On the south of the park stands the Athenæum, a building of rough stone, erected at the cost of $100,000 as a "tribute to art, science, and literature," and presented to his fellow-townspeople by Thomas Allen. It contains a large free library, an art gallery, and a very entertaining museum of curiosities. Next door to the Athenæum is the large white Court House, said to have cost $400,000. Across from the Court House, in a little corner of the park, is a tiny music house, gay with colored electric lights, where open air evening concerts are given all through the summer.
On the north of the park stand two of the handsomest of Pittsfield's eleven churches.
A SCENE IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.
The city's manufactories are large and thrifty, but they, and the operatives who manipulate them, are tucked away in a corner, so to speak, where they may not offend the eyes of the opulent inhabitants. Only in the riotous jostle of Saturday night in the store is one brought face to face with the fact that beauty, leisure and wealth do not hold a monopoly of the sweet Berkshire air. For everything appears so lovely. The streets are very wide, great stately avenues, where beautiful strips of the finest lawn border each edge of the sidewalk. Society is the choicest, for the summer residences of New York's four hundred intermingle with the magnificent old mansions owned by the staunchest of Massachusetts' old blue-blooded sons and daughters. Cropping out through the elegance of this little city are some queer old Yankee traits. Lawlessness there is none. No policemen guard the park, with its ideal lawns, but a polite notice informs passers-by that this being no thoroughfare, trespassing will not be tolerated, and there is none. When the concerts are in full blast, people gather in the walks and drives only. Whole rows of little street Arabs may be seen on these occasions, drawn up with their little bare toes touching the very edge of the precious grass. The open music house is always left full of chairs, which no one steals, nay, which no one uses. The entrance to the Court House is filled with blooming plants. No child, no dog even, is ill-bred enough to break one.
But the peculiarities of the people, the beauty of the dwellings, the magnificence of the equipages, the tide of fashionable life which pours in, summer and fall, all, ALL is forgotten as, from some point of vantage, the spectator takes in the beauty surrounding him. "On the west sweep the Taconics, in that majestic curve, whose grace travelers, familiar with the mountain scenery of both hemispheres, pronounce unequaled. On the east the Hoosacs stretch their unbroken battlements, with white villages at their feet, and, if the sunlight favors, paths of mingled lawn and wood, enticing to their summits; while from the south, 'Greylock, cloud-girdled on his purple throne' looks grandly across the valley to the giant heights, keeping watch and ward over the pass where the mountains throw wide their everlasting gates, to let the winding Housatonic flow peacefully toward the sea."
Thus, in taking leave of Massachusetts, I looked back to the starting-point, and thought with pleasure of the many beautiful links in the chain connecting Boston with Pittsfield, none more beautiful than the last.
Ninth Day.
Nassau House,