Wherefore in 1739 Out Of Northampton town rode Surveyor Timothy Dwight [1] across the wilderness trails and down over the bridle-path through Pontoosuck, Field of the Winter Deer, to lay out the Quincy grant. The dainty maid of Braintree, "Damsel Dorothy, Dorothy Q.," in hanging "sleeves of stiff brocade," probably never saw how lovely an inheritance was her portion of Lenox, threaded by little Yokun River, its' north bound marked by a great oak tree on the Pittsfield road, and scarcely more than a league from " Canoe Meadows, " where her irreverent great-grandson Oliver Wendell Holmes was destined to dwell "seven sweet summers " on the land-grant of his distinguished forbear Jacob Wendell, colonel of the " Ancient and Honorables."

The Quincys' north bound ran across the main road between Lenox and Pittsfield to the foot of the west mountain range, Yokun Mountain has been chosen latterly as a picturesque background for the "Fernbrook" of Thomas Shields Clarke; the house is Tyrolean Gothic and the lines of the hills are repeated in the roof lines. Mr. Clarke's studio is fashioned after the refectory of an ancient monastery at Ragusa, Sicily.

The south bound of the grant to Josiah Quincy crosses the present estate of Mrs. Richard T. Auchmuty; there a house was built by his grandson Samuel Quincy (registrar of deeds at Lenox), the father of the beloved " Miss Debby." Except for the occasional transfer of a lot on the " Quincy Grant Line," [2] this episode of Lenox history is forgotten.

We feel "marvellous well acquaint " with Lenox life in the middle of the eighteenth century; the merry enthusiasms of " our Fanny" over her beloved Happy Valley, where she would live alway, crop out in letters to Mrs Jameson, and we have the letters of Miss Sedgwick edited by Miss Dewey, and not least the Note- Book and letters of the Hawthornes and reminiscences of Lenox days by his children,- by his college-mate Horatio Bridge and by Mr. and Mrs. Fields. Moreover, Hermann Melville and Charles Sumner and other, delightful letter-writers were among the elect recuperating in Berkshire in the fifties. The following is an unpublished memory of James Russell Lowell:

                             " ELMWOOD, 23 May, 1875.
"To RICHARD GOODMAN, jr., Esq.,
              " Lenox, Mass.
"MY DEAR MR. GOODMAN:
   " I know Berkshire tolerably well for, one born among loving and placid landscapes. I once spent a summer- (1847, I think, at any rate it was while Hawthorne was there) partly in, Stockbridge and partly at Mr. Palmer's, whose farm if I remember rightly lay within your boundaries. I have spent a summer day alone on the mossy top of Deowgkook (pardon my phonetic spelling-being interpreted, it means Rattlesnake Mountain). I know Monument Mountain and Taghkonic well; had a distant acquaintance with the Pittsfield Elm, though I can't say he ever returned my visits. Above all, I had the pleasure of knowing those two admirable persons Mr. and Mrs. Charles Sedgwick. My friend Ward lived at the head of the Lake. You see I am not altogether a barbarian." [Dr. Holmes spoke of the Pittsfield Elm as "sorely in need of a wig of green leave?. "]

Mr. Lowell's dav in solitude on Rattlesnake was practical illustration of his thoughts of the blithe season when" 't is good to lie beneath a tree."

      .... "What a day
To sun me and do nothing ! Nay, I think
Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes
The student's wiser business; the brain
Will not distil the juices it has sucked
To the sweet substance of pellucid thought,
Except for him who hath the secret learned
To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take
The winds into his pulses. "

NEXT ...