In his summer home at Pittsfield, Longfellow wrote "The Old Clock on the Stairs"; at Stockbridge, Hawthorne builded his "House of the Seven Gables"; and Lydia Sigourney poetically told of "Stockbridge Bowl" with "Its foot of stone and rim of green." It was at Lenox that Henry Ward Beecher created "Norwood" and "Star Papers." Here Charlotte Cushman and Fanny Kemble came for many summers to rest and find new life.

Harriet Hosmer had her first dreams of fame at the Sedgwick school.

The Goodale sisters, Elaine and Dora, were born upon one of these mountainsides and both embalmed its memory in their poems.

Dora lovingly sings: Dear Berkshire, dear birthplace, the hills are thy towers, Those lofty fringed summits of granite and pine; No valley's green lap is so spangled with flowers, No stream of the wildwood so crystal as thine.
Say where do the March winds such treasures uncover, Such maple and arrowwood burn in the fall, As up the blue peaks where the thunder-gods hover In cloud-curtained Berkshire who cradled us all?
Henry Ward Beecher said: This county of valleys, lakes and mountains is yet to be as celebrated as the lake district of England and the hill country of Palestine....

Here is such a valley as the ocean would be if, when its waves were running tumultuous and high, it were suddenly transformed and solidified....