LENOX, "on top of the hill," has long been a "Land of Heart's Desire" to one and another of the world's gifted. No great upheaval in war or peace has fretted the Happy Valley's mirror lakes, the intervals of sunny rneadow, or superb Lenox range, crowned by dark forests and Yokun's Seat.
You may, nevertheless, distinguish four marked periods in Lenox history: first the half-legendary reign of the Indian Chiefs Yokun and Ephraim; to the second period belong the colonial proprietorship of the Quincys, and the 4ooo-acre grant to Ephraim Williams and those ministers who gave up their lands in Stockbridge to the Indian mission. These sold their claims, and in the middle of the century the settler's axe rang through the woods, lilac and syringa blossomed at their hearthstones; in snapping cold weather, oxen drew into the kitchen back-logs of such length, that as the sap ran it froze into an icicle at the other end. The patriot yeomanry of Yokuntown and Mount Ephraim, separated only by the lofty Lenox spur of the Taconics, christened their new villages after the English nobleman of proverbial good-will to Americans- Charles Lenox, Duke of Richmond, the friend of Horace Walpole.

Scintillating years of literary proprietorship opened the third period in Lenox with the advent of the county judges to the shire town; the hospitable board of Major Egleston - a founder of the Society of the Cincinnati---and the Berkshire Coffee House rang with toasts and repartee. In the early twenties arrived, as clerk of the courts, the love-compelling Charles Sedgwick-his delightful humor equalled that of his sister's stories-followed by his life-long friend the incomparable judge Henry W. Bishop, who purchased the Egleston house. [1]

Miss Sedgwick could not be separated from her favorite brother, and left Stockbridge to occupy the "wing" of his Lenox house, and literary pilgrims flocked around her: among them Harriet Martineau and the noted Italian ex- iles, Confallieri and others, released from imprisonment at Speilberg. (Castillia spent a year in Berkshire, and after his emancipation became a senatore del regno. " A lovelier nature than his was never given to mortal man," says Mr. Henry Sedgwick.)

In 1846 Mr. Samuel Gray Ward of Washington, the friend of Emerson, and the American representative of Baring Bros., took a fancy to the farms at the head of Stockbridge Bowl, and built High-Wood, a forerunner of the summer homes at Lenox; his farm included beautiful "Shadow Brook," recently the estate of Anson Phelps Stokes, and the namesake of the favorite rivulet of the children of Hawthorne's Wonder Book.

In the heat of the day at midsummer Hawthorne used to gather his children and their playmates together at Shadow Brook,- the talking brook, where overreaching branches created noontide twilight; then Sweet Fern, Periwinkle, Cowslip, and all the rest would beg for the story of brave Perseus, with his winged slippers and enchanted wallet, and of the mysterious friend Quicksilver who helped him to cut off the Gorgon's head. When the leaves over the brook changed to gold, "Cousin Eustace" told the children the story of King Midas and the Golden Touch. Thus, before this book of exquisite humor and simplicity was in the printer's hands (the only one of Hawthorne's without a sad page in it) his children could repeat it by heart.

From Mr. Ward's house, Jenny Lind was married, and it was Mr. Ward who induced Hawthorne to come to Lenox and occupy a tiny house near Lake Makheenac just over the Stockbridge line; " all literary persons seem settling around us" writes Mrs. Hawthorne from her " little Red Shanty, " as she calls it.

Horatio Bridge, Hawthorne's college-mate, assisted them in establishing their household gods at Lenox. Mr. Bridge writes to his wife:

              La Maison Rouge,
               "July 18, 1850.

"CARA MIA...
" Be it known, then, that Hawthorne occupies a house painted red, like some old-fashioned farm-houses you have seen. It is owned by Mr. Tappan, who lived in it awhile; but he is now at High-Wood, the beautiful place of Mr. Ward [Samuel Gray Ward]. . . . The view of the lake is lovely: I have seldom seen one so beautiful." [2]

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