Lowell, in 1883, "but the company is more of ghosts than of flesh and blood for me.' He lamented the fact that Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, Lowell, Hawthorne, Motley and Sumner no longer attended, and added, "I feel as if I belonged to the past." He proposed, however, with the aid of the younger members, to keep the club alive until Lowell could return to give some fresh life to it. He had already lamented that the club was not what it was when Lowell had attended its meetings. Finally, in 1890, he complained that he hardly saw a face of the old times, except those of Dwight and Hoar, "where we used to have those brilliant gatherings." His biographer says that probably no other. member of the club felt about it as Doctor Holmes did, and adds that of all who sat at its table he was by far the most brilliant talker. We may accept this opinion without admitting the truthfulness of Mr. Morse's statement that if Holmes had traveled largely he would have held the club in less esteem. Such a statement falsely assumes that more of cosmopolitanism would have made Doctor Holmes another man, and would have saved him from enjoying the men he met at the Saturday Club.

Mr. Samuel G. Ward, now a resident of Washington, is the only original member of the club now living. The other older members are Senator Hoar, Professor Norton, President Eliot, Judge Gray, E. L. Godkin, J. M. Forbes and Wolcott Gibbs. The club still continues to meet at the Parker House, on the last Saturday of each month, except July, August and September. There are now thirtyeight members. Chief Justice Field of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts is the president, and Professor W. W. Goodwin of Harvard University is the secretary. There is not in the club at present so large a proportion of literary men as formerly. A member has said of the club, in 1884, that Doctor Holmes was then president; and he was always present at

the dinners, and so were Judge Hoar and Mr. J. M. Forbes. These three, with a few intimate friends like Lowell and James Freeman Clarke, who came less frequently, kept up a steady fire of bright sayings and jokes, to which the younger generation was often glad to listen in silence. Since the death of Doctor Holmes and Judge Hoar, everything is changed in this respect; but the dinners of the club still remain as social and informal as ever, though the old leaders are gone.

For twenty years, beginning about 1856, the Saturday was the leading club of Boston, and it contained most of the men of wit, brilliant parts and literary reputation who lived in or near the city. It was a gathering of genial friends, who sought good fellowship and intellectual relaxation. The meetings were social and not literary; no essays were read, and no lectures were given. At one meeting of the club, when a reporter forced his way into the room before dinner and asked Doctor Holmes what subjects were to be discussed, he received the reply, "We do nothing but tell our old stories. We never discuss anything." Except on rare occasions. the literary part of the meeting consisted of conversation only. The dinner was the central object, and that was expected to bring out quite enough of social chat and conversational stir of thought to give the meetings a real interest. There being no rules to observe and no red tape to follow, the meetings were purely informal, and therefore cheerful and cordial. All the members knew each other intimately, and consequently felt quite at home with each other and ready for the free expression of thought and sentiment. Already the club has assumed a considerable importance in the literary history of Boston, and that importance is likely to increase as the history of the club is more fully known and as its members are looked at from a time more remote.

T

HE transformation is wonderful; it seems almost a work of magic. The story of Aladdin's Lamp cannot be wholly a myth. The sky no longer looks through a gaping roof to a yawning cellar. The rain, the hail and snow no longer enter as if welcome guests. Warp and woof, fashioned and dyed in the Orient, supplants the rubbish on the rotting floors. Stuffs, rich and rare, flow from walls no longer black with smoke and grime. Festoons, rivaling in texture those from the loom of the spider, which they displace, show artistic taste and delight the eye. Pictures and works of art fill every "coigne of vantage."

Gone the staggering partitions; gone the low, brown, ragged ceiling. The long slanting rafters are in full view. The massive chimney and the rotund oven stand displayed. Kitchen and bedroom, pantry and parlor have disappeared in one generous whole. Through the narrow windows, inviting streams of soft light from elegant lamps are sent abroad into the night towards every point of the compass. The genii of the place preside over cheerful hospitality within, where so lately a sad spirit of seclusion and gloomy content held sway.

No con

trast could be greater. In the yellow light, thrown fitfully out from the burning logs in the huge fireplace, graceful forms flit to and fro, appearing and disappearing with the fantastic shadows upon the red wainscoted wall. Sweet music is heard, soft and weird, as if afar off, and stories are told of witches urging their broomstick steeds across the stormy midnight sky to festive meetings in uncanny nooks with still more uncanny folk.

The Antiquary sits upon the hearthstone and muses. The change seems so unreal and bewildering; he cannot draw the line, and the past will mingle with the present. He watches the sparks and the curling smoke as they rise towards boundless space, and voices of the unseen catch his responsive ear. He hears, in the mouth of the cavernous oven hard by, whisperings and wailings from the spirits of the past,-the household familiars. Driven from old haunts they have crowded the oven for shelter, as one of the few undesecrated spots. "We claim," they say, "recognition before our final departure. Behold what we bring, and record what you will." And the Antiquary sees a shadowy procession

issuing forth from the mouth of the oven and bearing open scrolls on which are pictured events centering around this old hearthstone, - plain matters of fact, scenes of joy, scenes of sorrowing, of triumph, of despair, details of everyday life and duty in the far off past. Shadowy and dim, growing brighter and clearer, the vision passes upward, disappearing with the smoke and the sparks. Thus impelled, the Antiquary records in homely phrase the result of his musings in the little brown cottage by the old Albany road on the evening of its dedication to a new purpose and to a

to his successor in office, Rev. Jonathan Ashley.

As in later days, so in the olden time, leased lands fared hardly. Every thing possible was taken from it, and little or nothing returned. In 1759, after seventy years of this kind of treatment, the selectmen in a petition to the General Court say, "the soil is poor and barren for want of manure," also that the land is of less benefit to the minister than its value in money would be, and they ask leave of the General Court to sell it. There was, however, another reason for this action, and, it may be, the main one.