Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

[74] healthy-looking women, or so many good faces of either sex. Their mode of living is Virginian in its open-house hospitality; they say incidentally, “we happened to have thirty-five people in the house last night.” . . . I stayed at three different houses during my four days visit and might have stayed at thirty. I passed from house to house as through a series of triumphal arches and yet not from any merit supposed in myself, but simply because, as Conway wrote to them in a letter, “the earnest man is a king at Longwood; he finds friends and sumptuous entertainment wherever he turns. To say that they make one at home is nothing; one fears forgetfulness of all other homes.”

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Do not imagine that these people are ignorant or recluse; they have much intercourse with people, especially with Philadelphia; the young people are well educated, and all take the “Atlantic.” One feels in cultivated society. Aunt Nancy will like to hear that Bayard Taylor originated there and is now building a house there; I saw his father's house; also that of John Agnew, where his beautiful bride lived and died. I saw John Agnew himself, a noble-looking old man, erect as an arrow. I saw the lovely Mary's daguerreotype, and her grave. They all speak well of B. T. and praise his simplicity, modesty, and love of home; I never had so pleasant an impression of him, and if you will read his spirited poem of the tulip tree you can imagine a Chester County for a background.

The little meeting-house was crowded--seven hundred or so; the rest of the Sunday crowd was collected