Page:Peterruggmissing00austrich.djvu/64

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58
PETER RUGG,

acre of land, more than twenty thousand square feet, a corner lot with wonderful capabilities; none of your contracted lots of forty feet by fifty, where in dog days you can breathe only through your scuttles. On the contrary, an architect cannot contemplate this extensive lot without rapture, for here is room enough for his genius to shame the temple of Solomon. Then the prospect, how commanding! To the east, so near the Atlantic, that Neptune freighted with the select treasures of the whole earth can knock at your door with his trident. From the west all the produce of the river of Paradise, the Connecticut, will soon, by the blessings of steam railways and canals, pass under your windows; and thus, on this spot, Neptune shall marry Ceres, and Pomona from Roxbury and Flora from Cambridge shall dance at the wedding.

"Gentlemen of science, men of taste, ye of the Literary Emporium, for I perceive many of you present, to you this is holy ground. If the spot over which in times past, a hero left the print of a footstep is now sacred, of what price is the birthplace of one who all