y. I shall never forget that evening when I first entered
Williamstown, riding on the top of the North Adams stage. The
September rains had been abundant, and the meadows and slopes were at
their greenest; the atmosphere was as nearly transparent as we are apt
to see it; the sun was just sinking behind the Taconics, and the
shadows were creeping up the eastern slopes of Williams and Prospect;
as we paused on the little hill beyond Blackinton the outline of the
Saddle was defined against a sky as rich and deep as ever looked down
at sunset on Naples or Palermo. I thought then that I had never seen a
lovelier valley, and I have had no occasion to revise that judgment.
To a boy who had seen few mountains that hour was a revelation. On the
side of the picturesque, the old way of transportation was better than
the new. The boy who is dumped with his trunks at the station near the
factory on the flat gets no such abundant entrance into Williamstown
as was vouchsafed to the boy who rode in triumphantly on the top of
Jim Bridges' stage.

The wide old street was as hospitable then as now; if the elms were
something less paternal in their benediction their stature was fair
and their shade was ample; but the aspect of the street--how greatly
changed since then! There were two or three fine old colonial houses,
which are standing now and are not likely to be improved upon; but
most of the dwellings were of the orthodox New England village
pattern, built, I suppose, to square with the theology of the Shorter
Catechism, or perhaps with the measurements of the New Jerusalem, the
length and breadth and height of which are equal. The front yards were
all enclosed with fences, none of which were useful and few of which
were ornamental. The broad-shouldered old white Congregational
meeting-house stood at the top of the street in Field Park; it was the
goal of restless Sophomores for several hours every Sunday, and it was
also the goal of all ambitious contestants for college honors. Griffin
Hall was then chapel, museum, laboratories, and recitation-rooms;
East, South, and West Colleges, with Kellogg Hall, on the West
lawn,--"factories of the muses," in Lowell's expressive phrase,--stood
forth in their naked practicality much as they stand to-day. Lawrence
Hall library, in its earlier, wingless character of colossal ink-pot,
Jackson Hall[2] and the little magnetic observatory, still standing,
completed the catalogue of the college building