File:New England in letters (1904) (14804540663).jpg

Identifier: newenglandinlett00wils (find matches)
Title: New England in letters
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, 1865-
Subjects: American literature -- New England History and criticism New England -- Description and travel New England -- Intellectual life
Publisher: New York, A. Wessels
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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. After the Revolution it passedinto the hands of Eliphalet Pearson, long professor ofHebrew in the college, and in 1807 became the home ofAbiel Holmes, for the better part of forty years thesturdy and resolutely orthodox pastor of the FirstChurch of Cambridge. This Abiel Holmes, whoclaimed descent from one of the earliest settlers in thecolony of Massachusetts Bay, chose for his second wifea daughter of Oliver Wendell, a leading lawyer of histime, who was descended from the Wendells, theOlivers, the Bradstreets and the Quincys. And in such a house, to such parents and of suchancestry in August, 1809, was born a son to whomwas given the family names of Oliver and Wendell.This son, in the opening chapter of The Poet at theBreakfast Table, has described his birthplace with allthe vividness that l)clongs to early impressions — thegreat dimly lighted garret beneath tlic roof; the atticchambers which themselves had histories; the roomsof the second story, chambers of birth and death, 120
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CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES sacred to silent memories; and the heavy-beamedstudy on the ground floor, with its shelves of books, andits floors thickly strewn with the dents which traditioncredited to the hea\y rifle butts of the Continentalsoldiers. It was a great happiness, he adds, tohave been bom in an old house haunted by such recol-lections, . . . with fields of waving grass, and treesand singing birds, and that vast territory of four or fiveacres around it, to give a child a sense that he wasborn to a noble principality. Parson Holmes dwelt in the gambrel-roofed houseuntil his death, in 1837; and it was the home of his sonduring the latters childhood, youth and period of pro-fessional studies. There, too, at the age of twenty,the younger Holmes laid the foundation of his fame asa poet. The old frigate Constitution lay at theCharlestown Navy Yard about to be broken up, andHolmes, then in his senior year at Harvard, went oneday to see the historic craft. Returning to his home,an in

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