Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Louisa Storrow Higginson, June 1853

Princeton, June, 1853

Dearest Mother:

We do not see Wachusett — we are halfway up the ascent — but we look east and west over great valleys which need only more water to be radiantly beautiful. . . . The little hamlet sleeps in profound repose — a two-horse wagon, or even a pedlar with a pack, are events for a day. We look between the two little white churches up a lane which leads to Wachusett; last night we followed this up to its first summit — a little height before the real Wachusett begins; there was the skeleton of an old church, the strong frame uninjured, though raspberry bushes flaunt through the floor, and elders look in at windows; near it an old burial ground, Wordsworth's “Churchyard among the Mountains.” . . . The strawberries were ripening all over the lonely hill-top, and five children with cows and tin kettles and the baby in a wagon — in the waning June sunset; five little sisters there were, with all bleached but their blue eyes.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 144-5