[61]
charm is, I think, most strongly exhaled, like a flower's perfume, in summer.
Then, as one lingers at evening on the silent brown paths, looking up at the cool, shadowy green boughs, that render more infinitely vast the starry sky-depths beyond, one feels the spell most powerfully.
Thoughts of which dreams are made throng the mind, and stories of the past with which the Cambridge air is filled dominate the imagination.
Then the college life, with its present hopes and enthusiasms and its joyous modernity has ebbed away for a tidal-hour, leaving bare the quiet shore of the past, seamed and lined with the traces of two centuries tides.
In some such a summer I have written this brief account and now send it forth, “with all its imperfections thick upon it,” trusting it will lead someone else to seek out the history and grow to love stories of Cambridge as do I, to whom “its dust is dear.”
For assistance in preparing the facts contained in this article I am indebted to the courtesy of the Rev. William B. King and Dr. McKenzie.
I have also learned much from the following authorities: History of Shepard Church, Dr. McKenzie; The Cambridge of 1776, by Mr. Arthur Gilman; Harvard and its Surroundings, Mr. Moses King; Christ Church, Cambridge, Mr. S. F. Batchelder, and from other works of a like nature.
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