--you will find the name of Fortescue
Vernon, of the class of 1780, in the Triennial Catalogue--was a favored
visitor to the old mansion; but he went over seas, I think they told me,
and died still young, and the name of the maiden which is scratched on
the windowpane was never changed. I am telling the story honestly, as I
remember it, but I may have colored it unconsciously, and the legendary
pane may be broken before this for aught I know. At least, I have named
no names except the beautiful one of the supposed hero of the romantic
story.

It was a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by
such recollections, with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with
fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast
territory of four or five acres around it to give a child the sense that
he was born to a noble principality. It has been a great pleasure to
retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the natural
course of things it must at length pass into other hands, it is a
gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new tenant,
like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a neighbor of
condition. Not long since a new cap of shingles adorned this ancient
mother among the village--now city--mansions. She has dressed herself
in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, so they tell me, within
the last few days. She has modernized her aspects in several ways; she
has rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at the Common and
the Colleges; and as the sunsets shine upon her through the flickering
leaves or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my childhood, they
will glorify her into the aspect she wore when President Holyoke, father
of our long since dead centenarian, looked upon her in her youthful
comeliness.

The quiet corner formed by this and the neighboring residences has
changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd,
and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town as
constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to become the oldest
inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there
to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant
itself on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung
so tenaciously and fondly to the place and its habitations will have died
with those who cherished them.

Shall they ever live again in