Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 22.

[p. 15] of the artist should be mistaken for the Unitarian church steeple. Mr. Hooper admits the artist's error in house location, and frankly says it is, ‘like all other ideal pictures,’ open to criticism. The ‘island’ he refers to, with its trees, is surely a subject of interest. We trust its story, with Legend of Lydia, will be secured ere the deepwater Mystic our Representative Burrell advocates becomes a reality.

Thirdly. About the ‘Bower.’ We plead not guilty to ‘conscious historical falsehood’ (italics our own) in this count of the indictment (if such it be). We have consulted the dictionary, which is a help in trouble, and find some twenty meanings of false and a dozen of falsehood. This latter, in the quotation of Mr. H. from John Fiske, is doubly qualified. Certainly the writer of the ‘Midwinter Ramble’ is now in a maze, if not then in the ‘Bower,’ for by the communication of Mr. H. the ‘Bower’ mentioned by Mr. Brooks was not where the writer thought he had found it, not by ‘a dam site.’ We will now quote Mr. Brooks, (page 393):—

There was a mill at the place now called the ‘Bower,’ about a mile north of the meeting-house of the first parish, carried by the water of Marble Brook. The banks, race, canal and cellar are yet traceable. This was used for grinding grain and sawing timber. It was on land owned by Mr. Dudley Wade.

The mid-winter rambler had read the above, had never heard or read elsewhere of this mill or dam site, and accepting the only mention known to him as correct, wrote, ‘Yes, this is the’ Bower ‘(so-called fifty years ago), the site of the ancient mill.’ He regrets his inaccuracy, renews his plea of ‘not guilty of historical falsehood,’ and suggests a pilgrimage of interested readers to the real site of the ‘Bower’ as located by former President Hooper, and farther on to the dam, of which structure so much remains intact after the lapse of two centuries and which so few have ever seen, but which is well worth visiting.