Facts respecting an old arm-chair. At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. Seems but little the worse for wear. That’s remarkable when I say It was old in President Holyoke’s day. (One of his boys, perhaps you know, Died, at one hundred, years ago.) He took lodging for rain or shine Under green bed-clothes in ’69.
Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.—
Born there? Don’t say so!
I was, too.
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof,—
Standing still, if you must have proof.—
“Gambrel?—Gambrel?”—Let
me beg
You’ll look at a horse’s hinder
leg,—
First great angle above the hoof,—
That’s the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.)
—Nicest place that ever was
seen,—
Colleges red and Common green,
Sidewalks brownish with trees between.
Sweetest spot beneath the skies
When the canker-worms don’t rise,—
When the dust, that sometimes flies
Into your mouth and ears and eyes,
In a quiet slumber lies,
Not in the shape of unbaked pies
Such as barefoot children prize.
A kind of harbor it seems to be,
Facing the flow of a boundless sea.
Bows of gray old Tutors stand
Ranged like rocks above the sand;
Rolling beneath them, soft and green,
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,—
One wave, two waves, three waves, four,
Sliding up the sparkling floor;
Then it ebbs to flow no more,
Wandering off from shore to shore
With its freight of golden ore!
—Pleasant place for boys to
play;—
Better keep your girls away;
Hearts get rolled as pebbles do
Which countless fingering waves pursue,
And every classic beach is strown
With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red
stone.
But this is neither here nor there;—
I’m talking about an old arm-chair.
You’ve heard, no doubt, of PARSON
TURELL?
Over at Medford he used to dwell;
Married one of the Mather’s folk;
Got with his wife a chair of oak,—
Funny old chair, with seat like wedge,
Sharp behind and broad front edge,—
One of the oddest of human things,
Turned all over with knobs and rings,—
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand,—
Fit for the worthies of the land,—
Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in,
Or Cotton Mather to sit—and
lie—in,
—Parson Turell bequeathed the
same
To a certain student,—SMITH
by name;
These were the terms, as we are told:
“Saide Smith saide Chaire to have
and holde;
When he doth graduate, then to passe
To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe,
On payment of”—(naming
a certain sum)—
“By him to whom ye Chaire shall
come;
He to ye oldest Senior next,
And soe forever,”—(thus
runs the text,)—
“But one Crown lesse then he gave
to claime,
That being his Debte for use of same.”