The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

[149] Observatory, a conspicuous and accurate type, in spirit and nature, of several other departments of the university. It is constantly at work trying to learn more truth about the heavenly bodies,—confident that the truth will somehow and somewhere prove serviceable,—but taking no account of immediate utilities. From the top of the Observatory one overlooks the homes and working-places of as comfortable and happy a population as the world contains, and can almost hear the hum of their industries, and feel the throb of their multitudinous joys and sorrows; yet with the daily cares and labors of that population the Observatory has nothing to do. It lives a life apart, devoted to observation and study of sun, moon, and planets, of comets and meteors, and of the stars, conscious indeed that navigation and time-keeping depend on these studies, but keeping in immediate view only the instant search for new truth.

It is natural that Cambridge should be an object of great interest to visitors from other parts of the country, and it is pleasant to live in a place which has such attractions. Few educated people from the West and the South come to New England without visiting this city,—so full of historical, literary, and scientific associations. The summer visitors to Boston regularly make pilgrimages to the College Yard, Memorial Hall, the Museum, the old graveyard between the two churches, the Washington Elm, Brattle Street, and Elmwood Avenue. Many graduates of the university, whose lives are spent in places remote from Cambridge, return thither from time to time to refresh their recollections and to watch the progress of improvements. As a rule these men return with feelings of affection and gratitude. These sentiments, felt by thousands of men, ennoble the city and make it a worthier dwelling-place.