hide Sorting

You can sort these results in two ways:

By entity
Chronological order for dates, alphabetical order for places and people.
By position (current method)
As the entities appear in the document.

You are currently sorting in ascending order. Sort in descending order.

hide Most Frequent Entities

The entities that appear most frequently in this document are shown below.

Entity Max. Freq Min. Freq
Severance 66 0 Browse Search
Petrarch 50 0 Browse Search
Delia 49 43 Browse Search
Comstock 29 11 Browse Search
Jean Paul 28 0 Browse Search
Janet 25 1 Browse Search
De Marsan 18 8 Browse Search
Providence, R. I. (Rhode Island, United States) 10 0 Browse Search
New England (United States) 10 0 Browse Search
Thoreau 10 0 Browse Search
View all entities in this document...

Browsing named entities in a specific section of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work.. Search the whole document.

Found 33 total hits in 22 results.

1 2 3
New England (United States) (search for this): chapter 1
f Shoals because it was impossible to keep the Sunday worshippers from lying at full length on the seats. Our boatmen have the same habit, and there is a certain dreaminess about them, in whatever posture. Indeed, they remind one quite closely of the German boatman in Uhland, who carried his reveries so far as to accept three fees from one passenger. But the truth is, that in Oldport we all incline to the attitude of repose. Now and then a man comes here, from farther east, with the New England fever in his blood, and with a pestilent desire to do something. You hear of him, presently, proposing that the Town Hall should be repainted. Opposition would require too much effort, and the thing is done. But the Gulf Stream soon takes its revenge on the intruder, and gradually repaints him also, with its own soft and mellow tints. In a few years he would no more bestir himself to fight for a change than to fight against it. It makes us smile a little, therefore, to observe tha
Europe (search for this): chapter 1
irmed respectability of the Old stone Mill, the only thing on the Atlantic shore which has had time to forget its birthday! But in winter the Old Mill gives the tone to the society around it; we then bethink ourselves of the crown upon our Trinity Church steeple, and resolve that the courtesies of a bygone age shall yet linger here. Is there any other place in America where gentlemen still take off their hats to one another on the public promenade? The hat is here what it still is in Southern Europe,the lineal successor of the sword as the mark of a gentleman. It is noticed that, in going from Oldport to New York or Boston, one is liable to be betrayed by an over-flourish of the hat, as is an Arkansas man by a display of the bowie-knife. Winter also imparts to these spacious estates a dignity that is sometimes wanting in summer. I like to stroll over them during this epoch of desertion, just as once, when I happened to hold the keys of a church, it seemed pleasant to sit, on a
Rough Point (Tennessee, United States) (search for this): chapter 1
f the Scotch Lady Janet, who eloped with her tutor, and here lived in poverty, paying her washer-woman with costly lace from her trunks; of the Oldport dame who escaped from France at the opening of the Revolution, was captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where she took refuge in John Hancock's house. They can describe to you the Malbone Gardens, and, as the night wanes and the embers fade, can give the tale of the Phantom of Rough Point. Gliding farther and farther into the past, they revert to the brilliant historic period of Oldport, the successive English and French occupations during our Revolution, and show you gallant inscriptions in honor of their grandmothers, written on the window-panes by the diamond rings of the foreign officers. The newer strata of Oldport society are formed chiefly by importation, and have the one advantage of a variety of origin which puts provincialism out of the question. The mild wi
France (France) (search for this): chapter 1
s have coats of arms upon their walls, hereditary damasks among their scanty wardrobes, store of domestic traditions in their brains, and a whole Court Guide of high-sounding names at their fingers' ends. They can tell you of the supposed sister of an English queen, who married an American officer and dwelt in Oldport; of the Scotch Lady Janet, who eloped with her tutor, and here lived in poverty, paying her washer-woman with costly lace from her trunks; of the Oldport dame who escaped from France at the opening of the Revolution, was captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where she took refuge in John Hancock's house. They can describe to you the Malbone Gardens, and, as the night wanes and the embers fade, can give the tale of the Phantom of Rough Point. Gliding farther and farther into the past, they revert to the brilliant historic period of Oldport, the successive English and French occupations during our Revolution,
Syria (Syria) (search for this): chapter 1
et that makes a stranger soon feel at home in Oldport, while the prospective stir of next summer precludes all feeling of stagnation. Commonly, in quiet places, one suffers from the knowledge that everybody would prefer to be unquiet; but nobody has any such longing here. Doubtless there are aged persons who deplore the good old times when the Oldport mail-bags were larger than those arriving at New York. But if it were so now, what memories would there be to talk about? If you wish for Syrian peace, immortal leisure, --a place where no grown person ever walks rapidly along the street, and where few care enough for rain to open an umbrella or walk faster,--come here. My abode is on a broad, sunny street, with a few great elms overhead, and with large old houses and grass-banks opposite. There is so little snow that the outlook in the depth of winter is often merely that of a paler and leafless summer, and a soft, springlike sky almost always spreads above. Past the window str
Janet (search for this): chapter 1
ctised by each other. It is not held good-breeding, when they meet in a shop of a morning, for one to seem to notice what another buys. These ancient ladies have coats of arms upon their walls, hereditary damasks among their scanty wardrobes, store of domestic traditions in their brains, and a whole Court Guide of high-sounding names at their fingers' ends. They can tell you of the supposed sister of an English queen, who married an American officer and dwelt in Oldport; of the Scotch Lady Janet, who eloped with her tutor, and here lived in poverty, paying her washer-woman with costly lace from her trunks; of the Oldport dame who escaped from France at the opening of the Revolution, was captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where she took refuge in John Hancock's house. They can describe to you the Malbone Gardens, and, as the night wanes and the embers fade, can give the tale of the Phantom of Rough Point. Gliding fa
Polly Carter (search for this): chapter 1
he passing. And these aged citizens, while permitted to linger at their posts, were gossiping about men still older, in earthly or heavenly habitations, and the sensation of longevity went on accumulating indefinitely in their talk. Their very disputes had a flavor of antiquity, and involved the reputation of female relatives to the third or fourth generation. An old fisherman testified in our Police Court, the other day, in narrating the progress of a street quarrel: Then I called him Polly Carter, --that's his grandmother; and he called me Susy Reynolds, that's my aunt that's dead and gone. In towns like this, from which the young men mostly migrate, the work of life devolves upon the venerable and the very young. When I first came to Oldport, it appeared to me that every insituation was conducted by a boy and his grandfather. This seemed the cape, for instance, with the bank that consented to assume the slender responsibility of my deposits. It was further to be observed,
Susy Reynolds (search for this): chapter 1
nger at their posts, were gossiping about men still older, in earthly or heavenly habitations, and the sensation of longevity went on accumulating indefinitely in their talk. Their very disputes had a flavor of antiquity, and involved the reputation of female relatives to the third or fourth generation. An old fisherman testified in our Police Court, the other day, in narrating the progress of a street quarrel: Then I called him Polly Carter, --that's his grandmother; and he called me Susy Reynolds, that's my aunt that's dead and gone. In towns like this, from which the young men mostly migrate, the work of life devolves upon the venerable and the very young. When I first came to Oldport, it appeared to me that every insituation was conducted by a boy and his grandfather. This seemed the cape, for instance, with the bank that consented to assume the slender responsibility of my deposits. It was further to be observed, that, if the elder official was absent for a day, the boy
Broadway (search for this): chapter 1
pper, but no cashier. Going to the door again in some anxiety, he encountered a casual school-boy, who kindly told him that he did not know where the financial officer might be at the precise moment of inquiry, but that half an hour before he was on the wharf, fishing. Death comes to the aged at last, however, even in Oldport. We have lately lost, for instance, that patient old postman, serenest among our human antiquities, whose deliberate tread might have imparted a tone of repose to Broadway, could any imagination have transferred him thither. Through him the correspondence of other days came softened of all immediate solicitude. Ere it reached you, friends had died or recovered, debtors had repented, creditors grown kind, or your children had paid your debts. Perils had passed, hopes were chastened, and the most eager expectant took calmly the missive from that tranquillizing hand. Meeting his friends and clients with a step so slow that it did not even stop rapidly, he,
Adam (search for this): chapter 1
tain lively lady, addicted to daring Scriptural interpretations, thinks that there is some mistake in the current versions of Genesis, and that it was Spring. Street which was created in the beginning, and the heavens and earth at some subsequent period. There are houses in Spring Street, and there is a confectioner's shop; but it is not often that a sound comes across its rugged pavements, save perchance (in summer) the drone of an ancient hand-organ, such as might have been devised by Adam to console his Eve when Paradise was lost. Yet of late the desecrating hammer and the ear-piercing saw have entered that haunt of ancient peace. May it be long ere any such invasion reaches those strange little wharves in the lower town, full of small, black, gambrel-roofed houses, with projecting eaves that might almost serve for piazzas. It is possible for an unpainted wooden building to assume, in this climate, a more time-worn aspect than that of any stone; and on these wharves everyth
1 2 3