[
57]
Soon after announcing his new plan,
Higginson moved to
Cambridge and wrote to his betrothed:—
I shall live very unobtrusively and probably have no intimates, but I shall have a world made up of you and books and nature and myself and a great touch of unknown human nature in the streets of Boston besides.
Oh it will be nice—so free.
Life went a Maying
With nature, love and liberty
When I was young.
In this hopeful spirit, the young emigrant loaded his traps upon a wagon and led the horse over muddy roads to the room he had chosen in the first building called College House.
The new quarters he described in a letter to his Aunt Nancy:—
Here I am very nicely fixed, Madam; a very pleasant place is the Old Den, I assure you, particularly this room, North East third story—commanding a pretty view of the College Yard, especially neat in the morning—dew—grass—trees—library ground-glass windows—sunshine and so on—overlooks the street too very nicely—Brighton cattle —enthusiastic pigs—agonized maternal cows— heartrent filial calves and all that, very enlivening.
Oh it is the nicest room I know anywhere in its situation. . . the back part veiled into a bedroom by tall curtains a la Greque (secondhand—the gift of our liberal fellow citizen L. L. Thaxter, Esq.）— and the rest of the room filled up with superb furniture, among which shine pre-eminent two sulphur
