previous next
[151] have, as has been seen, some literary associations. It would be impossible to find elsewhere in America, and hard to select anywhere, a series of houses in this respect so notable.1

it was past this row of houses that Lowell walked daily or rode on his little pony to the village post-office; and it was not possible that a child of naturally imaginative turn should escape their influence. It was too soon after the American Revolution — then only fifty years removed — for him to feel any cordial sympathy or envy for the period of hair powder and snuffboxes; but the boy who was already immersing himself in the traditions of English poetry, had the actual form of the British occupation of New England vividly before his eyes.

Lowell may have also found, in the garrets of his father's House, such memorials of the confiscation of the estate as in the following

1Mrs. Oliver was sister to Vassall, and Mrs. Vassall was sister to Oliver. The deceased father of Vassall and Mrs. Oliver was brother to Mrs. Ruggles and to the deceased husband of the widow Vassall, and the deceased mother of Vassall and Mrs. Oliver was sister to Mrs. Lechmere and Mrs. Lee. The widow Vassall was also aunt to Mr. Oliver and to John Vassall's wife.” Paige's History of Cambridge, p. 168, note.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
New England (United States) (1)
America (Illinois, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Henry Vassall (6)
Thomas Oliver (5)
Sally Lowell (2)
John Vassall (1)
George Ruggles (1)
Paige (1)
Joseph Lee (1)
Richard Lechmere (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: