Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

[21] forces; the rest fleeing to General Gage in Boston. All these things were traditional among Cambridge boys; we knew the spot where the troops had been drawn up, opposite Dr. Holmes's “Old Manse,” while President Langdon offered prayer, ere he dismissed them to their march toward Bunker Hill. We all knew the spot where Washington took command of the army; and the house (the Craigie House) where he dwelt. We played the battle of Bunker Hill on the grass-grown redoubts built during the siege of Boston. Only one of these is left, the three-gun battery known as. Fort Washington, but there was a finer one on Putnam Avenue, where greenhouses now stand. More elaborate than any were those around the ruins of the convent on Mount Benedict in Somerville; they encircled the hill and could accommodate a regiment of schoolboys. Moreover, there still lingered one or two wounded veterans whom we eyed with reverence, chief of whom was Lowell's “Old Joe” :

Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad
His slow artillery up the Concord road-