Crucial Instances by Edith Wharton

I

To the visiting stranger Hillbridge's first question was, "Have you seen Keniston's things? " Keniston took precedence of the colonial State House, the Gilbert Stuart Washington and the Ethnological Museum; nay, he ran neck and neck with the President of the University, a prehistoric relic who had known Emerson, and who was still sent about the country in cotton-wool to open educational institutions with a toothless oration on Brook Farm.