On Wednesday the whole western party was to go to Narragansett Pier, and on Thursday the Roxbury party was to start, bag and baggage, for Quonochontaug, which is not far from that resort. But it was determined that on Tuesday the young people should go to Cambridge, where, at Harvard College, John was to make his home for most of the next four years.
They took a steam train into Boston, and at the station of the Providence road found a street car waiting to take them from Park Square to Harvard Square. The ride takes a short half hour. At Harvard Square you are on one side of the College Yard, as the region is called, which in colleges of more pretense would be named the Campus. Buildings of all ages and all aspects fill it, from the venerable brick of old Massachusetts, built near two centuries ago, in fond memory of Pembroke College in Cambridge, down to the last “sweet” devices of modern architecture.
They had an embarrassment of riches before them, that they might rightly use their time and gratify every taste of all the party. First of all, Nathan led them to the Library, and while under his brother’s guidance, the young people looked at some of the curiosities there, he took John to the Bursar’s office, to attend to some business about his college room. Then they all called on a young gentleman, to whom the Dudleys introduced the Creheres, so that they saw the comfort of the college rooms of the students. Next they went to Memorial Hall, where are the portraits of the old worthies of the state and college, the trophies of many base ball victories, and, most interesting of all, if you go at a meal time, some five hundred of the young men of to-day, eating with a good appetite. From this place they went to the Agassiz Museum, which is so skilfully arranged that they will all date back to that hour’s visit a clearer knowledge of the great classifications of natural science.
The young people declared that they were not tired even then. Their student friend had asked them to rest in his room after these bits of sight seeing, and they did so, and then, after a little lunch, went up to the Botanic Garden, stopped at the Observatory, and crossed to see the house which was lately the home of Longfellow, and in the Revolution, that of Washington.
Travelers who have the same lions to “do” in one day may find their order a convenient one to follow. And, though these are not landmarks of Boston properly, it has seemed wise not to conclude their story without telling of their Cambridge expedition.
“And now,” said Nathan, as they took at the door of the Longfellow house a car for Boston, “now we have made the beginning, when you come in the fall we can show you Boston.”
