Northampton

Excerpt from Northampton: The Meadow City "I remember. I remember the house where I was born, The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn." As I sit in my study-chair the old song which I used to hear in my childhood comes floating softly back to me, and I think, who is there that has no fond remembrance of the scenes of his early days? Unhappy is that man. The recollections of our early life spread flowers all along our path in our later wanderings. Early life always enriches itself by borrowing from the future in the form of rich anticipations, and then it repays the debt with interest by furnishing golden memories to sober maturity. The past feeds the future in all our growth, as in the plant branch and flower are nourished by the root. It is a peculiar hold which localities have upon our minds. Landscape pictures to which we give unstinted admiration are on all the walls of our minds. All poetry is full of this enthusiasm for places which we have learned to love. Those to which we are bound by peculiar memories gain a surpassing preciousness. Pre-eminently it is the scenes of our childhood before which we keep a lamp continually burning. Nothing can obliterate these from the mind. We may build more splendid habitations, Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures. But we cannot. Buy with gold the old associations Northampton has been a mother of many children, and they are everywhere eager for messages from the old home. There are hundreds, and even thousands of people scattered over the broad earth to whom the stately figure of Holyoke with her carpet of river and meadow beneath her feet, or Round Hill peacefully gazing down the valley between the two mountains, while she keeps watch over the village sleeping at her side, offers a view which is never permitted to fade from the mind. Northampton has been a town of prominence in the thought and speech of the people of New England, and that larger New England which reaches across the continent. There are few localities upon the face of the earth where so many different people, representatives of all climes, have resided while pursuing their education as in Northampton and the region surrounding it. If ancient Greeks were here they would certainly search for some evidence that the waters from the Pierian spring, or from some other fountain of inspiration, had flowed under the sea to mingle with the current of the Connecticut, for the soil which it touches brings forth nothing more naturally than institutions of learning. And here this quality has shown itself at the best. Students from all over America, not to speak of more distant lands, flock to the colleges and seminaries which cluster here. To all who have made their home for a longer or shorter period in one of these villages the scenery of the Connecticut valley, the beauties of its river and mountains and meadows, is fixed in the mind as one of the fairest visions of their life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.