Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[135] in Cambridge; and the house of Longfellow, always hospitable, was its headquarters.

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The path from Charlestown.

The literary associations of Cambridge all cluster around a single ancient road, called in the earliest records “The path from Charlestown to Watertown.” Hunters, trappers, Indians, pioneers, farmers, had all traveled on that road, going westward; and the hastily gathered and “embattled” farmers marched down it, going eastward, from Cambridge Common to the fight at Bunker Hill. It led through what is now Kirkland Street, passing the house where Holmes was born, through Brattle Street, past Longfellow's house, through Elmwood Avenue and Mt. Auburn Street, past the house where Lowell was born and died. It then passed on beyond Mt. Auburn to the original village of Watertown, now marked by a deserted burial-ground only — on whose crumbling stones the curious schoolboy still notices such quaint inscriptions as that of Mr. John Bailey, minister of the gospel, “a pious and painfull preacher,” or of his wife described as one who “was good betimes and best at last,” “went off singing and left us weeping,” and who “walked with God until ”