He has taken for his writing-room the former parlor looking
into the garden. He loves to work there, and he and his wife evidently
spend a good deal of time at the old place. There is a legend that
Washington spent three nights there, and that Dr. Bradshaw stepped
from the door to make a prayer upon the departure of the troops from
that point. Behind the house are some fine trees where we sat in the
shade talking until the shadows grew long upon the grass."
During the very last years of Dr. Holmes's life he used to talk often
of the old Cambridge home and the days of his childhood there. "I can
remember, when I shut my eyes," he said one day, "just as if it were
yesterday, how beautiful it was looking out of the windows of my
father's house, how bright and sunshiny the Common was in front, and
the figures which came and went of persons familiar to me. One day
some one said, 'There go Russell Sturgis and his bride;' and I looked,
and saw what appeared to me then two radiant beings! All this came
back to me as I read a volume of his reminiscences lately privately
printed, not published, by his children."
Dr. Holmes's out-of-door life was not limited, however, to his
excursions to Cambridge. Early in the morning, sometimes before
sunrise, standing at my bedroom window overlooking the bay, I have
seen his tiny skiff moving quickly over the face of the quiet water;
or, later, drifting down idly with the tide, as if his hour of
exercise was over, and he was now dreamily floating homeward while he
drank in the loveliness of the morning.
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