Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 11.

[p. 4] and green trees where are now paved streets and rows upon rows of handsome houses. Down in the marshes to the right were the busy brickyards, and near by, a standing rebuke to the civilization of the time, were the ruins of the Ursuline Convent, destroyed by a mob a few years before.

Passing down Main street on this side the hill, I stopped to study the Royall mansion. I knew nothing of its name or history, but the place carried with it an unmistakable flavor of the past, and that was an element which always attracted me. So on past the Medford House, over the bridge, past the little branch railroad station and City Hall, into the square. As I entered the square, things had a strangely familiar look. There are so many things in old-fashioned New England villages that look alike. It reminded me of certain New Hampshire villages with which I was familiar, the type, I have since found, of nine out of ten of those anciently planted in New England, the main feature consisting of two broad streets crossing each other at right angles, the intersection forming what is always and everywhere known as ‘the square,’ round which are clustered the various stores of the town, the postoffice, and the oldest church, the town pump always in the center. This last was my first objective point, for my long walk had made me thirsty. I was not so thoroughly permeated with my errand as to be oblivious of everything else, and I spent a comfortable and instructive hour in ‘sizing up’ the town before I turned my steps toward the old burying-ground, directed by a little girl, who was curious to know if I ‘was going to have a funeral,’ and who seemed to be genuinely disappointed when I assured her I was not. The wall which skirted the yard was in a dilapidated condition at that date, the town, or the church society having it in charge, evidently feeling sure that none of those in the enclosure would ever try to get out, and equally sure that nobody outside would be anxious to get in, and so regarded its mending as unnecessary. A