The fact that both my father and mother were natives of Worcester County and that most of our ancestors for several generations had been residents of Worcester and vicinity made that city of unusual interest to me, and I trust the reader will be indulgent if I allot too much space or seem too partial in my description of this early landmark in my journey. Worcester, nestling among the hills along the Blackstone River, the second city in Massachusetts, the heart of the Commonwealth, has a population of about 85,000. Shut in by its wall of hills, it seemed, as I first came into it, something like a little miniature world in itself. It possesses some share of all the good we know. Nature, that "comely mother," has laid her caressing hand upon it. Art has made many a beautiful structure to adorn its streets. Commerce smiles upon it. While its wonderful manufactures seem to form a great living, throbbing heart for the city. [Illustration: VIEW IN WORCESTER MASSACHUSETTS.] Sauntering up from the depot, through Front street, five minutes' walk brought me to the Old Common. There I found, what one so frequently finds in Massachusetts towns and cities--namely, a War Monument. Apparently that mighty five years' struggle, that brilliant victory, bringing freedom to two million fellow-creatures, bringing power, union, glory to the nation, has burned itself into the very heart of the Old Bay State; and lest posterity might forget the lessons she learned from 1861 to 1865, everywhere she has planted her war monuments, to remind her children that "Simple duty has no place for fear." In the shade of Worcester Common is another object of interest. A little plot of ground, wherein stands a grand old tomb. It is the resting-place of Timothy Bigelow, the early patriot of Worcester. Here in the sunshine and the twilight, in the bloom of summer, and under the soft falling snows of winter, he perpetually manifests to the world "How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest." A sturdy old New Englander was Colonel Bigelow. "When the news of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor reached him, he was at work in his blacksmith shop, near the spot now called Lincoln Square. He immediately laid aside his tools, proceeded directly to his house, opened the closet, and took from it a canister of tea, went to the fire-place, and poured the contents into the flames. As if feeling that everything which had come in contact with British legislative tyranny should be purified by fire, the canister followed the tea; and then he covered both with coals.