As I have started for a walk into the old times, and am not bound by any rule to stick to the point, I will here digress to say that the Episcopal Church (the Church, as it was simply called, when all the rest were “meeting-houses"), that tells the traveller what a pure and true taste was once present in Cambridge, and, by the contrast it presents to the architectural blunders that abound in the place, tells also what a want of it there is now,—­this beautiful church stood most appropriately and tastefully surrounded by the green turf, unbroken by stiff gravel walks or coach sweep, and undivided from the public walk by a fence.  Behind the church, and forming a part of its own grounds, (where now exist the elegances of School Court,) was an unappropriated field; and that spot was considered, by a certain little group of children, of six or seven years old, the most solitary, gloomy, mysterious place in their little world.  When the colors of sunset had died out in the west, and the stillness and shadow of twilight were coming on, they used to “snatch a fearful joy” in seeing one of their number (whose mother had kindly omitted the first lesson usually taught to little girls, to be afraid of every thing) perform the feat of going slowly around the church, alone, stopping behind it to count a hundred.  Her wonderful courage in actually protecting the whole group from what they called a “flock of cows,” and in staking and patting the “mad dogs” that they were for ever meeting, was nothing to this going round the church!

But to return to the cottage, from which the pretty, rural trait of its standing in its unfenced green door-yard led me away to notice the same sort of rustic beauty where the church stood.  We did not stop to knock at the outside door,—­for Aunt Molly was very deaf, and if we had knocked our little knuckles off she would not have heard us,—­but went in, and, passing along the passage, rapped at the door of the “common room,” half sitting-room, half kitchen, and were admitted.  Those who saw her for the first time, whether children or grown people, were generally afraid of her; for her voice, unmodulated, of course, by the ear, was naturally harsh, strong, and high-toned; and the sort of half laugh, half growl, that she uttered when pleased, might have suggested to an imaginative child the howl of a wolf.  She had very large features, and sharp, penetrating black eyes, shaded by long, gray lashes, and surmounted by thick, bushy, gray eyebrows.  I think that when she was scolding the school-boys, with those eyes fiercely “glowering” at them from under the shaggy gray thatch, she must have appeared to those who in their learned page had got as far as the Furies, like a living illustration of classic lore.  Her cap and the make of her dress were peculiar, and suggestive of those days before, and at the time of, the Revolution, of which she loved to speak.