The sky that overhung Hawthorne's departure from Lenox was gray with
impending snow, and the flakes had begun to fall ere the vehicle in
which his family was ensconced had reached the railway station in
Pittsfield. Travel had few amenities in those days. The cars were all
plain cars, with nothing to recommend them except that they went
tolerably fast--from twenty to thirty miles an hour. They were
chariots of delight to the children, who were especially happy in
occupying the last car of the train, from the rear windows of which
they could look down upon the tracks, which seemed to slide
miraculously away from beneath them. The conductor collected the
tickets--a mysterious rite. The gradually whitening landscape fled
past, becoming ever more level as we proceeded; by-and-by there was a
welcome unpacking of the luncheon-basket, and all the while there were
the endless questions to be asked and faithfully answered. It was
already dark by the time we were bundled out at the grimy shed which
was called the depot, at West Newton, where we were met by the Horace
Manns, and somehow the transit to the latter's house, which we were to
occupy for the winter, was made. The scene was gloomy and unpleasant;
the change from the mountains of the west depressing; and, for my
part, I cannot remember anything agreeable in this raw little suburb.
American life half a century ago had a great deal of rawness about it,
and its external aspect was ugly beyond present belief. We may be a
less virtuous nation now than we were then, but we are indescribably
more good to look at. And the West Newton of to-day, as compared with
that of 1851, will serve for an illustration of this truth.

Horace Mann's house was a small frame dwelling, painted white, with
green blinds, and furnished with a furnace stiflingly hot. One of the
first things the baby did was to crawl under the sofa in the