tenant, like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a
neighbor of condition. Not long since a new cap of shingles adorned this
ancient mother among the village--now city--mansions. She has dressed
herself in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, so they tell
me, within the last few days. She has modernized her aspects in several
ways; she has rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at the
Common and the Colleges; and as the sunsets shine upon her through
the flickering leaves or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my
childhood, they will glorify her into the aspect she wore when President
Holyoke, father of our long since dead centenarian, looked upon her in
her youthful comeliness.

The quiet corner formed by this and the neighboring residences has
changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd,
and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town
as constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to become the oldest
inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there
to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant
itself on this whole territory, and the private recollections which
clung so tenaciously and fondly to the place and its habitations will
have died with those who cherished them.

Shall they ever live again in the memory of those who loved them here
below? What is this life without the poor accidents which made it our
own, and by which we identify ourselves? Ah me! I might like to be a
winged chorister, but still it seems to me I should hardly be quite
happy if I could not recall at will the Old House with the Long Entry,
and the White Chamber (where I wrote the first verses that made me
known, with a pencil, stans pede in uno, pretty, nearly), and the Little
Parlor, and the Study, and the old books in uniforms as varied as those
of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used to be, if my memory
serves me right, and the front yard with the St