One day in walking down Tremont Street, as we halted at Miss Thorndike’s boarding-house, we saw a stout, middle-aged woman in the window, who nodded pleasantly to Miss Thorndike: “That is the poet, Lucy Larcom,” she whispered, to our awed surprise. We used to go to King’s Chapel just to see Dr. Holmes, who always sat in the same place in the gallery--the little old man, looking somewhat sleepy and very remote, but very fitting in that quaint old meeting-house. I first read his books in Boston, and it was such a delight in walking across the Common to realize that it was amid these very scenes that he had written the “Autocrat” and the “Professor.” It was a notable day when we went to Cambridge and visited Harvard University, the Old Craigie House, the Washington Elm, and Mount Auburn. Then there were the trips to Charlestown and Bunker Hill, and the Navy Yard--these soon after our arrival there--it all seemed like stepping out of real life into a novel. What a glamour there was over everything! I remember my awed feeling on gaining admission to Longfellow’s home, when, standing in the darkened study, we saw his table, his books and papers, they said, just as he had left them. I had then scarcely emerged from the spell of his poems, and, as we looked on the River Charles that afternoon, and thought of the poet standing in the very places where we stood; then, on returning to Boston across the long bridge, saw the lights reflected in the dark waters, and the stream of people hurrying to and fro, it all seemed a beautiful, sacred experience, linked as it was, with the Sunday afternoons at home, when I used to sing Father to sleep with “The Bridge” and “The Day Is Done.” “The Bridge” may have meant London Bridge, but to me it will ever be that long bridge spanning the Charles, over which we returned to Boston after our pilgrimage to the poet’s home. Mary A. Livermore’s lecture on Harriet Martineau was an event of that _annus mirabilis_; I sent reports of it home to our village paper, having previously written up several of our noteworthy excursions in and around Boston. This had begun by Brother letting the editor of the paper read one of my home letters, which he subsequently published, my first intimation of it being its discovery in the paper. I heard Joseph Cook lecture on the Indians, and heard Will Carlton read some of his own poems, and tried to be impressed with each, but was not. But I heard Beecher and was impressed without trying. He lectured on the Conscience; he said some persons’ consciences were like livery horses--they kept them all saddled and bridled and ready to let, but never used them themselves.