Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

A potent influence was also preparing for me in Cambridge in a peculiarly fascinating circle of young people,--more gifted, I cannot help thinking, than any later coterie of the same kind,--which seemed to group itself round James Lowell and Maria White, his betrothed, who were known among the members as their “King and Queen.” They called themselves “The brothers and sisters,” being mainly made up in that way: the Whites of Watertown and their cousins the Thaxters; the Storys from Cambridge; the Hales and the Tuckermans from Boston; the Kings from Salem, and others. They had an immense and hilarious intimacy, rarely, however, for some reason, culminating in intermarriage; they read the same books, and had perpetual gatherings and picnics, their main headquarters being the large colonial house of the White family in Watertown. My own point of contact with them was remote, but real; my mother had removed, when her family lessened, to a smaller house built by my elder brother, and belonging in these latter days to Radcliffe College. This was next door to the Fay House of that institution, then occupied by Judge Fay. And as my friend Maria Fay was a cousin of some of