veritable memorials and relics of early days, but such has been the
privilege of some of us in connection with the Harris home. Through many
generations of education and culture, treasures in books and music and
pictures, in furniture, plate, and china, have been collected and
preserved, until the home has become verily a museum of rare and
beautiful works, whose possessor is eminently suited to these delightful
surroundings.

Nor can we fail to offer and appreciative and loving tribute to the two
sisters who have long been among our most learned and accomplished women,
and have exemplified through their long lives the quiet beauty and
loveliness of true charity. The beautiful hill with the adjacent vale on
occupied by the estates of Mrs. Hook, Mrs. Pratt, and Mr. and Mrs.
Charles F. Sprague, was in the early days the Harris homestead. Here Dr.
Luther M. Harris, the father, was born. Some of us remember his as the
valued family physician, who, when burdened with the infirmities of age,
gave up his practice to Dr. George Faulkner.

One of the most interesting and attractive of the ancestral homes still
standing, in this vicinity, is the Greenough mansion, finely situated on
the curve of Centre and South streets. It has an air of dignity and
spaciousness which many a more portentous modern countryseat fail to
match. Although it has been home to five generations of the Greenough
family, -- since about the year 1780, -- its history antedates their
ownership by many years. This estate was originally of royal dimensions,
covering about one hundred acres, and belonged to John Polley. In 1752,
it was purchased by Commodore Joshua Loring, one of the Tory gentry, who
a few years later built the present house (1758), the frame having been
brought from England. Commodore Loring was a native of Roxbury and did
gallant service in the British navy, in the campaigns against Canada. He