Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

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Chapter 4: Longfellow

Unlike Holmes and Lowell, Longfellow was not born in a college town; but he went at fifteen to live in one, and that a very characteristic one, not differing essentially in its traditions from that in which he spent his later life, although all the academic associations at Bowdoin College were on a smaller scale than at Harvard. As Fluellen says in “Henry V.” that there is a river in Macedon and a river in Monmouth and there are salmons in both, so it may be said that Brunswick has somewhat the same relation to the Androscoggin that Cambridge bears to the Charles; and the open sea is within a few hours' sail from each, so that there were, or might have been at some period, salmons in both. Each town had then broad country roads shaded by elm trees, and each still has large colonial houses, in two at least of which — both yet standing — Longfellow