57 



houses. They are our century flowers, as the mediaeval 

 cathedrals are Europe's and as significant, in their way, of 

 the stern unconquerable fiiith that brought them here. 



I insist upon them for they are memorable to the eye 

 and to the feeling. 



One catches me, as I go to the Beverly station, with its 

 impressive bulk, and one huge chimney showing above 

 the trees. How they reproach the puniness of later times, 

 monoliths, no one divided their mass or exhausted their 

 simplicity. A history and character are in them, they are 

 gothic. Our life is raw enough, and new, and needs to be 

 tempered by the past. Cliaracter is like geology, the 

 world is built into it. Where we have so little old, what 

 with constant nres, and changes, and building over and 

 over on the same spot (it seems as if the American re- 

 sented an old thing, or were ashamed of it ; and inside our 

 houses, what wont our women do) ? we should preserve 

 what we have. We need it in our bustling modern life. 

 Every appeal the past makes is refining, humanizing. It 

 seems our buildings are tents from which w^e remove as 

 easily. The American is a kind of Bedouin for shiftiness 

 of place. The past is obliterated ruthlessly. 



One cannot exaggerate their impressiveness. The pur- 

 itan might come out of them to-morrow. They are the 

 only mementoes we have. Two hundred years old ! what 

 else have we so old as that? Why, everything is five 

 or fifty years old here at best ! As expressive are they 

 in their homely worth as the cathedrals of their enriched 

 and stately worship. The tooth of time has gnawed at 

 them in vain. They feast the eye and repose the mind. 

 The slope in front is dotted with apple trees, itself a 

 curly dot. This busy sturdy tree is just like the people, 

 and of most expressive growth. Like a bustling house- 

 wife, it has a domestic air, like fowls — a barnyard tree. 

 It seems to belong to the house, to be one of the fiimily, 



