A sixteen year old Emily Dickinson spent two weeks sightseeing in Boston in the fall of 1846 while staying with an aunt.  She wrote to a friend: “I have been to Mount Auburn, to the Chinese Museum, to Bunker hill.  I have attended 2 concerts, & 1 Horticultural exhibition.  I have been upon the top of the State house & almost everywhere that you can imagine.  Have you ever been to Mount Auburn?  If not you can form but slight conception – of the ‘City of the dead.’  It seems as if Nature had formed the spot with a distinct idea in view of its being a resting place for her children, where wearied & disappointed they might stretch themselves beneath the spreading cypress & close their eyes ‘calmly as to a nights repose or flowers at set of sun.”

(Emily Dickinson Selected Letters, ed. Thomas H. Johnson, Belknap Press, 1971.)

Photo above depicts Forest Pond, Catalogue of Proprietors, 1846.