UP AND DOWN THE LANE.

IT is strange that the spot of earth where we were born should
make such a difference to us. People can live and grow anywhere,
but people as well as plants have their habitat,--the place
where they belong, and where they find their happiest, because
their most natural life. If I had opened my eyes upon this planet
elsewhere than in this northeastern corner of Massachusetts,
elsewhere than on this green, rocky strip of shore between
Beverly Bridge and the Misery Islands, it seems to me as if I
must have been somebody else, and not myself. These gray ledges
hold me by the roots, as they do the bayberry bushes, the sweet-
fern, and the rock-saxifrage.

When I look from my window over the tree-tops to the sea, I could
almost fancy that from the deck of some one of those inward bound
vessels the wistful eyes of the Lady Arbella might be turned
towards this very hillside, and that mine were meeting hers in
sympathy, across the graves of two hundred and fifty years. For
Winthrop's fleet, led by the ship that bore her name, must have
passed into harbor that way. Dear and gracious spirit! The memory
of her brief sojourn here has left New England more truly
consecrated ground. Sweetest of womanly pioneers! It is as if an
angel in passing on to heaven just touched with her wings this
rough coast of ours.

In those primitive years, before any town but Salem had been
named, this whole region was known as Cape Ann Side; and about
ten years after Winthrop's arrival, my first ancestor's name