ridge
was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner
of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the route he had taken.

The beautiful elms that shaded great part of the way massed themselves in
the "groves of academe" at the Square, and showed pleasant glimpses of
"Old Harvard's scholar factories red," then far fewer than now. It must
have been in vacation, for I met no one as I wandered through the college
yard, trying to make up my mind as to how I should learn where Lowell
lived; for it was he whom I had come to find. He had not only taken the
poems I sent him, but he had printed two of them in a single number of
the Atlantic, and had even written me a little note about them, which I
wore next my heart in my breast pocket till I almost wore it out; and so
I thought I might fitly report myself to him. But I have always been
helpless in finding my way, and I was still depressed by my failure to
convince the horse-car driver that he had taken the wrong road. I let
several people go by without questioning them, and those I did ask
abashed me farther by not knowing what I wanted to know. When I had
remitted my search for the moment, an ancient man, with an open mouth and
an inquiring eye, whom I never afterwards made out in Cambridge,
addressed me with a hospitable offer to show me the Washington Elm. I
thought this would give me time to embolden myself for the meeting with
the editor of the Atlantic if I should ever find him, and I went with
that kind old man, who when he had shown me the tree, and the spot where
Washington stood when he took command of the Continental forces, said
that he had a branch of it, and that if I would come to his house with
him he would give me a piece. In the end, I meant merely to flatter him
into telling me where I could find Lowell, but I dissembled my purpose
and pretended a passion for a piece of the historic elm, and the old man
led me not only to his house but his wood-house, where he sawed me off a
block so generous that I could not get it into my pocket. I feigned the
gratitude which I could see that he expected, and then I took courage to
put my question to him. Perhaps that patriarch lived only in the past,
and cared for history and not literature. He confessed that he could not
tell me where to find Lowell; but he did not forsake me; he set forth
with me upon the street again, and let no man pass without asking him. In
the end we met one who was able