A REMINISCENCE OF OLD CAMBRIDGE.


In looking back 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,