Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

along Brattle Street the gallants of Revolutionary days had in Lowell's phrase “creaked up and down on red-heeled shoes, lifting the ceremonious three-cornered hat and offering the fugacious hospitalities of the snuff-box.” the Baroness Riedesel had described their delightful society in 1780; all the families were more or less connected, and most of them had slave plantations in the West Indies. She says: “never had I chanced upon such an agreeable situation. Seven families, who were connected with each other, partly by the ties of relationship and partly by affection, had here farms, gardens, and magnificent houses, and not far off plantations of fruit. The owners of these were in the habit of daily meeting each other in the afternoons,--now at the House of one, and now at another, and making themselves merry with music and the dance,--living in prosperity, united and happy, until, alas! this ruinous war severed them, and left all their ”