While we were in the Houghton Library, we saw the chest of drawers where Emily Dickinson’s poetry was found, her piano, her writing desk, and many other personal belongings. Today, we visited the house in which she lived for most of her life. The house didn’t contain many items that belonged to her growing up, but had been decorated and made to look authentic enough that tours could get the picture. The visit to her house illustrated the conflict we’ve heard so much about on this trip, which appears to be so common among historic preservationists: where is the true spirit of the person and how is his or her history best taught and experienced? Should belongings be removed from museums and placed back into the homes, or vice versa?

Should the drawers be at the house so that tour groups can view the actual piece of furniture where her poems were found? Does Emerson’s desk furniture, currently residing in the Concord Museum, really belong with the Emerson family to place in his home? I can see this debate is reasonable; however, I see it as merely a debate over money and the ability to stake a claim on an historical figure.

The answer, at least with the literary figures we’ve studied these past two weeks, is that it shouldn’t and doesn’t matter where the objects are. In each of the homes, whether or not the true furniture was present, I was aware of the strong spirit of the house, bringing the author and his or her words alive inside of me. These writers are all still partly alive because of the ways they all chose to live. Their writing has brought us into their worlds, and it is certainly detectable all over Massachusetts.

Of course, on this trip, I have become used to hearing that artistic people of the time were all friends with each other – that the man who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial received his first sculpting lesson from Louisa May Alcott’s sister, that Emily Dickinson’s literary friend was Longfellow’s student, that the Alcott sisters were taught about nature by Henry David Thoreau – but it still surprises me each time.

Our next example to add to the list is the close proximity of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home and Mark Twain’s not-so-humble abode. Mark Twain’s house was extravagantly decorated, with stenciled-on dark paint and intricate curtains made of fancy materials. He lived there with his wife and three daughters, whom he homeschooled in the nursery upstairs. They became proficient in German because a German woman lived with them for awhile, and she was instructed only to speak with the children in German. It seems Twain had similar education views to many of his innovative contemporaries – very hands-on and equal for boys and girls.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house was much more modest. I loved her house because there were many small pieces of furniture that had been made to fit Stowe, who was 4’11”. Her tiny desk looked slightly too small for me, and the mirror on her vanity was just big enough to fit my whole frame inside of it. I felt I could’ve lived there and that this furniture could’ve been made for me instead of her. I also didn’t know Stowe had also been an artist. Many pieces of her art hang on the walls inside the home now; she enjoyed painting nature scenes and never once painted a portrait. I love finding out that the authors we’ve been studying weren’t just clever in their writing. They were creative and independent thinkers in every way – and it shows in how they lived their lives.

Today I held pieces of untouchable art in my hands. My beliefs have been shattered that every important art piece must be sitting behind some piece of glass somewhere deep in a museum. Not in the treasure chest that is Harvard’s Houghton Library!

Our first stop was The Emily Dickinson Room, where her writing desk, the dresser that, upon her death, held all of her sewn-together poetry, and her piano are on display. In a display case were her poetry manuscripts; she often wrote a poem and, when she couldn’t decide on the perfect word, would put a + mark next to the word and write the other options at the bottom of the page. These marks are always mentioned in discussions about Emily’s poetry style, and we really saw the marks! In the same case was a sample of poetry and letters by W.B. Yeats. Right outside in a hallway display case was an original Alice in Wonderland, including prints of the illustrations. I thought we were the luckiest literature students ever.

Until we went to the next room! We were presented with the journals of Bronson Alcott while reading Walden, a journal of Thoreau’s nature essays, and the manuscript of The House of the Seven Gables, which was wrapped in nice red fabric. There were a few other books, and our presenter took us around each one, having a different student read a passage (if he or she could read the script!) until we figured out which author had written the words. Clippings from newspapers were lying around the books, having been taken out for the time being.

This whole experience was too much; at one point, I was so shocked I said, “She’s touching them!” She laughed and told me they had all been real people at one point and announced we were allowed to page through each volume on our own – no need for gloves, even! The only rule was that one set of hands touch at a time so that the pages didn’t rip. I read a list of the books Melville purchased while in Europe, which he had listed in his journal. I read a poem written by Longfellow, on the death of his friend Hawthorne, which was pasted into the back of The House of the Seven Gables.

We really were in literature student heaven!

Today we received a history lesson from none other than Hannah Adams, the first professional female American writer. We visited a long list of places that had impacts on the development of the colonies into an independent nation. We began our journey on the Freedom Trail at the Boston Common, which was the first public park in the US (a fact that made me quite happy). The first subway system in America was built right underneath it, and we used that subway stop many times to get from our hostel to the heart of Boston.

On the way through history, we saw the graves of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and James Otis, who we found out was a huge help in the revolution but was forgotten in history because he went a little crazy later in life. We saw the site of the first Anglican Church the British insisted on building. Because no one in Boston wanted the church there, the British took it upon themselves to build it right on top of half of a graveyard; today it is a Unitarian Universalist church. Hannah showed us the Old South Meeting House, a building that was used for many pivotal meetings during the time period. For example, on the night of the Boston Tea Party, a meeting was being held there, and people became enraged during the speeches to help support dumping the British tea.

Our final stops were the site of the Boston “Massacre” and Faneuil Hall. Hannah told us the story of what really happened the night of the Boston Massacre, when only a few were killed. She explained that the propaganda following the incident really became a reason for people on the fence to join the revolution because what most people saw was a print that included a dead dog in addition to a few adults sprawled on the ground. The image in most minds was of an injustice that had been done to the Bostonians. The last stop, Faneuil Hall, has been in operation since 1742 as a meeting place for politicking and important city, state and national discussions. The bottom floor of the building has always been a marketplace. Still used today as it was when it was built, Faneuil Hall hosted John Kerry during his concession speech in the 2004 election.

Hannah gave us some useful advice (if we lived during the revolutionary time period and were British): In order to avoid being caught as a British spy, always remember when someone asks you what is atop Faneuil Hall that it is a grasshopper; if you dare to call it a cricket, you’d better watch out, you British spy, you!

At the whaling museum on Nantucket Island, we had a very interesting lecture. One of the tour guides showed us a presentation and taught us about the history of whaling on Nantucket and throughout the world. There were many different stages of whaling and, for a while, it took place right off the coast of the island. The longer this was practiced, fewer whales came close to the coast and the whalers had to begin taking ships out into the ocean. Pretty soon, the Nantucketers discovered the Sperm whale and, because of the huge profits on Sperm whale oils and because of their huge size that does not permit them to be close to land, Nantucketers voyaged out for years at a time to capture them and bring back their bounties, returning rich men. These voyages would be very long, and the whalers would have to work very hard to bring down such a huge creature.

Next a wonderfully animated gentleman told us the story of a voyage that helped inspire Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. He had a knack for storytelling that made the listeners put themselves into the characters’ minds, which helped make the cannibalism that happened between the crew and other terrors seem more understandable in order for any crewmembers to survive.

After the story we were set free to wander about the museum. They had an exhibit of middle school students’ pictures of their favorite places on Nantucket Island. The posters detailed why those spots are important to preserving Nantucket’s history. There were plenty of tools and contraptions that would have been used on whaling voyages. The most interesting to me were the scrimshaw, which are pieces of art the men made from the bones of the whales. Some of them were pieces of bone with artistic carvings in them, and some were bigger and had been made into things like canes or a device for rolling string or yarn.

I really enjoyed the museum for its well-put-together history and story, but I had a hard time coming to terms with the large weapons and devices to kill the whales. There is a lot of talk of changing the whaling laws to make it more legal, but I have a huge problem with that, especially after seeing how amazing the creatures are through my own experiences. If they ever legalize whaling and the use of such weapons again, it will be hard to ignore how sad I felt for the whales being caught years ago. At least at the time of heightened whaling practices the whales were the only form of profit; legalizing it now would be for nothing but sport, and the extinction of the magnificent creature is just not worth it for a sport.

I wasn’t very impressed by Nantucket today. It’s attractive, it’s quaint, and it has a fairly interesting history. As a college student in the 21st century, however, I am not rich. After walking around all afternoon, I didn’t see much to do besides eat expensively, go sailing on expensive boats, shop for expensive clothing or…walk around. So, that is just what I did before returning to the lodging to rest. We are staying in a really nice place at the Maria Mitchell Institute in lodging where the interns stay over the summer.

Tonight we had a meeting with Vladimir, who works at the Institute and is an astronomer. He gave us a brief history of Maria Mitchell, who was the first woman astronomer and the first woman to see a comet. She was taught by her father, also an astronomer, and later taught herself everything she knew; she was obviously a brilliant woman and would have been considered especially brilliant in her time when women weren’t much more than mothers. Vladimir told us about the program they have for university students from the United States. Each summer they have six students (always a female majority) come to study astronomy. The key to their program is self-motivated learning and exploration, rather than simply telling students what is true and important. Participants are expected to figure things out for themselves.

After a briefing, Vladimir took us to the observatories where the Institute has two telescopes. The first one was white and brass and had recently been shined, gleaming its gorgeous structure. He explained about how telescopes work and how they are made. There are two types of telescopes - reflecting and refracting - and he moved us on to see the other, brand new telescope that had been his dream for years and years. It was shaped a lot less like what one expects a telescope to look like; instead of being long and thin, it was very short and wide and transmitted the images it captures onto a television screen.

Vladimir spoke for a long time, but it was never boring. He was so enthusiastic and knowledgeable and also had a lovely Russian and French-influenced English accent. I could have listened to him teach for much longer, especially if it had been a clear night so that he could’ve shown us the sky. For a minute there, I considered being an astronomer so that I could come to his institute and have him teach me for an entire summer!

We drove to Salem, MA, today. The House of the Seven Gables, as written about in Hawthorne’s book, is located in Salem, as is Hawthorne’s boyhood home. The houses are right by the water and right next door to each other because his boyhood home was bought and moved two blocks from a lot that is now a parking lot to the lot behind the House of the Seven Gables. It was interesting to see the history of the house because at one point a very rich sailor decided the gables were too intricate and not stylish enough so he had them removed. His daughter, after taking over the home upon his death, later told her cousin Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived a few blocks away, how the house had looked before her father changed it so drastically. To use the wood he had removed, the father built a barn out back.

Later, after the book was written describing the house with seven gables, the owner realized that in order to give tours and hopefully make money for the acclamation program she started for immigrants, she would have to rebuild the gables that had been removed. No one would want to visit the House of the Three Gables or the Four. The house was renovated with the same wood from the barn to appear how Hawthorne had described it. It remains in Salem now, as it does in the book, and is ranked as one of the top ten houses in the world.

Our second visit was the Salem Witch Museum. I suppose you can’t go to Salem and not see something about witches, but this was by far the silliest museum I’ve seen. There were life-size dioramas surrounding one room that were each spotlighted while the story narration was going on. There were screams and loud talking and attempts at being “accurate” in the scenery. The next part of the visit had a tour guide to inform us of the history of witches and Wicca and Paganism. This exhibit was to convince people to not be prejudiced against Wicca because “people of the Wicca religion are not green witches.” The museum had a very nice exhibit about medicinal botany as well as an outline with the development of Christianity compared with the fall of Paganism. Despite the good parts of the museum, the whole experience seemed to want to demonstrate the horror of the Salem Witch Trials and to discourage that type of behavior; at the same time, however, the entire town capitalizes on the same horrific history and makes incredible amounts of money off of it. I didn’t find it to be a great example of demonstrating just how awful prejudices can become, so I had problems appreciating the exhibits we saw.

Ready to realize the immensity of whales, we boarded the whale-watching boat in Gloucester, MA. I was worried we would be one of those tour groups that don’t actually get a glimpse of a single whale. An older couple on board our boat, who were asking about our trip, told us they had been whale watching multiple times and liked the company we had chosen very much. This encouraging statement got me through the next hour of speeding across the vast water in the biting wind I had not quite prepared for while packing. I was cold, tired, and beginning to feel seasick. Maybe it was a good thing that I had forgotten my lunch back at Friendly Crossways!

The boat began to slow at long last, and the announcer said we were in range of possibly seeing whales, and our group - most of which had been inside taking refuge from the cold - made its way out onto the deck. The excitement had mounted and everyone was craning his or her neck in hopes of spotting the first whale.

I soon realized it had been silly of me to believe it unlikely that I would see a whale. After the first few sightings of the tops of the whales, it began to seem we were watching the whales put on a production of their greatest moves! We saw both fin whales and humpback whales; the three whom the guide kept referring to by name were Teapot, Falcon, and Lace. My enthusiasm was audible for every person on the boat; I simply could not contain myself. Every time I chose one side of the boat from which to watch, I heard “oohs” and “aahs” from the other side and ran quickly to the other side, only to remember how quickly they submerge back into the water.

Two of the sightings remain my favorites. The first special one was when three whales came up in quick succession from diving down 100 feet to feed. The water began to turn green in color, which is a sign they are close to the surface, and then one of the three whales came out of the water with its mouth gaping. The other two followed in the same form, so quickly that the three whales were above water, mouths open so that we could see six individual jaws, at the exact same moment.

The second one was unbelievable. One of the whales had a calf that was about two years old. Our guide said baby whales like playing around in the water and become curious about boats. As if to prove that, the calf came to the side of the boat where I was standing and emerged facing the wall of the boat. It was above water about five feet from the edge of the boat, remained for a few seconds and then disappeared. I was so excited to have seen a baby whale - about the size of an SUV - so close to me! Never did I imagine that she would reemerge another six or seven times, each time just as close to me, and each time so that we could see a different part of it. We got to see its entire back, its blowhole, its side, its open mouth, and its tail. On its final time, she sprayed out of her blowhole. Never did I think I would be so excited to be sprayed by a whale! For a short bit I wished to jump in the water and swim with her, but I managed to restrain myself.

Today was a busy day, with the Concord Museum, Emerson’s house and the Fruitlands – the utopian society the Alcotts and a few others attempted to create. It’s very hard to choose what to talk about, because all three were really interesting. The thing that stands out most is our tour through Emerson’s house, because our tour guide made it feel much less like walking through a museum and more like simply visiting the Emerson’s and finding them out. First, she ushered us into his study, which has been recreated because the furniture is now in the Concord museum on display. She told us it was fine to sit in the chairs, and we all did, assuming it was furniture that meant nothing. Then we found out it was similar furniture that had been moved from other parts of the house and all of it had actually belonged to Emerson and his family. We were sitting on chairs that he and other famous authors and thinkers who would have visited had likely also sat on! I couldn’t believe we were allowed to sit on it because all the other homes we were forbidden to even lean on the walls. She let us feel right at home.

In addition to that, while up in the master bedroom, she took out the robe that he used to give lecures on the lecture circuit and the robe he put on in the morning when it was chilly in the house. The robes were beautiful. The one he gave lectures in had cuffs at the wrist and then billows of fabric that hung over his hands. His morning robes were made by his wife and had lovely pieces of velvet on the cuffs and at the front. She told us she didn’t usually take them out to let visitors see because no one usually cares about such things and she was therefore giving us a special tour. I just couldn’t believe she was touching them and showing them off to us. I felt right at home, as if Emerson would just walk through the door and greet us. It was a wonderful visit.

Today at the Old Manse I was very excited to see the study that belonged to both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne at different times. This room stood out for me more than the rest in the house both because of the three historical events that took place within and because of the stories our tour guide told us. She described Emerson’s years at Harvard and his attempt to get through Divinity school, which was unsuccessful. He always felt the religion just didn’t suit him properly and couldn’t bring himself to give communion, so he decided instead to drop out. Believing himself to be a failure because the five generations behind him had been ministers, he traveled to Europe to raise his spirits, and it was in Europe where he discovered the philosophy of Transcendentalism. The teachings of the philosophy “spoke to his soul” and, when he returned to America, he practiced the idea that God is within every being and everything in nature and turning it into more of a religion than a philosophy. This discovery prompted the transcendental movement, and an explosion of great American literature.

Emerson placed his desk between two windows that faced out towards what was then untouched nature and the view helped inspire him to write. It was at that desk that he wrote the first drafts of his essay “Nature,” which is considered by some to be the “Bible of the Transcendentalists.” Years later, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife lived in the Old Manse and while they were there, Hawthorne built himself a desk that faced against the wall opposite the windows; he said he could not concentrate while at Emerson’s desk because the same nature that inspired Emerson only distracted Hawthorne and instead has his back face the view of outside. It was interesting to note the differences in the two authors’ characters. The room is also the very same one that his grandmother stood looking out at the North Bridge, where first shots of the Revolutionary War took place. The fact that many important events of history took place within one room is amazing; the fact that I was standing in the spirit of it all was astounding.