Tarry at home travels . some advanced studentin that class may find out, what is unknown toall the readers of these lines, why the accomplishedarchitect Charles Bulfinch put a pineapple on topof the dome. Some of the old writers really thought that NewEngland was an island. What they knew wasthat Henry Hudson had worked his way in theHalf Moon up from the ocean on the south asfar as Albany; that Champlain had come bywater from the ocean on the north as far as LakeChamplain; that between Albany and the headof Lake George there is not a wide distance. Inpoint of fact, I believe the neck of land
Tarry at home travels . some advanced studentin that class may find out, what is unknown toall the readers of these lines, why the accomplishedarchitect Charles Bulfinch put a pineapple on topof the dome. Some of the old writers really thought that NewEngland was an island. What they knew wasthat Henry Hudson had worked his way in theHalf Moon up from the ocean on the south asfar as Albany; that Champlain had come bywater from the ocean on the north as far as LakeChamplain; that between Albany and the headof Lake George there is not a wide distance. Inpoint of fact, I believe the neck of land betweenthe waters which flow into the St. Lawrenceand the waters which flow into the Hudson is notmore than two miles across. If anybody cares,it was within twenty miles of this neck thatBurgoyne received his coup de grace, and that 14 TARRY AT HOIME TRAVELS the history of modem civihzation changed when,in his capitulation, the independence of the UnitedStates was made sure. I was once at an evening party, talking with. John a. Governor of Massachusetts. one of the great New Englanders, John AlbionAndrew, w^hen Louis Agassiz joined us. I said,Agassiz, I wish you would tell Andrew what Iam telling him; you would do it so much l^etterthan I. Naturally, he asked me what I was INTKODUCTORY 15 telling him. Now, it was at the time of one ofour prehistoric quarrels with England, when theunderstanding between the two countries was notas cordial as it is now. England and the UnitedStates were quarrelling about 54-40, or codfish,or something — I have forgotten what. I said,I am telling Andrew how you told us that whenthe Lord God thought he would make a world outof a spinning ball of red-hot water and steamwhich there was, he made some rocks rise upas a sort of nucleus of the man-habitable world,and that the first thing he thought of was tomake the ridge between the United States andCanada. Agassiz laughed, and said that he had not putit in exactly that way, but that that wa
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