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UNIVERSITY

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CAT. NO. 23233

Cornell University Library
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Book of Boston, by Robert Shackleton...

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3 1924 028 818 800

THE PARK STREET CHURCH, FROM THE COMMON

Cornell University
Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028818800

THE BOOK OF

BOSTON

By

ROBERT SHACKLETON

Author of "The Book of New York,"
"Unvisited Places of Old Europe," etc.

Illustrated with Photographs
and with drawings by R. L. BoYKR

THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA

1917

COPYRIGHT
i 9 r 6 BY

THE PENN
PUBLISHING
C OMPANY

First printing, October, 1916
Second printing, February, 1917

3y (p/ Co y&
x

The Book of Boston

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Taking Stock op the City 1

II Boston Common 5

III Boston Preferred 20

IV On the Prim, Decorous Hill 35

V The City op Holmes 49

VI A House Set on a Hill 62

VII A Picturesque Bostonian 73

VIII A Woman's City 84

IX The Distinctive Park Street Corner . . 99

X Two Famous Old Buildings 109

XI To the Old State House 122

XII Faneuil Hall and the Waterside . . . 133

XIII The Streets op Boston 148

XIV In the Old North End 163

XV Down Wapping Street and Up Bunker Hill 177

XVI The Back Bay and the Students' Quarter . 18.8

XVII Heights Reached and Kept 208

XVIII " College Red and Common Oreen " . . . 223

XIX An Adventure in Pure Romance .... 239

XX A Town That Washington Wanted to See . 255

XXI The Famous Old Seaport op Salem . . . 269

XXII The Most Important Road est America . . 285

XXIII Plymouth and Provincetown 300

XXIV "The Night Shall Be Filled with Music" . 319
Index 327

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Park Street Church, from the Common . Frontispiece
Doorway of the old house of the Harvard Presidents,
Cambridge Title Page Decoration

PAGE

The Shaw Memorial (heading) 1

Fountain on the Common (initial) 1

Boston from the Charles (tail piece) 4

The Long Path (initial) 5

St. Paul's, facing the Common . . . (tail piece) 19

A doorway on Beacon Hill (initial) 20

Beautiful Mount Vernon Street . . . (facing) 22

A Beacon Street mantel of 1818 . . . (tail piece) 34

The high-shouldered end of Cedar Street (initial) 35

Looking down old Pinckney Street . . (facing) 44

Thomas Bailey Aldrich's doorway . . (tail piece) 48

Quaint steps at end of Bosworth Street . (initial) 49
The doorway of Prescott's home on Beacon Hill

(facing) 52

The Sunny Street that holds the Sifted Few (tail piece) 61

Iron gateway at the State House . . . (initial) 62

The Bostonian Hub of the Universe . . (facing) 66

Looking across the Public Garden . . . (tail piece) 72

The Mall, across from Hancock's house . (initial) 73

John Hancock's sofa (tail piece) 83

Entrance to the Women's City Club . . (initial) 84
A spiral stairway, by Bulfinch, on Beacon Hill

(facing) 92

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Museum of Fine Arts, from the Fenway

(tail piece) 98

The gate of the Granary Burying-Ground (initial) 99

Tremont Street along the Common . . (tail piece) 108

Old King's Chapel (initial) 109

Statue of Franklin at the City Hall . . (tail piece) 121

A narrow byway (initial) 122

The Old State House (tail piece) 132

Old India Wharf (initial) 133

Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market . . (facing) 134

T Wharf (tail piece) 147

Bridge on the Fenway (initial) 148

On Commonwealth Avenue .... (tail piece) 162

Old North Church . .' (initial) 163

Interior of the Paul Revere house . . (tail piece) 176

Bunker Hill Monument (initial) 177

"Old Ironsides" (facing) 178

Where the British landed : the Navy Yard, Charlestown

(tail piece) 187

The Boston Library (initial) 188

A Venetian palace in the Fenlands . . (facing) 202

Cloistered courtyard of Boston Library . (tail piece) 207

Statue of Washington in Public Garden . (initial) 208

Knox's cannon, on Cambridge Common . (tail piece) 222

The Washington Elm, Cambridge . . . (initial) 223

The Main Gateway of Harvard . . . (facing) 230

At the Arnold Arboretum (tail piece) 238

Birthplace of two Presidents, Quincy . . (initial) 239
The Fairbanks house, Dedham; probably the oldest in

New England (facing) 242

Church at Quincy (tail piece) 254

Stairway in the Lee mansion, Marblehead (initial) 255

ILLUSTEATIONS

PAGE

The harbor of Marblehead .... (facing) 264

The old Cradoek house on the Mystic . (tail piece) 268

A Salem doorway (initial) 269

Romantic Chestnut Street, in Salem . . (facing) 276

Hawthorne's birthplace, Salem . . . (tail piece) 284

The Old Manse, Concord (initial) 285

"Here Once the Embattled Farmers Stood": Concord
(facing) 294

Emerson's library (tail piece) 299

The Alden house, at Duxbury .... (initial) 300

Plymouth, from the Graveyard on the Hill (facing) . 306

Sand dunes of Provincetown .... (tail piece) 318

Along Charlesbank (initial) 319

Old Louisburg Square (facing) 322

A Club hallway (tail piece) 325

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

CHAPTER I

TAKING STOCK OP THE CITY

SHALL write of Boston. I shall write
of the Boston of to-day; of what Bos-
ton has retained, and what it has be-
come and what it has builded; and I
shall write, to use the quaint old
Shakespearean phrase, of the memo-
rials and the works of art that do
adorn the city. I shall write of the
Boston to which thousands of Ameri-
cans annually pilgrimage. And if, in writing of the
Boston of to-day, there is mention of the past, it will
be because in certain aspects, in certain phases,
the past and the present are inextricably blended.
Boston is dear to the hearts of Americans.

1

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

A city of interest, this : a city with much of charm,
with much of beauty, with much of dignity. A city
of idols as well as of ideals, and with some of the
idols clay. For, indeed, it is a very human city, with
pleasantly piquant peculiarities. On the whole, in
its development, a comfortable city. A city of tradi-
tions that are fine and traditions that are not so fine.
A city of beliefs and at the same time of prejudices.
A city rich in associations, rich in its memories of
great men and great deeds, rich in its possession of
places connected with those men and deeds. No other
American city so richly and delightfully summons up
remembrance of things past.

I shall write of the people as well as of their city,
and of their character and peculiarities and ways.
Boston, with its prosperous present and its fine, free
relish of a history that is like romance, is a likable
city, a pleasing city, a city to win the heart.

And it still has the aspect of an American city.
Hosts of foreigners have come in, but something in
the spirit of the place tends finely to assimilation.
Some portions of the city are altogether foreign, but
on the whole the American atmosphere has persisted.
There is constantly the impression that Americans
are still the dominant and permeative force, and one
comes to realize that by their influence, and by a
splendid system of day schools and night schools, they
are steadily making Americans of foreigners and even
more so of the children of foreigners. The early
Bostonians, by means of the forces of a thoughtful
civilization, and constantly by earnest work and pro-

2

TAKING STOCK OF THE CITY

found sacrifices, expended their energies in fitting
their country for the citizens of the future. The
Bostonians of to-day find it necessary to fit those
citizens for our country!

Boston is a mature city, a mellow city, a city of ex-
perience and experiences, a city of amenities, a city
of age. Never was there a greater fallacy than the
still-continuing one that ours is a new country! It
is generations since this was true. When one re-
members that the Pilgrims came three centuries ago,
and that the Bostonian settlers closely followed them,
it is strange that there should still be an impression
that this means youth. Clearly, undoubtedly, the city
of Boston is old. If one should say that it is not old
because it is younger than London, then neither is
London old because it is younger than Borne. Age is
necessarily a relative term, and three centuries of
vivid, earnest, eager, glowing life give age to Boston.

Yet it is not merely because of its age that Boston
holds one. A city, like a building or like a person,
must have much more than mere age to arouse in-
terest. A city must have charm or beauty or grace,
or brave associations with a long-past time ; and Bos-
ton, with the soft twilight into which its more distant
history vaguely merges and with its possessions of
beauty and delightfulness and dignity, assuredly pos-
sesses these requisites. History and buildings, great
achievements, picturesque events — Boston may point
to them all.

But I shall not attempt to tell everything, or even
every important thing, in Boston's present or Bos-

3

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ton's past. He who writes of Boston must, from
necessities of time and space, leave much untold and
undescribed ; but in selecting what seem the essential
and most notable features one ought, at least, to pre-
sent the piquant city in a fair and rounded way.

And Boston ought not to be considered in a nar-
row geographical sense. To write properly of Bos-
ton is to write also of the neighboring towns that
have come to be associated with her in common ac-
ceptance and common thought ; the places over which
the mantle of Boston has been flung and which stand
hand in hand with her in the light of tradition and
history.

-? r

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CHAPTEE II

BOSTON COMMON

OSTON COMMON has given to
Boston individuality. Standing
practically untouched and un-
broken, in the very heart of the
city, it represents the permanence
of ideals. And it has always rep-
resented liberty, breadth, unique-
ness of standpoint. One gathers
the impression that the people of
Boston will retain their liberty so
long as they retain their Common, and will sink into
commonplaceness only if they give up their Com-
mon. It is, in a double sense, a Common heritage.

Utilitarianism would long ago have taken this great
central space to make way for the natural develop-
ment of business ; this great opening, in the ordinary
course of city growth, would long ago have been cut
by streets and covered with buildings. But Boston,
has held loyally to her ideals : she has held the Com-
mon ; from the first, she seems to have had a subcon-
scious sense of its indispensability to her.

One might begin, in writing of the Common, with
naming the streets that bound it, and setting down the

5

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

precise area — which, by the way, is not far from fifty
acres — but the vital fact about it is that for almost
three hundred years, almost from the beginning of
Boston, the Common has been a common in fact as
well as in name, held for public use throughout these
centuries. No street has ever been put through it;
no street car line has been allowed to cross. To some
extent the subway has been permitted to burrow be-
neath, but that has itself been for public use without
affecting the surface. The long-ago law of 1640 de-
clared that ' ' There shall be no land granted either for
houseplott or garden, out of ye open ground or com-
mon field," and this inhibition, broadly interpreted
for the Common preservation, has held through the
centuries. In 1646 — how long, long ago ! — a law was
passed, further to strengthen the matter, declaring
that the Common should forever be held unbroken
until a vote of the majority of the people should per-
mit it to be sliced or cut ; and this very year in which
I write, the people, on account of this ancient law,
voted on a proposition to reduce the Common in
order to widen bordering streets, and by a big ma-
jority voted it down.

The ordinary American impression of a common is
of a shadeless and cheerless expanse, a flat, bare
space. But Boston Common is crowded thick with
old trees, it is light and cheerful and alive with hap-
piness ; instead of being flat it is delightfully diversi-
fied, and instead of being bare it has, over all of its
surface excepting the playground spaces, an excel-
lent covering of grass — and this in spite of the fact

6

BOSTON COMMON

that there are no keep-off-the-grass prohibitions.
L The Common is a space to be freely used, but the peo-
ple love it and do not ruin it with use.

Those whom one ordinarily meets on the Common
are of the busy, earnest, clean-cut types. Many of
them, one sees at a glance, have grandmothers. All
are well-dressed, alert, genially happy — and the fancy
persistently comes that the very air of the Common
diffuses a comfortable happiness.

Among the pleasantest of the many pleasant asso-
ciations with the Common is that of Ealph Waldo
Emerson and of how, as a small boy, he used to tend
his mother's cow here! There is a fine and simple
breeziness in the very thought of it. What a picture
— the serious, solemn little boy so solemnly and seri-
ously doing his part to aid his widowed mother in the
time of her straitened fortunes! I think it much
more than a mere fancy that the influences of that
time had much to do with making Emerson a patient
and practical and kindly philosopher instead of
merely a cold and theoretical one. And I associate
with those early days a tale of his later years, a tale
of his coming somewhere upon a young man who was
vainly struggling to get a mild but exasperating calf
through a gate : pushing would not do, pulling would
not do, and, "Oh, don't beat her!" said a gentle
voice, and the by-that-time famous Emerson tucked a
finger into the corner of the calf's mouth and the lit-
tle beast trotted quietly along, sucking hard ! I think
that Emerson, personally lovable man that he was,
owed to his experience with the cow on the Common

7

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

the possession of so great a share of the milk of hu-
man kindness, and to his living for a time at the very
edge of the Common much of his open outlook on
life. And there comes to mind a letter in which some
one mentioned his writing, as a boy, a scholarly com-
position on the stars, because of thoughts that came
to him from looking up at the stars from the Com-
mon. That is the sort of thing that represents Bos-
ton Common. Perhaps "Hitch your wagon to a
star !" came to Emerson from the inspiration of those
early days.

Cows were freely pastured on the Common until
about 1830 ; and one thinks of the delightful story of
Hancock, he of the mighty signature, who, having on
hand a banquet for the officers of some French war-
ships, at a time when the friendship of the French
meant much to us, and learning that his own cows
had not given milk enough, promptly sent out his
servants to milk every cow on the Common regardless
of ownership! And the very owners of the cows
liked him the better for it. And the fact that Han-
cock's splendid mansion looked out over the Common
had, doubtless, much to do with giving him the cheer-
fully likable qualities that he possessed, in spite of
qualities not so likable. For this is such a human
Common! You cannot help feeling it every time
you cross it or walk beside it or look out over it. It
is a place where people are natural, even though you
no longer see cows there. And there is a building
on fashionable Mount Vernon Street, close by, a low
one-story studio building, which not only, though the

8

BOSTON COMMON

inhibition is ancient indeed, is kept down to one-story
height as an incorporeal hereditament of the houses
opposite, which did not wish their view interfered
with, but which also possesses, opening upon the
street, a broad door which — so you are told, and you
have no desire to risk the chances of disproval
by unearthing old documents — must forever remain a
broad door so as to let out the cows for the Common !

The Common is not all a level, nor is it all a hill,
for it is freely diversified with levels and slopes. It
is a pleasantly rolling acreage and possesses even a
big pond. And there are a great many trees, in spite
of the difficulties that trees face in their fight for ex-
istence against city air and smoke, and in spite of
the ravages of the gypsy moth, and in spite of serious
lopping. The trees still cast a royal shade and give
a fine, sweet air to it all.

It is pleasant, too, to notice the system adopted
here many years ago, and now in use in some other
cities also, of marking carefully the different trees
with both their popular and botanic names. For my
own part, I remember that it was as a youth, on Boston
Common, that I first learned to differentiate the Eng-
lish elm from the American and the linden from the
English elm.

One may get somewhat of real beauty on the Com-
mon too, as, the glorious yellow and green effect of
the great gold dome of the State House seen through
and beyond the trees.

The paths, whether of asphalt or earth, are rather
shabby, and the Common has nothing of the aspect

9

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

of gardens or of trimmed lawns. There is an excel-
lent Public Garden just beyond tbe Common, if that is
what one is looking for.

I know of no other open space in America so geni-
ally and generally used. And no one, except once in
a while for some special event or reason, ever goes
to the Common — no one needs to — for it is simply
right here at the center of things, and doesn't need
going to ! It is crossed and passed and looked at in
the daily routine of life.

In its complete exclusion of vehicles, the Common
is the pedestrian's paradise; and never were there
paths that lead on such unexpected tangents. Never
were there paths which so puzzlingly start you in
apparent good faith for one destination only to make
you find yourself most surprisingly headed in an-
other. Yet these perplexing paths are all straight!
The uneven and vari-angled sides which make the
Common neither round nor oblong nor square nor
anything at all, are responsible for leading even the
oldest citizen away from his objective if he for a
moment forgets what a lifetime of familiarity with
these paths has taught him.

Many of the Common walks, as winter approaches,
are made to look amusingly like the sidewalks of
some village, for interminable lengths of planking,
full of slivers and holes, are dragged from their sum-
mer's hiding places and laid down here, on crosspieces
that raise them a few inches above the level of the
walks.

A prettily shaded path is the one known as the

10

BOSTON COMMON

Long Path, leading far on under tall and overarching
trees from the steps opposite Joy Street to the junc-
tion of Boylston and Tremont, and this is the path
followed by the Autocrat and the Schoolmistress in
the charming love episode that was long ago so
charmingly told. One may almost think that the hu-
man touch of this pretty romance, with its simple
glow of love and life, is the most delightful bit of
humanity about the Common, and the fact that it
was a love affair of fiction does not make the story
the least particle unreal, for every one remembers it
as if it was lovemaking of the real and actual kind.

Although the Common has been held immune from
homes or streets for these three centuries, a part of
it was long ago given over to a graveyard. It is a
large graveyard, too, and, although it is directly
across from thronged sidewalks and sparkling shops
and theaters, it is just as attractively gloomy in ap-
pearance as a good old-fashioned graveyard ought to
be ! Central as it is, and befitting its name of Central
Burying-Ground, it has all the interest of aloofness.
It is practically hidden, it is almost forgotten and
overlooked; and this effect is really remarkable.

One of the many who are buried here was the in-
ventor of a soup that promises to keep his name in
perpetual remembrance — of such varied possibilities
does Fame make use to hold men's names alive!
Many years ago a certain Julien was a cook and a
caterer in Boston, an excellent cook and caterer whose
finest achieved ambition was the making of a certain
soup which so hugely tickled the palates of the elect

11

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

that by general consent the name of Julien was lov-
ingly attached to it. Well, he deserves his fame, as
does any man who adds to the happiness and health
of humanity. And here his body lies.

And in this lonely and melancholy cemetery, with
the brilliant shops and theaters so incongruously
looking out over it, there is buried the artist admit-
tedly honored as the greatest of early American por-
trait painters; perhaps the greatest, even including
the best of modern days; and of course I refer to
Gilbert Stuart. This son of a snuff grinder was hon-
ored abroad as well as at home, and gave up a tri-
umphant career in England, in the course of which
he painted King George the Third and the Prince of
"Wales, who was to become George the Fourth, in
order to satisfy his intense desire to return to Amer-
ica to paint a greater George than either.

It is fitting that he should be buried here in New
England's greatest city, for he was New England
born, and he lived in Boston throughout the last
twenty years or so of his life, and Boston is the proud
possessor of his best and finest Washington, one of
the only two that he painted direct from his subject
(the many others being copies or adaptations by him-
self or by other artists), and with this George Wash-
ington is also Stuart's altogether charming portrait
of Martha Washington, the two being painted at the
same time. Yet only the other day I noticed, in Bos-
ton's best morning newspaper, a brief reference to
Gilbert Stuart which twice spelled his name with a
"w"! Temporal

12

BOSTON COMMON

Some years after Stuart's death, it was arranged
by some wealthy folk of Rhode Island to take his
body back to his native State: for he was born at
Narragansett, six miles from Pottawoone and four
from Ponanicut, as he once explained to some Eng-
lishmen who wondered where a man could possibly
be born who spoke English, but said that he was not
a native of England or Scotland or Ireland or Wales ;
but after the preparations had been made it was
learned that not only was the grave of Stuart un-
marked but that it was unknown; Boston had care-
lessly mislaid the body of this great American; so
the best that could be done was to put a tablet on the
outside of the cemetery fence.

Not far from the burying ground is a monument in
honor of the men who were killed in what has always
been known as the Boston Massacre. And the list of
killed is headed by the name of Crispus Attucks, the
negro; not that he was more of a martyr than the
others, but that this was a chance to set a negro's
name first as a sort of defiance, on the part of this
abolitionist city of Boston, to any who might deem
negroes inferior. And by far the noblest monument
in Boston, a monument positively thrilling as well as
beautiful, a monument which, though standing unob-
trusively, just recessed from the sidewalk, is aston-
ishingly effective in its splendid setting between the
two great trees that shade it, is a sculpture by St.
Gaudens, which vividly presents, in deep relief, not
only the figure of the gallant Colonel Shaw but fig-
ures of the negroes who bravely followed him to a

13

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

brave death. It is a memorial to the spirit, even
more than it is a monument to men. This memorial
— the most successfully placed monument in Amer-
ica — stands at the highest point of the Common, close
to the spot where the War Governor of Massachusetts
stood to see Shaw and his regiment march by; and
fittingly, here, these soldiers in bronze will forever
go marching on.

There is a great deal in a city's devotion to ideals ;
but only a few evenings ago, in a big Boston theater
that was packed to capacity, there were "movie"
pictures of the sad Beconstruction days, pictures so
utterly unfair in character as to be deplored even by
the more earnest sympathizers with the South; and
yet, that crowded house applauded tempestuously —
the only applause of the evening — the pictures of
masked Ku Klux riding down and killing negroes.
But I suppose one ought not to forget that Boston
must hold descendants of those who tried to mob Gar-
rison, as well as descendants of those who stood for
human liberty.

Another of the Common monuments stands on an
isolated little hillock, and is to the memory of the
soldiers and sailors who died in the Bebellion. It is
not much as a work of art; in fact, it is somewhat
worse, because more pretentious, than a host of medi-
ocre military memorials set up throughout the coun-
try; but the situation is fine, and the inscription is
fine, narrating as it does that the city has built the
monument with the intent that it shall speak to future
generations; and so, one sees that it is an excellent

14

BOSTON COMMON

thing to stand here, elm-shaded on its eminence.
More and more one feels that across this Common
comes blowing the warm breath of a history that is
alive.

From the very earliest days the Common was a
training ground for soldiers, and this use has not
been entirely forgotten. The Bostonians are in-
clined to resent the fact that their Common was used
by the British in the Eevolutionary times as a train-
ing ground and mustering place for the soldiers who
went to Bunker Hill, and before that for the ones
who marched to Lexington; it was taking quite a
liberty, they still feel; but they find consolation in
certain facts of history in regard to what happened
to those men.

It is still remembered, too, that a tall young Amer-
ican, standing by, attracted the awed attention of the
British soldiers here, for he was over seven feet high ;
and he remarked to them, carelessly, that when they
should get up into the interior of the country they
would learn what Americans really were, for out
there they looked on him, with his height of only
seven feet, as a mere baby.

And once, between the days of Lexington and
Bunker Hill, an American stood by and laughed
amusedly as a company of British were practising
target shooting, which so annoyed their captain that
he demanded an explanation, whereupon the Amer-
ican said it amused him to see such bad shooting.
"Can you do any better?" said the officer angrily.
"Give me a gun," was the laconic reply. And with

15

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

that the American proceeded to give an astonishing
exhibition of center-spot hitting — and the British
were to learn, to their cost, over on the hill in Charles-
town, that Americans could hit live targets just as
readily as they could hit any other kind. (That story
of target hitting is curiously like Scott's story of
Robin Hood hitting the target at the angry behest of
King John ! If Scott had been an American he would
have found a wealth of material in American annals.)

The broad elm-arched mall along the Beacon Street
side of the Common is an odd memento of our second
war with England ; for money was raised by subscrip-
tion in 1814 to defend the city against an expected at-
tack, and as the attack was not made and peace was,
the money was spent in constructing this mall.

Very early, the Common was used as a place of
execution, and in particular it was where Quakers
and witches were unanswerably silenced: but in the
good old times executions were looked upon in a much
more matter-of-course light than they are in modern
days. They were really public entertainments in a
time when entertainments were few and when the
Puritan public frowned on the frivolous.

The mighty "Whitefield used to preach on the Com-
mon, and it was the main place of refuge for goods
and people from the great fire that less than half a
century ago devastated the business section.

Flocks of pudgy pigeons now hover about the Com-
mon, and it is a pretty sight to see them come cir-
cling and whirring, in graceful curves and full trust-
fulness, to eat the crumbs so freely scattered for

16

BOSTON COMMON

them. One need not go to Venice to find a city where
citizens and visitors feed the pigeons! Countless
gray squirrels dart safely about, and the Common is
also a popular place for the airing of that fast-dis-
appearing race, the dog — for dogs are indeed rapidly
disappearing, not only on account of city conditions
but in particular from the continuous and deadly at-
tacks of the automobile ; and so the broad Common,
without automobiles as it is, is a rallying place for
dog owners and their dogs. They make a sort of
last stand here ! But never do you hear a man whis-
tle for his dog in Boston ; not even on the Common.
It simply isn't done! And if a thing isn't done in
Boston, you mustn't do it!

The Common has from the first been a place for
spectacles of one kind or another; not only such as
the drilling of soldiers or the execution of people of
unpopular opinions, but many and many other kinds.
There comes pleasantly the thought of what a pretty
picture it must have presented on that long-ago after-
noon, far back before the Eevolution, when, under the
auspices of a society for the promotion of industry
and frugality (the Bostonians have always had a
partiality for long titles!), some three hundred de-
mure maidens, "young female spinsters, decently
dressed," as the old-time phrasing has it, came out
here on the Common with their spinning wheels, and
sat here and spun, with busy demureness, prettily
playing Priscilla to the admiring John Aldens among
the watching throng. What a charming memory it
makes for the Common! How one thinks of the

17

THE BOOK OP BOSTON

Twelfth Night lines about the "spinsters and knitters
in the sun," and the "free maids that weave their
threads!"

One notices that the Bostonian of those old days
did not consider a spinster as necessarily a female;
a city of spinsters would not need to be a city of
women; and after all, the word spinster might
properly be used as meaning merely spinner. But
the explanatory words "decently dressed" would
seem to deserve further light: could any young fe-
male spinster of pre-Bevolutionary days ever have
dressed otherwise! The very thought is incredible.

The genial freedom for which the Common stands
was well illustrated by a story told me by a Boston
lady, of her last meeting with Louisa M. Alcott; for
a little niece came running up, exclaiming excitedly,
' ' Oh, Aunt Louisa ! I just feel that I want to scream ! ' '
Whereupon the creator of "Little Women" most
placidly replied, "Very well, dear: just go out on the
Common and scream." And that was both wise and
illustrative.

Old-time city that it is, Boston has an old-time
fancy for observing holidays. Even on the last Col-
umbus Day it seemed as if every store was closed and
that every citizen was either at the ball game — some
40,000 were there, with at least half as many more
anxious to get in — or else walking on or beside the
Common. And when night fell, it seemed as if every-
body went to the Common, for there were fireworks
given by the city, with lavishness of expense and su-
perbness of effect. Mighty crowds were gathered

18

BOSTON COMMON

and hundreds of motor cars were lined up around the
Common's edge, and when, at the close, the American
flag was flung to the night in colors of blazing fire,
every motor horn honked joyously and every indi-
vidual joyously cheered. For this was their own
Common.

v^-/V> "f - ' - *■ * '~- -— ~-Z W ^5^

CHAPTER III

BOSTON PEBFEEBBD

"" " ATTJRALLY enough, next to Bos-
ton Common comes Boston Pre-
ferred! For the term can very-
well be used in referring to Bea-
con Hill, which edges and over-
looks the Common and is still the
finest residence section of the city.
And this Boston Preferred, this
Beacon Hill, still stands for the
exclusiveness, the permanence, the
fixity, of Boston society; it stands
for the social cohesion of the city.

Beacon Hill is still of very considerable altitude,
even though it was long ago lowered, by vigorous
cutting-down, from the triple-peaked height that it
was originally when it gave Boston its first and
grandiose name of Tri-Mountain. The triple-peak
disappeared and a single rounded top remained. The
State House stands on the present summit of the
hill, and the top of its great gold dome is at the same
height as was the top of the hill itself originally.
The hill is still so steep that in places there are
lengths of iron handrails set into and against the

20

BOSTON PBEEEEEED

buildings for the aid of pedestrians in icy weather,
and there are notices at the foot of some of the hills
to warn vehicles not to attempt them when the slopes
are icy hut to take some roundabout course instead
— with Bostonian attention to detail, the particular
course being suggested. And at teas or receptions the
waiting motor-cars are likely to be standing with
their wheels turned rakishly against the curb for
safety. And on the most slippery days the motors
and carriages that have dared to venture upon the
actual slopes go dangerously, for the horses slip in
nervous helplessness, and now and then some motor
skids and slides and whirls and either dashes against
the curb or slides swift and uncontrolled to the foot
of the hill.

And as to the name of the hill, no one need think
that beacons are but a picturesque figure of speech
in regard to long-past American days, for beacons
were a very real and at the same time an extremely
romantic feature of early life in this country. Bar-
oness Eiedesel, the wife of the Brunswick general
captured with Burgoyne, tells that when she was with
her captive husband in Cambridge there was an alarm
which caused a rising of the entire countryside, that
barrels of pitch blazed on the hilltops, and that for
some days armed Americans came hurrying in, some
of them even without shoes and stockings, but all
eager and ready to fight. Historians have so ignored
the romantic in America that they have almost suc-
ceeded in giving Americans themselves the idea that
the romantic never existed here.

21

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Beacon Hill is the part of Boston that is still full
of fine old homes. They are not the earliest houses
of the city, they are not even pre-Revolutionary, but
they are of the fine period following shortly after the
Eevolution. They are generous, comfortable, well
proportioned, dignified houses, with their soft-toned
brick and their typical bowed fronts and their general
air of spaciousness and geniality — the bows in the
fronts being gentle outward swells of the walls from
top to bottom of the house, with two windows in each
bow, one on each side and none in the middle ; some-
thing entirely different from most modern bay-win-
dows, of Boston and elsewhere, which are excres-
cences with three windows. Quite English, old-fash-
ioned English, are the Beacon Hill bow-fronts ; very
much the kind of fronts that Barrie somewhere de-
scribes as bringing to a stop the people driving
through a little village.

That this part of Boston is really on a hill is recog-
nized as you climb it; and if, on some of the streets,
you sit inside of one of the bowed windows and a
man is walking down the hill, you are likely to see him
from the waist up as he passes the upper window, and
to see only the top of his hat when he passes the
lower! But an even better way to realize just how
much of a hill this still is, is to look back at it from
one of the bridges over the Charles for, from such
a viewpoint, this part of the city rises prominent and
steep, with its congregated mass of buildings etched
dim and dark against the sky, like an old-time engrav-
ing darkened and at the same time beautified with

22

BOSTON PREFEEEED

age. This Beacon Hill is so charming a part of the
city as to be supreme among American perched places
for delightfulness of homes and city living.

Mount Vernon Street is the finest bit of this fine
district. One of the old residents of the street said
to me, with more than a touch of pride, that Henry
James termed it the only respectable street in Amer-
ica. "Well, Henry James liked Mount Vernon Street
very much indeed, although he did not write pre-
cisely what was quoted to me as being his. What
he wrote was that this was the happiest street scene
our country could show (perhaps I should remark
that the context shows him to use "happy" in the
general sense of felicitous), "and as pleasant, on
those respectable lines, in a degree not surpassed even
among outward pomps." After all, looking at his
words again, there need be small wonder that he was
misquoted, for who, except a devoted disciple of
James, could be expected to understand precisely
what this phrasing means ! But the general impres-
sion is clear, and that is that Henry James, critically
conversant as he was with the most beautiful streets
of Europe, and idolizing Europe, still had high ad-
miration for beautiful Mount Vernon Street.

The street is one of serenity, and there is a certain
benignancy of dignity which seems to make an at-
mosphere of its own; there is a constant beauty of
restraint, and of even a sort of retiring seclusion,
even though the houses are built close together. It is
indeed a felicitous street, and the more felicitous
from a certain crookedness, or at least out-of-straight-

23

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ness, in its street lines, that comes from quite a num-
ber of unexpected and unexplainable little bends, so
slight as not at first to be noticed, but which add ma-
terially to effectiveness.

But it must not be thought that Mount Vernon
Street is the only part of Beacon Hill that is full of
charm, for there are other charming streets as well,
notably Chestnut Street, rich in old-time atmosphere,
and Beacon Street, fronting bravely out over the Com-
mon, and that charming Louisburg Square about
which all of Beacon Hill may be said to cluster : and it
may be mentioned that the Beacon Hillers like to pro-
nounce Louisburg with the "s" sounded.

Louisburg Square is like Gramercy Park in New
York, in that the people who own the abutting prop-
erties possess certain ownership in it — the central
portion being oval and not square, and the entire
square being oblong. It is amusing that when the
trees in the center are trimmed and lopped the wood
is divided into bundles and parcels and evenly dis-
tributed for fireplace burning among all of the ad-
joining property holders.

In any city, even in Europe, Louisburg Square
would at once attract attention as a charming little
bit. Its central oval is green, tree shaded, with grass
within an iron fence, and all about it are fine old
houses of old Boston type. It is really a bit of old
London, and that this is no mere fancy is shown by
the fact that when a country- wide search was made by
a moving picture concern which was preparing for
an elaborate presentation of Vanity Fair, the search

24

BOSTON PEEFEEEED

resulted in fixing upon this little Louisburg Square,
with its shading trees and old-fashioned house-fronts,
to represent the Eussell Square of London and of
Thackeray. A house was chosen — any one of a num-
ber might have been chosen — for the Osborne home,
and the street sign of "Louisburg Square" was taken
down and "Eussell Square" was substituted, but no
other alteration was needed. I went to see the pic-
ture given, and had I not positively known that it
was Louisburg Square I should never have doubted
that it was really the familiar Eussell Square at
which I was looking. That the house chosen was
Number 20 adds a point of interest, for it is the house
in which the wonderful singer, Jenny Lind, was mar-
ried to her accompanist, Otto Goldschmidt, in the
course of that remarkable American tour in which
she was given $175,000 and all of her expenses, while
her manager, P. T. Barnum, received as his share
$500,000.

There are two little statues, modestly pedes-
taled, within the oval of green, one at either end, and
each of them is a little smaller than life size. They
are so quietly sedate, these smallish marble men, that
they seem as if made with particular thought of the
sedateness of this smallish square. One of the fig-
ures, so one recognizes, is of Columbus, but the other
is so unfamiliar, with a face so different from that of
any well-known American, that one wonders in vain
who it can possibly be — and then it is learned that it
is Aristides ! One helplessly wonders why Aristides
the Just stands here! And the matter seems still

25

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

stranger when one learns that, so the residents tell
you, these two marble monuments were the very first
of all the Boston public monuments to individuals.

Something approaching a century ago, so it ap-
pears, a Greek merchant settled in Boston and made
his home here on Louisburg Square, and he so loved
the environment that he had these monuments sent
over from Greece and presented them to the city to
stand forever here ; choosing Columbus as his idea of
the man most representative of all America, and Aris-
tides because he personally loved the good old Greek,
his own countryman. A story like that does add so
much to the charm of a charming place.

This old part of the city, and particularly Louis-
burg Square, is a gathering place for cats ; not home-
less cats that furtively creep away, but sleek, sedate,
well-fed, lovable and likable cats; cats come here to
meet each other or to hunt birds or just to take a
stroll. They are of all races, sizes, and colors, from
the big, glorious yellow to the shiny-coated jet black.
Sometimes only one or two are in sight; at other
times there may be several ; then, when these wander
off, others will wander incidentally in, perhaps only
one or two again or perhaps a group. When tired of
walking or of hunting or of exchanging compliments
with one another they are not unlikely to rest com-
fortably on the bases of the monuments, generally
choosing, for some obscure catlike reason, Columbus
in preference to Aristides; indeed, a cat on Colum-
bus is a familiar neighborhood sight.

Here on Beacon Hill some of the houses have panes

26

BOSTON PREFERRED

of purple glass in their windows, and one learns that
this empurpling effect makes the house owners very
proud indeed. It seems that quite a quantity of win-
dow glass was made which contained some unexpected
material, just when some of the best houses here-
abouts were building, and that it was used in these
houses, and that in course of time and the action of
the sunlight, the glass containing the unexpected sub-
stance turned purple and that purple it has ever since
remained. Just why it should be a matter of special
pride to have too much foreign substance in one's
window glass it is hard for even the Bostonians to
explain, for they realize that the houses are just as
old, and would look just as old, without the purple
panes; but none the less, to them it represents
vitreous connection with a proud and precious past.
As a matter of fact, a similar pride used to be felt by
the owners of some old-time houses on Clinton Place
and Irving Place in New York City, which also pos-
sessed purple panes. One wonders if there is some
subtle and subconscious connection between the ideas
of purple glass and blue blood; at any rate, the
owners have all the sense of living in the purple.

Boston goes to sleep early, and Beacon Hill goes
even earlier than does the rest of the city. And, the
people once in bed, it takes a good deal to rouse them.
At a few minutes before eleven one night I was walk-
ing down Mount Vernon Street, with the houses all
blank and black, when I saw an automobile fire-engine
and hook-and-ladder start climbing up the hill.
Never have I heard so terrific a street noise. For the

27

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

heavy motors were on low gear, and each moment
they were almost stalling, and they were grating,
grinding and shrieking as they slowly fought their
way, with noises that shattered the very air. One
would have thought that every individual on the hill
would be aroused. But no ! If any house on Beacon
Hill must burn, it must be before eleven at night or
else neighbors refuse to be interested. Two serv-
ants opened a dormer window and looked out — and
that was all!

Beacon Hill, the height of exclusiveness, the cita-
del of aristocracy, all this it has long been, as if
its being a hill aided in giving it literal unapproach-
ableness. It still retains its prideful poise, in its out-
ward and visible signs of perfectly cared-for houses
and correctness of dress and manners and equipage.
But the gradual approach of changes is shown by shy
little signs, frightened at their own temerity, that
here and there on Beacon Street modestly print the
names of this or that publisher, and by other little
signs on Pinckney Street which set forth the single
word "Booms."

Some years ago there was something of a migration
from this region to the Back Bay, and many wealthy
folk of Boston now live over there, but the better
families have always looked on the Back Bay as not
to be compared with Beacon Hill.

From the first a poorer and, from the standpoint
of Beacon Hill, an undesirable, population has
swarmed up against the barriers from the north side,
the side farthest away from the Common, but for

28

BOSTON PEEFEEEED

generation after generation the barriers have held
firm against them, and now there are even signs of
redeeming a little of this adjoining district. Just
off one of these poorer streets, I noticed a courtyard,
Bellingham Court (the old governor's name has an
aristocratic sound!), running back for some two hun-
dred feet to a high wall that once was blank, and not
only is that wall now thick-covered with ivy, but on
either side of the brick-paved courtyard the few
modest little houses are flower-bedecked, and green
with vines, and brass-knockered. The courtyard is
not for vehicles, and down its center are arranged
neatly painted boxes of flowers, with brilliant ger-
aniums the most prominent, as a strong note is
needed. It is a little sheltered nook where the com-
monplace has been transformed into loveliness.

Not all of the old houses have old Bostonians liv-
ing in them, for some new Bostonians are here also,
and one of these naively said to me that on first mov-
ing in she was so disturbed by seeing people stop and
look up at her windows that she nervously went from
room to room to see if the curtains were wrong, only
to find later that her house was attracting attention
because it was one of the houses in which Louisa M.
Alcott had lived.

The residents of this region, though ultra-partic-
ular in some respects, are not afraid to do the un-
usual. Two dear old ladies of eminently correct fam-
ily, living in an eminently correct house, keep a dish-
pan chained to their front doorstep to offer water to
dogs and cats ! It would take a lifetime to learn just

29

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

how the people of this city differentiate the things
that in themselves simply must not be done, and the
things which, no matter how unusual or exceptional
or odd, may be done with impunity.

That Beacon Hill, with its long-maintained social
prestige, is but a few minutes' walk from the stir and
crowds and bustle of the busiest business streets, and
that on its crest is the very center of the political
activities of Massachusetts, the State House, makes
its continued possession of these serried ranks of
capable, comfortable, handsome homes the more sur-
prising in these days of constant American change,
and that it is so much of a hill as always to have
been impracticable for street cars seems to be the
great single reason for its being so long left prac-
tically unaltered. The absence of street cars also
adds very much to the general effect of serenity and
peacefulness.

Most of the houses are of brick, unpainted and soft
red, agreeably mellowed and toned by the weathering
of years. Indeed, the effect of the entire hill is an
effect of brick, for not only are the houses brick but
the typical ones are, in general, narrowly corniced
with dentiled brick, and the brick walls drop down to
the universal brick sidewalks of the district. Yet
there is no wearisome likeness of design: continually
there is the relief of the variant.

The accessories of the hill charmingly befit the
homes, and chief among these accessories is the
greenery. For there are lines of trees on the streets,
and groups or single trees in the square or in some

30

BOSTON PEEFEEEED

of the gardens behind the homes, and here and there
is a mighty spreading elm, and here and there is a
flowering ailanthus, and in every direction, on the
fronts or the sides of the houses, one sees wistarias
in coils or convolutions or sinuous lengths, and some
of the vines are of giant thickness, and some clamber
over the iron balconies, twisting and crushing and
knotting themselves python-like around the rails ; and
one sees, too, the Boston ivy, the ampelopsis, sweetly
massing its rich green against the soft red of brick.
Innumerable window-boxes give color and fragrance
and English-like touches of beauty. And on one of
these streets I noticed a mighty, ancient rose vine,
almost a ruin, which has annually spread its flowers
there for decades. And all of this in the very heart
of this old city !

And one of the most prominent of the large old
houses, a mansion in very truth — the old-time rule
in New England being that a mansion was a house
with a servants' stair, but using the word here in its
usual sense of meaning a large and stately home —
has behind it, terraced above a side street, a high-set
and level garden, with a garden-house of diamond-
paned windows ; a garden rather melancholy now but
so romantically high perched as to have all the effect
of what the ancients meant by "hanging garden."

That on all of these streets the houses are of vary-
ing widths adds immensely to the general picturesque
effect; in fact, the streets which show the greatest
variety in width of houses are the most picturesque.
None of the streets is what a Western man would

31

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

call broad, and some are really narrow, the narrowest
of all being little Acorn Street, so slender that you
may shake hands across its width. An attractive lit-
tle street, this, with its line of neat little houses and
its brave array of prettily framed doorways and
polished brass knockers; the houses being on one
side only of the narrow way, facing the high walls,
trellised on top and green with vines, of the gardens
of Mount Vernon Street homes.

Several of the streets of the hill climb straight and
steep from the waters of the Back Bay, and there are
positively beautiful views looking down the vistaed
narrowness and out across the surface of the water.
Stand well up on the steepness of Pinckney Street, and
look down at the water sparkling under a sky of
Italian blue, and across the sweeping stretch to the
white classic temples gleaming in the sun on the
farther edge of the Charles (and they look like
temples, although in fact they are new buildings of the
School of Technology), and you will see how striking
and beautiful a city view may be. Or, stand well up
on the steep of Mount Vernon Street in the late after-
noon of an early autumn day, when the golden sun
transmutes the water of the Charles into gold, and
scatters showers of gold through the branches of the
trees, and flings the gold in splotches and streaks and
shimmerings on the pavement, and all is a glorious
golden glamour, and again you will realize how beau-
tiful a view it is possible for a city to offer.

Beacon Hill is so delightfully mellow! And this
mellowness of aspect comes not only from the fine-

32

BOSTON PEEFEEEED

ness of the old houses in their age-weathering of
brick, but also from such things as the old iron bal-
conies that hang in front of the drawing-room win-
dows (all this part of old Boston having its drawing-
rooms one flight up so that the people, following the
English tradition, may "go down to dinner"), and
the brass knockers, and the doorknobs of brass or
old glass, and the old frames of iron, leaded into brick
or stone, like those of old Paris that used to hold
the ancient lanterns that roused the a la lanterne cry-
so terrible to the French aristocrats, and the old iron
rails, with little brass urns on their posts, on the tops
of big-stoned walls, and the fat cast-iron pineapples,
ancient emblems of hospitality, and the good old foot-
scrapers, of fine dignity in spite of their lowly use ;
and one cannot pass along any of these old streets
without seeing at windows, as if turning a cold shoul-
der to the present day, fascinating chair-backs of
Chippendale or Sheraton, or even of the rare Ja-
cobean.

On Beacon Hill one is always anticipating the un-
usual. And one evening, just as dusk was softly
creeping over Louisburg Square, strains of music
softly sounded, with a sort of gentle pathos, and there
came quiveringly the old-fashioned "When we think
of the days that are gone, Maggie." It was played
so very, very slowly, so very, very sweetly, by two
quite oldish men, both of them American, that window
after window softly opened and women looked out,
and home-going men paused in mounting their door-
steps, and a tenser silence, except for the quivering

33

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

notes, fell over the twilight square, and all intently
listened, all were moved. The two players, so un-
expectedly American instead of German or Italian,
seemed strange memories of the past, tremulously
playing here their old-fashioned music in front of
these old-fashioned houses that were, themselves,
softly dimming like memories in the twilight.

CHAPTEB IV

ON THE PRIM, DBCOEOUS HILL

i W I ^IHE streets of Boston are peopled

|j ' lf,}„ « with shadows of the past; shad-

\ , , M? ows of those connected with the
Z|t7^ J |7fj!ij historical or literary Boston that

'' ^ T l'A,yJM~ has gone. Nor are all the figures

ipO|iPij"n( Bostonians. Here is Dickens, af-

> i\~7.~*~^~"~~ i - ter a long winter day's tramp out

,/y ; " into the country with James T.

/ f Fields, hilariously swinging back

» to the city in a wild snow storm;

I but suddenly, near the junction of

the Common and Charles Street, disappearing from
view in the swirling snow clouds, only to be dis-
covered on the other side of the road helping to his
feet a blind man who had fallen helplessly in a drift.
Here is Thackeray driving down Tremont Street to
the lecture hall, with his extremely long legs hilar-
iously stuck out of the carriage window in sheer joy-
fulness that all the tickets for his first lecture had
been sold! For it will be remembered that Thack-
eray came over to give to the Americans all four
Georges in return for the one George that we had
concluded to do without. Can you imagine the feel-
ings of the sedate Bostonians as they saw the great

35

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Englishman going to his own lecture in what with-
out exaggeration could he called an informal way !

How full of life, of buoyancy, were those two won-
derful Englishmen! How impossible to picture any
Boston man so carried away by success unless in a
condition to be carried away by the police ! But, so
far as that is concerned, it is not likely that even
Thackeray ever rode through a street of his own Eng-
land in quite such exuberance of joy.

Dickens liked Boston, and found what he termed
a remarkable similarity of tone between this city and
Edinburgh. Thackeray liked Boston, and used to
say playfully that he always considered it his native
city. Both men made Boston their landing-place on
coming from England, and this could scarcely be
looked upon as chance, or merely that Boston was the
terminal point of a steamer line, but it was also, no
doubt, because the two chose the city whose reputa-
tion in England most appealed to them; for Boston
used to be the center of American literary life.

It was in Boston that Thackeray first tasted Amer-
ican oysters; and enormous ones were purposely set
before him at the now-vanished Tremont House, ad-
joining the Old Granary Graveyard, on Tremont
Street (with the ' ' e " in ' ' Trem' ' short if you would be
thought a Bostonian!), and he rejected the largest
because it looked like the High Priest's servant's ear
that Peter cut off, and with difficulty swallowed the
smallest, gasping out that he felt as if he had swal-
lowed a baby. I think people were more natural,
more frank, more full of spontaneity in those days,

36

ON THE PEIM, DECOROUS HILL

less afraid of what other people might think; or at
least our distinguished visitors from abroad gave ad-
mirable object lessons along that line.

And picture Thackeray— and isn't it a delightful
picture! — dashing down the slope of Beacon Street
toward the home of the historian Prescott, gleefully
waving two volumes of "Esmond" that had just come
to him from across the Atlantic and which he was tak-
ing to Prescott because Prescott had given him his
first dinner in America — picture him thus dashing
down Beacon Street and joyously crying out to a
friend whom he passed : ' ' This is the very best I can
do ! I stand by this book, and am willing to leave it
when I go as my card!"

The Prescott house is still there, 55 Beacon Street,
well down toward the very foot of the hill and facing
out over the Common. It is a broad-fronted house,
built in balanced symmetry, a house of buff-painted
brick with rounded swells, with roof fronted with
heavy white balusters, with window trimmings and
door pilastered in white, with black iron balcony light
and graceful in design ; it is a fine-looking house, a
house with a distinguished air. And somehow it
seems to suggest a portrait of the admirable Prescott
himself. It is a house worth seeing on its own ac-
count and also because it was there that Thackeray
received the inspiration for the sequel to the story
which we see him so gleefully carrying, the sequel to
"Esmond," for it was in that house that he saw the
two swords (now in the possession of the Massachu-
setts Historical Society) that had been carried by

37

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

relatives of Prescott in the Bevolutionary War, one of
them having been gallantly drawn in the service of the
King and the other with equal gallantry in the service
of America. Here Thackeray pondered the romance
in such a situation, and the result was "The Vir-
ginians," with one Esmond to fight for the King and
the other for Washington.

Over and over one realizes what possibilities of fine
romance lie about us here in America. Not merely
romance good enough for minor writers, as some
would have us believe, but romance good enough for
the giants. For Scott made brave use of the brave
old story of the Begicide and Hadley, and he took
his most beloved of all characters, Bebecca, from
Philadelphia and Washington Irving ; and Thackeray
took his Virginians from Boston and Prescott ; — and
I might refer to Dickens and "Chuzzlewit" were that
not something far different from romance.

Boston could never forgive Dickens; and that he
patronizingly wrote, years afterwards, that America
had so changed that he could now speak well of it,
aggravated rather than mitigated the enormity of his
literary offense, which was, not that he had found
people in America to criticise, for he had found peo-
ple to criticise in his own England, but that, judging
from "Chuzzlewit," he had found no one to think
highly of in America. He had been cordially re-
ceived by fine gentlemen, cultivated and polished men,
who would have been, and some of whom were, re-
ceived as fine gentlemen in the very finest society in
Europe, yet none the less he went home and wrote the

38

ON" THE PEIM, DECOROUS HILL

book that he had planned in advance to write, follow-
ing the advice that he had long before put in the
mouth of Sam Weller, to be sure to make a book on
America so abusive tbat it would be sure to sell; he
had, with amazing baldness, followed the published
prejudices of Mrs. Trollope, which he had absorbed
before leaving England; he wrote of Americans as
ignorant and boastful boors; and of course, in the
new portions of our country, there had to be many-
such. He wrote of America as being nothing but
a nation of boors when he well knew us to be a nation
possessing not only such men as Hawthorne and
Longfellow and Webster and Motley and Prescott
and Fields but many a cultured man of business and
many a cultured family.

Fields, with whom Dickens loved to take long
tramps, lived on Charles Street, at 148, well on the
way that the jogging horse-car used to take towards
Cambridge. It is now a highly undesirable street,
with infinite dirt and noise, and could at no time have
been really attractive. And the Fields house was al-
ways hopelessly commonplace, a house high-set and
bare in a row of houses all high-set and bare, built in
an era of architectural bad taste. It is a brick house
with brown stone trimmings, and is empty as I write,
for Fields long since died and now his widow is dead,
and the untenanted house has been drearily splashed,
across the narrow sidewalk, from the chronically
muddy street; splashed with brown and yellow dabs
to more than the tops of the front doors and win-
dows, and remaining drearily uncleaned.

39

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

I sometimes think of Fields as having been Bos-
ton's most important literary man. I do not mean as
a writer, although he did write one book that has
endeared him to a host of readers, but what he really
did for literature was as an intelligent and keenly
appreciative critic and an inspirer of literary men.
He won the devotion of a host of friends; he wel-
comed distinguished foreign writers and gave them
fine impressions of American society and literature ;
he counseled and inspired American writers and held
them up to their best ; it was even owing to him and
his personal urgency that the "Scarlet Letter" saw
the light. He was one of those rare men who could
judge of the value of writing without having to wait
to see it in print and without waiting to watch its
reception by the public. He was an anticipatory
critic of insight and judgment. And that he was at
the same time a publisher and for years even a maga-
zine editor also, was in every respect fortunate, for
he could publish what he thought worth while to the
mutual advantage of himself and the authors.

It is to the lasting honor of Fields that, as Whipple
wrote of him after a life-long friendship, he had de-
liberately formed in his mind, from the start, the
ideal of a publisher who should profit by men of let-
ters while at the same time men of letters should
profit by him, and that he consistently and success-
fully lived up to this ideal.

In the old days there was a serious effort to make
Charles Street a fine home street. Thomas Bailey
Aldrich came here for a time from the slope of Bea-

40

ON THE PEIM, DECOROUS HILL

con Hill, making his home at 131, and Oliver Wendell
Holmes came for a time to a house, since destroyed
in the building of a hospital, at 164 ; but the street
early showed its hopeless disadvantages, becoming, as
it did long ago, a great teaming thoroughfare circling
the foot of Beacon Hill from one part of the city to
another.

The advantages of Charles Street are on the water-
side; for it is close to the great broadening of the
Charles Eiver, which has always offered a beautiful
view to the windows looking out over its sunset
sweeps of water. Holmes made his home there, not
only for the beauty of the water views but because
he intensely loved rowing, and here he had precisely
the opportunity he wanted, with the additional con-
venience of keeping his boat at his back door. But
the increasing disadvantages of Charles Street out-
weighed even these advantages of water and view.

The great rooms of the Fields house likewise looked
out over the water, and it was deemed such a pleasure
and such an honor to be a guest of James T. Fields
that in the old days every literary man expected to
be given an invitation as a hall-mark of success.

Those were the days when Boston authors were fine
gentlemen and when many a Boston fine gentleman
was an author. Indeed, there has never been a Grub
Street in Boston. Those who look up the homes of
authors need not search in the poorer parts of the
city but among the homes of the socially exclusive,
and the few exceptions are close by in neighborhoods
that were once just as exclusive. And this is the

41

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

case not only in the city but also in those near-by sub-
urbs which are themselves essentially part of Boston,
for it was not poor or unattractive or commonplace
towns in which Hawthorne and Longfellow and Emer-
son lived, but places of such fine distinction and
beauty as Cambridge and Concord.

In this matter of the fine living of its authors Bos-
ton stands almost unique among cities, the only one
which has rivaled it being Edinburgh, where the
group of writers who were so famous a century ago
lived mostly in the best residential section. In no
other particular is the resemblance between Edin-
burgh and Boston so interesting as this.

On Mount Vernon Street, at 59, in the very heart
of conservative aristocracy, is the house that was the
latest home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a real man-
sion, broad of front, with classic pedimented doorway
of white marble with fluted Doric pillars, and with
entablatures of marble set between the second and
third stories, and with a rounding swell, and a charm-
ing iron balcony, and four stone wreaths along the
cornice, and four dormer windows above ; and in front
of the house there is even a generous grass-plot.

Mount Vernon Street, that very citadel and center
of the Brahmins, as the exclusive Boston folk of a
past generation loved to call themselves, attracted
also for a time the most distinguished of all the
Boston writers of to-day, Margaret Deland, who lived
for a time at 76, in an old house whose front wall has
long horizontal sets of windows that were put in for
the sake of giving an unusual amount of light and

42

ON THE PEIM, DECOKOUS HILL

sun to the flower-loving author. On the curbstone
near this house is the quaintest old lamppost in Bos-
ton, a wrought iron frame set on a slim granite shaft.
After her earlier successes Mrs. Deland left this home
for one farther down the street, and then moved over
to the Back Bay, still keeping up the Boston literary
tradition of living among people of wealth. The
other day I noticed in Boston's best morning news-
paper a portrait of Mrs. Deland, with a review of her
latest work, a new Old Chester book, and the review
was amusing, because it described her as being a New
England woman who writes with remarkable discern-
ment of a New England village, when as a matter of
fact she came here from "Western Pennsylvania, and
her Old Chester is near Pittsburgh. It is the natural
tendency of Boston to assume that an excellent thing
is of Boston or at least New England origin.

On Mount Vernon Street, 83, is the home of Wil-
liam Ellery Channing, a fine, austere house of dig-
nity befitting the high standing of the man; a house
with a low embankment wall, and grass, and a balcony
of a design that is like the backs of Chinese Chippen-
dales. His is one of the few homes that show a
tablet, and it is the quietest and most unobtrusive
of tablets, set as it is in the ironwork of the gatepost.
In Boston everybody knows the name of this Chan-
ning, and he has been honored with a public monu-
ment over beside the Public Garden, and Longfellow
wrote a poem to him, and he is remembered as a great
figure and as a leader in thought; yet the Channing
that those who are not Bostonians most naturally

43

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

recall is the William Ellery Channing, the relative
and namesake of this Channing of Boston, whom
Hawthorne so loved and wrote of so lovingly.

On the difficult slope of the next street to steep Mt.
Vernon, on Pinckney street, named in honor of that
Pinckney who left us the heritage of that upstanding
phrase, "Millions for defense but not one cent for
tribute," on that Pinckney Street, at 84, is the home
where Aldrich, early in his career, wrote his immortal
juvenile, the "Story of a Bad Boy." It is a low-set
and almost gloomy looking house, for it is without the
usual high basement of the vicinity. Still it is a pleas-
ant house after all, and one wonders why friends of
Aldrich always referred to it as a "little" house, for
it is four windows wide instead of the usual three of
its immediate neighbors. The house has a peculiarly
ugly over-hanging bay-window, misguidedly set by
some would-be improver against what was once the
attractive front of the house, and the first impulse is
to say to oneself that of course this ugly bay could not
have been there in the time of Aldrich ; but a lifelong
resident of the street told me that she well remembers
the time when he lived and wrote here and that he
wrote his "Story of a Bad Boy" in this very bay-win-
dow!

Farther up the hill on Pinckney Street, at 54, is an
attractive house which may really be called smallish ;
one feels impelled to call it "neat" even in a district
of neatness, and except for that quality little of the
distinctive is noticed except that it has an eight-
paneled front door with the characteristic door-knob

44

ON THE PEIM, DECOROUS HILL

of silver-glass. This house has a most amusing con-
nection with literature, for it was here, in July of
1842, that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his note to
James Freeman Clarke, asking him to perform the
marriage ceremony between himself and Sophia Pea-
body, "though personally a stranger to you," as he
expressed it; and the amusing feature was that al-
though Doctor Clarke was told that "it is our mutual
desire that you should perform the ceremony" and
that a carriage would call for him at half -past eleven
o'clock in the forenoon, Hawthorne quite forgot to
mention the date on which the expected marriage
was to take place ! And the note itself was no guide,
for it was merely dated "July," without the day!
And Hawthorne also quite forgot to mention where
he would like the ceremony to be performed! Still,
as Hawthorne wrote the street number on his
note, it was possible to straighten the matter out
in time.

Still farther up and on what has now become the
level-top of Pinckney Street, at 20, is one of the houses
where the Alcotts lived, a little, very narrow, high-
perched building with its main floor reached by queer
abrupt steps up to a front door deeply recessed in an
almost tunnel-like approach. The house is of dingy
brick and has little windows, and is immediately back
of the very best of Mount Vernon Street and on a
queerly narrowed part of Pinckney Street. And
looking off toward the broadened Charles from this
highest part of the street there comes an impression
as if the hill has dropped suddenly away and the

45

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

classic temple-like structures on the farther side of
the water are close to the foot of a precipice.

The work of Bronson Alcott has been absolutely for-
gotten and his very name would be forgotten were it
not that he was the father of Louisa M. Alcott ; yet he
had some most unusual qualities. He wrote little and
lectured much; he was not a success; he was rather
tiresome ; and yet with his transcendentalism, with his
entirely vague thoughts in regard to what we should
now call the superman, the uplift, he seems to have
been near to something very excellent, very modern.

It was to this house on Pinckney Street that Alcott
returned to his hard-pressed family, one cold winter's
day, after a lecture tour, with his overcoat stolen and
just one single dollar in his pocket! And this re-
minds me of a story that I long ago heard out in
Cleveland from an old resident there who told me
that she remembered how, when a girl, Alcott came
to lecture, and that as they had heard that he and
his family were in actual need of money they actively
sold tickets enough to hand him three hundred dol-
lars, whereupon he said, quite beamingly, that in
Buffalo he had seen a set of valuable books that he
had very much wished for but had been unable to
buy, and that now he would go back and get them and
take them home with him.

He was an impractical man, yet his friends liked
him and smoothed the way for him, and in his later
years the Alcott family were delightfully mainstayed
by the immense success of the books of his wonderful
and universally loved daughter.

46

ON THE PEIM, DECOKOUS HILL

The house where Bronson Alcott died at the age
of almost ninety, in 1888, is also on Beacon Hill; a
decorous, mid-block, characteristic Louisburg Square
home, at 10, on the southern side of the square ; it is
a bow-fronted, white-doored house with a vestibule,
with finely-paneled white inner door, hospitably show-
ing to the street; it is a broad brick house set on a
smooth granite foundation behind a little iron-railed
space, with a plump pine-apple looking like a cheese
at the terminal of the rail.

His daughter, Louisa M. Alcott, who won the hearts
of myriads and gave such unbounded and wholesome
pleasure with her "Little Women" and "Little Men,"
was so ill, in another part of the city, at the time of
his death, that she was not told of it, and on the day of
his funeral she herself died in the belief that her aged
father was still living.

A few doors away, also facing out into the greenery
of Louisburg Square, over in its southwest corner, at
Number 4, lived for a time "William Dean Howells;
his once-while home being a comfortable, dormered
house of the customary brick, with long drawing-room
windows on the second floor, next door to a larger
corner house, now a fraternity house, out of and into
which young men seem always to be dashing.

Still lower on the slope of Beacon Hill, at 3 West
Cedar Street, is a house that was for a time the home
of the poet who figured among Longfellow's notables
at the Wayside Inn; for those who were pictured as
gathering there and telling their tales were all very
real men, although some of them were fancifully de-

47

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

scribed. The poet of the party was a certain Thomas
Parsons who was thought of very highly by his famous
literary contemporaries, although had it not been for
Longfellow he would now be quite forgotten. He
made his home for the better part of his best years on
Beacon Hill Place, near the State House, but the wide-
spreading State House extension has taken street and
house, as it has taken many another ; but his home for
a while was here on West Cedar Street, in a small
cozy, plain house in an entire street of similar cozy
little houses, all with flowers in window-boxes and box-
bushes on the doorsteps, all with brass knockers and
old door-knobs and arched doorways. "A poet, too,
was there whose verse was tender, musical and terse,"
as Longfellow expressed it ; and it is pleasant to have
this house mark a poet's memory, even though the
memory is due to the greater poet who wrote about
him.

CHAPTEE V

THE CITY OF HOLMES

I HE authors of Boston seem to have
been, in an altogether pleasant
sense, nomads, even though they
kept their nomadic activities within
a very limited district. Although
there is little in the life of Boston
authors which in the ordinary sense
could he termed moving, as they
were a happy, fortunate, conven-
tional folk, their lives were certainly moving in an-
other sense, for moving is what they spent a great
deal of time in doing. Three homes for Aldrich, at
least three for Holmes — four, counting the beautiful
early home now gone, in Cambridge, and five if the
Berkshire home should be included ; several different
homes in Boston for the Alcotts, who even had three
homes out in Concord between times ; various homes
for Parsons and for Palfrey, three for Motley, two for
Parkman — thus the list goes on, and Prescott is al-
most the only one I think of who did not go moving
about, and probably even he did some moving that I
have never heard of. Even Mrs. Deland, Bostonian
by adoption, has so readily adapted herself to Bos-

49

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ton's literary way as already to have lived in at least
three different Boston homes. It all reminds me of a
most interesting little place that I came across in
Europe, Neutral Moresnet, where the inhabitants
make it almost a point of honor and certainly a point
of duty to change their houses once a year.

On Walnut Street, facing down Chestnut, was the
boyhood home of Motley, the historian, a house that
has since been torn down; the best part of his life
was spent in Europe, but he also loved his Boston,
and a Chestnut Street house is pointed out, at 16, with
a brass-knockered, brass-handled door, with a wonder-
ful fanlight, designed in flowing lines, as a place where
he lived for a time.

Chestnut Street is a neighborhood of very felicitous
doorways and at 13, well up the slope of the street,
is a charming house that was long ago one of the
several successional homes of Julia Ward Howe. It
has an unusually striking doorway, with four slim,
prim white pillars, and is an individual sort of house
as if to befit the strikingly individual woman who lived
here. No one else, surely, in all literary history ever
won acknowledged literary leadership through a long
life by one single song plus personality ! Mrs. Howe
died a few years ago, but when Henry James came
over to take his final look at this country to see that
it really wasn't worth while and to shake its dust
forever from his feet, she was still alive, and the two
met at a reception, and a story was told me, by one
who heard and witnessed the scene, of what took place
at their meeting. Mrs. Howe had known him from

50

THE CITY OF HOLMES

his boyhood and he at once began to tell her with effu-
sion of how he had thought and thought of her, so
much and so often, while away, and of what a precious
delight it now was to meet her again. Bat she must
have had some donbt of his entire sincerity for, look-
ing over her spectacles at him as she used to do when
he was a boy, and speaking to him as if he were still
a little boy, she melted his sugary pleasantries by say-
ing, with gentle and very slow admonition and with
an accented "me," "Don't lie to me, Henry."

Far down at 50 Chestnut Street, in a section where
the typical houses have three-part windows as the
main windows in their front, is the house where the
historian Parkman lived and worked for twenty years.
It is a house with exceedingly tall chimneys and a
door deeply recessed within an arch, and is almost di-
rectly through from the house of the historian Prescott
on the next street parallel, Beacon Street. And noth-
ing could be more strange, than that both of these
historians, whose homes were so near together, were
so grievously troubled with their eyesight as to need
specially made appliances, a sort of machine or frame,
to enable them to read and write at all ; each gave a
superb example of working under almost insuperably
depressing difficulties; and that they were both his-
torians, both Americans, both of them dwellers on
Beacon Hill for many years adds to the strangeness
of it.

Out in front of the State House, at the corner of
Beacon Street and Park Street, stood the beautiful
home of the man who used so to represent Boston in

51

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

the public eye that it was playfully suggested that the
city be called Ticknorville. Here stood the home of
George Ticknor. In a sense, the house still stands
here, but it has been so altered in fitting it up for
business and offices, for antique dealers and deco-
rators and lawyers, that one 7 s first impression is that
it has quite vanished and that another building stands
in its place. But even yet one-half of the distin-
guished horseshoe stair still remains, leading up to
the front door, and although the fine original door
has been replaced by a window, part of the old portico
is still in place, surmounted by some exquisite old
ironwork which is among the very finest bits of old
ironwork in Boston. The marble hall of which Haw-
thorne writes and in which so many distinguished
visitors were received, has gone, and the stairs have
been altered and new-banistered, and it is now hard
to imagine the old-time glory of the place, although
the great height of the ceilings gives an impression of
spaciousness and dignity.

For many years Ticknor lived here, pleasantly
varying his life with lengthy trips to Europe for
travel and study. He had married the daughter of
an extremely wealthy merchant, and this made life
sufficiently easy for him to spend years and years in
producing an agreeable and scholarly history of
Spanish literature. Even yet, a Bostonian writing
or speaking of the old house and its old-time glory, is
likely to refer to it as "her" house, and to mention
"her" hospitality and even, incredible though it
seems, "her" library! Ticknor must have been a

52

DOORWAY OF PRESCOTT' S HOME ON BEACON STREET

THE CITY OF HOLMES

most likable man, for so many likable men liked him so
very much indeed, and be was deemed an immensely
distinguished man, yet he stands as a striking ex-
ample of great fame in one generation and practical
oblivion in the next.

And how impressively all of those old-time Amer-
ican writers loomed ! And how neglected are most of
their works to-day! And yet individual remem-
brance or forgetfulness is not the only test. As a
class, or group, they brilliantly made the beginnings
of our national literature, they showed that American
writers could mark out paths of beauty and learning,
they made it clear that American writers could be
men of imagination and poetical power. That most
of them are now unread is neither discredit nor criti-
cism. In England there has been the same forget-
ting of men once famous, for of the English authors
of the past only a few of the preeminent are read, and
the many others who meant so very, very much in
their day, are but names and vague memories. But
that does not mean, either in England or in America,
that the now forgotten writers of the past were not
excellent and noteworthy writers, for numbers of
them were very excellent and noteworthy indeed, and
their combined influence is a powerful and still-con-
tinuing force.

It is pleasant to realize that this old section is not-
able for its connection with other art as well as that
of literature; in its architecture it is agreeably dis-
tinguished, and it has a pleasant association with the
best paintings, for I remember that in looking over a

53

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

list of those who, a few years ago, were the owners
of Gilbert Stuart's works, I noticed that quite a pro-
portion were still in the possession of residents of
Beacon Hill ; which is just as it ought to be.

Not only is the entire hill, regarding it as a whole,
a highly successful example of domestic architecture,
whether the houses are considered singly or in mass,
but there are individual houses notably worthy of at-
tention. For example, at 85 Mount Vernon Street,
is an especially attractive Bulfinch house of a design
not usual with that unusual man, and he built it thus
differently in order to match an unusually broad front-
age of building space and to harmonize with an un-
usual depth of long and high retaining wall in front.
It is a big square-fronted house, one of the largest
homes of the entire neighborhood, with its entrance
door not on the front of the house at all but on one
side, and with its front beautifully balanced with over-
arched windows, with separate little balconies, with
Corinthian pilasters; and it has a great octagonal
lantern on the roof. In addition to all else of dignity
and fineness there is the excellent feature of continu-
ing back to the wall of the courtyard, completing a
design that is architecturally an adjunct. But the
house is now all gray, in one dull monotone, and it is
really necessary to picture it in the beauty of its
original design of red brick and white pilasters and
black iron to see it as it ought to be seen.

Of all the writers who by their combined influence
gave the Boston of the past its high literary distinc-
tion none was so important as Oliver Wendell

54

THE CITY OF HOLMES

Holmes. Not that lie need necessarily be considered
the greatest among them, although in his particular
line he was supreme, but that he so stood for Boston,
so represented Boston, so interpreted Boston, so
gave the city definite form out of vaguely general
imaginings, so placed it before the world, as to make
himself its definite exemplar.

Boston is the City of Holmes, and he himself was
Boston epitomized. He was in himself a human
abridgment of Boston, an abstract of the city that he
so loved. He was the best of Boston concentrated
into one human form, and he was a writer of whom
any city in the world might be proud. To read his
"Autocrat" is an intellectual aesthetic delight. Sel-
dom has there been a man so clearsighted, and at the
same time so cleverly able to put his clearsightedness
into such delightful literary form. Montaigne would
have loved him. Lamb, who died when the career of
Holmes was just beginning, would have called him
brother.

Over in King's Chapel, where Holmes had a pew
in the gallery during most of his long life, there is a
tablet to his memory. He is not buried there, but
his friends very properly wished him to be commemo-
rated in that old-time building of Boston; only, the
tablet is really entertaining, although that is the last
word that would usually be thought of in regard to any
cenotaph, for it begins its description of Holmes with
the words "Teacher of Anatomy," letting "Essayist
and Poet" follow!

Curious, you see, the order of precedence. No ad-

55

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

mirer of Holmes, outside of Boston, would ever have
thought of his fame as an essayist being second to
anything else, least of all as being second to his fame
as an anatomical teacher. He was, doubtless, an ex-
cellent surgeon, and being of an original bent of mind
he put his originality into all he did, and long ago
some of his surgical or medical opinions led some one
of the Teutonic name of Neidhard to write a book at-
tacking them, and another controversial anti-Holmes
book came from the equally Teutonic-named Wes-
selhoeft, but these men and their books are them-
selves no more forgotten than is the fame of Holmes
himself as a surgeon.

And yet, at a dinner in honor of Holmes, on his
seventieth birthday, when friends and admirers gath-
ered from various cities, President Eliot of Harvard
arose, after there had been general felicitation of
Holmes as a man of letters, and said : "It seems to me
my duty to remind all these poets, essayists and story-
tellers that the main work of our friend's life has
been of an altogether different nature. I know him
as the professor of anatomy and physiology at Har-
vard for the last thirty-two years. You think it is
the pen with which Doctor Holmes is chiefly skillful.
I assure you he is equally skillful with the scalpel."

That is delightfully remindful of the meeting of
Voltaire and Congreve, when Voltaire expressed his
pleasure at meeting so distinguished a literary man,
and Congreve stiffly replied that it was not as a liter-
ary man but as a gentleman that he wished to be con-
sidered, whereupon Voltaire promptly replied that he

56

THE CITY OF HOLMES

did not need to come so far to find a gentleman.
Holmes must have thought of that, though as guest
of honor he could not speak of it! He knew per-
fectly well that these admirers had not come there to
find a surgeon. And he must have remembered, with
glee that was tempered with chagrin, that although
Harvard had long honored him as an M.D., Boston in
general had refused to take him seriously, as a doc-
tor, after he had jokingly let it be known that "fevers
would be thankfully received."

Of all Boston writers it would be expected that
Oliver Wendell Holmes would choose the finest and
most attractive house to live in, and this not alone
because of his being a man of such ability but be-
cause he so loved the fine things connected with the
fine old times, and because his own life began in a
house that was a most charming example of old archi-
tecture. I well remember the house where he was
born ; it was over in old Cambridge, close to the Com-
mon, but it has been destroyed for some reason, and
the spot stands empty; I well remember what a fine
old pre-Eevolutionary house it was, picturesque in
the highest degree, the kind of house that delights the
imagination, low-set, homelike, yellow and gambrel-
roof ed ; but he has written of it himself :

"Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, —
Standing still, if you must have proof. —
'Gambrel? — Gambrel?' — Let me beg
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, —
First great angle above the hoof, —
That's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof."

57

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

The ideals of Holmes were all of the olden-time.
He stood, as he frankly said, for the man who could
show family portraits rather than twenty-five cent
daguerreotypes, for the man who inherits family
traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least
four or five generations ; and among these cumulative
humanities one would have expected Holmes, of all
men, to rank high the possession of an old-time house,
rich in the feelings and traditions of the past. But
after living through his early years in a house that
was a thing of beauty, Holmes did not find it a joy
forever to continue to live in a fine house, but chose
instead to live in commonplace houses! Nor, after
writing as he did of the striking down of thousands of
roots into one's own home, did he settle down in any
one house for a lifetime! The trouble was that, all
unconsciously, he was in this regard not living up
to his own ideals. His ideals led him toward the old
and beautiful, the things connected with ancestry and
the past; but with old houses it seems to have been
with him as it was with old furniture ; he writes apolo-
getically, somewhere or other, of loving old-time fur-
niture but of keeping it practically hidden in some
out-of-the-way room, and he seems to have felt the
same perverse desire to keep from showing any out-
ward love for old houses. He chose a home for him-
self, not even on Beacon Hill, although close beside
it; he chose to live in Bosworth Street, then called
Montgomery Place, a court leading off Tremont
Street opposite the Old Granary Burying Ground, and
ending in a few stone steps, arched with a wrought-

58

THE CITY OF HOLMES

iron design, leading down to an alley which borders
where once stood the ancient Province House and
where antiquarians still point out what they say is
a fragment of the Province House foundation wall.
All this region was long ago given up to business, but
where Holmes lived is still pointed out at the farthest
left-hand, next to the corner of the court, and it was
never an attractive place, and the next door house,
still standing, is positively commonplace. Still, with
a curious perversity, he lived here for almost twenty
years, and here wrote almost all of his remarkable
"Autocrat." It was a well-to-do neighborhood, and
perhaps even wealthy, but it missed being distin-
guished.

But Holmes finally tired of the house and died out
of it. I use his own words to express his moving
away from it : for, as he writes, after referring to his
having lived in this very house for years and years,
and then leaving it, people die out of their houses
just as they die out of their bodies. He and his fam-
ily, he narrates, had no great sorrows or troubles
there, such as came to their neighbors, but on the
whole had a pleasant time, but "Men sicken of houses
until at last they quit them," as he goes on to say.

"Whereupon one feels sure that this splendid Auto-
crat would surely, the next time, choose a home in
which he could feel pride. But, no ! He went to the
Charles Street house, which was a house as common-
place as the one he left. Here, however, he had the
water immediately behind the house, with its sunset
glows and the distant hills. Still restless, he moved

59

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

again, and this last time to the house in which at a
mellow age he died, at 296 Beacon Street: not the
Beacon Hill district, but in the Back Bay extension
of Beacon Street. Again he had chosen a house with
back- view on the waterfront, but, still perverse on this
subject of homes, he had again chosen an undis-
tinguished home and undistinguished environment, al-
though it was a house and a neighborhood of well-to-do
but monotonous comfort.

One naturally wonders whether, had he chosen a
home more fitting to his ideals, he would not have
left behind him more than the single superlative book
he did leave. But as that single book is really in the
very first class, of its kind, perhaps it was all for
the best, after all.

One likes to think, and I am sure it is more than a
mere fancy, that the influence of that beautiful house
in Cambridge, the birthplace of Holmes, extended in
at least a considerable degree over his entire life, and
it assuredly had much to do with making him a finely
patriotic man, devoted to the best Americanism.
For there was much more to that house than age and
gambrel-roof and beauty ; there was association with
the most heroic deeds of our American past ; for that
very house was headquarters of the Committee of
Safety, and the American soldiers who were to fight
at Bunker Hill lined up in front of that very house
before making their night march to the battlefield,
and stood with bared heads while the President of
Harvard College, standing on the front steps of the
house, prayed for the success of the American arms.

60

THE CITY OF HOLMES

Those associations thrilled Holmes throughout his
life, for even in the house where he died, far down
among the houses of the Back Bay, one likes to re-
member that, looking from his windows, the thing
which most of all impressed him was (a fact of Bos-
ton geography surprising even to many a well-in-
formed Bostonian) that from those windows he was
able to see Bunker Hill Monument.

vjt

'S,

istvJi'P.*::-

I

'i -
. * Use i.ti. w .id.rr ^z< i *—

CHAPTEE VI

A HOUSE SET ON A HILL

T was Oliver "Wendell Holmes who
remarked that the Boston State
House is the hub of the solar sys-
tem, and that you could not pry that
out of a Boston man if you had the
tire of all creation straightened out
for a crowbar. And that is really
the standpoint of Bostonians,
Nothing else can possibly be so im-
portant as is Boston; and, to the
Bostonian, his city seems to be represented by the
State House. There is excellent ancient authority
for the statement that a house set upon a hill cannot
be hid, but even without this ancient authority there
would be no disputing the fact that the State House,
set as it is upon Beacon Hill, is not hid, for its gold
dome, which used to offer a glory of literal gold leaf
but is now not quite so striking in its more recent
covering of a kind of gold paint, is visible not only
to all Boston but to many and many a town and vil-
lage beyond the limits of the city.

And somehow, when I look at this great dome, on
its height, in Boston of New England, visible over
miles and miles of the surrounding country and far

62

A HOUSE SET ON A HILL

out over the water, I think of another Boston, a Bos-
ton in Old England, with its splendid tower rising
far into the air and visible for many, many miles
across land and sea alike. And the name of this
American Boston came straight from that English
Boston, and hundreds of the English Boston people
were the first of the settlers of this American Boston,
driving out, as they did, by their presence, friendly
though it was, the hermit Blaxton whom they found
established here before them, with his thatched-roof ed
cottage and his little rose garden and his spring on
what was long afterwards to become Louisburg
Square. What an interesting life story Blaxton 's
must have been ! How it tantalizes the imagination !
And yet, as to so much of the romantic in New Eng-
land, the New England mind is rather cold toward
him, as is strikingly illustrated by no less a man than
Henry Cabot Lodge who, after telling of the mystery
of Blaxton and of the little that was ever known of
him, except — and what an except! — that he was a
Cambridge man who exiled himself, with his library,
to the absolutely unbroken wilderness and mar-
velously made a charming home here, with his flowers
and books, in the early 1620 's, goes on to add, Boston-
like, that although all this seems dimly mysterious
and excites curiosity, the story would "no doubt
prove commonplace enough" if we could know more
about it!

I have often thought, when looking at the dome on
Beacon Hill, that the early settlers, looking at the
early beacon that, on the then much higher hill, long

63

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

preceded the State House here, must have been
strongly reminded of their church-tower beacon of
St. Botolph's at home, and that they would have been
intensely pleased could they have known that this
great dome was to stand here, and that, every night,
it was to be a beacon superbly glowing with great
rings of light that shine far out over the countryside.
And remembering that English Boston, with its
splendid, tall, truncated tower, that was in times of
danger a beacon tower, and its veritable tide-water
Back Bay (even though it may not have been given
that name), and its comfortable old homes, and its
air of centuries of solid comfort and prosperity, and
its wonderful great open market still existing and
probably looking much as it did three centuries ago
(no wonder the American Bostonians, remembering
that market-place in England, promptly established
an open market here!), the thought comes, of what
ease and happiness and comfort and fine living were
sacrificed for the sake of coming to America ; for the
Boston Puritans did not, as was the case with the
Plymouth Pilgrims, come here from exile but from
their native country and their comfortable homes.
And yet there was another factor, after all ; for they
still show, in the English Boston, the gloomy prison
where were held in confinement, for mere matters of
opinion, some of the very ones who on their release
planned the migration to America and freedom. Those
men deemed freedom in a wilderness preferable to
the chance of further imprisonment even in a charm-
ing old town, and preferable to living where their

64

A HOUSE SET ON A HILL

minds, even if not their bodies, would be held in
bondage. It is no wonder that America, settled in
great degree, both Northern and Southern colonies
alike, with people who came seeking freedom from
one or another kind of duress, developed from the
very first an intense movement toward permanent
liberty on this side of the ocean ; instead of being mat-
ter of surprise that our Eevolution came, it would
have been surprising, considering all this, if it had
not come.

That Boston possesses its hub of the universe, its
State House, is because, alone among the great cities
of the country, it is not only a great city but the
capital of a great State. One wonders just what
would have been deemed the hub if it had not had its
domed building set up here so prominently. No Bos-
tonian ever thinks of it as the Massachusetts State
House, but always as the Boston State House. Bos-
ton, the capital of early days, was wise enough to
retain the distinction when it grew large. New York
was the capital of its State and for a time was even
the national capital; Philadelphia was the capital of
Pennsylvania and, like New York, was for a number
of years the national capital ; but both these cities not
only lost their headship of the nation but also re-
linquished such leadership of their own States as
comes from being the political center. But Boston,
once given the distinction of being the seat of gov-
ernment of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
continued to hold it, thus adding greatly to its im-
portance and consequence as a city — and thus secur-

65

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ing its most striking architectural ornament, the State
House, the most beautiful feature of which is known,
from the name of the architect, as the " Bulfinch
front." Originally, however, it was a front of brick
with pillars of white, and originally the dome was
covered with plates of copper, rolled and made by
Paul Bevere, but Eevere's copper has had many a
patch and replacement and the entire front of the
building itself, below the dome, has been painted; it
was for many years painted yellow, but is now white.

This high-set building, on its high elevation, un-
doubtedly had its inspiration from some Greek tem-
ple on a hill. Bulfinch, like the great English con-
temporary architects whom he so much resembled, the
Adams, gained his knowledge of beauty from an in-
tense and loving study of the Greek in books and
in travel in Europe.

The building has all the advantage of a noble posi-
tion of which noble use has been made. Its superb
colonnade of pillars is symmetrically so spaced, with
four pillars singly in the middle and four in doubles
at either end, as to obtain the most admirable effect ;
the effectiveness of thus using double pillars on the
front of a building instead of single-spaced pillars
only, being strangely overlooked by most architects.
This noble colonnade is surmounted by a temple-like
pediment over which rises the great dome, and below
the colonnade is an admirable row of arched openings
from which the steps sweep down to a broad grassy
space which stretches off toward a terrace above the
Beacon Street sidewalk and thus toward the trees

66

A HOUSE SET ON A HILL

and grass of the Common, the iron archway at the
sidewalk being a most effective bit, in its Greek detail.

The work of Bulfinch is the more notable because
there was no model anywhere of precisely the kind
of public building which he wished to build. No leg-
islative hall existed such as indicated the general idea
of republicanism. France was exchanging its kingly
government for the rule of the people, but the theater
at Versailles and the tennis-court satisfied the peo-
ple's representatives. Meanwhile, in England, the
House of Commons was quite content with the mag-
nificent Saint Stephen's at Westminster. But Bul-
finch was a big man, an individual man, who not only
utilized the best he saw but who worked along lines
of his own originality. And that he was not only
original but successful is shown not only by the fact
that one State after another copied his general model
but by the fact that he personally was chosen to com-
plete the design and the building of the capitol at
"Washington — the entire world knows with what su-
preme success.

The Boston State House is a distinctly American
building, and everywhere within it there is a general
air and atmosphere of courtesy towards strangers,
and a readiness to show anything of interest, not only
without the desire for tips but without the possibility
of giving them. And not only has the American Bul-
finch front been preserved, but also the original Bul-
finch interiors.

Here, with its windows looking out over the Com-
mon, is the original Senate Chamber, with its fine

67

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

barrel-roof ornamented with classic ornaments on
the rectangular spaces of the ceiling. It is a small-
galleried room with an air of quiet perfection.

The beautiful room in the very center of the old
front is the original Hall of the Bepresentatives.
When built, this hall was large enough to hold only
chairs without any desks, as there used to be so many
members in proportion to the population of the State
that the meetings were almost State meetings ! It is
a large room, made octagonal by four niched corners ;
these corners, now niches, having once held fireplaces
where cordwood blazed cheerily for the very practical
work of heating this great apartment. In addition
to a large candelabrum hanging from the center of
the ceiling, which was a candelabrum in fact, to be
used for candles only, each member needed to have
a candle at his own seat for use in the early darkness
of winter afternoons, and each member was expected
to buy his own candles for his own personal use; a
state of affairs that would positively appall any pub-
lic servant of to-day.

The walls are of white pine, cut and painted to
represent even-set blocks of marble, and there are
felicitous balustraded galleries for the use of the pub-
lic. The ceiling is domed above this entire room, but
the dome is a long distance beneath the gold dome that
tops the building, and is not its inner surface, as one
might at first suppose on looking up from this floor.

These old rooms are all in white, which admirably
brings out the lovely classic perfection of detail, and
there is beautiful relief given by a various use of

68

A HOUSE SET ON A HILL

blue and buff in certain places and by the higb-placed
"windows, rayed and oval. The great coat-of-arms,
the old clock, the speaker's seat, the corridor along
the front behind the pillars, each is an achievement
in design and dignity.

In these two old meeting-halls are preserved relics
which, though few in number, are of profound in-
terest. Here on the wall is an old musket; not a
remarkable musket in itself, one would say, but just
one of the old-fashioned flintlocks; but it is really
one of the most remarkable muskets of history, for
it was not only captured in the running pursuit from
Concord, but was the very first gun to be captured
from the British in the war of the Eevolution. Here,
too, is the musket that fired the shot heard round the
world, for it is the very musket used by Major John
Buttrick, who commanded the embattled farmers at
their stand at the bridge in Concord. Here, too, is a
drum which rattled through the sound of the rifles
on Bunker Hill. The intent has been to give place
only to relics of special distinction.

In the new part of the building there is a rounding
room of yellow marble, richly ornate, which is a
veritable shrine for Americans, for it nobly displays
three hundred battle flags that were carried by Mass-
achusetts soldiers in the War of the Bebellion.

Also, in the new part of the building is the State
Library, where is preserved the invaluable Bradford
history, the story of the Plymouth Pilgrims, written
by Governor Bradford himself. It is necessarily
under glass, and is kept opened at one of the yel-

69

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

lowed old pages, where, in plain old-fashioned hand-
writing, still perfectly legible to-day, it is set down
that "Haveing undertaken for ye glorie of god and
advancements of ye Christian faith and honour of
our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie
in ye northerne parts of Virginia," the company are
about to frame certain laws and ordinances which he
goes on to enumerate. The invaluable manuscript
is carefully put into a fireproof safe at the close of
every day. It is remarkable for the number of words
on each page, for the average seems to be about four
hundred. If any visitor wishes to read more than
the single page which is shown him under glass, he is
freely offered, for perusal, a large photographic copy
in which he may, if he so desires, read every page as
if in the very handwriting of the old governor.

In the new portion of the building are seemingly
endless corridored vistas, with a permeative impres-
sion of new mahogany desks and a great deal of
bronze and tawny marble. There are also the present-
day meeting halls of Senators and Eepresentatives.

In the new Hall of the Eepresentatives, in this new
part of the building, hangs a wooden codfish "as a
memorial of the importance of the Cod Fishery to the
welfare of this Commonwealth," as the phrasing was
of the resolution which ordered, in 1784, that a cod-
fish be suspended "in the room where the House
sat." That was in the old State House, still stand-
ing down town, and it would also seem that the custom
was older than that particular fish. It is almost cer-
tain, too, that this very codfish of wood, now hanging

70

A HOUSE SET ON A HILL

in the new room of the Bepresentatives — their sec-
ond room in the new State House — is the very one
which was suspended in the room in the old State
House in pursuance of the resolution of 1784, for in
1895, over a century afterward, it was ordered that
the "removal of the ancient representation of a cod-
fish" from the old hall to the new be carried out.
"Whereupon, a committee of fifteen proceeded to the
old room of the Bepresentatives, and, wrapping the
symbolic wooden cod in an American flag, proudly
bore it in state to the new room, which would seem
to be the third room for this sacred codfish, as it is
commonly called.

But except for the codfish and the Bradford man-
uscript, and the battle flags, it is the older part of the
State House that is of interest to the visitor. And
there is more than the old meeting halls of the Sen-
ate and House of Bepresentatives. There is still the
Governor's room, an apartment of unusual dignity,
with its white pilasters and cornices and windows and
fireplace, all curiously and perfectly balanced. I
know of no other such room, precisely like this in
proportions, for it is an exact cube in its dimensions
of length, breadth and height. And it is a success,
in that it looks like a room made for the use of one
man rather than for the purposes of a board meeting
or an assembly. Also, it is the kind of room which
would be not only filled, but would have the appear-
ance of being really furnished, with people standing,
as at a governor's reception. Old-time architects
had a way of thinking of such things as the purpose

71

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

and the use, not only of houses but of particular
rooms, and this is one great reason why so much of
the work they did is called by us moderns felicitous.

Eemembering that Bulfinch excelled in stair design,
it is interesting to notice the wonderful little stair-
cases in the old part of the building ; staircases that
are lessons in good taste, as is also the grand stair-
case itself, with its heavy four-sided balusters and
its very effective mahogany rail.

The entire building, as originally designed by Bul-
finch and built under his direction, had a frontage of
172 feet and a height of 155 feet, but, splendid old
building that it was, it cost only $135,000. The land
upon which it was built was two acres or so of what
was "commonly called the Governor's pasture," be-
cause it was land that was owned by the widow of
Governor John Hancock, recently deceased, and al-
though the State appropriated $40,000 for the land
it had to pay in reality only $20,000. How times have
changed !

CHAPTEE VII

A PICTUEESQUB BOSTONIAU"

|HE most prominent Bostonian
of Bevolutionary days, the Bos-
>■ | ton man who loomed the largest

v mM''^f^i-M an< * s ^ looms most important,

was the splendidly dressed John
Hancock, and his home, up near
the summit of Beacon Hill, was
a radiant center of wealth and
society. But that home, so typical of the finest and
choicest old-time life and architecture, has gone:
some half century ago, in spite of the entreative pro-
tests of all lovers of the stately and beautiful, it was
torn down for the sake of replacing it with a huge
house that is hopelessly humdrum. Even the fine old
furniture, so representative of the best old-time life,
and which had the additional value of being so asso-
ciated with the man of mighty signature and Dorothy
Q., was lost or scattered. Out in "Worcester I saw a
superb double-chair of Chippendale design, that had
stood in the Hancock home ; in Pilgrim Hall in Ply-
mouth is a noble settee that was of the Hancock fur-
nishings; in Marblehead, in the Jeremiah Lee man-
sion, I saw six mahogany chairs, Heppelwhites, beau-

73

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

tiful in design and workmanship, which, so tradition
tells, were purchased at a Hancock auction, and car-
ried up to Marblehead on a sloop, after John Han-
cock's death. The portraits, by Copley, of Hancock
and his wife, are fittingly in the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts.

Hancock was such a big figure in his time, and
filled such a space in the public eye, that here on
Beacon Hill, where his house stood, near the State
House that has since been built upon his cow pasture,
his presence still seems to be felt. Yet not only was
his fine home destroyed and his fine furniture scat-
tered, but before these things happened his widow
had changed the name of Hancock for that of one of
his own ship captains, and forever left the house
where, with the gorgeous John, she had welcomed so
great a number of personal guests and guests of the
State or the Nation. When Lafayette visited Boston
in 1824, he was escorted, by a great procession,
through the streets, and passing along Tremont
Street, beside the Common, thoughts came to him of
the noble hospitality that had long ago been extended
to him in the Hancock mansion, which was then still
standing, on the other side of the great open space
beside him. Full of such thoughts he lifted his eyes
to a window — and there sat Mrs. James Scott, once
Mrs. Hancock! Many years had passed; but he
recognized her, he stopped the carriage, he rose in
his place and, hand on heart, bowed low ; and as the
carriage resumed its way she sank back, overpowered
by the rush of memories. And such things make the

74

A PICTURESQUE BOSTONIAN

past seem but yesterday, for the past still lives when
one can feel its very life and watch its pulsing heart-
throbs.

But Boston never really liked Hancock. That, as
a rich merchant, he was placed in great public posi-
tions of a kind usually given to lawyers, roused the
jealousy of lawyers, and every effort was made to
ignore or belittle him. And he was an aristocrat;
and revolutions always dislike aristocrats. He was
the one conspicuous aristocrat of Boston who sided
against the King, the others refugeeing to Halifax,
and when the war was over, and families came in
from Salem and Quincy (Braintree) and other places
to become the leading families of Boston and make
themselves Boston ancestors, Hancock was the only
prominent representative of the ancien regime. He
was himself born in what is now Quincy, but had come
into Boston long before the Bevolution to be asso-
ciated with his wealthy uncle there. His position,
his wealth, his fine mansion that stood so proudly on
the hilltop, his lavish hospitality, with gayety and
wines and dinners and music and dancing, made for
jealousy among those who were invited, and for heart-
burnings and backbiting among those who were not
invited at all or not so often as they thought they
ought to be. On the whole, he could not but make
enemies, and the Boston of even to-day is still moved
by their enmities.

It was not until 1915 that this, his own city, would
even put up a memorial to him — yet this belated me-
morial, which is set just within the entrance of the

75

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

State House, shows by a brief enumeration how great
a man he was, for, beginning with the admirable
phrasing, "John Hancock, a Patriot of the Bevolu-
tion," it goes on to enumerate, with dignified brevity,
that he was President of the Provincial Congress of
1774, that he was President of the Continental Con-
gress of 1775-1777, that he was the first signer of the
Declaration of Independence, that he was the first
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
and was again, afterwards, made governor, and that
he was president of the Convention that adopted the
Federal Constitution. An amazing list! A man
who could occupy positions so dignified, so respon-
sible, so honorable, not only among his own people
but as a chosen leader of strong men gathered from
all parts of America, must have possessed remarkable
qualities of leadership.

More than anything else, Hancock's clothes and his
ideas of personal consequence made him enemies!
He bought costly material. He wore his clothes with
an air. He was a Beau Brummel of public life; he
was more than that, for he also lived in state and with
stateliness. All this was more noticeable in New
England than it would have been farther south, and
his colleagues either hated or disparaged him for it.

In the old State House, now maintained as a mu-
seum, not this new State House, there are preserved
some of his clothes, and I noticed in particular a
superb coat of crimson velvet and a splendid gold-
embroidered waistcoat of blue silk: there are, too,
some dainty slippers of white satin ar-d blue kid,

76

A PICTUKESQUE BOSTONIAN

with roses of silk brocade, that his wife had worn.
These things were, from their somewhat sober color-
ing, belongings of advancing years, but I remember
a description of Hancock as a leader of fashion when
a young man, and even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed more splendidly, for there was a coat of
scarlet, lined with silk and embroidered with gold,
and there was a waistcoat embroidered on white
satin, and there were white satin smallclothes and
white silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes and
three-cornered gold-laced hat! He was often called
"King Hancock" from the ostentation of his appear-
ance and equipage, and a contemporary description
declared that he appeared in public with "all the
pageantry and state of an oriental prince," attended
by servants in superb livery and escorted by half a
hundred horsemen. And another account tells of his
loving to drive in a great coach drawn by six blooded
bays. Hancock's gorgeous clothes and gorgeous os-
tentation were too much for Boston, and many years
after his death even the genial Holmes took a hu-
morous fling at him :

"The Governor came, with his light-horse troop,
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop;
Halberds glittered and colors flew,
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew,
The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth
And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath. ' '

From all that one reads of Hancock's manner and
appearance, and from the size of the signature that
he so conspicuously and bravely set down, first of the

77

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Signers of the Declaration of Independence as he was,
one would gather the impression of a big consequen-
tial man, overbearing and pompous ; but fortunately
there is Copley's portrait to be seen, and Copley did
not thus picture him.

Mrs. Hancock, "Dorothy Q.," Copley pictures as
a slender lady in a pink silk gown with tight sleeves,
and a tambour muslin apron, and a tiny black velvet
band around the neck, and if her forehead is a trifle
too high and bare and her lips a little too suggestive
of selfishness, why, on the whole it is an attractive
face ; and John Hancock himself is shown as a slight
and slender man, without pomposity of expression or
bearing: just a quiet, agreeable-looking man, hand-
some and intelligent, dressed without ostentation and
with extreme neatness, in a plain gold-braided coat,
with simple white ruffles at the wrists, and white silk
stockings, sitting at a desk, pen in hand, turning the
pages of a ledger. There is no better way of coming
to a judgment regarding the character of the old-time
leaders than by studying their portraits, when they
were painted by such masters as Copley, Trumbull
and Stuart, and such paintings give at the same time
a feeling of intimate personal acquaintance with the
men portrayed.

Hancock must have been a most unusual man, to
win leadership as he did in the face of depreciation
and criticism. His great conspicuous signature alone
would mark him as unusual; and when he signed, it
was with full knowledge that he was taking greater
risks than most of the other signers, not only because

78

A PICTURESQUE BOSTONIAN

of his prominence as the first of the list but because
he knew from personal observation the strength of
England, having been one of the few who in those
early days had crossed the Atlantic. It is curious to
know that Hancock, the First Signer, was present at
the coronation of George the Third ! At the time of
the Declaration, he had been proscribed for more than
a year, on account of Revolutionary activities, and
when he set down his bold signature he exclaimed:
"There, John Bull can read that without spectacles!
Now let him double his reward!"

That he risked so great a stake as he did, that he
risked great wealth and high social position as well
as life — few in the North or the South risked so much
— ought to have gone far toward endearing him to his
contemporaries ; and, indeed, it was all this, combined
with qualities of leadership, that gave him such suc-
cessive posts of importance. But doubtless there
was something in his personality to arouse dislike,
more than can now be seen. That he was, in present-
day phrase, his own press-agent, quite capable of
writing ahead to announce the time of his intended
arrival at some place, and deprecating the idea of
popular enthusiasm being shown by taking the horses
out of his carriage — his own idea, thus put into the
heads of others! — gives some intimation of how he
won disfavor.

The tablet set into the fence in front of the house
that has replaced his, seems in itself to bring his fig-
ure to mind, with all his picturesqueness of dressing
and dining and living and driving and posing; for

79

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

he was certainly much of a poseur. But he was ro-
mantic, too. He married Dorothy Quincy early in
the war, at Fairfield, Connecticut, while he was still
a proscrihed man, unable to return to Massachusetts
under forfeiture of his life; and, the house being
afterwards wantonly burned in one of the barbarous
burning coast-wise raids of the British, he sent down
material for a new house from Boston, when the
war was over, for its rebuilding, with the understand-
ing that it should be rebuilt as a copy of his own house
in Boston. It is worth while adding to this romance
in house-building, that the Fairfield house, rebuilt so
largely at Hancock's expense in memory of the happy
event there, was completely altered in appearance,
by a new owner who did not care for beauty, about the
same time that Hancock's house on Beacon Hill was
torn down by an owner similarly iconoclastic. But
the story of the romantic marriage at Thaddeus
Burr's house in Fairfield is still remembered in the
old Connecticut village, and the little Fairfield girls
are still named Dorothy in a sort of romantic memory.
One thing is hard to forgive him, and that is his
flight from Lexington, though that is something that
Boston itself seems not to question. He had left
Boston with Samuel Adams, as the first clash of the
Eevolution approached, they two being specifically
cut off from mercy by the English Governor's procla-
mation which was at the same time offering mercy
to any others who should seek it. The two men had
taken shelter at Lexington; they had been wakened by
Paul Bevere at two o'clock in the morning of the great

80

A PICTUKESQUE BOSTONIAN

19th of April; they thought that the British would
like to capture them even more than to destroy the
military supplies in Concord; and they deemed dis-
cretion better than valor, and fled. It is true that they
were proscribed, and it is possible that they did not
expect actual deadly shooting to take place that morn-
ing, but they also knew that British soldiers were out
from Boston on grim duty and that the minute-men
were gathering. As they fled they heard the bells of
village after village solemnly sounding across the
dark countryside. But they did not turn back and
stand with the farmers whom their own leadership
had taken into rebellion. What an opportunity they
had! "What an opportunity they missed! How gal-
lantly they would forever have figured in history had
they even, after running away from Lexington, joined
the minute-men at Concord or on the glorious running
fight to Boston ! It was an opportunity such as comes
to few — and instead of accepting it Hancock was
sending word to his fiancee, Dorothy Quincy, who was
at the home in Lexington where he had found shelter,
telling her to what house he was fleeing and asking
her to follow and to take the salmon ! — a particularly
fine specimen that he had hoped to eat at breakfast.
And Dorothy Quincy followed and actually took it,
and it was cooked — and then came poetic justice, in
the shape of a man wild with the this-time-mistaken
news that the British again were near, whereupon
Hancock and Adams once more fled, salmonless, and
when breakfast was at length eaten there was only
cold pork. No wonder, years afterward, Mrs. Han-

81

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

cock wrote, "The Governor's hobby is his dinner-
table, and I suppose it is mine."

Neither Hancock nor Samuel Adams had the two
o'clock in the morning courage that makes a man
brave when confronted with swift physical emer-
gency: but they both possessed in a high degree the
courage that makes well-dressed men, when combined
with other well-dressed men, risk resolutely their
lives and property and honor. But the lack of phys-
ical courage did not prevent either Hancock or Sam-
uel Adams from being given lofty positions of trust
and from being, in turn, governors of Massachusetts.

In general, the site of a vanished building is not
particularly interesting, but the simple tablet on the
iron fence, showing where stood the picturesque house
of the picturesque Hancock, and the belated memorial
in the State House, which was built upon his own
grounds — he had intended presenting the land to the
State for the purpose, and the memorandum for the
deed of gift was under his pillow when he died — sum-
mon up, as of the moment, the remembrance of this
man of the past. The land, the hill — the Bostonian
disparagement! — all are still here, and here is the
very Common across which he loved to look and along
the side of which, in front of his mansion, he loved to
pace, with stately dignity and in stately clothes !

But it was against the sternness of Puritan law for
any one to stroll, no matter how sedately, on the Com-
mon on Sundays, and the story is told that even Han-
cock, at the height of his power, when taking the air
one pleasant Sunday afternoon in front of his house

82

A PICTUEESQUE BOSTONIAN

on the Common, which he doubtless looked upon al-
most as his own front yard, was incontinently
pounced upon by a constable and, in spite of his
choleric protestations, triumphantly led away! The
story may be apocryphal, but it bears all the marks
of truth, in the desire to humble Hancock, and at the
same time to stand for the sanctity of the Sabbath.

CHAPTEE VIII

a woman's city

|HE Sunday observance law
which John Hancock found,
to his annoyance, could be in-
voked even against a man of
power, provided that "all
persons profaning the Lord's
Day by walking, standing in
the streets, or any other way
breaking the laws made for
the due observance of the
Lord's Day, may expect the
execution of the law upon them for all disorders of
this kind"; and the city still gives a general impres-
sion of respect for the Sabbath. As long ago as 1711
Increase Mather told the Bostonians that a great fire
of that year had come as a punishment for not observ-
ing the Sabbath with sufficient strictness, and his
admonition was promptly heeded and, so it would seem
from appearances, has been heeded ever since — al-
though, one regrets to observe, without noticeable re-
sults in the way of fire prevention.

The city does not, however, give the impression of
being particularly religious. It religiously cele-

84

A WOMAN'S CITY

brates Sunday with fish-cakes and brown bread, but
it is without the general tramp-tramp-tramp of
church-going feet that is heard on the Sabbath day
in that city with which it is most often compared,
Edinburgh. There is considerable church-going: it
should not be forgotten that Boston has long been the
center of Unitarianism and that it has become the
stronghold of Christian Science; but the general im-
pression of the city and its streets on Sunday is of a
sleepy quietude with comparatively few people stir-
ring about. But not all Boston is at church or at
home, for in pleasant weather the principal roads
leading back into the city are, at night, aflame with
motor lights. It used to be that the Sabbath began on
Saturday at sunset, and "upon no pretense whatso-
ever was any man on horseback or with a wagon to
pass into or out of the town" till the time of Sabbath
observance was over. Well, at least the horses had
a day of rest. But on the entire subject of Puritan-
ism, with its varied inhibitions, one cannot but think
of that illustrative antithesis of Macaulay, perhaps
quite unfair but at least quite unforgetable, that the
Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain
to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spec-
tators.

The difficulty of even now getting food on Sunday
in Boston is really amusing : of course, the hotels are
open, but many restaurants, even such as cater to
three-meals-a-day custom, close tight during all of
Sunday! — and this, not merely in the business sec-
tion, where closing would be justified, but in localities

85

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

where hosts of people, students of the myriad educa-
tional institutions, and temporary dwellers, without
home ties or home facilities, are wholly dependent
upon these local restaurants. Bestaurant-closing is
a survival of Sunday observance; Boston, except as
to its own individual appetite, would fain remember
the Sabbath day to keep it hungry.

Bestaurants, by the way, average better and
cheaper in Boston than in other great American cities.
In no respect, indeed, is the city more admirable than
in being a place where people of limited means but
excellent tastes and desires may live economically
and at the same time with self-respect : and this comes
largely from the influence of the innumerable army
of students, and visitors of the student class, and un-
married and self-supporting women. The general at-
mosphere of Boston is one of a pleasant economy
which need not at all be associated with poverty.

The shopping districts have a number of attractive
little restaurants and tea-rooms, managed by women
or by philanthropic societies of women, where a type
of food is offered which may, perhaps, be described as
hygienic health food. There are also "laboratories"
and "kitchens" and "food-shops"; not names that
would attract one, I think, except in New England.
Apparently, the next generation of New Englanders
are not to be "sons of pie and daughters of dough-
nut."

Also, one notices that there are very few restau-
rants open after the generally announced closing
hour of eight, and one is inclined to say that the

86

A WOMAN'S CITY

fingers of one hand, and perhaps even the thumbs
alone, would number the places where after-theater
suppers are openly offered. One restaurant freely
advertises, without arousing comment or protest, that
it is the "one bright spot in Boston" after theater
closing. There are two or three hotels that cater to
late comers, but there is little to attract those who
would drop naturally into a cheerful restaurant but
who balk at going formally to a hotel. As soon as
the theater is over, the audiences scurry into the sub-
way. Those who do not go to the theater are sup-
posed to be in bed by ten o'clock or so. It gets late
very early in Boston.

A curious effect of Sabbath observance that lasted
until far into the 1800 's was the omission by the thea-
ters of Saturday night performances. The first
breaking from the old ideals came in 1843, when the
Tremont Theater of that time reluctantly gave a Sat-
urday night performance to please the many visitors
who had come to the city for the Webster oration at
the dedication of Bunker Hill Monument. (It was
in this theater, three years earlier, that Margaret Ful-
ler and Ealph Waldo Emerson together watched the
dancing of Fanny Ellsler, when, so the tale runs, Mar-
garet whispered ecstatically, "Kalph, this is poetry!"
to which came the philosopher's fervent response,
"Margaret, it is religion!")

It is curious, with Boston's theaters, to find that
several of the best-constructed or most popular — the
terms are not necessarily synonymous — are on streets
that amaze the visitor with the impression of being

87

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

shabby or narrow or hard to find, such as Eliot Street
or Hollis Street, or Tremont Street in a section
where it suddenly loses its excellent appearance ; nat-
urally, this sort of thing does not strike a Bostonian,
because he is used to it : it is like a man knowing his
way familiarly about in his own backyard, although
it would merely mean unattractive exploration for a
stranger. The theater which, more than any other,
appeals to the "best families" and for which it is the
tradition, though by no means the general practice,
to "dress," is on a narrow, back, out-of-the-way
street.

The venerable Boston Theater — soon, so it is under-
stood, to be torn down, after a long, long existence —
has its main entrance on Washington Street; but a
secondary and highly interesting entrance, from the
best part of Tremont Street, is through a long tun-
nel-like foot-passage, and then an actual underground
passage beneath a building; and another theater,
close by, has an entrance even more interesting, this
being a hundred yards or so of subterranean passage,
lined with mirrors, not only under buildings but
underneath a narrow street; although one is so apt
to associate underground passages, at least in an
old city, with sieges or escapes or romance.

The old Boston Theater was opened in 1852, and
the first words delivered from the stage were those
of a poem written for the occasion, that had won a
prize of one hundred dollars ; one of the actors read-
ing the poem, and the author of the lines being Par-
sons, Longfellow's Poet of the Wayside Inn. Even

88

A WOMAN'S CITY

as late as that, the Saturday night closing tradition
was still so generally adhered to that for quite a while
no Saturday night performances were given in this
theater; there were just five evening performances
a week.

This city was particularly associated with the life
of Edwin Booth. His very first appearance on any
stage was at the old Boston Museum (now destroyed),
in 1849, when he played Tressel to the Richard the
Third of his father, Junius Brutus Booth. In the
good old days, although there was no rivalry with the
busy "movies," the theaters had a way of giving
satisfyingly crowded evenings, and that particular
performance of "Richard the Third" was accom-
panied by a farce of the decidedly un-Shakespearean
name of "Slasher and Crasher." Another evening
of two performances, "The Iron Chest" and "Don
Cassar de Bazan," this time in 1865 and at the Boston
Theater, was to Booth tragically notable, for it was
on that evening that his brother shot President
Lincoln.

Those who, in the course of the many years of its
1 existence, have come to know the Boston Theater,
with its circling Auditorium and big steep galleries,
and to love it on account of its boasted acoustic qual-
ities, would have been incredibly amazed had they
been told long ago, that the time was to come, in its
theatrical career, when acoustics would not count : yet
that time has really come, for it has been turned over
to the "movies," pending destruction.

Among the many memories associated with the

89

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

theater is that of the great ball given here in honor
of the Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward the
Seventh, in 1860, when the wealth and fashion of Bos-
ton came here to do him honor. I have somewhere
seen it noted that some fifteen hundred tickets were
subscribed for, for that literally princely ball at the
Boston Theater; one thousand for couples and the
other five hundred for additional ladies accompanying
them, thus making two women for each man, which
would seem to point out that even long ago Boston was
a woman's city.

At any rate, Boston is a woman's city now ; not that
women are collectively of more importance than men,
but that they are of much more than usual impor-
tance : there is no other city in which women are rela-
tively of such consequence. Yet it is not distinctively
a suffragist city, and, surprisingly for a woman's
stronghold, the women anti-suffragists are very active.

More than in any other city, women go unescorted
and without question to theaters and restaurants.
So many women are independent, so many women
are employed in stores and in offices, that, more than
in other cities, respectable women alone on the streets
at night are a common sight, and they attract neither
comment nor attention. They have what Barrie calls
the "twelve-pound look." They are well-set-up, well
clad, carefully shod, precise, good-looking: they go
quietly about their business in a way that makes other
people go about theirs. And it has worked out with
perfect naturalness, through the safeguarding of re-
spectable women, that the city government and the

90

A WOMAN'S CITY

police see to it that those of another class are very
slightly in general evidence. This does not at all
mean that Boston is any hetter than other cities, but
that a different situation as regards women in general
makes for a different treatment of the entire subject
of women. I know of a lonely woman, not beyond
middle age, and what Bostonians call well-born, who,
all of her relatives being dead, and she being deaf and
very sensitive, spends almost every evening in the
summertime sitting, until eleven o'clock or so, on a
bench in the Charles Biver Parkway, looking out over
the water ; and I do not know of any other large city
where a woman, not old, could sit on a bench in a
public park, without attracting the slightest attention
whatever.

The fact that so many women are so eminently cap-
able of taking care of themselves brings about the
natural consequence that they are freely permitted to
take care of themselves ; for example, in other cities
one of the rarest sights is to see a woman carrying a
heavy traveling-bag, but here in Boston it is a sight
so common as to attract no notice whatever. In the
daytime or at night-time you will frequently see
a well-dressed woman, an independent feme sole,
walking briskly along, heavy bag in hand; and I do
not mean carrying the pleasant little Boston shop-
ping bags but literal valises, and I have not infre-
quently seen a woman carrying not only one big valise
but one in each hand.

On the average, too, this being a woman's city has
had a not unnatural result upon woman's dressing,

91

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

it being, on the average, not quite so merely attractive
or charming as it is in most cities. There is a great
deal of highly excellent dressing on the part of the
women, but it is excellent and good in the sense in
which a man's dressing would be deemed good: it is
not quite so much a matter of following the fashion
as of wearing good clothes of good material ; and, as
with the men, the women are likely to keep their excel-
lent clothes until they begin to show wear, instead of
being quite so subject as are the women of other
cities to what would be termed the whims of fashion.
Boston has an extraordinary number of well-tailored
women, but perhaps it may be said that it is mostly
a matter of excellent grooming. There is a smaller
proportion of women in Boston than in other cities
who dress merely to flutter along a fashionable prom-
enade to please the eyes of observers.

I noticed at the street door of a fashionable shop
where they sell nothing more intimate than hats and
millinery, a sign such as I never saw in any other city,
for it bluntly reads, "No admission for men" ! And
it is not ah emergency sign, for a crowded season, but
is permanently lettered on brass. Imagine such a
sign on a hat shop on Bond Street or the Rue de la
Paix, or in Berlin, let us say, where the Emperor
William loves to go out and buy his wife's hats and
surprise her with them, and then expects her to sim-
ulate joy!

A marked result of the unusual consequence of
women here is the unusual importance, both relatively
and in themselves, of women's clubs; and the women

92

A SPIRAL STAIRWAY BY BULFINCH, ON BEACON HILL

A WOMAN'S CITY

show that they can excellently equip and excellently
manage their clubs. One, the Women's City Club,
has had the excellent taste to acquire for its club-house
a building that is one of the finest examples of Ameri-
can town-house architecture; it is a house built by
Bulfinch,'and is one of a pair of balanced mansions,
each with the distinguished bow-front of Boston and
each with a beautifully pillared and fan-lighted door-
way. This club-house is at 40 Beacon Street, and
looks down on the pool and the elms of the Common,
and it is worth becoming familiar with not only to see
how excellently the women chose a headquarters but
also to see what was the kind of house that Bulfinch
won his fame in building.

The front hall is broad, with a small reception room
at one side, and from it there starts upward, with a
charming curl to the top of its newel-post, a most
graceful, aerial, spiral stair which mounts up and up,
a thing of ease and lightness and grace, toward the
great round cupola or lantern that throws down its
light from the roof for the entire stair. The rail is
mahogany, the balusters are white, and the steps are
white, with a crimson carpet.

What was originally the dining-room is the large
room at the front on the main floor, and it swells finely
into the swell of the great window-bow. The rear wall
of this room curves backward in exact balance with the
curve of the front, and its two mahogany doors are
set into the curve, thus producing the effect of an
oval room even though the side-walls are straight.
A fireplace, in staid setting of white and green marble,

93

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

faces the door. The windows are large and mahogany-
sashed, with dark heavy curtains hanging straight
down from up above the window-tops and caught aside
with rosetted holders of brass ; these club women aim-
ing constantly to keep up, in adjuncts, with the excel-
lent effect that Bulfinch with his architecture began.
The doors, six-paneled and broad, are of mahogany,
and those that are in the curve at the back of the room
are themselves curved to fit it, such being the design-
er's completeness of detail. The door in the hall
opens in two flaps and is broad enough to permit the
guests to walk in to dinner two by two, in the old-fash-
ioned formal way.

Behind the dining-room is the great old kitchen,
with its open fire-place, its ovens, and its queerly
built-in iron-domed concavities. Ascending the main
stair, whose tread and rise are a delight, we enter an
ante-room with a lovely, mellow marble mantel, and
from this room pass through an opening with fluted
pillars into what was the great drawing-room, this
being an oval room, rich in fine Greek detail, with
exquisite mantel, exquisitely molded cornice and ex-
quisitely designed oval ceiling; a room by an Ameri-
can architect of which an American may be proud !

The house was built to be heated by wood fires, and
a niche in the hall marks where an iron urn originally
stood, which received its heat from a fire in the cellar
for the heating of the hall, such being the method in
use before the days of modern furnaces and furnace
pipes; and it is interesting to remember that almost
all of the houses we now see on Beacon Hill were

94

A WOMAN'S CITY

built back in the days of wood fires, when the wood was
sawed on the sidewalk and stored in the cellars, or
in woodhouses in the yards; and that not only were
there primitive methods of heating, and also of light-
ing, but that there was even no public water supply
until less than three quarters of a century ago, and
that almost all of these old houses still have wells in
their cellars, even though the wells may in the course
of time have been filled up.

In a sense Bulfinch, the architect of the house of the
Women's Club, made Boston. He gave the city a
high standard of architectual distinction. He gave
it architectual individuality. He gave it the type of
dwelling of which this club-house is such an admirable
example. And not only did he admirably design
dwellings and set a high standard which other archi-
tects were glad to follow, but he also gave to America
its general type of State House. As the honored
architect of the State House of Massachusetts he was
called to Washington to take charge of the Capitol
there, and his ideas as to public buildings have been
followed throughout America. Any city would have
the right to be proud of this great man, and so it is
particularly pleasant to remember that not only was
he an American but that he was so much so that as a
small boy he watched the battle of Bunker Hill from
the roof of his father's house.

It is interesting that when, toward the close of his
life, Bulfinch was asked if he would train any of his
children in his own profession, he naively replied that
he did not think there would really be enough left for

95

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

any architect to do ! The different cities, he went on,
and the principal States, were already supplied with
their principal buildings, and he hardly thought there
could be enough building to do in the future for a
young man to make his living as an architect.

Perhaps it was from remembering that Boston is
a woman's city that I thought of its being the home
of Alice Brown, and there came the further thought
that not only are the homes of writers of the past
worth noticing, but also the homes of writers of the
present day, especially when, as in the case of Miss
Brown, the present day writer is one whose work is
of grace and distinction. Naturally, I did not much
expect to find the name of Alice Brown in the tele-
phone directory; there would be "John Brown" and
"James Brown" and other Browns, but not likely
the one as to whose home I had become interested.
Still, the telephone book was handy, and I might as
well look. — And I realized as never before that Bos-
ton is a woman's city, for, each with her separate
telephone number, there were nine Alice Browns look-
ing up at me, so to speak, from the page! Nine
Alices with name so Brown, as the old song almost
has it ! Fascinated, my eyes wandered up and down
the columns, and I noted telephones for women
Browns innumerable: three Annas, three Berthas,
four Lauras, no fewer than twelve Marys, and an
ever-lengthening list leading to Katharine and Sarah
and Alice and Inez and Corah and Daisy and Lillia
and Lilliah, up to one hundred and nineteen in all,
and many a Browne more with an "e" to follow!

96

A WOMAN'S CITY

And as other names of the directory would be like
Brown, I thought of how thin a telephone book would
be Boston's if all the women's names were taken out!
And even with the nine Alice Browns, the name of
Alice Brown the writer is not to be found. But her
house is on Beacon Hill, at 11 Pinckney Street; a
brick house, prim, pleasant and precise, with iron-
railed steps leading up to a curve-topped entrance-
way.

That Boston is a woman's city came to me, just a
few days ago, in still another way, for a Bostonian
friend handed me a letter, just received, and said that
I really ought to use it because it was so typical of old
Boston and she knew that the sender would not be
displeased if she should ever know it had been pub-
lished. The writer of the letter is one of two elderly
maiden sisters, who always dress in heavy black silk,
and whose hair is still done in the prim, old-fashioned
way of Civil War times, and who still live in the old
house, in its still aristocratic neighborhood, in which
they were born.

"I walked home," thus part of the typical letter
runs, "doing several errands on the way, and most
of the evening I was reading to my sister, and this
morning I awoke early, lighted my candle and read
until I had to get ready for breakfast!" She read
by candlelight! What a picture in these modern
days! "Then settled down comfortably to tackle
a tableful of monthly bills waiting for the checks to
pay them, stopping long enough to look over a list of
kitchen furnishings that the cook had ordered and to

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

write a Christmas poem which my sister had been
composing, from her dictation!" What charming
old-fashioned sisterly sympathy — and a Christmas
poem! "Now it is one o'clock, and I haven't begun
my bills, and there are the dinner chimes. We dine
at one" (old-fashioned again!), "myself, my sister's
attendant and her secretary, and sometimes" — what
a touch! — "our stately black cat."

CHAPTEE IX

THE DISTINCTIVE PARK STEEET CORNER

I HE unusual prominence of
monuments to ministers in
Boston might, at first thought,
be ascribed by some to the fact
of this being a woman's city;
but of course, as any Boston-
ian would at once tell you, it
is really because of the unusual
prominence of ministers in the
development and life of the city. There is the me-
morial to Phillips Brooks beside his church, at a busy
edge of Copley Square, he being set within a canopied
marble niche, garbed in his bishop's robes, with an
angelic figure behind him: and not far away, at the
nearest corner of the Public Garden, there is niched,
like a cinque-cento saint, the long-gowned figure of
William Ellery Channing. Entirely unlike both of
these, in its exceedingly unsaintlike appearance, is
the monument to another minister, Edward Everett
Hale, at a Charles Street entrance to the Public Gar-
den, for he stands in wait in the shrubs, just inside
the gate, in every-day clothes and long loose overcoat,
stooping, as if pausing for a moment in his walk, with

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his old-fashioned beaver hat in one hand and his cane
in the other ; a man honorably known to all Americans
for his "Man without a Country."

To commemorate not only the clerical profession
but the medical, there is within the Public Garden a
monument that gave Holmes the inspiration for a
brilliant bit of wit. The monument was designed to
commemorate the discovery of Ether, the mastering
of the whole problem of consciousness of pain in surg-
ery, but while it was under construction a fierce and
never-to-be-settled controversy arose as to which of
two claimant physicians was really the discoverer, and
so the monument was completed with the name of the
man omitted, which led Holmes promptly to suggest,
with that obviousness which marks all great wit, that
it was not so much a monument to Ether as to Either.

There is an exceedingly prominent monument, the
big equestrian of General Hooker, set up in front of
the State House, which is also interesting on account
of what is left off, for there is nothing but the single
word "Hooker"; as if, one may fairly suppose, when
p they came to the matter of inscription, it was remem-
bered that the only battle of consequence in which
General Hooker commanded was the terrible defeat
of Chancellorsville. It is sometimes delightfully wise
to have brief inscriptions on statues. After all, New
England was not fortunate in developing great mili-
tary leaders in the Civil War, in spite of her promi-
nence in the events and discussions preceding the
struggle and in spite of the vast number of her men
who gallantly went to the front; she developed no

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THE DISTINCTIVE PARK STEEET CORNER

Grant or Thomas or Sherman; and already she has
practically hidden, off on one side of the State House,
statues of the never-prominent General Banks and
General Devens. But monumenting in haste and re-
penting at leisure is something far older than Amer-
ica. And it is a favorite Boston belief, long held and
often expressed, that if she should set up statues to
all her distinguished sons there would be no room left
in which people could move about.

Diagonally across from the Hooker monument, just
away from the corner of Park and Beacon Streets,
close to the altered Ticknor homestead, is a little
house, tucked in among towering business buildings
and faced by a great hotel: and this house, still a
home, is filled with paintings collected years ago in Eu-
rope. It stood before the Revolution (its front has
been changed), and about 1830 was the home of
Chester Harding, the New England-born, backwoods
artist who, after making his success in Paris — but it
was a Paris in Kentucky — painted the great ones of
America and of England, including judges and sena-
tors and some half dozen of the dukes, and then came
back to Boston. For some time while in Boston he
so eclipsed Gilbert Stuart that that great painter was
wont to ask, looking at his own empty studio and
knowing that Harding's was thronged, "How rages
the Harding fever?"

Close by is the Athenaeum, most charming and de-
lightful of libraries, full of serenity and repose and
rich in its great collection of books. Not only does it
possess the workable and readable books of recent

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years, but precious prints and books and manuscripts
of the past, and such treasure as the greater part of
the library of George Washington, each book, with
his signature and bookplate, deposited here after
its purchase in 1849 by ' ' seventy gentlemen of Boston,
Cambridge and Salem," who contributed fifty dollars
each to obtain it. To the Bostonian of tradition, the
Athenaeum still proudly represents the essence of the
city ; the building is admirably impressive outwardly,
it is attractive and full of atmosphere within, and it
is rich in the very spirit of the best of Boston. Its
main entrance has a replica of Houdon's life-size
statue of Washington, a replica, modeled by Houdon
himself, of the original, which was made for the State
of Virginia and is preserved at Richmond; Houdon
having come to America to make a statue of Washing-
ton, at the request of Franklin, who knew him in Paris.

The main reading-room, occupying the great upper
floor, is of unusual architectural beauty, with its
vaulted roof, its pillars and alcoves, its general fine-
ness and comfort. The library is peculiarly fitted to
the needs of the scholar, and membership in it, to be
a "proprietor," as is the term, is highly esteemed.

The great rear windows of the Athenaeum look down
into the ancient deep-shaded Granary Burying-
Ground, and off at one side, also looking down into the
burying-ground, are the windows of that monthly, the
Atlantic, which is itself another of the treasured be-
longings of Boston: and especially is the bowed win-
dow noticeable when one learns that it is the window
of the oval room in which James Russell Lowell

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THE DISTINCTIVE PAEK STEEET CORNER

reigned as editor and where lie still looks down
benignantly from the wall, like a patron saint: and
although one may do full honor to his memory and to
his fine influence, the profuse and double-pointed
whiskers do rouse the recollection of the little girl who
asked: "But what are the points for?"

There are few more impressive burying-grounds
in the world than the Granary, fronting out on busy
Tremont Street and hemmed in on its other sides by
towering business structures, by the phalanxed win-
dows of the quiet Athenaeum, by the publishing build-
ings, and by the old Park Street Church. The Gran-
ary has impressiveness, it even has beauty, and it has
an aloofness that comes from its being some three
feet or so above the level of the thronging sidewalk
that it adjoins.

Anciently a granary actually stood here, but the
place long since came to be a crowded human granary
instead ; and what a roll of fascinating old-time names
might be called here ! Hancock, Sewall, Bellingham,
Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Franklin (the parents of
Benjamin Franklin are buried here), Cushing,
Phillips, Otis, Revere! There are royal governors,
patriot governors, signers of the Declaration, orators,
leaders among the citizens — it would be a long, long
roll ! And there would be a strange unexpectedness if
responses should come, for many of the stones in this
graveyard were long ago indiscriminately changed
about. At one time they were even tidied and set in
rows to meet the landscape-gardening and grass-mow-
ing proclivities of a city official! There was some

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mild objection to this, but nothing was done to check
or correct the changing, and when, long afterwards,
people began to speak strongly about it, it was too
late, for records had not been kept.

Although Boston thinks a great deal of the people
of the past, they would seem to have acquired some-
what careless habits of caring for their remains. Gil-
bert Stuart was mislaid. Major Pitcairn was lost,
and it was probably a substitute body that was sent
back to England as his, to rest in Westminster. The
stones on Copp's Hill were changed about or used
for doorsteps. And here in the Granary the muni-
cipal idiosyncrasy has been even more striking. It
was Oliver Wendell Holmes who remarked of this
graveyard, that the stones really tell the truth when
they say "Here lies."

But although this carelessness of the past needs to
be known it does not affect the dignity, the solemnity,
the impressiveness of the place. . It merely means that
the visitor must be content to honor these worthies
of the past in mass rather than in detail. They are
all there. They all lie somewhere within the broad en-
closure. Upon their confused resting-places the tall
office buildings look down, and beside them the public
go hurrying along the crowded sidewalk. They are
somewhere here, beneath the shade of the thickly clus-
tered horse-chestnuts and honey locusts, and it really
is not worth while to try and pick out the still properly
marked graves from the mistaken ones.

One of the two young duellists of whom Holmes
wrote, who fought to the death on the Common, is

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THE DISTINCTIVE PARK STREET CORNER

buried here, and it is curious that this seems to be
better remembered, by most people, than does the
fact that here were buried so many great and famous
folk, although that young duellist has no claim to fame
except that of dying in a duel which seized upon the
imagination of the man whose personality permeates
all Boston.

A high, open, iron fence standing on a low, dark
retaining wall, separates the burying-ground from the
street, and the entrance is through a black and gloomy
stone arch, with a suggestion of the Egyptian in style,
flanked at either end of the wall by a black stone pillar.

It is pleasant to notice that with such a great area
of office buildings looking down into this resting place
of American dead, there is scarcely a business sign
to be seen, although the opportunity and temptation
are so great. It is a fine example of business re-
straint. Indeed, one at first thinks that there is ab-
solutely no sign at all, for it is only by carefully look-
ing for them that two or three very little ones are
found.

From the Athenaeum itself, from a little high-
perched coign of vantage there, a little outside summer
reading-place which fairly overhangs the back of the
Granary graveyard, the most striking of all views of
the inclosure may be had, for from this point one
looks down through the treetops on curving lines of
little dull-colored headstones, standing shoulder to
shoulder on the green dark grass, under the gloomy
trees, like gloomy spirits of New England consciences
forever looking out, with drooping shoulders, through

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the great iron fence, upon the passing of their descend-
ants and successors.

The Granary burying-ground antedates the church
beside it, the fine old building, with Christopher "Wren-
like steeple, known as the Park Street Church. And
one is tempted to think of this church as, on the whole,
the most typically Bostonian building of Boston. On
its prominent corner at the foot of the slope leading
up to the State House, and with its windows looking
out on one side over the Common, and on the other one
the Granary ground, it seems as if it had grown there,
so natural it is, so easy, so graceful, so felicitous,
standing there in so sweet a pride.

The delightful spire is notable, not only for the per-
fection of its upper proportions but also in not rising
from the building itself but, instead, forming the ex-
tension of a tower that itself rises from the ground,
church and tower being connected by pillared curves,
quadrant-like, which architectually unite them into an
indivisible whole, with no sign of separation. There
could not be a more charmingly picturesque corner,
for the Common, than is made by this so charming and
picturesque a church.

For many years the building was painted, and even
in its dull drab was attractive, but it has recently been
vastly improved, as a number of other old Boston
buildings have similarly been improved, by the clean-
ing of all the paint from the brick and by the painting
anew of all the wood; thus restored to its original
design the church now positively sparkles in its white
paint and mellow red brick.

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THE DISTINCTIVE PAEK STREET COENEE

Park Street Church is not so old as are several
others in Boston, for it dates back only to a little
more than a century ago, but in its short life it has
not been without claims to distinction ; the first public
address of William Lloyd Garrison was delivered in
this building, and here for the first time the hymn
"America" was publicly sung.

Beneath the church are a gay-looking flower-shop
and picturesque tea-rooms, and they seem pleasantly
Bostonian in their churchly location, for until recent
years a bookstore was quartered in the basement of
the Old South Church, and I have noticed a furniture-
packing shop beneath a church at the foot of Beacon
Hill, and it used to be, when the Hollis Street Church
was standing, that its pastor, a powerful advocate of
prohibition, used to deliver attacks on drink at the
same time that the vaults beneath his feet were rented
by three pillars of his church, distillers, for the stor-
age of casks, giving rise to the still-remembered epi-
gram:

"Above, the spirit Divine,
Below, the spirits of wine."

The corner where stands so felicitously the alto-
gether attractive Park Street Church has itself given
rise to a flash of real wit, especially notable as show-
ing that Holmes did not utter every witty Boston say-
ing. For this came from a certain long-ago Apple-
ton, brother-in-law of Longfellow, famed as a humor-
ist and bon vivant, a man of wealth and family but
whose humor, still remembered reiteratively, usually

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took some such form as sailing for Europe, without
telling any one, on the very day that he was expected
to be host or guest at a dinner. However, the corner
beside Park Street Church really inspired him to one
excellent jest. For it is a very windy corner, one of
the windiest in all Boston, and Appleton dryly re-
marked one day that there really ought to be a shorn
lamb tethered there!

CHAPTEE X

TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

N a February night in 1688, a
striking funeral pageant passed
through the streets of Boston;
the funeral procession of Lady
Andros, the wife of Governor
Andros. And how far away
that seems! 1688 — that was the
far-away year that marked the downfall of the second
James. That year seems far away even when one is
over in England, and therefore it seems curiously far
away in this New England. Yet in 1688 Boston had
for decades been settled. People had already begun
to think of it as a long-established place. People had
already begun to look with interest at those who could
rightfully claim the title of "old inhabitants" !

That winter-night funeral of Lady Andros made a
grimly striking scene. A hearse with six horses drew
the body. Soldiers lined the way. Torches flickered
and blazed to light the snowy streets. Candles and
torches lighted the old church. Six "mourning
women," as they were called, walked behind the body
until it was set down before the pulpit and then they
seated themselves beside it like dismal ghosts. The

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church was crowded. The minister, with the grim di-
rectness of old times, preached frankly from the text,
•'All flesh is grass." And when the ceremony was
over the body was borne out of the little chapel, a
building standing where now stands the Old South
Church, on what is now Washington Street, and car-
ried to the burying-ground now known as that of
King's Chapel, on Tremont Street, King's Chapel
itself having not then been built. That winter night
funeral was dramatic indeed.

What is supposed to be the grave of Lady Andros
is still to be seen, here within this ancient inclosure
of King's Chapel Burying-ground, and here too is
many another of interest. The supposedly oldest
remaining stone is that of a certain William Paddy,
who died in 1658. Born in the year 1600, this man;
born twenty years before the sailing of the May-
flower; born while Elizabeth was still Queen; yet here
in Boston is his grave, still marked. Here rest the
remains of many a Leverett and Wendell and Mather
and Cotton, and especially is it the last home of many
a Winthrop, and in a Winthrop tomb lies that Mary
Chilton Winthrop who not only was one of those who
crossed in the first voyage of the Mayflower but who,
so the delightful old story has it, was the first woman
to land in America from that immortal ship. I do
not know how one can come to a more practical and
more vivid appreciation of the American past, than
by stepping aside, from the busy, rushing street, into
the down-sloping bit of burial-ground, hemmed in by
street and chapel and business blocks and city hall,

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TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

and standing beside the very tomb within which lie
the remains of that May-flower passenger, the first
woman to step upon the Rock.

And modestly, very, very modestly, far over at one
side of the graveyard, stands a stone which marks
the resting-place of one Elizabeth Pain, and it simply
records without any of the old-time reference to
beauty of character or beauty of life or the grief of
the remaining relatives,, that she departed this life in
1704; and a sort of chill comes, a grim feeling of the
severity of the past and of the present, when you
know that this is understood to be the grave of the
poor woman who gave to Hawthorne his idea of
Hester Prynne : for it will, of course, be remembered
that the scene of the "Scarlet Letter" was Boston
and not Salem, although it was in Salem that the book
was written. The poor Elizabeth with the suggestive
surname was one of the earliest Americans to learn
that the fatted calf is never killed for the prodigal
daughter.

Here in this really ancient graveyard is the tomb of
Robert Keayne, who founded, half a century before
the time of the Andros funeral, his Ancient and Hon-
orable Artillery Company, which is still existent.
Over at one side of the enclosure, I chanced upon the
name of Tudor, a name mildly prominent in early
New England history; and the thought comes of that
New England Tudor — could this have been the very
one! — who, when presented at the court of King
George the Third, caused a look of pleased astonish-
ment to come over the bored face of the monarch at

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

the mention of his name: "Eh, eh, what! Tudor?
One of us, eh, what?"

The present King's Chapel, beside the old burying-
ground, is a pillar-fronted, rather low, square-towered
building, a building rather dark and dusky in effect,
built not on the general lines of most of our early
churches, but following the design of some of the old-
fashioned little churches of London. And the pil-
lars are not of stone, as they seem to be, but of wood.
Taken by itself it would seem to be a veritable bit out
of London. The very first King's Chapel was built
here in the very year in which Lady Andros died,
and although that first building was wood instead of
stone, and although it was a little smaller than the
present chapel, which is itself quite small, it must
have been a church with a great deal of display and
impressiveness, for along its walls were hung the
escutcheons of the King of England and of the vari-
ous Boyal Governors who had been sent out to Massa-
chusetts. Even in those early days it was looked upon
as rather an ostentatious building.

The present chapel was built over a century and a
half ago; services were first held here in 1754; and
the interior is not without a certain richness of effect,
simple though it is. It is really a cozily attractive
little church, with its white walls and galleries and
pillars and its square pews with dark mahogany top-
rails and linings of red baize. The pairing of the
pillars adds much to the excellent effect, as do also
the Corinthian capitals. The ceiling is unusually
low even for a small church and there is also the un-

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TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

usual feature, for America, that the floor is made of
small square stones. The comfortable, square, en-
closed pews seem additionally quaint and comfortable
from their being fitted with stands for canes and
umbrellas, and little shelves for prayer-books and
Bibles, and even with chairs in addition to the fixed
benches of the pews.

Tradition has not preserved the precise location of
the pew in which Washington sat when they gave an
oratorio in this building to entertain him in 1789, but
one may fairly suppose that it was the pew known
as the Governor's Pew, which was in early days sur-
mounted by a canopy and in which sat in succession a
line of pre-Revolutionary royal governors, beginning
with Governor Shirley, who laid the cornerstone of
the building. Here, too, sat General Gage and Sir
William Howe, in the early part of the Bevolutionary
War. Familiar as Washington was with the churches
and the architecture of the entire country he must
have looked with much interest at the high-set pulpit,
the very pulpit which is still in place and used, for
it is believed to be the oldest in New England and
possibly in the United States ; it dates well back before
the building of this present building, for it was trans-
ferred from the earlier church to this, and is said to
be at least as old as 1717 and perhaps to have been in
the older church from its very beginning in 1688.
It is certainly interesting, with its twisting stair
charmingly enclosed with panels and pilasters, and
its heavy suspended sounding-board.

King's Chapel has a connection with what is often

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

written about as one of the romances of early Amer-
ican days, for one of those who united to build the
present structure was that Sir Henry Frankland who,
up at Marblehead, fell in love with the inn-keeper's
pretty daughter, Agnes Surriage, and brought her
to Boston ; his pew is still remembered and is the one
now numbered 20; but Frankland played anything
but a manly man's part, and the masters and lovers of
real American romance, Longfellow and Hawthorne,
did nothing, I think, to give the story its amazing
vogue.

The present organ of King's Chapel was sent out
from England in 1756, and has from time to time been
rebuilt and enlarged, and it is said to have been the per-
sonal selection of the mighty Handel, who tested it
and played upon it at the request of King George the
Second, who counted him as a friend and asked this
favor of him.

There are various old monuments, inside this
church, of worthies of the past, including a noticeable
one, in the most florid Westminster Abbey funeral
style, to the memory of Samuel Vassall, who belied
his name by being very independent indeed, and who
won fame and wealth as a patriotic merchant in the old
days when loyalty meant loyalty to the King.

The funeral of General "Warren, who was killed at
Bunker Hill, was held in this chapel after the city
came into the possession of the Americans. There,
too, was held the funeral of Charles Sumner. And
among the monuments within the building is one to
men who were connected with this chapel and who

114

TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

died in the Civil War. Already our churches are com-
ing to be like those of England, where there are me-
morials to the men of war after war in never-ending
succession.

A cheerful memory of this chapel is that it was the
regular place of worship of Oliver Wendell Holmes '
who, year after year, sat in pew 102 in the south
gallery. One may fancy what a trial or what a re-
ward it must often have been for the rector, after
some argumentative or oratorical effort, to glance up
and catch those keen eyes looking at him with ap-
praisal in the glance ; it must have kept a succession
of rectors well up to the mark to know that such an
autocratic critic was watching them.

The King's Chapel Burying-ground used to be
known, long ago, as the Old South Church Burying-
Ground, although the Old South Church is a few
blocks away, and on Washington Street.

On the front of the Old South is an inscription
which tells that the church gathered in 1669 ; that the
first church building was put up in 1670; that the
present church building was erected in 1729 ; and that
it was desecrated by the British troops in 1775-6.
But this enumeration of facts and dates quite ignores
an event which a great many people would deem the
most interesting of all, and that is that Benjamin
Franklin was baptised here in 1706.

What a busy day that was in the house near by,
now long since vanished, where the Franklins lived!
The father Josiah, and Abiah his wife, attended
service at the Old South Church in the morning.

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Little Benjamin was born at noon. And that very
afternoon he was proudly carried to church to be
christened !

One cannot but remember Benjamin's own sum-
mary of the lives of his parents. ".Without any es-
tate, or any gainful employment, by constant labor
and industry, with God's blessing, they maintained a
large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen
children and seven grandchildren reputably." "He
was a pious and prudent man," records Benjamin of
his father, Josiah ; and of Abiah, his mother, he faith-
fully records that she was "a discreet and virtuous
woman."

In the front of the church, beside the tablet of
dates, is a placard which, although meant to express
the standpoint of the old-time patriots as a lesson
for future generations, is positively misleading, for
it refers to winning victories for liberty and the peo-
ple "under the law." But there could not be a
greater misapprehension. The whole standpoint of
the patriots of the Revolution is missed. The Revolu-
tion stood for bravely acting against the law, for not
heeding danger to life or estate when it seemed right
to act against the constituted authorities. The tea
ships, the fight at Lexington, the stand on Bunker Hill
— what an absurdity to think of such things as "un-
der the law"! It is a solemn thing for a people to
stand against the law, but the glory of the Revolution
was that the patriots did stand against the law.
When Joseph Warren made his entry through a win-
dow into the pulpit of this very church and there de-

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TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

nounced in fiery words the British soldiers, the very
officers and soldiers who crowded about the front of
the pulpit while he spoke, he had no thought of acting
under the law, nor did he dream of being under the
law when, three months later, he bravely gave his life
as the British came charging up the hill over in
Charlestown.

The Old South is a neat and attractive building of
brick with a slender spire of wood. The spire is grace-
ful, but the tower that supports it, and which itself
projects a little. upon the busy sidewalk, is heavy in
proportion.

Entering the church through a vestibule beneath the
tower we find that the interior has not been treated in
the usual style of the Gothic nave, but is broader in
proportion than would be expected in a church ; it has
its pulpit, not at one end, but in the middle of one
side; and, unexpectedly for such a small building,
there are two galleries facing it. The pulpit is only
in part the original pulpit, but the needful restoration
was made along the original lines ; it is of admirable
shape, with pillar supports and elaborate cornice, and
it has a little rounding projection of mahogany on its
front, a sort of pleasing bulge, for the standing place
of the speaker. The window behind the pulpit is big
and broad, a sort of Palladian window, flanked by
reeded pillars ; and as one stands here it is impossible
not to picture the thrilling scene when Warren made
his way through this window, opened for his entrance,
stepped to the little bulge in front of the pulpit,
and with superb bravery delivered his thrilling ad-

117,

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

dress to the people who packed the building itself and
the very aisles and entrances. It was a brave day for
America.

The building long ago won the high-sounding name
of the "Sanctuary of Freedom," because within it
were held some of the most momentous of the town-
meetings that preceded the Revolution; and during
the Eevolutionary "War it was singled out by the Brit-
ish for contemptuous treatment, and was turned into a
riding-school for cavalry, and tons of earth were
thrown upon the floor to give footing for the horses ;
and in addition the pews were burned to keep the
soldiers warm. One may regret the burning of the
old pews, but it would not be in the least a regrettable
act if the present cheap-looking wooden chairs, with
cheap perforated seats and backs, could be given to the
British or anybody else, and burned. It cost over
$400,000 to save this church from being torn down for
the erection of a big office building, and Boston people
gladly raised the huge sum, and it does seem a pity
that a very little of that sum was not utilized to put in
fitting benches, if not pews.

A few relics of Eevolutionary days are shown in
this building, and there are photographs, to suit the
taste of such as care for such a thing, of the skull of
General Warren, showing the fatal bullet-hole : an ex-
hibition which perhaps might have been spared.

Not only were the old pews burned by the British,
but many valuable books and manuscripts regarding
early New England, that had been stored in the tower
of the old church, were also brought down and thrown

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TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

in the fire to help keep the soldiers comfortable in
the cold winter days of the siege.

And the most important manuscript in the world,
as a leading New Englander, Senator Hoar, in his
formal speech on the final recovery of the manuscript,
called it, was seized upon with others of the treasures
of the Old South tower, and was preserved by some
strange and never to be explained chance, and long
afterwards was discovered by another of the strang-
est of chances, over in England, and at length was
returned to America. This was the absolutely in-
valuable holograph account of the Mayflower expedi-
tion, and of the early days in Holland and in Plymouth,
by the great Governor William Bradford himself ; and
the story of this manuscript is the most extraordinary
literary romance of the world.

When the books and manuscripts were dragged
down from the tower this manuscript, which after-
wards came to be known mistakenly as the "Log of
the Mayflower," was spared, though no one knows
by whom; no one knows whether its value was even
guessed at, but presumably it must have been, for it
was carried to England, no one knows by whom, and
when the Americans once more took possession of the
city, it was not to be found and was supposed to have
been burned and its records and data thus forever
lost.

More than half a century after its disappearance,
an English bishop, the Bishop of Oxford, wrote a
book, which attracted scarcely any attention, on the
history of the church in America, and, quite a number

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

of years after its publication, an American, turning
over the leaves of the bishop's history, was startled by
some references to a manuscript, undescribed except
as being in the possession of the Bishop of London in
the library of his palace at Fulham. The American
— there is some question as to whether it was a man
named Thornton or one named Barry — was fortu-
nately one who knew early American history, and
he knew that the facts quoted in that book on the
church could have only one source, and that was the
Bradford manuscript, which had been quoted to some
extent by early American chroniclers and which every-
body supposed had long ago been lost. At once
definite inquiry was made, and it was learned that this
was indeed the long lost work of Bradford, although
neither the Bishop of Oxford nor the Bishop of Lon-
don himself could throw light upon how or when it
had come into English possession.

Americans at once began a campaign to recover it,
frankly taking the ground, when they met with delay
and doubt, that the excuse of loot in war time had
never been applied to the permanent retention of
literary treasures. The English themselves were in-
clined to agree with this, but things moved slowly, and
it took about half a century before negotiations were
fortunately concluded. They might have been going
on even yet had it not been for another of the strangely
fortunate chances in regard to the history of this
manuscript, and this was that a new Bishop of Lon-
don was appointed who felt cordial toward the United
States and said frankly that he, for his part, would

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TWO FAMOUS OLD BUILDINGS

hand over the manuscript if he were given the author-
ization of his superior, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
and that soon after this he was himself appointed, by
a whimsical chance, Archbishop of Canterbury!
Whereupon, in 1897, the thing was done, and the in-
valuable manuscript came back to Boston and was wel-
comed with great ceremonies and public speeches after
its strange absence of a century and a quarter.

But it was not again deposited in the Old South
steeple ! Instead, as the prized possession of the State
of Massachusetts, and not of Boston alone, it is kept
in the library of the State House, up on Beacon Hill,
and is there shown freely to any one who cares to see
it.

CHAPTEE XI

TO THE OLD STATE HOUSE

'N early days Washington Street, upon
which the Old South Church faces, was
known in its successive sections as Corn-
hill, Marlborough Street, Newbury Street
and Orange Street; names not thrown
away but frugally saved to be used in a
new district ; and all were merged in the
patriotic name of Washington because
Washington himself entered the city
along this route at the time of his visit
in 1789 ; and perhaps the naming was partly in amends
for having kept him waiting for two hours, mounted
on his white horse, just outside of the town limits,
while the State and town authorities debated on just
how he was to be received.

It was fortunate that Washington had drilled him-
self to patience and at the same time that he well
knew how to hold his dignity, for in the early days of
the adoption of our Federal Constitution a burst of
anger on his part, or even of impatience, no matter
how well justified, might have had a disastrous na-
tional effect, as might also any impairment of the
President's proper position. Yet, though he looked

122

TO THE OLD STATE HOUSE

upon a little waiting as too minor a thing to be taken
notice of by a great man, he did not overlook Governor
John Hancock's not coming to call upon him. Han-
cock stayed at home, as if thinking a Massachusetts
governor more important in Massachusetts than a
President of the United States, and as if expecting
Washington to make the first call ; but this, "Washing-
ton absolutely refused to do ; not only his own dignity
but the dignity of the nation was at stake; and on
the next day Hancock, swathed in explanatory flannel
wrappings, belatedly and formally called, offering an
alleged attack of the gout as an excuse for not calling
the day before. And perhaps the gout was real. Or,
if Hancock had but tardily done honor to the first
President, it was probably because John Adams, the
first Vice-President, had entered Boston in the Presi-
dent's company, and that Hancock and John Adams
were far from being friends, Adams having even gone
to such a length, in his jealousy, as to term Hancock an
"empty barrel"; the resounding sound of which ap-
pellation must have reached Hancock's ears. But
there ought not to have been any real ill feeling on the
part of Hancock toward "Washington, whatever may
have been the case as to John Adams. Hancock had
named his only son after himself and "Washington,
John George "Washington Hancock, and that the little
fellow had recently died would assuredly make even
closer the personal tie between President and Gov-
ernor.

Other streets of old Boston have had their names
changed, for reasons not so excellent as those which

123

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

gave the city Washington Street, and on a few of the
corners the old names are given as well as the new, but
in the main the old ones are forgotten. The greater
number of changes seem to have been made because,
as the city grew bigger, it became more finical; and
one realizes that Frog Lane would not be so excellent
a business address as Boylston Street, that Pudding
Lane and Black Jack Alley would seem less respect-
able than Devonshire Street, that Black Horse Lane is
more dignified, if that were all, as Prince Street ; but
it is not clear why the delightful name of Boyal Ex-
change Lane should have been altered, except actually
during the time of the Bevolution, to Exchange Street,
and it is hard to reconcile oneself to Broad Alley be-
coming Hollis Street, to Turnaway Alley becoming
Temple Place, and to Coventry Street becoming the
prosaic Walnut; one may quite sympathize with
changing Blott's Lane to Winter Street but feel that
romance was lost in altering Seven Star Lane to Sum-
mer Street ; and if it might be objected that Seven Star
Lane does not sound citified enough there would really
be no objection to calling it the Street of the Seven
Stars.

Washington Street, and especially that part which
is directly through from the Common, has especial in-
terest in the difference between its general aspect in
the evening and its aspects during the day. In the
morning the better part of it is crowded with the
women of the socially elect doing their shopping, and
in the afternoon with women whom the socially elect
consider hoi polloi; and the men who thread their way

124

TO THE OLD STATE HOUSE

along the narrow-sidewalked shopping sections in
daytime are alert business men, not too intensely hur-
ried ; the daytime is the time of Boston bags and pros-
perity ; but in the evening, for a few hours — never un-
til really late, for this is an early city — it is differently
thronged and brilliantly lighted, and at this time it
gives much the aspect of the main street of a busy
English mill town, crowded as it is with the people
who come for the "movies" and the cheaper theaters,
or who are out simply for a stroll.

Boston has not lost capacity for enthusiasms ; cities,
like men, need that ; but Boston shows enthusiasm in a
typically quiet way. I have seen "Washington Street,
in the business center, jammed solid for several blocks
with a crowd, estimated by the police as numbeiing
from twenty-five to forty thousand, which absolutely
stopped traffic, and all these people had gathered to
watch the score-boards of several newspaper offices
that are close together there ; for the Boston club was
playing for the League championship in old Philadel-
phia. The streets were packed to capacity for a long
distance within sight of the boards, and the windows
and roofs were crowded with decorous, neat, well-
tailored, well-dressed, self -restrained men, every one
with his shoes polished and his hat on straight. It
was a very proper crowd. Many of the men were
ready to yell if an announcement were extremely fav-
orable, but even then they would not yell very loud.
The business men and office clerks of the city had
given up an entire business afternoon to follow in
packed decorousness the record of a baseball game.

125

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

A walk of less than five minutes on Washington
Street, from the Old South Church, takes one to the
corner of State Street, where once stood the book-
shop which graduated that superb artillery officer,
Henry Knox ; and here there opens out what is known
as State House Square, out in the center of which
stands the Old State House.

Once in a while, in Boston, it is necessary to say, in
differentiation, the New State House or the Old State
House, for when the new one was put up the old one
was preserved, and it stands among the new busi-
ness buildings of the busiest district of the city. Ex-
tremely strong efforts have from time to time been
made to destroy this old building and use its site in
important business development, and great financial
temptation has been offered to the city, and the argu-
ments for the needs of business were really so cogent
that a few years ago it seemed as if the city would
yield to them. It had already yielded, so far as giv-
ing over the building to rental for offices and other
business purposes was concerned, and there was dan-
ger that the entire building would be given up. But
while the city wavered, hesitant and doubting, the news
went out through the country that perhaps the long-
treasured building was doomed, whereupon a formal
message came from the city of Chicago, offering to
buy the old structure in order to tear it down and
rebuild it, brick by brick, out there on the shore of
Lake Michigan. The structure would thus be kept,
so Chicago with earnest dignity expressed it, as an
American monument for all America to revere.

126

TO THE OLD STATE HOUSE

Of course that settled it. Perhaps the building
would have been preserved in any event, but after that
message, had Boston decided to tear the building
down, it would have been quite impossible for her to
throw away the bricks when Chicago was ready not
only to pay for them but to build them up again and
honor them, and it would have been altogether un-
bearable for Boston to think of people going to
Chicago to see this old State House ! — and so it still
stands here.

It will be remembered that Chicago won another
victory for the world by offering to buy and set up
within its own precincts the birthplace of Shake-
speare, when that building was about to be lost to
Stratford, and in that case, as in this, the offer by
that broad-mindedly acquisitive city of the West was
sufficient to secure the preservation of the old build-
ing on its original site. It is interesting to speculate
what buildings of the world, whether in America or
Europe or Asia, will in time be pleasantly captured
by Chicago in this way.

The Old State House is a building of piquant in-
dividuality; it would easily attract attention any-
where ; without knowing anything about it one would
be sure that it must be a building of interest, and it is.

It stands at what was long the center of much that
was important in old Boston. In the open space be-
side it and beside the still earlier building that pre-
ceded it was the early public market of the city; in
fact, the public market was not only beside but un-
der the earlier building, which, in the old English

127

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

market-place way, was built upon pillars, leaving the
level space beneath the building as an open arcade
for the merchants.

Even the present building has a history that goes
back to 1713, and when, about forty years afterwards,
it suffered a disastrous fire, at least the walls of 1713
were saved, thus preserving the early felicitous shape
and proportions of the building.

Hereabouts went on much of the early Boston life.
Here in the open square stood a cage, for the display,
in restrained publicity, of such as had dared to violate
the Sabbath; here were the stocks; here was the pil-
lory — reminders, these, that all was not gentleness and
moral suasion in the days of yore ! — and here stood,
even into the nineteenth century, the whipping-post.
It is not with any spirit of criticism of the past that
these things are mentioned; it is proper to speak of
them, that we may not forget that the past was not al-
together perfect.

Nobler and more tragic than such associations is
the association with what has always been known as
the Boston Massacre, of 1770 ; directly in front of this
building is where the fatal shooting by the English
soldiers took place, that roused a wild storm of in-
dignation that even yet is remembered, and which in
itself had much to do with intensifying and crystalliz-
ing the sentiment in favor of an actual and final break
with England. In the general excitement of that time
and the feeling that at any moment, should the de-
mands of the citizens for the removal of the soldiers
from Boston not be heeded, there might be actual war-

128

TO THE OLD STATE HOUSE

fare, most of the men of Boston were under arms, and
even John Adams took his turn with others, as a
soldier, at this very building, coming, as he has with
his own hand recorded, "with my musket and bayonet,
my broad sword and cartridge box." It is an inter-
esting remembrance of the trial of the English
soldiers, that followed, that two of them who were
actually convicted of manslaughter escaped punish-
ment by pleading the very ancient English plea of
"benefit of clergy"! — which had nothing whatever to
do with literal clergy, but only with the ability to
write, which was anciently supposed to be an accom-
plishment of the clergy alone, who as a class were im-
mune from punishment.

In outward appearance the Old State House sug-
gests a memory of Holland. It elusively but charm-
ingly indicates a bit of Dutch architecture. It has a
long line of dormers on each side of its roof, and in
the center rises a quaint tower, in square-sided sec-
tions which go up in diminishing sequence to a little
belfry. At either side of the gable lines on the high
and almost corbel-like corners of the facade, the
square-shouldered front that faces out toward the
oncewhile market-place, stand the lion and unicorn,
effective and highly decorative, breezy copies of the
originals which were thrown down and destroyed in
the Eevolution, gayly gilt like the originals, and look-
ing almost royally rampant as they face each other
across the central clock which points out that times
have changed.

In the center of this facade is a beautiful second-

129

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

story balcony of stone, in front of a many-paned cen-
tral window with curving pediment. From this bal-
cony many a speech has been delivered and many a
proclamation has been read, from the time of the early
Colonial governors down, but the long succession of
royal proclamations came finally to an end when, on a
July day in 1776, to an exalted throng of Revolution-
ary citizens gathered in this open space below, there
was read the full text of the Declaration of Independ-
ence, which had been relayed to Boston as fast as a
galloping messenger could take it. "In the brave
days of old ! ' ' — these fine old familiar lines may well
be applied to Boston.

From this very balcony, ten years before the read-
ing of the Declaration, was proclaimed the repeal of
the hated Stamp Act, and also from this balcony, at
the close of the Revolution, the people were told that
peace with Great Britain had been made and that full
recognition of the rights of the American Republic
had been yielded.

This old building was successively the Town House
of Boston, the Court House, the Province Court House
and then the State House ; and after the State offices
were moved into the big building on Beacon Hill it
became for a time the City Hall. The building is now
restored, but has not suffered the misfortune of be-
ing over-restored, and it is given up to the accumula-
tion and display of a collection, of fascinating inter-
est, of a vast number of mementoes relating to early
days ; and like the Museo Civico of Venice, and others
of that admirable class, it sets forth, with its memen-

130

TO THE OLD STATE HOUSE

toes, the things which represent the daily life of long
ago.

Among the individual relics is a beautiful silver
tankard, that was made by Paul Eevere. It is a
masterpiece of silver-smithing, and is so highly prized
that it is held in place by a hidden lock and chain, in
order to keep it should some thief break the glass case
in an effort to snatch it away. Here, too, is preserved
one of the original Eevere prints of the Boston
Massacre, which took place under the windows of this
building, and it is so valued that it is put into a fire-
proof safe every night. The building also holds, in
one of its corners, a little old organ, which rivals the
old organ of the Park Street Church with its "Amer-
ica," for this in the Old State House was one at
which the stately old tune "Coronation" was com-
posed and on which it was first played ; it is an organ
with lead pipes and is still playable and of excellent
tone.

For a building which outwardly does not appear
large, and which is really not large, there is in the in-
terior an astonishing effect of amplitude. In this re-
spect it is a marvel.

There are various meeting rooms in the building,
each of old-fashioned dignity, and in particular the
fine big room, with its noble spaciousness, that is still
known as the Council Room, as it was in the long ago
time when the royal governors, richly appareled, sat
here in formal state in conference with their coun-
cilors. It is a room with twin fireplaces and big re-
cessed windows and fine cornice and charming wain-

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

scoting, and it is pleasant to remember that John Han-
cock was here inaugurated governor.

It is astonishing what a degree of beauty, what an
amount of dignity, the earliest American architects
were able to secure in their public buildings, and this
in Boston may compare honorably with the best.
There is the old Maryland State House in Annapolis ;
there is the one-time State House, Independence Hall,
in Philadelphia ; and there is the Old State House here
in Boston ; all of them pre-Revolutionary buildings of
practically the same period, and all of immense dig-
nity and distinction. The three are of very different
appearance from each other but they are alike in
continuing to be worthy points of pilgrimage for
Americans and in having direct connection with im-
portant events of the past.

on in

/ I

CHAPTER XII

FANEUH. HALL AND THE WATEBSIDE

XEAR the Old State House and,
like it, tucked in among big
office buildings, you come unex-
pectedly upon a broad, plump,
portly, comfortable, restful
building, with an aspect of age
as well as this aspect of ease,
and you search elusively for
words to define its impression,
and you know that the right phrase has come when
you hear it called the Cradle of Liberty; for it is a
building that gives a comfortable old-fashioned im-
pression of a comfortable old-fashioned cradle — al-
though this is not what gave it its cradle cognomen,
but the fact that within its walls the fiery orators of
pre-Revolutionary days made their most eloquent ap-
peals for liberty.

It is a distinguished looking building, with its dig-
nified regularity of windows, and the good old-fash-
ioned dignity of its long sides, and its interesting
round-topped tower. It is twice as large as it used
to be — as Boston has grown so this cradle has natu-
rally grown — but in doubling its length and increasing

133

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

its height it lost none of its good old-fashioned sym-
metry, for the great Bulfinch undertook the work of
enlargement and gave it his utmost care.

The building was the gift, in 1742, of a public-
spirited citizen named Peter Faneuil, who gave the
money for it because he knew that Boston needed not
only a good hall but a market-place to take the place
of the earlier market, at the Old State House ; and a
market-place was accordingly established in the lower
floor. The building was burned a few years later,
and promptly rebuilt, and the final enlargement that
we now see was made a little more than a century ago.

The hall itself, above the public market, is never
rented, but is forever to be used freely by the people
whenever they wish to meet together to discuss pub-
lic affairs; and this alone would make the building
proudly notable. And many a great man, and many
a man who was deeply in earnest even if not great,
has spoken in this hall. And it is still used freely
for the public meetings of to-day.

The meeting hall, almost square, has a right-angled
arrangement of seats, and, with its rows of Doric
columns, is quite distinguished. And one notices that
a winding stairway leads down from the very floor
of the speaker's platform and wonders if it is to facili-
tate the entrance of popular speakers in case of a
great crowd, or, on the other hand, to facilitate the
hasty exit of the unpopular! One notices, too, that
the balcony has peculiar effectiveness of proportion,
adding much to the effectiveness of the entire hall,
and further notices, as an additional point on the

134

FANEUIL HALL AND QUINCY MARKET

FANEUIL HALL AND THE WATEESIDE

part of Bulfinch, that this comes from his having made
the space above the gallery a little higher than the
space below, although the first impression is to the con-
trary. It is the same idea, carried ont here in simple
wood, in early America, on a small scale, that the great
Giotto carried out so splendidly on a large scale in his
tower at Florence.

The great painting behind the speaker's platform
is fittingly a painting of a great American oratorical
scene, for it represents "Webster, in the United States
Senate, delivering his celebrated reply to Hayne.
Webster himself has spoken here in this hall just as
all the famous orators of New England have spoken
here, and here were held some most momentous early
meetings, including that which, several years before
Lexington and Bunker Hill, stated the rights of Amer-
ica so plainly and imperatively as always to be held
by the British to mark the real beginning of the
Revolution.

The paintings of notables that hang about the walls
are to quite an extent copies, but what is believed to
be an original Gilbert Stuart is the big painting of
Washington, who is represented as about to mount his
horse, at Dorchester Heights. This painting, how-
ever, would not have been made by Stuart had it not
been for a blacksmith ! For it seems that a wealthy
citizen wished to pay for a painting of Washington,
to be hung in this hall, and the town meeting was
about to decide to give the commission to a certain
Winstanley, when the blacksmith interposed his ob-
jection. This Winstanley, a painter of no originality,

135

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

had worked up quite a business in copying the Wash-
ington of Stuart, getting the idea of doing so from
the fact that Stuart's Washingtons had frankly been
copied and adapted by Stuart himself — which was a
very different matter. Washington himself, after sit-
ting to Stuart, had freely and knowingly accepted a
copy, by Stuart, of the painting that had been made
from the sittings, and the original itself is now in the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The only other Wash-
ington that was painted by Stuart with his great sub-
ject personally before him was what is known as the
Lansdowne portrait, which journeyed long ago to
England. Whenever, for years, Stuart needed money
— which was often! — he painted a Washington for
somebody, by copying or adapting from his own work.
Winstanley knew of this, for there was no secrecy
about it, and those who got these Washingtons from
Stuart knew that they were copies or replicas, but that
they were Stuart's own replicas; they were the re-
sults of the great artist's personal study of his great
model ; whereas the copies of Stuart that Winstanley
made and sold, one of which made its way as a verita-
ble Stuart to the White House, and was picturesquely
taken out of its frame by Dolly Madison to save
it on the approach of the British, were in no proper
sense Stuarts. Yet when Faneuil Hall was to have its
painting of Washington it was about to be decided to
buy a copy from the ready Winstanley ! And it was
at this point that the blacksmith, who is remembered
only as a man of the North End, arose and vehe-
mently opposed the idea, declaring that to procure a

136

FANEUIL HALL AND THE WATERSIDE

copy of Gilbert Stuart made by some one else would
be a lasting disgrace when Gilbert Stuart himself was
actually living in the city. At that, Stuart was
promptly commissioned to paint a Washington for
Faneuil Hall. And it is a pleasant recollection that
Edward Everett, in his eulogy of Lafayette, delivered
in this hall, electrified his hearers by suddenly turning
to this portrait of Washington and exclaiming:
"Speak, glorious Washington! Break the long si-
lence of that votive canvas !"

From time to time, there have been gatherings here
not only for political objects or to record grievances,
but for social ends, and one such was a meeting at
which General Gage, the royal governor, at a time
when he knew that the Port Act was about to ruin the
commerce and business of the town, rose and proposed
a toast "To the prosperity of Boston"! And an-
other was the ball given here, some three-quarters of
a century ago, in honor of the Prince de Joinville, at
which time Faneuil Hall and the adjoining Quincy
Market, which was long ago built to meet the growing
market needs of the city and whose gable faces the
gable of Faneuil Hall, were connected by a temporary
bridge and both buildings were aglow with light and
thronged with guests. Quincy Market is itself 535
feet long and covers 27,000 square feet of land.

Another reminder of Faneuil Hall came to me in
Windsor, England, recently, for in an out-of-the-way
corner of that old town, near the foot of a picturesque
and almost mysterious stairway which leads down
from the huge castle on its height to a postern-door,

137

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

I noticed a house with a tablet upon it. Something
led me to cross the street to read, and I was interested
to find that it was the home of Bobert Keayne, who
left old Windsor for Boston and founded in this new
world the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company,
the oldest military organization in America. And
how old it makes this country seem ! For Keayne was
born before the settlement of Boston, before even the
settlement of Plymouth, and he founded the artillery
company here in Boston in 1637, and the upper por-
tion of Faneuil Hall is used as its armory.

Keayne was only a tailor over in England, and it
used to be an English saying that it takes several
tailors to make a man, but Keayne, coming to America,
showed that the English saying does not apply on this
side of the ocean, for he certainly was a man of capac-
ity and affairs, a man who did very much to establish
the foundations of early Boston on a strong basis.
That his will, written with his own hand, and dispos-
ing of some four thousand pounds — quite a fortune
for those days — covered 158 folio pages, and that it is
said to be the longest will on record, at least in New
England, is but one of the side-lights on an interest-
ing personality ; but the most interesting thing he did
was to found his artillery company, and he did this
because he was a member of an old artillery company
in London. Any man deserves to be remembered who
puts in motion something that remains prominently
in the public eye for almost three centuries ; and there
seems to be no reason why his organization should not
continue for centuries more.

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FANETJIL HALL AND THE WATEKSIDE

Down by the big and busy South Station which,
when it was opened in 1899, was said to be the largest
railway terminal in the world and which still claims
to be first in the number of persons using it daily, one
does not expect to find anything connected with the
Boston of the past ; as you walk there, you think only
of the rumble and thunder of present-day business, for
the streets are thronged with trolley cars and heavy
trucks and the sidewalks are crowded with busy busi-
ness men, and elevated trains hurtle by on their spid-
ery trestles.

But you go on for a little beside the elevated, on At-
lantic Avenue, and your attention is attracted by a
bronze tablet, set into a building at one of the busiest
corners, and something draws you to read it, and you
find yourself deeply rewarded. Ordinarily, in these
modern days, one does not stop to read tablets of the
past on buildings of the present ; one likes to look at
buildings of the past and to read of the actions of the
past, and it is likely to be rather uninteresting to look
at a place which is merely the site of a happening and
which is now covered with something which has no re-
lation to that happening. But this tablet is one of the
exceedingly worth while exceptions. At the top is the
figure of a full-rigged, old-time ship, and beneath the
ship you read that this tablet marks the spot where
formerly stood Griffin's Wharf; and lest you forget
what Griffin's "Wharf was, the tablet goes on to explain
that here lay moored, on December 16, 1773, three
British ships with cargoes of tea, and that "to defeat
King George's trivial but tyrannical tax of three pence

139

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

a pound, ' ' about ninety citizens of Boston, partly dis-
guised as Indians, boarded the ships and threw the
cargoes — three hundred and forty-two chests in all —
into the sea, "and made the world ring with the pa-
triotic exploit of the Boston Tea Party."

You cannot but feel stirred as you stand here, and
the fact that where the wharf stood and ships lay is
now all solid ground, built up with business blocks,
does not take away from the sudden vision of the past
which comes sweeping over you. For it was a right
brave thing that those men did ; it was an achievement
of tremendous daring in the face of the power of Eng-
land ; and that the value of the tea was great added to
the very real danger of most severe punishment: I
have read, though it seems almost incredible, that the
tea was valued at eighteen thousand pounds !

One should not, however, enter this district except
on a Sunday. On Sundays all is quiet and deserted ;
scarcely a single person is met ; it is almost a solitude,
and it is an excellent time to continue to some of the
nearby, old-time wharves which do still represent the
old-time Boston waterside.

It is but a short walk, continuing along Atlantic
Avenue, to a big wharf which, although almost covered
with modern cargo sheds, still retains its ancient name
of India Wharf. And the wharf also retains the great
old India Wharf building, standing detached from all
the modern shipping sheds and towering up to its
height of seven stories — really a towering height in
early American days. A big, brick structure it is,
built with a broad center and two broad wings, and

140

FANEUIL HALL AND THE WATERSIDE

giving a striking effect of isolation— an isolation that
is at the same time both shabby and proud. The big
building faces out toward the water and gives a fine
air of standing for the old shipping prosperity that
meant so much in the early days of Boston ; and I can-
not remember a more romantic looking business struc-
ture in America.

The brick, laid in English bond, has mellowed to a
weathered yellowness. The fifty windows of the
facade were originally shuttered, but the shutters re-
main on only three, and beside the others tbe wrought-
iron holders stick out like little black prongs. Some
of the windows are arched with white stone ; here and
there across the building's front are remains of white
marble lines; a monster chimney stands above the
towering top of the middle gable ; the two highest win-
dows are fans, and a shelf between these two, now
empty, up in the pediment, looks as though it was
originally made to hold some figure, probably that of
a ship ; and the lines of the sash of these two lofty fans
are like the longitude lines of a globe.

The pavement in front of the building is of enor-
mous cobbles of granite, some of these blocks being as
large as two feet by one, and they are just like ancient
pavement blocks, such as one is accustomed to think
of only in old Italian cities.

India Wharf and the wharves adjoining are not par-
allel with the shore line but project in long rectangles
right out into the water of the harbor. Long Wharf,
near by, was given its name because at the time it was
built it was the longest wharf in the country; and be-

141

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

cause it was so long, thus offering a point of military
advantage, a battery used to stand out there on the
very end of it.

Central Wharf is also interesting, with its long row
of old-fashioned stone warehouses. In fact, this en-
tire region tells vividly of the picturesque early busi-
ness years before the great changes that came with
railroads.

T Wharf — which, when you see it on the street sign,
"TWf.," seems positively cryptic — is picturesque in
a high degree, for old-time-looking, full-rigged fishing
boats, with rattling yards and ropes, are tied up along-
side, and on Sundays immense nets are spread out on
the wharf, at great length, with their rows of cork
floats. Sea-gulls whirl over the wharves and the
water, and dart divingly for their food, and cry their
harshly wailing note ; and on Sundays the fishermen
and their friends, Americans and Italians, congregate
about these boats and the wharf; and some of the
fishermen — or perhaps they are dock hands or market
porters — make their homes in the oddest of fleets, a
covey of perhaps a score of little mastless boats,
painted blue or green, and anchored close to shore in
a space between two piers. And everywhere is the
permeative smell of fish. And often the close-gath-
ered fishing boats mass picturesquely against the sky
a great tangle of masts and ropes and spars.

Many of the buildings among these wharves stand
on piling, and are partly over the water, and the
wharves themselves are built of enormous blocks of
stone, or of enormous timbers. In one place I noticed

142

FANEUIL HALL AND THE WATEESIDE

a long stretch of black beach beneath overhanging
flooring, and it led back in strange, long, tunnel-like
spaces among the wooden supports, into the distant
darkness; and all seemed whispering of romance or
crime.

Here one sees the long-forgotten sign of "Wharf-
inger"; and there are little shops that sell all sorts
of sailors' supplies: ferocious knives with blades a
foot and a half long, fish forks with handles as long as
hay forks but with only a single prong, fog horns,
anchors, hooks, woolen "wristers," oil skin clothing,
and "sou 'westers" that have come straight out of
Winslow Homer's paintings.

The sign, too, of "hake sounds" is remindful that
this city of cod has also many another fish, for one
finds there are the haddock, the mackerel and the her-
ring; the scrod — which is really a little cod, although
even Bostonians cannot always tell when the scrod be-
comes a cod or when a cod is still a scrod. There are
the swordfish and spikefish ; there are cusk and tinkers
and eels; there are butterfish, flounders and perch;
there are halibut and chicken-halibut; there are blue-
fish, sea-trout, bass and scup; there are oysters, lob-
sters, clams and the giant sea-clams so delectable in
New England chowder ; there are sculpin, tautog and
quahog.

On Commercial Wharf is a row of uniform old
buildings of dignified solidity, all broad gabled and of
stone, with rows of little dormers like hencoops on
their high slate roofs. When this wharf was built,
about a century ago, it was by far the finest of the

143

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

waterside blocks of buildings, and men whose ships
traded to the Cape of Good Hope, the Spanish Main,
to India and China, to the North of Europe, flocked to
it to make it their headquarters. And old-timers love
to tell that, in their boyhood, old-timers of that period
loved to tell them, that in those early days of Ameri-
can commerce the skillful captains of the ships would
beat in under full sail, without assistance, up to these
very wharves.

The general district adjacent to these old-time
wharves is mostly given over to the modern, but here
and there are still to be seen quaint roof lines, and
old-fashioned gables, and odd street-corner lines, rem-
iniscent of the days that have gone. There is consid-
erable, in fact, to remind one of old-time business
London, including the many narrow passages and
alley-ways that go diving here and there among the
buildings. Not far away, too, is Fort Hill Park, a
level space, grassed and sparsely-treed, in the heart
of modern business buildings, and retaining the circu-
lar shape remindful of its past : for here in early days
rose a hill a hundred feet in height, and where it was
cut partly down its slopes were covered with fashion-
able homes — Gilbert Stuart chose his residence here —
and at length it was entirely leveled into its present
simple form.

Up a little distance from the waterside, on Custom
House Street, is the old Custom House of Boston,
sadly altered in looks from its early days, shorn of all
distinction, and now showing a front of extraordinary
plainness, with a sign denoting that it is a "Boarding

144

FANEUIL HALL AND THE WATEKSIDE

and Baiting Stable" — the "baiting" being itself a
queer reminder of a vanished time.

The old Custom House building is worth while mak-
ing the few minutes' necessary pilgrimage to see, for
here the collector of the port was Bancroft the histo-
rian, and one of his assistants was a certain young man
of the name of Hawthorne! Bancroft had been at-
tracted by some of Hawthorne's early short stories,
and for that reason had offered him a position here.

Hawthorne was rather bored by the work; he was
gauger and weigher, but does not seem to have given
to the duties of these humble offices the hard work that
a certain other writer, named Eobert Burns, devoted
to similar duties. In fact, Hawthorne seems always
to have considered public office a rather tiresome sort
of thing to attend to, in spite of the fact that it gave
certain financial advantages not to be scorned by nov-
elists. I have somewhere read his own description of
his work here in Boston, and he seemed to find the
heat and the flies of the waterside most unpleasant;
with nothing of offsetting pleasantness. Boston, at
that time, had not discovered him — his recognition had
been very slight.

Somewhere I have read a brief description of him
at this time, and it mentioned the delightful fact,
which at once sets Hawthorne before us as a likable
and very human man, that he loved to follow brass
bands ! "Which amusing habit doubtless explains why,
over in England, he notes in his journal that he had
just seen march by the regiment of which George
Washington was once enrolled as an officer !

145

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Close by this old building — for one continually sees
how near together are most of the important or inter-
esting things in Boston — is the new Custom House, an
extremely notable structure, towering up to the height
of 498 feet above the sidewalk ; and the building does
literally tower, for it may be said to be all tower!
Years ago, a dignified structure, with pillared fronts,
was built, in the form of a Creek cross, to replace the
old building of Bancroft and Hawthorne, but the busi-
ness of the city gradually outgrew it, and an appropri-
ation was made by Congress for larger quarters.
Beal estate, however, had so gone up in price in Bos-
ton that the appropriation was not sufficient to buy
land as well as to put up a building, and so the expedi-
ent was hit upon of running up the building itself into
the air! The pillared fronts, with their thirty-two
great Doric columns, still remain, but the entire center
has risen, splendidly dominating in its immense height,
making a tower which, though not quite beautiful, can
be seen for miles in all directions. The city of Boston
forbids the erection of any building within its limits
higher than 125 feet, but the United States, taking ad-
vantage of the fact that it owns as a National Govern-
ment the land upon which any of its public buildings
stands, simply ignored the Boston restriction and went
right ahead with this higher tower. And the people
of Boston, themselves, are not displeased, although
this was done in spite of them; in fact, they say that it
gives a beacon-like effect to the city which rather
matches the generally desired tone. At the same time,
it fits in with the beacon idea of the early days, and

146

FANEUIL HALL AND THE "WATERSIDE

the fact that old Boston of England is also dominated
by a tower which can be plainly seen for miles and
miles across the fenland does certainly add to the
sense of appropriateness. And that the Custom
House stands so supreme over everything else in Bos-
ton, that it so dominates, is but natural after all — for
in Boston it is natural for Custom to dominate !

CHAPTER XIII

THE STBEETS OP BOSTON

|VEN Boston, in spite of its
being an intellectual city —
and one need never prove
that Boston is intellectual,
for Bostonians stand pleas-
antly ready to admit it —
sufficiently succumbed to
mid- Victorian standards of
building as to put up a
goodly number of architec-
of the sad examples being
was so highly thought of
at the time of its construction as to draw such
encomiums as the following from an intelligent
observer of about 1880: "Its style of architecture
is grand in the extreme. It is a building of elegant
finish. Its roof is an elaboration of Louvre and Man-
sard styles." Really, beyond this nothing need be
said. Yet this building points out the irony of fate,
for in its granite prodigiousness it did a vastly better
thing for Boston than many a more beautiful building
would have done, for it stood as an absolute barrier
in the great fire of 1872, completely stopping the

148

tural ineptitudes, one
the Post-Office, which

THE STREETS OF BOSTON

frightful rush of flames in its direction; without this
unbeautiful building the terrible record of 767 build-
ings burned, 67 acres swept over, and a money loss of
seventy-five millions, would have been vastly worse.

That fire destroyed many a picturesque landmark,
but the city still retains the old-time interest that
comes from narrow and crooked streets. "The street
called Straight" was certainly not a Boston street.
In its whimsical complexity, the city is still as notable
as when the Marquis de Chastellux wrote that he
thought this feature exemplified "la liberie."

In the old section of the city there are still to be
found not only crooked streets and unexpected angles
but great numbers of narrow passages and blind ways,
and there are little court-yards and streets that end in
stone steps — all giving a highly satisfying sense of the
olden days, for it is mainly on account of the olden
days that one likes to come to Boston. One long slit
of a passage, nearly six feet wide, running close be-
tween business blocks, is an "avenue," and I know it
is an avenue because there is a sign on it to that effect,
although otherwise I should never have suspected it
of bearing such a large title. One can burrow across
much of the old city through narrow passages, and
here and there it is not only the metaphorical burrow-
ing of narrow ways, but the literal burrowing of some
public passage through and under some pile of build-
ings. One may even find extraordinarily narrow pas-
sages in such a comparatively new section as between
West and Temple Streets and Temple and Winter ;
and one may follow narrow ways, one after another,

149

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

from the Granary to Faneuil Hall, and in many an-
other place. Of no other American city could one
say, as Holmes said of Boston, that he used to "bore"
through it, knowing it as the old inhabitant of a
Cheshire knows his cheese; and "bore" is precisely
the right word. Some of the passages are so narrow
that, standing in the middle, one may put an elbow
against each wall. And these network passages are
not back-ways for refuse and ashes, but are steadily
and freely used by men and women as public pathways
and shortcuts.

After all, as to Boston streets in general, one re-
members that it has finely been said that, although
the city is full of crooked little streets, it has opened
and kept open more turnpikes that lead straight to
free thought, free speech and free deeds than has any
other city.

The street pavements, one regrets to notice, are
likely to be rough and the sidewalks narrow, and in
muddy weather the result is what would naturally be
expected from such a combination, for in no other city
have I noticed such splashing of house fronts and store
windows with mud as in some parts of Boston. In
the medieval streets in old European cities conditions
are the same except that there is little traffic to speak
of. Had Macaulay ever been in America one would
have taken it for granted that the inspiration of his
lines, telling that to the highest turret tops was
dashed the yellow foam, came right from Boston.
And the motorist must know his Boston exceptionally
well to be able to make his way about on streets whose

150

THE STREETS OF BOSTON

pavement is even measurably smooth. The cobbles
at the sides of the Beacon Hill streets are obviously
excellent as checks to sliding in slippery weather, but
the cobbles in other parts of the city are not so under-
standable, and the holes and roughnesses that have
nothing to do with cobbles are understandable even
less. By "cobbles," it may be added, is meant not
merely the rough Belgian blocks which are to be found
here and there in Boston as in other cities, but round-
top beach stones, little boulders, extremely uneven in
surface and polished by the hoofs of many generations
of horses. But there are splendid parkway roads in
Boston, and some splendidly smooth roads leading out
to some of the suburbs ; altogether, Boston has some of
the very best and some of the very worst roads that
I have ever seen in a city. And frequently, on account
of inefficient street-cleaning, there is achieved an in-
credible dustiness.

The hand-organ is still a common survival in Bos-
ton streets, and there are also survivals of street cries,
in at least the older and still American parts of the
city, of a kind that have nearly vanished from most
other large cities; and these cries quite fulfill the
requisite of being practically unintelligible except to
the ear of custom. Some one wishing to rival the
familiar prints of "Old London Cries" might still get
out a series of "Boston Cries" and date it in the
twentieth century. The humble soapgrease man still
goes about with greasy cart and gives his humble soap-
grease cry; the strident call of the eager fishman is a
familiar possession of the city, though within my own

151

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

memory the conch-shell of the mackerel man has van-
ished ; the varied cries of the men with fruit still rend
the air, and these men have usually carts, with horses,
which they drive by at a perpetual quickened walk,
and the insistent and urgent voices seem to declare
that the fruit must be bought instantly ; perhaps the
iceman is the best of all, for he wails and trails his
words with a wonderful, lengthening "ee-ice," with a
poignant accenting of the final note ; and, as I write,
one seems even more interesting than the iceman, for
I hear a cry that is not only a veritable survival of
the past, but one which has quite disappeared, so far
as I know, from other cities — the cry of the ragman,
going along with his bag over his shoulder and his
scale in his hand, with his quietly murmuring cry of
"Bags, an' ol' clothes"!

And in line with the street cries of Boston is a street
sound that is curiously remarkable — the sound of
bells that are strung on horses drawing the more
primitive kinds of delivery wagon, or tied directly on
the wagon thills. I do not remember any other Ameri-
can city where horses or wagons are belled. Nor do
I refer to sleighbells, which are a different matter alto-
gether. I mean bells that go ringing or jangling as
the four-wheeled vehicles move through the streets ;
and it gives a most odd effect. The custom probably
began as a measure of safety in approaching the fre-
quent intersections of the narrow streets ; for the same
reason that the gondola men of Venice utter their
long-drawn-out warning cry as they approach the in-
tersections of the narrow canals.

152

THE STREETS OF BOSTON

Sleighbells in winter are common; indeed, Boston
is very much of a winter city, as is shown by the swift
appearance of sleighs and bob-sleds after a snow, the
swift handling of the snow-shoveling problem, the
myriad little avalanches from the sloping roofs when
a thaw comes, the skating on the Charles and on the
lake in the Public Garden and on the pond in the Com-
mon, and the free and untrammeled coasting of boys
and girls down the paths and the hill-slopes of the
Common. And conservative ladies who still avoid
limousines and pin their social faith to carriages — the
"kerridges" of Holmes, with a "pole and a pair" —
have the coupe top detached from the wheels and
slung on an iron frame, with graceful runners, and,
thus vehicularly equipped, sleigh forth in undis-
turbed exclusiveness to make their afternoon calls.

It so happens that I have rarely noticed a policeman
upon the Common, though on inquiry I have learned
that always there is supposedly a detail of two police-
men there ; perhaps it is only a fancy, that the general
sense of freedom as to the Common keeps it unwatched
ground. It seems quite unwatched, even when there
is skating on the big pond before it has frozen
strongly, and when, after freezing and melting, there
are holes in the ice and gaps of black water along the
edges. I one day asked a policeman on Tremont
Street about this, for I was accustomed to see in other
cities the red ball and supervision, for skating,-but in-
stead of saying that the water was not deep enough to
be dangerous except for a cold wetting, he said
thoughtfully: "Why, no — there ain't no rule about it

153

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

— the boys go on when they want to." Then a slow
smile crept over his face. "I suppose it ain't likely
they will go near the holes," he said. It really seems
as if this freedom on the Common has come down
without question since that pre-Eevolutionary time
when the boys of Boston went to the British General in
command and complained of the spoiling of their
slides and had their claim acknowledged.

The street signs of Boston are explanatory, exposi-
tory, admonitory, advisory. I have even seen, but
rarely, the blunt "Keep off," but there is more likeli-
hood of finding such a courteously suggestive sign as
' ' Newly seeded ground. ' ' And as Boston takes it for
granted that the people within its gates wish every-
thing to be reasonably done, you will see "Uncheck
your horses on going up the hill," or "Best your
horses"; and you will notice such advice as "Do not
walk more than two abreast," and "Do not stop in the
middle of the sidewalk," and "Do not block the cross-
ings."

A kind of sign, rather exceptionally rhadamanthine,
is seen at some of the street intersections and bluntly
commands "Do not enter here"; and several visitors
have told me that they have actually gone clear around
such blocks so as to enter at the other end, to see why
it was that admittance was forbidden, and that not un-
til then did they realize that Bostonians merely meant
to say that it was a one-way street for vehicles, with
no intended reference to pedestrians. And a smile is
admissible when you see a stairway, leading down
from a sidewalk, marked ' ' To the Elevated " ! In any

154

THE STEEETS OF BOSTON

other city Bostonians would see humor in calling a
subway an elevated, even though it may chance after
a while to lead to an elevated. Also, I have been
directed in the suburbs to the "Subway," where there
was only a stair to the elevated. And when you read,
in a street car, that you are "forbidden to stand" on
the front platform, and in the same car that you are
"not allowed to stand" on the rear platform, you
wonder just what fine distinction is implied.

The custom in Boston at some corners is to give not
only the street names, but the number of the ward as
well, and a visitor to the city told me that, arriving at
night and starting out to explore the city the next
morning, he at once noticed Ward II, Ward III, and
so on, near his hotel and thought he must be in the
vicinity of a great Boston hospital with out-lying hos-
pital buildings. And an old Bostonian assures me
that it was not a joke, but a fact, that a Boston library
had a sign reading "Only low talk permitted in this
room" — till the newspapers learned of it!

"Prepayment" cars are a feature of Boston, and
you find yourself vaguely wondering about them until
you see that they are but the "Pay as you enter" cars
of other cities.

And all this in a city whose very street railway men
will calmly refer you to "the next articulated car,
sir," and which preens itself on such things as say-
ing that gloves are always "cleansed" and never
"cleaned" ! which is remindful that the men of Boston
do not wear gloves as freely as do the men of other
large cities in the East; gloves are evidently looked

155

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

upon, by them, as meant for cold weather, and not
until cold weather are they donned generally.

I have noticed that the police are a courteously
helpful set of men, never too busy to answer questions.
I have even smiled to see the traffic men at the busiest
crossings stop to answer carefully and distinctly the
questions of fluttered folk even while thronging motor
cars come bearing down in threatening masses.

In the best retail shopping district, which corre-
sponds with what used to be the ' ' ladies ' mile ' ' in New
York, there are many delightful specialty shops on
streets just off the principal thoroughfares: little
shops which make one think of London. There are
lace-shops, linen-shops, hat-shops, tea-shops — the list
might be extended indefinitely. The heavy percent-
age of candy-shops, with their attractive windows, is
noticeable, and one finds himself thinking that this
must be due to the influence of women — until he dis-
covers that there is also a striking number of candy-
shops down in the heart of the business district !

Boston must, also, be an intensely flower-loving
city, judging from the frequency of gorgeous window
displays of flowers and the great number of shops that
sell not only cut flowers but bulbs, seeds and house-
plants.

Ask a Philadelphian or a New Yorker to show you
the nearest doctor and he looks at the nearest house !
For doctors ' signs are so common in those cities that
you think it likely to see one at any window. But in
Boston the doctors' signs are few and far between,
and when found they are so small as to be not only

156

THE STREETS OF BOSTON

inconspicuous but almost unreadable. It would seem
as if tbe bigger a doctor's reputation the smaller his
sign. And to a great extent doctors throng to office
buildings.

The pharmacists, in distinction from the candy
and soda people who also sell drugs, are even rarer in
proportion than in other American cities.

Old-fashioned terms or phrases are preserved.
The sign of "Lobsters and Musty Ale" is not infre-
quent, and it is still far from impossible to find a
"Tap"; and if one is so old-fashioned as to drive into
town with a horse he may still have it "baited," as
old-fashioned announcements still have it, at old-
fashioned places.

And there are still, in Boston, book-shops that look
like book-shops, delightful book-shops that attract
book-buyers and book-lovers; a type of shop that
is passing, in some American cities, on account of
the taking over of the book trade by department
stores.

So sensitive is the Boston mind, in some respects,
that no employee of any shop, or, in fact, any
employee of any kind, is ever treated so harshly as to
be "discharged"; and to be "fired" would be shud-
deringly impossible ; here in Boston a dismissed em-
ployee has simply "got through." That is all. He
has "got through." And with that delicate euphe-
mism the incident and the conversation are delicately
but finally closed. If, on the other hand, a man has
resigned of his own free will, or has moved into a
higher sphere of influence, that is another matter, and

157

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Bostonian pains are taken to make that fact clear.
But in general, lie has just "got through."

It is impossible to think of any street scene in Bos-
ton without thinking of the most Bostonian feature of
all, the Boston bag. A plain leather bag it is, not
much over a foot long and about one foot in height;
it has something of the quality of a valise and some-
thing of the quality of a portfolio ; it has a flat bottom
and two leather handles and never closes with a lock
but with a strap. It is used by all the men and women
and girls and boys, it is used by youth and age, it is
used in walking the streets, in shopping, in going to
school, in going to business offices, it is carried in
street cars and automobiles, it is used for business and
for pleasure, it holds books, purchases of all sorts,
skates, lunches and anything; it may even at times be
empty, but it is none the less carried. No visitor who
becomes fully impregnated with the Boston feeling
ever leaves the city without carrying one away with
him. It has long been said that the requisite pos-
sessions of every true Bostonian are a Boston bag, a
subscription to the Transcript and a high moral
purpose.

There is so much of the pleasant in the weather in
Boston that I do not quite see why it is so abused by
the citizens themselves. It is not altogether so good
as in some American cities, but it is quite as good as
in some others, even of such as have a better name
for their weather. Yet one must admit, however re-
luctantly, that there is an east wind, which at times is
highly disagreeable. It can have such fierce, ugly,

158

THE STKEETS OF BOSTON

persistent, tearing qualities that you feel as if on the
bridge of a liner with all the Atlantic pulling at you.
And it can blow like a proof of perpetual motion. It
can be as raw and chill and wet, too, as a wind blow-
ing straight off the Banks ; and one begins to see that
it is not necessarily blue blood that gives blue noses.

Although James Bussell Lowell, Bostonian and
Cambridgean that he was, gave Boston, with a
subtlety that the city has never yet realized, its cruel-
est weather tap by his declaration that it is in June
that "if ever" come perfect days, the perfect days are
many in the course of a year and the really excellent
days are many more. It seems as if Bostonians love
to find fault with their weather just as the people of
Edinburgh like to find fault with theirs, as a sort of
relief to wind-strained nerves, but without meaning to
be taken too literally. And yet, I remember a recent
September in which, for several days, some of the
Boston public schools were closed on account of the
oppressive heat, only to be closed for excessive cold
the very week after.

There are more drunken men to be met on Boston
streets than one sees in other cities, and many of them
are well dressed; and perhaps the frequency of the
sight indicates that the police do not think it necessary
to be too severe with men who are uncomfortably tack-
ing and taking their way home. But at least it is clear
that the law which takes away the screens from bars,
and thus puts them in public view, so that the passing
public, friends or relatives or employers, may see any
man who takes a drink, does not act as a deterrent;

159

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

indeed, the crowded condition of the bars in general
throughout the city shows that the enforced publicity
has not had any prohibitive effect.

The parkways of Boston, and especially what may
be called the incidental parkways, are thoroughly ad-
mirable ; and by incidental parkways I mean the nar-
row strips, boulevarded and parked for long distances,
as along the Back Bay and out for miles through the
Fenway and beyond, where the bordering land is used
freely for homes, and just as much for the charming
homes of people of moderate means as for those of the
wealthy.

There are superb roadways, running through beauti-
ful park-land, far out into the country outside of Bos-
ton, such roads being the result of the combined and
coordinated plans of State and city and townships.
I well remember such a road, leading out through
Commonwealth Avenue and Brookline, and thence on
to the westward toward Weston, through a lovely
natural landscape, admirably beautified by art.
There were groups of white birches beside the road,
and there were glimpses of little lakes, and the trees
were rich in the splendor of their autumn foliage, the
yellow maples, the scarlet sumac, the oaks with their
leaves of splendid bronze. Country clubs seemed to
hover, here and there, along the border, and, almost
hidden by trees, I noticed many a home. Other roads
now and then led off enticingly, and there were open
glades, tree foliaged, and splendid groups of massed
oaks, and veritable old warriors of pines. It is a roll-
ing country, part hills and part levels, and now and

160

THE STEEETS OF BOSTON

then there were special bits of beauty where a stream
was crossed and where one would catch glimpses of
canoes and of pretty girls paddling in blazers of yellow
or purple or green.

And this road is only one of a number of perfectly
oiled roads, tar-bound and hard, radiating away from
the city's center. One such road leads to the admira-
bly conceived Arnold Arboretum, established nearly
half a century ago, through the bequest of one hun-
dred thousand dollars, by James Arnold of New Bed-
ford, for the growth and exhibition of every kind of
tree that can be grown in the New England climate.
The Arboretum occupies over two hundred acres, and
is a beautiful and most interesting park, finely roaded
and footpathed, and planted with a vast variety of
trees and shrubs, all plainly marked.

One of the finest excursions, by motor or train or
trolley, is to "Wellesley; for the Elizabethan college
buildings, newly erected since a fire, are positively
beautiful in their setting of water and rolling land
and ancient pines ; and the atmosphere is one of sweet
and scholarly serenity.

The parks of Boston, and the parkway boulevards,
have not as yet been merged, as in Chicago, in a com-
prehensively connected system, yet the results thus
far are highly satisfactory. I remember, among other
roads, the Eevere Beach Parkway, a superb boulevard
that leads off towards Lynn and Salem; curving out
from Charlestown, and running beside the broad blue
bay and the wide white beach that are held within
the protecting arm of Nahant. Eevere Beach, so

161

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

thronged with myriad pleasure seekers in summer, I
recently saw in the loneliness of October, with its long
line of coastwise buildings closed, and only two human
figures in sight in the entire length and breadth of
the beach, two girls, one redcoated and the other red-
capped, moving prettily about.

And I went on through Lynn and Swampscott, along
a rock-made road just a little higher than the sweep-
ing sandy curve beside it, and there I saw myriad
boats floating in the water, or lying on the sloping
sand, and the water was all alive and glittering under
a cloudless sky; and a man in yellow oilskins was
leading a white horse that was drawing a green boat,
mounted on low gray wheels, toward the blue water.

F "/V.

CHAPTEE XIV

IN THE OLD NORTH END

|ROM the old North End, the old-
est part of the city, most of the
vestiges of early American life
have disappeared. There are two
extremely interesting old build-
ings, and there is Copp's Hill, but
in regard to the rest of the locality
it is not a jest, but a very practical
fact, to say that the sights of the
North End are mostly sites.
Here and there, tucked away, are a doorway, a pil-
lar, an ancient gable, but even such reminders are few.
However, the part of the city maintains strikingly the
old Boston characteristic of narrow streets, leading
in odd lines, and the two ancient buildings that re-
main are unusually ancient and of unusual interest.
The North End has become Italian. It is true that
Boston, on the whole, retains the general atmosphere
of an American city, but the entire North End is
foreign, and Salem Street might as well be called
the Via Tribunali.

It was many years ago that the descendants of the
original Americans disappeared from the North End,
but for a long time afterwards a great many of the

163

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

old-time houses remained, and the entire district was
so taken over by Hebrews that, until recent years, the
typical resident was that college-song celebrity, sung
into American fame, whose "name was Solomon Levy,
with his store on Salem Street." Gradually the
Italians have come into complete possession, and un-
attractive tenements have been erected for them, to
take the place of the houses of the past.

The old church on Salem Street, the Chiesa del
Cristo, is of fascinating interest. The name is not
remindful of things American, and so it may be ex-
plained that, although the Italian name has really
been placed out in front of the church to attract the
neighborhood dwellers, the good old American name
is also there ; for it is the Church of Christ, the famous
Old North Church, a bravely notable church, the old-
est of all the churches of Boston. But it somewhat
startles an American to find Christ Church translated
into Chiesa del Cristo, with ' ' Servizio Divino," "Scu-
ola Domenicati," and "Tutti sono invitata," added.

But you enter the church and at once you are back
I in the far-distant American past, for the church has
stood here on the slope of Copp 's Hill since 1723, and
its interior, so fair and white, so pilastered and pan-
eled in beauty, is full of the very atmosphere of early
days. So white, indeed, is the interior, that the
only touches of color are in the rose silk about the
altar and the organ gallery, and the color of rose in the
lining of the pews, this diffused presence of rose giv-
ing just tbe needed softening touch. But I ought not
to forget another touch of color : an American flag, at

164

IN THE OLD NORTH END

one end of the church — a pleasant thing to see in this
old American and now Italian neighborhood.

The square box pews, the high and isolated pulpit,
reached by its bending stair, the double row of white
columns, the great brass candelabra of such excellent
simplicity in design — all is restful, complete, well
cared for, in every respect satisfactory.

The exceedingly sweet chimes are of eight bells,
placed here in 1744, and upon one of them the proud
statement is lettered : "We are the first ring of bells
cast for the British Empire in North America. ' ' And
when they ring out the old-time hymns familiar to the
English-speaking races, here in the now foreign-speak-
ing region, as they do on Sunday afternoons, one may
fancy that it is with a sort of sweet pathos, as if hop-
ing that some American will hear.

There are many details of interest. The old clock
in front of the organ has ticked there for almost a
century and a half. Here is a pew set apart, so the
old inscription has it, for the use of the "Gentlemen
of the Bay of Honduras" — and one learns that this
pew was long ago thus honorably set apart in recogni-
tion of the building of the spire of the church by the
Honduras merchants of 1740. The present spire,
above the tower, is not the original one, which blew
down over a hundred years ago, but the spire that we
now see, delicate and strong and graceful as it is, was
put up by the architect to whom Boston owes much,
Bulfinch, who carefully reproduced it from the orig-
inal drawings. In front of the organ are four charm-
ing little figures of cherubim, carved figures of women

165

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

perched prettily, with trumpets at their lips, stand-
ing there as they have stood since the long-past pre-
Eevolutionary days when they were captured by an
English privateer from a French ship.

It is a place to wander about in and notice one in-
teresting thing after another. Here, for example, is
a tablet in memory of Beverend Mather Byles, Jr.,
who was rector here from 1768 to 1775, one of the
many Church of England clergymen who fled in the
early days of the Bevolution to New Brunswick or
Nova Scotia, which were still loyal British posses-
sions. And there is a tablet to the memory of Major
John Pitcairn, he who at Concord, according to the
spirited tradition, stirred his rum with his finger and
said that thus he would stir the blood of the Ameri-
cans before night, but whose bravery could not save
the English forces from their running defeat from
Concord back to Boston. He was mortally wounded
a few weeks later on Bunker Hill. Likely enough
General Gage, witnessing the battle from the very
tower of this old church, saw him carried by his son
from the hillside down to the boats, where the young
man kissed him a last farewell and returned to duty
— one of the extremely dramatic touches in American
* history, and one which so impressed General Bur-
goyne that he spoke of what a wonderful scene it
would make in a play.

Grim old vaults extend beneath the entire church,
but admittance is now forbidden to visitors. I went
through, years ago, with a garrulous old sexton, now
long since dead, who loved the old inscriptions and

166

IN THE OLD NOKTH END

loved to talk of the happenings in the dark backward
and abysm of time, and I remember how he pointed
out, with curious pride, the vaults of the poor of the
parish in the place of honor beneath the very altar,
and he deciphered for me ancient, rusted inscriptions
telling of lords and ladies who had lain beneath the
church — inscriptions that were, to the imagination,
veritable volumes of romance ! — and he showed me an
open charnel vault, down in those black depths, where
whitening bones lay in lidless coffins.

Many of the New England rectors, fleeing from the
Eevolution, carried the ecclesiastical silver of their
churches with them, but Eector Byles did not follow
that unfortunate example, and thus the Old North
Church still owns its old silver, although it has de-
posited it, for safe keeping and so that it may be seen
under safe conditions, with the Museum of Fine Arts.
And it is a proud possession, for the splendid tall
flagons, the paten, the bowls, the plates, make in all
the most notable collection of old ecclesiastical silver
in New England, and have come down with memories
of wealthy donors, of merchants, of Colonial rulers,
even of royalty.

The church still proudly holds its old vellum-covered
books, one of the most picturesque collections in
America ; and there is a very early bust of Washing-
ton, believed to be the first monument to "Washington
to be set up anywhere in America ; in recent years the
famous name of Houdon has been attached to this, but
it is not quite like Houdon 's work, and it was probably
made by some forgotten artist who was momentarily

167

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

inspired by such a mighty subject as Washington.

There is a two-centuries-old, mahogany, bandy-
legged armchair in the chancel, so fine in shape, so
truly glorious a specimen of chairmaking, as fitly to
be compared with the best old armchairs of America
— William Penn's, the high-backed Chippendale of the
first officer of Congress, the Jacobean armchair of
Concord, the Elder's chair of Plymouth. One places
this chair of Christ Church near the head of the list.
The altar table is also contemporaneous with the
church itself and is of solid, heavy oak. In a room
behind the chancel there is also some extremely pleas-
ing old furniture, for there are a desk of oak and a
gate-legged table, and an ancient chair of Queen Anne
design, fine and notable.

You go forth again into Salem Street, and you have
been so deeply impregnated with the spirit of the past
that you can glance up, with a pleasure that is un-
alloyed by the swarming foreign life, at the fine pro-
portions of this old edifice, which has stood here so
beautifully and so long. Then again comes the sense
that this has become a Naples, but without the pic-
turesqueness of Naples : without the color, the pleas-
ant intimacies, the costumes, the flowers, the goats,
of that massed and ancient city: and you feel angered
that Italian boys crowd about you so vociferously, of-
fering themselves as guides to the ancient American
graves on Copp's Hill.

Up on the front of the church is a tablet telling that
from this tower were hung the signal lanterns of Paul
Bevere ; and as one reads this the mind is filled with

168

IN THE OLD NORTH END

a rush of romantic memories. For that ride of Paul
Eevere's was so wonderful a thing! And it is not
fiction, romantic though it sounds, but a veritable fact.
Eevere did not, so it happened, see the lanterns him-
self, but friends were on the lookout and told him
that the lights showed, and off he went galloping on
his splendid errand. Even the most sluggish blood
must thrill at such a story.

And the tale itself would be none the less inspiring
even if, as some have believed, it was from the tower
of another North Church that the lights were flashed,
instead of from this, for it is the splendid story it-
self that matters ; the story of how Paul Eevere was
silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, past the
Somerset, British man-of-war, and the other ships of
the British fleet, the story of the flashing out of the
lights, and of Eevere 's bravely galloping off through
the Middlesex hamlets and farms and telling of the
British march: "A voice in the darkness, a knock
at the door, and a word that shall echo forevermore"
— It is a fine thing for our country to possess a tale
so splendidly romantic and so nobly true.

The other North Church, for which some claim has
been made, stood in North Square, not far from here,
and was torn down by the British for firewood in the
course of the siege of Boston. Paul Eevere himself,
writing years after the close of the Eevolution, says
the signals were shown on the "North Church." He
does not say, "the North Church that was destroyed,"
and therefore should be taken to mean the church
known by all as the North Church at the time he wrote

169

THE BOOK OE BOSTON

— the church still standing to-day. The present
church fits the description that the lanterned church
"rose above the graves on the hill," and the situation
is precisely such as would be chosen for signaling
across the water ; so there is no good reason to doubt
its being the very building, thus leaving to the noble
story a noble existent setting.

Copp's Hill Burying-Ground, near the Old North
Church, the metaphorical "night encampment on the
hill," was literally a camp, for British soldiers, dur-
ing the siege, and its oldest portion became a ceme-
tery at least as long ago as 1660.

The hill is not so high as it originally was, having
been greatly altered in appearance by the grading
of adjacent streets and the building of embankments,
and also by the erection of tenements that huddle
against the cemetery ; and tenement dwellers actually
string their clothes-lines, with their variegated bur-
dens, not only beside the graveyard but actually
across parts of it. And cats, mostly the big yellow
ones, roam sedately about, yet somehow without the
grim suggestiveness that Stevenson thought he dis-
cerned in the cemetery cats of Edinburgh.

Copp's Hill is particularly the burying-ground of
the Mather family, including Cotton and Increase, and
the Mather tomb is still preserved ; but as to the graves
of most of the other early Americans buried here there
is scarcely any certainty as to precise location or date,
for many of the stones have been freely changed
about, and many have had the dates chipped and even
altered ; many were even carried away and, when re-

170

IN THE OLD NORTH END

covered, were set back at random. And none of this
vandalism can be charged to foreigners. It was done
before the influx of either Hebrews or foreigners, by
Americans who saw humor in changing dates and
shifting stones, and others who utilitarianly recog-
nized in these stones material for doorsteps, window-
sills and chimneys. Still, this burying-ground stands
notably, even though conglomeratedly, for early Bos-
ton.

I found it a quiet place in spite of the tenement sur-
roundings, and with a marked effect of crowded mor-
tality, which is doubtless owing, in some degree, to
the effect of crowded life in the streets and tenements
adjacent. The place is a grassy knoll, studded with
stones and with smallish trees, and the ground is
a-flutter with little American flags fastened on low
upright iron rods, it being not precisely apparent
which graves these flags mark, although one naturally
supposes that they are offerings of Decoration Day.

Down below, seen over rooftops and down narrow
streets, is the harbor, and on the height beyond, over
in Charlestown, towers the lofty monument of Bunker
Hill. In the harbor, the other day, there lay at
anchor, with felicity of position, several warships,
just where the English warships were at anchor when
Paul Eevere was rowed by.

Always in this vicinity the mind goes back to Paul
Revere. And it is pleasant to know that the little
building on North Square which was his home for
many years, not many blocks away from the Old
North Church, has been preserved, although it is al-

171

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

most lost among the Italian shops and tenements of
the district. It is a small building with an over-hang-
ing second story, a high sloping roof, and the hugest
of chimneys. And if it has been somewhat over re-
stored outside and in, with more of diamond panes
than Bevere himself would have used, still, it is such
a satisfaction to see it kept at all that one does not like
to feel critical about it. It was a very old house when
Bevere bought it, before the Eevolution, and, as a
gauge of values in those days, it may be mentioned
that he paid for it, in cash, 213 pounds 6 shillings and
8 pence, and that he also gave a mortgage for 160
pounds. It was from the very windows of this house,
even though now over-diamonded, that he showed
those transparencies of the Boston Massacre that
brought all Boston here, aflame with excitement.

The boldness of Paul Bevere, his bluntness, his dar-
ing, his physical energy, ought to have won him high
place in public affairs. He was one of the most
trusted "Sons of Liberty," from as early as 1765; as
confidential messenger he was entrusted with impor-
tant communications from prominent leaders of Bos-
ton, such as Adams and Hancock, to members of the
Provincial Congress and the Continental Congress;
several months before Lexington, in December of
1774, he rode, for the Boston Committee of Safety, to
the Committee of Safety at Portsmouth, notifying
them that the English had prohibited importations of
powder and munitions, and that a large garrison had
been ordered to Fort William and Mary, whereupon,
in consequence of this message, some four hundred

172

IN THE OLD NOETH END

men were hurried by the Portsmouth Committee to
the fort, where they temporarily made prisoners of
the captain and his handful of soldiers, and went off
with some ninety-seven kegs of powder and a quantity
of small arms, which, thus captured, were afterwards
used to vast advantage on Bunker Hill.

As an artist, Eevere made prints, and copper-plate
engravings, of pictures of ante-Revolutionary events,
which were sent out broadcast and made wide and
successful appeals to patriotism. He was forty years
old when the Revolution began ; a man well tested and
trusted; a man who had given hostages to fortune,
too, for by his first wife he had eight children, and he
had married a second, who in time was to offer him
a like total of eight !

He was a silversmith of rare skill, and made, in
solid silver, delicate ladles, exquisite teaspoons,
stately flagons, rotund mugs, and salts, and braziers,
and sugar-tongs — all with skill and beauty and pro-
priety; not crude things, but exquisite things; silver
as exquisite as was made in England in that period of
distinctly fine taste. And examples of his art are
still preserved, and vastly prized, in all the shapes
named.

Paul Revere was one of those men who can do any-
thing and do it well. He even turned his attention to
dentistry in the early days when dentistry was barely
beginning to be a science, and there is still extant one
of his advertisements of 1768, reading:

"Whereas, many Persons are so unfortunate as to
lose their Fore-Teeth by Accident, and otherways, to

173

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

their great Detriment, not only in Looks, but speaking
both in Public and Private: — This is to inform all
such, that they may have them re-placed with artificial
Ones, that looks as well as the Natural, and answers
the End of Speaking to all Intents, by Paul Revere."

When, quite a while after Bunker Hill, it was de-
sired to remove the body of General Warren from its
first resting-place, it was Paul Eevere who identified
it by an artificial tooth and the wire he had used to
fasten it in.

Eevere also engraved much of the Revolutionary
money. Nor does the list of his varied activities end
here, for he also made the carved wood frames for
many of Copley's paintings — and beautiful frames
they are !

Paul Revere, bold and shrewd as he was, seems to
have been the only man who distrusted that Bostonian
who was the predecessor of Benedict Arnold, Doctor
Benjamin Church. Church was in the confidence of
the early patriots, and, after taking part in confer-
ences, used to walk over to the British and betray all
that was being planned. Church was lucky to escape
with banishment when his treachery came to light.

In spite of boldness and shrewdness and loyalty,
Revere had no appreciative standing in Boston. He
was always termed a mechanic, and was looked on
rather patronizingly. When the Revolutionary War
actually came, he expected opportunity for service,
but practically no notice was taken of him. Although
Washington knew him, it was slightly, as a local man
who cleverly saw to the repair of some gun-wagons,

174

IN THE OLD NOETH END

and so Eevere was not offered a post with the Conti-
nental army, bnt was left to do duty for the local Mas-
sachusetts authorities, which gave him an inactive life,
for, after the early days, the War remained in the Cen-
tral and Southern Colonies. We hear of him as head
of a court-martial, dealing out minor sentences such as
riding on the wooden horse as a punishment for play-
ing cards on the Sabbath. We hear of him as gover-
nor of Castle William (Castle Island) in Boston Har-
bor, and see him mounting there the guns from the
wrecked Somerset — what thoughts must have come to
him as he remembered the night when he rowed past
her dark sides! We read of him as a subordinate
member of the poorly planned and more poorly exe-
cuted Penobscot expedition.

He has left on record that he felt, bitterly, that those
who knew him best, those he thought his friends, took
no notice of him. And, indeed, a word from Hancock
or John Adams or Samuel Adams to either Washing-
ton or Anthony Wayne, would have given them an
admirable, capable soldier and would have given Ee-
vere the chance he wanted; but Hancock and the
Adamses, wise and patriotic though they were, were
not themselves men of action, and were too quiet in
personal tastes to appreciate the merits of vivid per-
sonal courage. And so, toward the end of the war,
Eevere went back to private life and work again, a
disappointed man.

After the war was over he asked to be Master of
the Mint — and what honor and distinction he, with his
skill and artistic feeling, would have given it! But

175

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

his Boston friends in power found it politically in-
convenient to urge Ms claims and his ability upon
Congress, and thus the Mint missed a superb master
and Bevere continued a private citizen. He estab-
lished a brass foundry and furnished the brass and
copper work for the splendid Old Ironsides, and re-
ceived for it, it is curious to know, the sum of $3,820.33.
He rolled sheets of copper for the dome of the State
House on Beacon Hill. And when Governor Samuel
Adams, in 1795, laid the corner stone of the State
House, his first assistant was "the Most Worshipful
Paul Bevere, Grand Master"; and, as Grand Master
of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, he signed the
address from the Masons to George Washington, the
Mason, when he left the Presidency.

And so it is interesting to see preserved, here in
this ancient quarter of Boston, the little ancient house
that was for many years the home of that remarkable
man.

CHAPTEB XV:

DOWN WAPPING STBEET AND UP BUNKER HILL

VEE in that old part of Boston
still known as Charlestown,
there is a little quaint and wav-
ering street, shabby and irregu-
lar ; it is a street that arouses an
odd sense of interest, and the in-
terest is added to by the signs
which you read in the windows
of the shabby little shops.
"Everything from a needle to
an anchor"; "Why get wet when a raincoat is
only $1.25?"; "Lockers to let"; and you see, also,
that such simple joys are provided as white
shoes, gum, tobacco, and candy, and that there
are to be had not only "Yokahoma Eats" but also
"Honolulu Lunch." I noticed, also, a sign "Don't
risk your money ; buy a leg-belt" — a leg-belt ; so that's
the way, is it, that sailors keep their money !

This wavering, savory little street is Wapping
Street, and not only in its name is it delightfully
reminiscent of waterside London, but in its aspect;
and it is curiously fitting that this street should be
reminiscent of something that is English, for it leads
to the gate of the Charlestown Navy Yard, and where

177

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

the Navy Yard is now the English landed for their
attack on Bunker Hill.

There are spaciousness and quiet inside of the
grounds of the Navy Yard, and flowers and gardens
and a pergola ; and a bugle sounds through the air, and
in a little while a band is playing, and capable-looking
officers and men walk spiritedly about, and there are
long machine shops and quarters, and here and there
is some old cannon or figurehead from some ship of the
past, and there is the fine, old-fashioned home of the
commandant, with its cream-colored brick ; in fact, all
the brick hereabouts is cream-colored, and Uncle Sam
is very generous with paint.

At the piers, or out on the open water, warships,
little or big, lie moored, and near the very heart of it
all is the famous frigate Constitution, lovingly known
as Old Ironsides.

She is black and white, in her glory of masts and
spars and myriad ropes. From her curving prow to
the quaint-shaped cabin at the stern, her lines are of
the handsomest. She is graceful and strong, she is
trim and capable and proud, and her guns, in their
long double lines, are close together, giving a realizing
sense of the meaning of the old word "broadside."
One is apt to forget that such a warship carried hun-
dreds of fighters and scores of cannon.

The ship is freely open to visitors, and one cannot
but be a better American for going aboard and actually
treading its decks; one cannot but feel a surge of
patriotism when going about on this old ship that
made such glorious history.

178

"old ironsides

WAPPING STEEET AND BUNKER HILL

It was well on toward a century ago, in 1830, that
some Government official gave orders to have the ship
broken up and sold for junk ; and the entire nation was
shocked when the news was learned, for Old Iron-
sides had won a place very close to all hearts. And
a young man, burning with the indignation that all
were feeling, put that fiery feeling into fiery words :

"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky ! ' '

Thus the lines began, and they went on gloriously
to the demand that rather than break up and sell the
splendid ship they

"Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"

After that there was no more talk of breaking
up Old Ironsides. "With these lines, young Oliver
"Wendell Holmes had done a proud service for his
country, and the ship was repaired and painted, to be
kept as a national possession, and the Government
ever since then has continued to paint and furbish her,
and she is still a national heritage. A few years ago,
as she was said to be going to pieces at her pier, some
navy officer proposed that she be towed out to sea,
not to be given the glorious end that Holmes pictured
as being better than tearing up for junk, but to be a

179

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

floating target for battleships and sunk for gunners'
practice ! But Congress was at once so overwhelmed
with protests that it was decided still to keep the gal-
lant old ship.

The houses of Charlestown rise crowdedly behind
the line of the Navy Yard, and above and beyond the
confusion of roofs one sees the upper part of a tall
stone shaft, bare and dignified in its fine simplicity.
And no American can look at that monument and be
entirely unmoved, for it marks the place where was
fought the most representatively American of all bat-
tles, that of Bunker Hill.

And here, from the Navy Yard, where the British
troops landed long before there was any Navy Yard,
we follow up the hill ; only we do not go in a practically
direct line, as the British soldiers did, but, after walk-
ing back through queer little Wapping Street, go by
trolley, zigzaggingly, through rather commonplace
streets to the summit. There is nothing in Charles-
town that offers interest except the Navy Yard and
the monument; the town was set on fire and burned
by the British at the time of the battle, — no doubt a
military necessity — and the rebuilt portion, as well as
the great spaces that were bare in Bevolutionary days
and have since been built over, have never drawn
either wealth or an interesting kind of architecture.
But one thinks little of such considerations as these
in the presence of Bunker Hill Monument.

A strange battle, that of Bunker Hill! On the
American side there were no uniforms and there was
no flag ! There was really not even a leader, for no

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WAPPING STEEET AND BUNKER HILL

one general was absolutely in command. The Ameri-
cans had come together in a sort of neighborly gather-
ing, for the mutual good, and officers and men were all
fully in accord with one another. But although it
may be said to have been a neighborly New England
gathering, there was no lack of military skill and no
lack of discipline. And the British themselves ad-
mitted afterwards that there was no lack of the best
fighting qualities.

And the spectators outnumbered the fighters ! That
strange fact makes the battle unique among the great
battles of the world. For not only did General Gage
and other officers watch the fight from the tower of the
old North Church, but every high point of land, every
roof and window that had an outlook over the water,
was crowded with the people of Boston, sympathizers
with either Boyalty or Bepublicanism, watching the
fight with intense or even frantic interest. They saw
the Americans calmly walk about and calmly settle be-
hind the hastily made breastwork, preparing for the
assault. They saw the red-coats go steadily up the
hill. They watched with straining interest as the
breastwork was neared — Would the Americans run?
— And then came the flash of rifles and the crackling
roar of sound and the red-coats wavered and recoiled,
and officers furiously tried to encourage and hold their
men ; but in vain, for down the hill the red-coats ran,
leaving the slope dotted thick with the dead and
wounded. What a sight for the men and women and
children who watched all this with terrified interest !
Then again the calm preparation, again a brave at-

181

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

tack, again a withering fire and a huddled retreat
down the hill.

Well, we all know that at length the British won,
and that, in full sight of the Boston spectators, almost
all of whom had friends or kinsmen among the fighters,
the Americans fell back with glory. "The defense
was well conceived and obstinately maintained,"
writes tbe clear-eyed Burgoyne, one of the British
major-generals in Boston, who had been given charge
of some desultory cannonading. ' ' The retreat was no
flight," he writes, English general though he was ; "it
was even covered with bravery and military skill."
(He was afterwards to learn, still more intimately,
about American bravery and military skill !) And the
first question of General Washington, not yet in New
England, when he heard of Bunker Hill, was the eager
inquiry as to whether or not the militia had stood firm,
and when he was told how superbly they had acted, he
exclaimed, "Then the liberties of the country are
safe 1" And all this leads to the strangest considera-
tion of all in regard to this battle, which is, that al-
though it was an American defeat, it had all the essen-
tial elements of an American victory.

Charlestown is on a peninsula, and, from a strictly
military point of view, there was nothing to be gained
by the Americans in advancing to a position so un-
tenable that the English, by so locating the warships
as to cut off communication with the mainland, could
have made their retreat impossible. Also, from a
strictly military point of view, there was nothing to be
gained by the British in making a direct attack upon

182

WAPPING STEEET AND BUNKER HILL

the American position in front. But both sides were
keyed for a test of strength, both sides knew that the
test must come sooner or later, and on both sides was
the intense feeling that the sooner the better.

All the central part of the battle-field has been kept
free from buildings, and they cluster modestly about
the big, open, grass-covered space. And from the
center of this space rises the monument, flawless in its
stern dignity, massive in its strength. Without pre-
liminary base, it rises from the ground ; it is of blocks
of New England granite and has a monolithic effect,
lofty and tall. And the most eloquent man that New
England has ever produced, the mighty orator who
spoke at the laying of the corner-stone and at the com-
pletion of the monument, summed up its feeling and
its influence with a massive simplicity equal to that of
the monument itself :

"It is a plain shaft. It bears no inscriptions. But
it looks, it looks, it speaks, to the full comprehension
of every American mind, and the awakening of glow-
ing enthusiasm in every American heart."

It was among the most interesting features of the
celebration of the monument's completion, in 1843,
that thirteen survivors, of Bunker Hill or Lexington
or Concord, were present to listen to Webster's ora-
tion, although that was sixty-eight years after those
battles ! It had seemed almost wonderful that quite a
number of Bunker Hill veterans were present at the
laying of the corner-stone in 1825, when Webster
thrilled the vast assemblage before him with the words
addressed to the survivors — the best known of all his

183

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

utterances — beginning "Venerable men, you bave
come down to us from a former generation!"

Anotber wbo was present in 1825 to listen to Web-
ster was a certain Jean Paul Boch Ives Gilbert Motier,
Marquis de Lafayette; and Boston still loves to tell
tbat at a dinner given in tbe distinguished French-
man's bonor at the time of this visit, he emotionally
joined in cheering some words laudatory of himself,
through not quite catching that he was the subject of
the eulogy ; something, by the way, which would never
have been noticed in France, and certainly not remem-
bered for more than a minute, had some American
general over there, from lack of full understanding
of the language, joined in applause of himself.

It is well to remember in regard to Bunker Hill, that
the British forces engaged in the attack numbered
some two thousand men, and that the defenders were
fewer, being in all only some fifteen hundred ; and that
the Americans lost about three hundred and fifty in
killed, wounded and prisoners, whereas the English
loss in killed and wounded was well over one thousand.
I remember seeing, in some museum, a cotemporary
pamphlet that was scattered throughout America,
grimly itemizing that the English lost, in killed, 1 lieu-
tenant-colonel, 4 majors, 11 captains, 13 lieuten-
ants, 1 ensign, 102 sergeants and 100 corporals. No
wonder Bunker Hill has been looked upon as the place
where the British army faced the hottest fire of its
history, considering the number engaged and the
length of time that the actual firing lasted ; and it was
especially noticeable that the officers suffered, propor-

184

WAPPING STREET AND BUNKER HILL

tionately, even more than the men, because most of
the Americans were sharp-shooters and picked them
off.

After the battle the British occupied the hill them-
selves, and kept soldiers there throughout the contin-
uation of the siege; and General "Washington never
tried to take it away from them, knowing that its pos-
session would have no particular bearing on the cap-
ture of the city, and that it would naturally fall into
American hands again in good time.

The days of the siege were so tiresome to the British
that they amused themselves by presenting plays of
their own composition, in Faneuil Hall, and one of
these plays was a farce which they called ' ' The Block-
ade of Boston." The farce gave them huge enjoy-
ment, for it caricatured Americans in general and
American soldiers in particular, and presented a
special caricature of General Washington himself,
armed with a grotesque rusty sword and attended by
a grotesque orderly. On a January night in 1776 the
very building was rocking with the laughter of the men
and their officers at this presentation, when a sergeant
rushed into the hall; "The Yankees are attacking our
works on Bunker Hill ! " he cried. For a few moments
there was an amazed silence. The men thought it a
joke, and yet the sergeant's tone had a grim earnest-
ness that they did not like. Then there came the sharp
command of their general, who was present : " To your
posts, men ! " A cold chill seemed to fill the hall, and
all the farce fell away from the idea of Washington
and Americans, for although those English soldiers

185

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

were not cowards it was anything but a farce to face
Americans on Bunker Hill or anywhere else. It
turned out that that particular alarm was a mistake
and that no attack was in progress, but never after was
there much hilarity at farces ridiculing the Americans.

Close beside Bunker Hill Monument there was put
up, a few years ago, a little building that was an entire
departure from the fine simplicity of the original
plans; a little classic stone temple, with six classic
stone columns; an incongruous structure to find on
Bunker Hill. It does not have even the excuse of be-
ing a museum, except for a few not-notable paintings ;
but it is a place where souvenirs and post-cards are
sold. There ought to be nothing there but the monu-
ment itself. A structure of any sort breaks the
splendid austerity of effect.

Not far from the monument is a statue in honor of
the brave Prescott, showing him in his long and un-
military coat just as he stood when giving the com-
mand to fire, that had been withheld till the whites of
the English eyes could be seen. The statue is by the
American sculptor, Story, and one wonders why, in
spite of its excellence, it is wanting in vigorous vital-
ity, and seems even a trifle priggish; and then it is
noticed that down on one corner is some incised letter-
ing telling that it was made at "Boma" — not Boston,
or even good plain Kome, but "Boma" ; and one won-
ders no longer that vitality and Americanism were
missed.

But one need not trouble about such minor things as
classic temples or Eoman- American sculpture, for the

186

WAPPING STEEET AND BUNKER HILL

noble Bunker Hill Monument is here, telling forever
its noble tale; and even the lines of the redoubts, so
bravely held, have been remembered and carefully
marked ; and the sense of American glory is here.

In the Tower of London there is a cannon which, as
the English claim, was captured at Bunker Hill ; and
a few years ago, when this was vauntingly shown to a
visiting American, he looked it all over very calmly
and then, just as calmly, said : ' ' Oh, I see ; you have the
cannon — and we have the hill ! ' '

_• _ "IUI'IIMI',ggj —

CHAPTER XVI

THE BACK BAY AND THE STUDENTS' QUAETEE

[0 no Bostonian does the
Back Bay mean water! The
Charles, backed np by a dam
to the dimensions of a bay, re-
mains merely the Charles, and
the Back Bay is the erstwhile
swamp land beyond Beacon
Hill and the Common. Even
the Public Garden was, long ago, merely a marsh at
the Common's end, and the great space beyond, now
covered by endless streets and houses, is all made
land. It is the Back Bay.

The main artery of the Back Bay is Commonwealth
Avenue, and it is so proudly boulevarded, in noble
sweep and breadth, that one is almost ready to forget
the brown-stone monotony of its houses. The avenue
is two hundred and twenty feet in width, from house-
front to house-front, and is free of street cars. Down
its center is a great, generous, tree-lined, well-shaded
parkway, with a path down the middle for pedestrians ;
there are pleasantly placed benches by which the park-
like character is increased; and this long central

188

THE BACK BAY

greenery lias a series of admirably placed statues, with
the equestrian Washington, excellently done by Ball,
at the beginning of the line; although Bostonians
themselves long ago pointed out that he has turned his
back on the State House and is riding away!

This avenue is so successful, so notable, as to have
served as a model for other boulevards throughout the
United States, and it has also given inspiration to Bos-
ton for her recent development of home-bordered park-
ways running out toward outlying suburbs.

One of the statues is of John Glover of Marblehead,
who commanded a thousand men of his town, whom he
formed into a redoubtable Marine Regiment, ' ' soldiers
and sailors too"; and this monument perpetuates his
skill and bravery in getting "Washington's army across
to New York after the defeat at Long Island, and his
even more remarkable success in boating the army
across the Delaware on a certain bitter winter's night
at a place still called Washington's Crossing. He
died in his beloved Marblehead; but Boston has placed
his statue here, feeling that in this city such a valiant
son of New England should be forever remembered.
His hand firmly grasps his sword hilt — but the sword
itself has gone ! Was it the act of some vandal, one
wonders, some one with a degenerate idea of relic
hunting? But at least nobody ever took his sword
away from John Glover living.

Another of the line of statues is that of Alexander
Hamilton, and it looks odd because it is minus the
familiar queue. On the lower part of this monument
is a medallion, of three profiles, apparently of Ham-

189 rS

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ilton ; not quite understandable this, and one can think
only of the two skulls of Saint Peter shown by the
Roman guide, one of the saint in early manhood and
the other in later life. This triple representation, if
of Hamilton, does not have the reason for being of the
wonderful triple portrait, by Gilbert Stuart, of
Madame Bonaparte.

The great expanse of water that is really the Back
Bay, and which borders the section of land that Boston
perversely calls the Back Bay, is one of the glories of
Boston. Although broadened by a dam, it is not water
that is lifeless and dull, but water that is cheerful,
wimpling, sparkling, very much alive. And when a
winter storm comes the water dashes over its broaden-
ing embankment with all the appearance of a real sea.
Along the waterside, and for a broad space back from
the water, a parkway has been made that at any season
of the year offers most admirable waterside walking.
Surely, no other modern city is so thoughtful of its
pedestrians, in these days of motor-cars, as is Boston.
You may walk on Charles Bank for a long distance, on
a broad concrete walk, with grass and shrubs on one
side and the dancing water on the other. The long
line of houses built on the Back Bay extension of Bea-
con Street looks out over the water, and the people
who live in these houses prize the view, with its sun-
set glories ; but all along the water-front one sees only
the backs of the houses — the back windows ! To the
Bostonian, the proper fronting of a house is on a con-
ventional two-sided street, and the architectural
temptation of a fine front toward a fine water-view

190

THE BACK BAT

does not alter propriety. "We have the view from
our rear windows," they tell you; not even willing to
adopt double-fronted houses, which would give archi-
tectural finish toward the water as well as toward the
street.

Between Charles Bank and Beacon Hill, the city had
become unattractive in development, whereupon, a
few years ago, the property-owners banded together
cooperatively and did a fine thing which would have
been quite impossible to them acting as individual
owners. They united in a comprehensive plan for
improvement, and there has already been the most
delightful success, for houses have been built that are
mutually protected and protecting, notably on the
cleverly arranged Charles Street Square, with its
broad opening out toward the water, and its houses all
balanced architecturally in the Colonial style. So
successful has this been that there will shortly be an
adjoining group of houses, which is to bear the name
of Charles Street Circle.

To people outside of Boston, the words ' ' Back Bay ' '
represent social domination, but Boston itself knows
that social supremacy has remained with Beacon Hill.
Although "the sunny street that holds the sifted few"
stretches into the Back Bay, and although the author
of that line, Holmes, moved off into the levels, on that
extended street — his last home was the ordinary-look-
ing house at 296 Beacon Street — and although Silas
Lapham and many another have built or bought in the
Back Bay, most of the "sifted few" remain on Beacon
Hill. Even the wealth that went to the Back Bay

191

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

found that it "cannot buy with gold the old associa-
tions"; and the Back Bay is, after all, just street after
street filled with houses, representative of comfortable
living, which are too ordinary to praise and yet not
bad enough to criticise. It is not altogether clear why
one feels resentment toward the houses and streets of
the Back Bay, for they seem innocent enough: but
when Henry James impatiently wrote of their "per-
spectives of security," he expressed, by this curious
phrase, that the Back Bay somehow gets on the nerves.

But this region does at least spread out with a
luxury of space, as if the city, released from the
cramping of its original bounds — hemmed in as it
originally was by bay and river and swamp, and there-
fore built with repression, with tightness, with narrow-
ness of streets — rejoices in its new-found freedom.

And here there is something typically and pleas-
antly Bostonian. Beginning with the cross-streets of
the Back Bay, the street names are in alphabetical se-
quence, with two-syllabled names alternating with
three ; or, I should say, being in Boston, dissyllables
alternating with trisyllables ; and the Bostonians take
a nice pride in it. There are Arlington, Berkeley,
Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester —
and it would seem that Boston, differing from the rest
of America and from England, deems Gloucester a
trisyllable and will have none of the elided "Gloster."

That the present home of Margaret Deland is in the
Back Bay is one of its pleasantest features, and the
house, 35 Newbury Street, shows a great frontage of
mullion-windowed glass, being even more marked in

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THE BACK BAY

respect to glass than her former home on Mt. Vernon
Street. And this window frontage is for the sake of
the jonquils and spring flowers that she loves and
which she personally plants and watches. The crea-
tor of Doctor Lavendar, the author who has filled Old
Chester with fascinating life, is almost as notahle a
flower-grower as she is a novelist, and once a year,
in this comfortable, sunny home, she holds a winter
sale of these jonquils that she has grown and gives
the proceeds to a vacation home for girls, a project
dear to her heart.

A fine daylight view of the sky-line of the Back Bay
may be had from the center of the Cambridge Bridge ;
I do not remember any similar view in any other city ;
and it possesses the additional peculiarity of being a
view of levels : the level of the water, the level of the
parkway, then the generally level line of house roofs.
But the finest view that the Back Bay offers is of the
water itself and not the land, and at night instead of
in the daytime. For this view, stand far out on Har-
vard Bridge, and the effect is beautiful in the extreme.
You are hemmed in by the rows of city lights that sur-
round the water on all sides ; a mile away the view is
finely ended, in one direction, by the arching curve of
lights that mark the Cambridge Bridge ; about as far
in the other direction, the bordering lights converge
as the water narrows ; down the long sides are the un-
broken lines of lights ; you see nothing whatever but
these lights, and the dark water dimly illumined by
their gleam, and the restless reflections of the myriad
lights struck waveringly down into the water, and the

193

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

bands of light that royally make a diadem of the great
dome on the height of Beacon Hill.

The social rivalry of Beacon Hill and the Back Bay
may be left to the Bostonians, just as the social rivalry
of south and north of Market Street may be left to
Philadelphians ; and Beacon Hill and the Back Bay
are quite at one on the most Bostonian of all subjects,
that of ''family." For in Boston, every one of the
worth while is a descendant; no one who is only an
ascendant is for a moment worthy of comparison with
a descendant ! One of the cleverest Bostonians once
remarked that although politically there should be
equality, socially there should be "the" quality. As
the verse of exclusiveness has it :

"The good old city of Boston,
The city of culture and cod,
"Where the Cabots speak only to Lowells
And the Lowells — speak only to God."

And there are endless developments. A famous
Bostonian, commenting on the great fire of 1872,
clearly indicated that the important feature was, not
that he had suffered by this fire, but that his grand-
father had lost 40 buildings in the big fire of 1760!
Boston conversation is apt to be sprinkled thick with
Bible-like genealogy; I have heard, as typical din-
ner-table conversation, such things as: "James was
the son of John, you know, who was the son of Thomas,
the cousin of William." Most Bostonians are not
much interested in any conversation unless they can
naturally put in an ancestor or so, and always, in

194

THE BACK BAY

speaking of any happening of the past, Bostonians are
bound to remember that some ancestor or connection
was concerned. The traveler need not journey to
China to find ancestor worship.

One would no more have Boston without its naive
flavor of family talk than have Maarken without its
typical costumes: family belongs to Boston, as cos-
tumes belong to Maarken : and it is not in the least a
boastful pride in ancestors who have done great deeds :
the important thing is to be descended from certain
stocks and lines, arbitrarily decided upon in the course
of generations, with no reference whatever to merit or
achievement ; it is, indeed, no disadvantage for an an-
cestor to have done distinguished deeds for the nation
or to have written distinguished books, but on the
other hand it is no disadvantage for the ancestor to
be without distinction. And there is at the same time
a fine breadth and liberality about it all ; when one of
the oldest and finest families goes into the making of
sausages, and makes them for many, many years and
makes millions of dollars out of them, it does not hurt
its social standing in the least, as it might in some
more narrow city.

The intense feeling for family also works out rather
oddly in the frequent tying up of family property to
be held undivided by quite a number of heirs ; and the
fact that such cases often work hardship through the
inability of the heirs either to dispose of the property
or to receive incomes from it, does not at all tend to
discourage the custom. A friend mentioned in casual
conversation the other day that she was born on Mount

195

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Vernon Street and had only recently sold her one-ninth
part of her old family home, and that she had done it
with a keen wrench of feeling. You will not infre-
quently see in the newspapers advertisements offering
to lend money to heirs on their undivided estate or
their future inheritance.

Family is the common possession and talk of youth
and age, of men and women and boys and girls. An-
cestors are mulled over in all ordinary conversations.
Only this evening, as I walked on Beacon Street beside
the Common — literally this evening, and I quote liter-
ally what I chanced to overhear; indeed, even if I
wished to I could not invent anything that would so
well illustrate what I am setting down — only this eve-
ning, as two men passed me, one was saying: "His
great-grandfather — "! That was all. It was but a
few words caught in passing. But in no other city
could such altogether delightful words have been
heard.

I was led one day by a Boston friend to a lecture ;
it was a lecture on spiders ; and the very first words
of the lecturer were : " The Lycosidae is the most prom-
inent family we have in Boston." And there came to
mind a verse I had somewhere heard, a verse excellent
because so really illustrative :

"Little Miss Beacon Street
Sat on her window-seat,
Eating her beans and brown bread ;
There came a small spider
And sat down beside her —
'You're an Argyroneta,' she said."
196

THE BACK BAY

Lectures are themselves the very essence of Boston,
and this comes from the time when lecturers, mostly
Bostonians, went forth throughout the country, up-
lifting and instructing eager audiences. In those
days, lecturers were held to be representative of the
highest wisdom and lecturing was still deemed the
most admirable way of delivering wisdom — and these
two beliefs are still devoutly held in Boston. Where
two or three are gathered together there is sure to be
a lecturer in the midst of them; every Bostonian is a
lecturer or a listener ; the excellent habit is unescapa-
ble. Nothing else interests Bostonians as lectures do.
The summer course, the fall course, the winter course,
the spring course, the lectures of this, that and the
other prophet, are always occupying their time. As a
Bostonian said to me : "If you just sit down anywhere
in Boston a lecture will be poured into your ears."
There are lectures on astronomy and atavism and art;
there are lectures on batrachians and Buddhism and
butter-making ; there are cooking lectures, cosmos lec-
tures, curtain lectures, culture lectures; there are
lectures on duty and digestion, on philosophy and
Plato, on how to eat and sleep and think and dream;
there are lectures on everything practical and imprac-
tical. In fact, the lectures and the lecturers are innu-
merable, and the Bostonians have many local authori-
ties to whom they listen as oracles. As winter comes
on the true Bostonian gathers together his lecture
cards and sorts them, and hoards them, and gloats
over them, just as a squirrel gathers and hoards his
winter nuts. Lectures are nuts to Bostonians.

197

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

I remember an acquaintance saying one afternoon,
and I mention it because it is simply typical: "Aren't
you going to So-and-so's lecture at four o'clock?" and
when I replied tbat I was not, he said promptly:
"Then, of course, you are going to Thus-and-so's lec-
ture this evening? ' ' It would take the last sting from
death if a Bostonian could be assured of courses of
lectures through futurity.

Holmes loved to sit down and write a poem after
any lecture that especially interested him. Turn the
leaves of his volumes of verse and you will see quite
a number of lengthy poems with titles declaring them
to have been written on his return from lectures.

The entire idea was amazingly helped on its way by
the foundation of the Lowell lectures, three quarters
of a century ago. A great sum was left by one of the
Lowell family for the sole purpose of paying lecturers
to talk to Bostonians, with the typically Bostonian re-
quest that the manager should always, if possible, be
a Lowell. Scores of free lectures are delivered, annu-
ally, to Bostonians under the direction of the Lowell
Institute, and the pace thus set is followed so enthusi-
astically by all sorts of enthusiasts and associations
that there are hundreds of lectures every year.

Second only to lectures in popularity are concerts.
Nothing, indeed, is so held to represent real culture,
in Boston, as a devoted knowledge of music. There
is an interest which amounts almost to a gentle pathos
in a Boston musical night — any one of the many nights
at which elect music is worshiped by the elect. The
hall itself (there are many halls in Boston where music

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THE BACK BAY

may be heard, but there is only one that is " the " hall) ,
the hall itself is angular and rectangular, with an effect
of the gaunt and the gray, and there is a gentle general
effect of age, of gray-haired women and of men with
domes as bare as that of their own State House, and an
interspersing of eye-glassed students holding big black
books in which they devotedly follow the score.

If, as to the music itself, there is satisfaction with
a high degree of technical correctness, without the co-
incident loveliness of which the composers dreamed, it
would simply indicate that this is the way in which
Boston prefers music to be given; if the music is a
shade or so more percussive than is deemed desirable
elsewhere, and if the drum, played passionately, is
permitted to stand most markedly for music, it is all
as it should be, and the young students beam with
critical joy, and there is a gentle nodding of elderly
heads. And, after all, Boston comes naturally by a
love of the percussive, for at her Peace Jubilee, at the
close of the Civil "War, a mighty orchestra and a choir
of ten thousand enthralled audiences of fifty thousand,
while twelve cannon thundered in unison and fifty an-
vils clanged as one. I should never think of criticis-
ing Boston music any more than I should think of criti-
cising Boston brown bread: each is something inter-
estingly typical and loyally honored. I remember a
French lady, a visitor, who, not quite getting the Bos-
ton viewpoint, asked wonderingly, ' ' Why do they go
to so much trouble to make it?" She was referring
to the bread, but I notice, as I set it down, that the
words seem equally to apply to the music. If Boston

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

should ever lose her charming idiosyncrasies, her
brown bread, her baked beans, her fish balls, her music,
her lectures, she would cease to be Boston.

Lectures and music are naturally included in the
subject of the Back Bay because it is at the edge of the
Back Bay that most of the halls for music and lectures
are located, and especially along Huntington Avenue.

At Copley Square, where Huntington Avenue be-
gins, there begins also the most interesting develop-
ment of modern Boston, present-day Boston, for, rang-
ing and spreading out, through and beyond the Back
Bay and into the adjoining Fenlands, is building after
building, educational or institutional; hospital build-
ings, philanthropic buildings, and, most notable of all,
a wide range of school and college buildings ; and the
average of architectural beauty is admirably high.

Facing into Copley Square is the Boston Public
Library, and, "Built by the people and dedicated to
the advancement of learning" is the noble motto over
the main entrance of this truly beautiful building.
And it is a thoroughly good American library, ready to
give due honor to the literature, the science, the art
of America as well as of Europe. Set into the sides
of the building are panels giving famous names in
groups of similar kinds, and American names are
honored with a quiet matter-of-factness. "With Titian
and Velasquez and Hogarth, one sees the name of
West. With Boyle is joined the name of Bumford.
With Sterne and St. Pierre and Chateaubriand stands
the name of Irving. Macaulay is between Prescott
and Bancroft. Calvin and Wesley keep company with

200

THE BACK BAY

the New England Mather. And with Palladio and
Wren the name of the Bostonian architect Bnlfinch is
conjoined.

The building is not only admirable in proportions,
but extremely fine in details, and one need not pay at-
tention to such minor points as the confusion of
Strozzi lanterns at the entrance or to the pedestaled
marble lady who, as Bostonians like to point out, is
offering you a marble grape-fruit.

Even finer than the exterior is the interior, with its
welcoming stairway with its splendor of tawny mar-
ble, and as you mount the stairs you pass by those dig-
nified memorials to the Civil War Volunteers of Mas-
sachusetts, two great marble lions, one of them with
a broken marble tail that has been so cleverly mended
as in itself to represent positive art !

Mounting to the upper hallway you move past a
series of exquisite mural panel paintings by Puvis de
Chavannes; decorative figures in soft lavenders and
greens, figures walking or floating against back-
grounds of soft gray or in an ethereal blue that is only
like the perfect blue of the clear sky of a wonderful
morning; and all is so soft and easy and sweet and
graceful as to make these murals an achievement in
repression and beauty. Turning from the upper hall
to the right, one comes to glorious pictures by Abbey,
high-set, frieze-like, around all the upper part of a
great room that is pilastered and paneled with dark
oak, and ceilinged with dark oak beams picked out
with gold. It is a shadowy room, a room intentionally
dark, to give relief and foreground to the pictures,

201

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

which, representing the Quest of the Holy Grail, are
glories of vivid coloring; knights and ladies and
churchmen in pomp of purple and gold and bright
scarlet. And on the floor above this is Sargent's
"Frieze of the Prophets."

Within the quadrangle of the library is an inner
court that is so reposeful, so charming, so delightful,
with its arcaded space around its central fountain, as
to make it an esthetic architectural triumph.

Facing the library, at the opposite end of Copley
Square (and like the squares of most cities this is not
at all a square in shape), is a building which, some
years ago, was looked upon as an architectural wonder.
It is a huge church, a massive pile of yellows and
browns, and, built in mid- Victorian times, was meant
to follow some of the ancient churchly architecture of
Europe. Until recent years, Bostonians dwelt with
pride on every detail of this great Trinity Church,
and would insist on pointing out to visitors every de-
tail of design and workmanship. But a change of
taste has gone over the entire country, including Bos-
ton, and now it is quite realized that the church is not
beautiful, in spite of the fact that its great central
tower is tantalizingly remindful of that of Tewksbury
and that its little outside stairway is tantalizingly re-
mindful of a Norman stair of remarkable beauty at
Canterbury — tantalizingly, but how different they
are!

The Back Bay and the Fenlands, one merging im-
perceptibly into the other, are really one great flat
region recovered from the swamps, the Fenlands pos-

202

THE BACK BAT

sessing the great advantage of having a great part
kept as parkways, with water and bridges. The resi-
dences of the Fenland are of a more interesting aver-
age than those of the Bay — and it is over here, in the
Fen country, that Robert Grant the novelist lives, at
211 Bay State Road. How delightfully the words
"Fen" and "Fenlands" bring up memories of the
Boston of Old England, set as it is in the great flat
region of the English Fens !

Also in the Fen country, and not far from Hunting-
ton Avenue, is Fenway Court, one of the most remark-
able homes in America, built by Mrs. Isabella Gard-
ner, who dreamt of erecting a Venetian palace on
this level Brenta-like land, and realized her dream.
It was a romantic plan romantically carried out. Mrs.
Gardner brought across the ocean actual parts and
fragments of old Italian buildings, that the basis
should be actually Italian, and here she built her Vene-
tian palace, and filled it with rare and costly examples
of old-time European art.

Not far from this are the buildings of the Museum of
Fine Arts, impressive of front toward Huntington
Avenue, and positively beautiful in the facade that
looks out over the water of the Fenway, for this face
is stately with a long colonnade of great pillars.

The contents of the museum are of admirable aver-
age ; much is of high interest, notably the paintings of
distinguished Americans of the past by distinguished
American painters of their time. Much of antique
furniture is here, largely American, and it is displayed
as if befitting the title of the museum, as if worthy, as

203

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

it is, of place among other beautiful products of the
fine arts. The rooms where the furniture is dis-
played are arranged with wise harmony ; a table of a
certain period is likely to be in the center, with furni-
ture of the same period — sideboard, cupboard, chairs
— around the sides; and portraits of the men and
women of the period, by painters of the period, are on
the walls.

And there is here the most notable collection of old
American silver in America, admirable examples, in-
cluding much of the finest work of that admirable
silversmith, Paul Revere.

A great area, throughout this general region, is so
thick-dotted with educational institutions that it has
begun to be called the Students' Quarter, or, as some
Bostonians love to call it, "our Latin Quarter." And
all this has no reference to Cambridge, which is across
the river and outside the city limits ; all this is actually
within Boston, and Boston is very proud of it.

In this great clump of Back Bay and Fenland
schools there are already some twelve thousand stu-
dents in addition to the Boston-born ; and the students
and the buildings are constantly increasing in num-
bers. It is fine, too, that most of these educational
buildings are as noteworthy, architecturally, as are
the numerous buildings that philanthropic and en-
dowed organizations have built in this general
quarter.

With the influence of all these schools, added to the
admitted culture of generations, one might expect a
complete fastidiousness in general speech: and yet,

204

THE BACK BAT

throughout all Boston there is a general and amusing
treatment of "r's". In the first place, Bostonians
eliminate this letter altogether from a host of words
such as "Bunker," which is always given as if it were
spelled "Bunkah." For this they will probably say,
and rightly, that there is good authority. And I pre-
sume that, after all, they can show excellent authority
for their thriftiness with these discarded "r's," for
they do not really throw them away or really mislay
them, but use them on words that do not show the let-
ter. It is fascinating to hear them add an "r" to the
end of "area," or say that their dog "nors" a bone;
it is fascinating to hear them speak of "standing in
awr"; it is fascinating to hear a highly-cultured Bos-
tonian, a Brahmin of Brahmins, call his wife "Bew-
ler" for Beulah or say "Anner" for Anna.

It was a Bostonian, who, having traveled and ob-
served and realized, remarked quaintly, of the succes-
sion of Quincys called Josiah — pronounced, of course,
"Josiar" — that the line did not go on from sire to
son but "from 'Siar to 'Siar'M

Most notable of all the educational buildings of the
Fenland are those of the School of Medicine of Har-
vard University; for Harvard, instead of having all
its buildings in Cambridge, came here to build its
school for doctors.

The buildings are of marble ; a group of five, fronted
and united by terraces and balustrades, and all facing
into a central plaza large enough to give stately archi-
tectural relief. The pillared administration building
is flanked on either side by laboratory buildings and

205

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

the entire group forms a simple and beautiful whole,
with an air of noble permanence.

One Sunday afternoon I was walking near these
buildings when I noticed people running; men well
garbed and women well gowned were running ; a lim-
ousine drew up at the curb and two men and a woman
leaped from it and ran ; a street car stopped and men
and women tumbled from it and ran ; it was not mere
hurrying, but actual running, and all ran around the
open end of the Medical School plaza. It was clear
that there was either a terrible accident or a fire —
most likely one of those noble buildings, apparently
fireproof, was aflame ! — so I hurried with the others
and rounded the corner, and all were rushing for a
doorway — beside which was a notice declaring that
there was to be a Free Public Lecture, that the doors
were open at 3, and that they were absolutely to be
closed at 4 :05 ! I looked at my watch — it was 4 :03y 2
— and I understood the running. But I think I never
shall be able to understand what they expected the
people to do who should enter at 3, nor why the clos-
ing time was so oddly fixed at precisely 4 :05 !

As I looked and read and turned away, men and
women, but in diminishing number, were still running
up, darting past me, and plunging through the door.
I halted, for it came to me that the notice did not men-
tion either the lecturer's name or his subject — and
what a fascinating subject it must be to draw these
prosperous men and women literally on the run !

I asked a man of well over sixty, as he flew by. He
glanced at me reproachfully, he did not check his

206

THE BACK BAY

speed, but he flung back over his shoulder as he
plunged at the door some words that absurdly seemed
to end in ' ' fat. ' ' Clearly, I must inquire further and
must not, again, try to check any one near the door.
It was 4 :04!/2- I saw a youth come bounding on. I
hurried toward him and turned beside him and, falling
into his stride, asked him what was to be the lecture.
We strode together; and he gasped, "The Assimila-
tion of Fats" ! "With that he dashed at the door — he
was the last one in — instantly it was locked — the next
comer, a moment too late, tried the handle in grieved
futility — it was five minutes after four.

CHAPTER XVII

HEIGHTS REACHED AND KEPT

N a forgotten and faded part of Boston,
somewhat away from the center of the
city, rises a hill whose top is green with
grass and thick with elms and lin-
dens, and on whose highest point stands
a monument of exceptionally fine de-
sign; and this monument marks the spot of a great
victory, one of the victories of Washington. And al-
though it was a military victory it was bloodless ; al-
though it was a victory of immense importance to
America it was won without loss. And the hill is still
known as Dorchester Heights, just as it was when
General "Washington made it famous at the time of the
Evacuation of Boston.

Before the Bevolution the height was a place of
pleasant resort, and John Adams mentions in his diary
that on one evening in 1769, fifty-nine toasts were
drunk at a barbecue and feast here to which three hun-
dred guests sat down, and he adds, evidently thinking
that if fifty-nine toasts were drunk so would many of
the people naturally be expected to be, that "not one
person was intoxicated or near it."

After the Bevolutionary days this general region

208

HEIGHTS REACHED AND KEPT

was looked upon for a time as holding great possibili-
ties of residence, and wealth and aristocracy were ex-
pected to come, and a big hotel was even built here
which, however, failed to succeed, for the district
failed to attract the expected classes, whereupon the
hotel building was taken over by the very opposite of a
sparkling hotel, an asylum for the blind, an asylum
that gradually became very famous under the name of
Perkins — and it is most curious that the wife of the
most distinguished of the successive heads of this
blind asylum was the author of the stirring lines be-
ginning, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming
of the Lord!" — for Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, early in
her life, lived here, for Doctor Howe, her husband,
was long the superintendent. But even the asylum
has moved elsewhere, and just recently the building
itself, a really good-looking structure, was torn down
and its material all sold. It was a satisfaction, how-
ever, to learn that a beautiful central stairway was
bought by a Bostonian who wished to build it into a
house of his own, for it is so sadly general that beauti-
ful parts of fine old buildings are thrown away and
burned when the buildings are taken down.

The district at present has not much to attract a
visitor, for the streets and buildings are almost all
quite commonplace ; although even an otherwise com-
monplace district deserves appreciation for such ef-
forts to save its old trees as this district has made,
even to the extent, in places, of encouraging them to
live even when surrounded by sidewalk stones.

It was early in the Eevolution that Dorchester

209

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Heights became famous. "When the British held Bos-
ton they fortified every place that seemed important
to the defense of the city, and then settled down to
await developments. Meanwhile, with a large Ameri-
can army so dispersed as to cover every possible line
of approach, it was a difficult matter to get needed pro-
visions into the city, and when ships were sent off on
foraging expeditions it was not safe for them to make
landings anywhere on the New England coast, for the
entire countryside was in arms. All this caused much
hardship and suffering, for garrison and townsfolk
alike, and plan after plan was evolved by the British
officers for advancing upon the Americans and de-
feating and dispersing them; but always the officers
remembered Bunker Hill, and put each plan aside in
hopes of finding a better one or of receiving such
powerful reinforcements as would give to an attack
the probability of success. And as they waited and
planned and hesitated, General "Washington was him-
self constantly planning and waiting and watching,
eager for a chance to drive the British away. Slowly
advancing here, patiently strengthening a defense
there, ceaselessly studying and watching, steadily put-
ting into the troops the discipline and patience that
they needed, he came to see where a possible oppor-
tunity lay. And that opportunity was on Dorchester
Heights, for from that vantage point he could com-
mand the harbor and the city — if he had proper guns.
And with incredible carelessness, the British had
failed to fortify the spot; had failed even to place
troops there.

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HEIGHTS REACHED AND KEPT

But although there was no British obstacle, there
was the obstacle that lay in lack of equipment. The
Americans had no cannon except some minor field-
pieces. They had no siege guns of sufficient range and
caliber to sweep the harbor even if the height were
seized. And there was the further consideration that
heavy guns would be needed even in holding the
height, for the British could not be expected to make
over again the mistake of Bunker Hill and send lines
of practically unsupported troops against American
entrenchments; the British would so combine heavy
cannonading with assault that, unless the Americans
should have proper artillery, the heights would be un-
tenable and the Americans would be compelled to re-
treat; the hill would then be thoroughly entrenched,
by the British, against attack from the American side,
and the capture of the city would be almost hopeless.
So Washington knew that he must wait for big guns
before he could dare to seize the heights, and mean-
while he could only hope that the British would con-
tinue to be so confident of his getting no big guns that
they would not themselves take possession of that
vantage point. It seems incredible, looking back at
it, that this prominent hill, just at the edge of the
city (it is now included within the city limits), should
have escaped occupation by either side, when there
were thousands of British soldiers within the city and
thousands of Americans hemming the city in.

From the first, even before the ultimate seizure of
Dorchester Heights was decided upon, the possession
of heavy guns had been recognized as of the highest

211

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

importance to the besiegers. The guns were got ; and
their getting was a remarkable achievement, one of the
most remarkable of any war in history.

The man to whom the task was entrusted was young
Henry Knox, afterwards to become the famous Gen-
eral Knox; and his fame and advancement, as the
trusted artillery officer, the trusted friend and helper
of Washington, began with his selection for this task.

Not much of a soldier, one might in those early days
have thought, for his occupation had been the peaceful
one of bookseller! He had begun business for him-
self in Boston, in the early 1770 's, with an initial im-
portation of books to the value of three hundred and
forty pounds, which total was steadily increased until
it was over two thousand pounds, and his business
became flourishing and his shop was known as a pop-
ular meeting-place for the best men and women of
the city. Then financial trouble came to him as it
came to all the business men of Boston, through the
threatened break with England, the closing of the port,
and the general disorganization of trade. When the
war actually began, Knox put his ruined business
aside and promptly joined the American forces.
Throughout the war he forgot all about his books — he
was General Knox, the great master of artillery. And
it is pleasant to know that when the war was at length
over, and he might fairly have repudiated all of his
debts to English publishers because his financial
trouble had come altogether from the British Govern-
ment and because his shop was robbed and looted by
British soldiers, he did not like to hold the English

212

HEIGHTS BEACHED AND KEPT

publishers responsible, and continued to make pay-
ments on these pre-Eevolutionary debts long after the
war was over.

Knox was extremely handsome and likable as well
as capable. In fact, bis capacity was recognized from
the beginning. He had married the daughter of an
aristocrat, in spite of the opposition of her family, and
was so highly thought of that strong efforts were
made to attach him to the English before he could join
the Kevolutionists. That he was an active member of
the handsomely uniformed local organization known
as the Grenadier Guards, and second in command,
made him of practical promise as a soldier ; and when
it was learned that he would not fight for England,
General Gage peremptorily forbade him to leave Bos-
ton. But his wife quilted his sword into the lining
of his cloak and he escaped from the city in disguise
and reached the American lines.

From the first, Washington liked him and he liked
Washington. Washington needed a man who could
be trusted to get cannon. Here was Henry Knox,
than whom no man was more dependable. It was a
supreme opportunity for both. Crown Point and
Ticonderoga had been captured ("In the name of
Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"), and there
were many cannon, at those two adjacent forts, ready
to be used ; and Knox was told to go and get them.
And although it was a tremendous undertaking he
started off without a doubt of success.

On his way to Ticonderoga there was one of the
curious meetings of history, for on a stormy winter

213

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

night, on the border of Lake George, Knox met Major
Andre, who was on his way as a prisoner to Lancaster,
Pennsylvania — this being, of course, an earlier cap-
ture than the later fatal one. The two young men
spent a pleasant evening together, for they had tastes
in common and were alike bright and agreeable, and
in the morning they parted — only to meet again when
Andre was once more a prisoner. And it was severe
suffering for Knox, long afterward, remembering this
pleasant winter meeting beside Lake George, to sit
as a member of the court martial that found it in-
evitable to condemn Andre to death.

Knox reached Ticonderoga and Crown Point and
found the cannon there. And we still may read his
fascinating inventory. There were 14 mortars and
cohorns, brass and iron, from 4%" to 13" diameter of
bore; there were two iron howitzers; there were 43
cannon, from 3-pounders to 18-pounders. There was
thus the formidable number of 59 guns in all, with a
total formidable weight of 119,900 pounds! And
some of the 18-pounders weighed as high as 5000
pounds each.

This enormous weight of artillery Knox was to
convey to Boston without the loss of a single unneces-
sary hour. He was to take it through miles and miles
of wild wilderness, by a rough road which was prac-
tically no road at all, in mid- winter ; he was to go right
across the Berkshires; and those who have motored
over those splendid hills in summer on perfect roads,
and know what heights and grades there are, will some-

214

HEIGHTS BEACHED AND KEPT

what appreciate how gigantic was the task confront-
ing Knox, of dragging one hundred and twenty thou-
sand pounds of cannon over the mountain trails,
through snow and ice and storm. And it would be
hard to find words more brave and confident than
those he wrote to Washington ; not over-confident, not
boastful, for he merely "hoped"; but we may be sure
that "Washington, reading the message, felt no doubts ;
Knox wrote, telling of finding the guns, and said : "I
hope in sixteen or seventeen days' time to be able to
present to Your Excellency a noble train of artillery."
And his use of the word "noble" — what a touch it
gives! That word, alone, would show the bravely
romantic strain in Knox. He did not say "big" or
"heavy" or "important" or "much-needed," but in-
stinctively used the delightful word "noble" — "a
noble train of artillery!"

Knox had been instructed by Washington as to how
many horses to use, but there on the spot he gave up
all idea of horses, being the kind of man who could as-
sume the responsibility of altering instructions when
it seemed advisable to do so, and he wrote to Wash-
ington that he had procured eighty yoke of oxen in-
stead. He wrote from Albany on January 5th, ea-
gerly impatient of a delay through a "cruel thaw"
which made it temporarily impossible to cross the
Hudson — which, to our amazement, we find had to be
crossed "four times from Lake George to this town!"
And from the Hudson he at length struck across
the country, and over the great heights, from Kinder-

215

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

hook to Great Barrington and thence to Springfield,
from which place he went triumphantly on to Boston.
It was an amazing achievement.

Day by day "Washington had feared that the British
would seize the heights of Dorchester. All he could
do, as he waited, was to put in readiness -bales of
screwed hay and fascines of white birch, ready for the
making of redoubts — the white birch that even now
springs up so freely all over the untillable parts of
eastern Massachusetts. The weather continued so
cold, and the ground so deeply frozen, that there
seemed no chance to intrench on Dorchester, and sur-
face redoubts were therefore all that could be pre-
pared for. And there was moral severity as well as
the severity of winter, as shown by General Orders
of a winter day early in 1776 positively forbidding not
only the soldiers, but the officers as well, to play cards
or other games of chance, for "At this time of public
distress, men may find enough to do in the service of
God and their country, without abandoning themselves
to vice and immorality."

With the arrival of Knox and the cannon the mili-
tary situation was changed. It was now but a matter
of bravely and cautiously making the final move. And
on the night of March 4, the move was made.

It was a moonlight night. The British were un-
watchfully asleep, refusing to let more than their
pickets and patrols be disturbed by a severe cannonad-
ing which was kept up by the Americans from various
points about the city to draw attention from the send-
ing of a large number of men and wagons and guns

216

HEIGHTS BEACHED AND KEPT

to Dorchester, where the steep height was mounted
and defensive preparations instantly begun. It was
a literal proving that "the heights by great men
reached and kept are not attained by sudden flight, "
but that they, while their opponents slept, were toil-
ing upward in the night. Throughout the night the
Americans worked with intense energy, and when
morning came there was a redoubt-crowned hill, with
soldiers and guns. The British gazed at it in amaze-
ment and soon realized that Washington had deci-
sively outwitted them, for they quickly discovered
that his position commanded the harbor and the city.
It has never, I think, been sufficiently understood,
in regard to Washington's siege of Boston, that he
came to the task, not as a stranger to that city but
with a close knowledge of Boston localities. As a
young officer, fresh from the campaign of Braddock,
a great military movement with whose every detail
he had been familiar, he had been sent to Boston, in
1756, on military matters and to tell Governor Shirley
the circumstances of the death of Shirley's son on
the Monongahela. At that time, Washington stayed
ten days in Boston, and not only mingled with
the best society of the town, but made it a point,
with his military experience and ambitions, to see
Boston thoroughly, even to the extent of visiting
Castle William, out in the harbor. He could not well
have had any definite premonition, twenty years be-
fore the Bevolution; but none the less, born soldier
that he was, he acquired such local knowledge as made
Boston and its defenses familiar ground.

217

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

And, too, he came to the siege with full understand-
ing of British officers and soldiers, of British methods
and ways of thought, of a certain blundering and un-
watchful bravery which marked their methods ; he had
learned all this from his close association with Brad-
dock and his officers, and the knowledge thus gained
gave him such an insight into the workings of the
English military mind as made it possible for him to
plan with success for Dorchester; counting, first, on
British inaction, and next on his own preparations to
meet their belated activity.

Washington fully expected an attack on his vital
position at Dorchester. General Howe fully expected
to make one, and Lord Percy was hurried toward Dor-
chester with twenty-four hundred men. The assem-
bling of this force was witnessed not only by the
American army, but by the people of the city, who
gathered in massed throngs on the neighboring hills.

It was a steep ascent to the American position;
it is steep even now, although much of the ground
round about has been graded and leveled; it was too
steep for the successful depression of artillery in
those early days, and so the Americans made ready,
not only with their rifles, but with barrels of stone and
sand to roll down on Percy's men as they should come
up the hill. But only a few of Percy's men reached
even the foot of the hill, for a heavy rain and storm
came on, with so high a wind and such rough water
and dangerous surf that the landing of the English
troops to make an attack became impossible. The
storm continued all that day, and all the following

218

HEIGHTS BEACHED AND KEPT

night and the next day, and when it ceased the Ameri-
cans had made their position so strong that it was ab-
solutely useless to attack it. And Washington could
now at any moment cannonade Boston.

Washington had been specifically authorized by
Congress to attack Boston even though the town might
thereby be destroyed. General Howe, appreciating
to the full the new gravity of his position, frankly
threatened to burn the town if an attack should be
made. But Howe knew that his position had sud-
denly become hopeless ; he was trapped and was ready
for an accommodation ; and Washington, for his part,
could not bear to have the loyal city destroyed. There
was some difficulty in reaching an agreement between
the two leaders, for, such being sometimes the ab-
surdities of practical affairs, Howe would not ad-
dress Washington in those early days as an acknowl-
edged General, and Washington would not permit
himself to be addressed in any other way. However,
what may be called a gentlemen's agreement was
unofficially arranged, by which Howe was promptly
to evacuate the city and Washington was to refrain
from using his guns. There was almost two weeks of
preparation for the departure, with the Americans
watchfully waiting, and on March 17th the British
fleet sailed away, dropping out of the harbor in long
procession, bearing eleven thousand troops and one
thousand Boston refugees; going to Halifax, these
refugees, self -condemned and unhappy exiles; and
ever since has "Go to Halifax" been an opprobrious
term in most of America, just as I have noticed the

219

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

word ' ' Hessian" still used opprobriously down in Vir-
ginia.

What a spectacle must the sailing of the British
fleet have been. There were as many as one hundred
and seventy ships, so some of the descriptions have
it, and soldiers and civilians, men and women and
children, crowded every vantage point, every house-
top and hill, to see the ships move sullenly away and
watch the white sails disappear in the distance.

And that was how "Washington won Boston ; won it
with superbness of victory, completeness of success;
won it without loss of life except such as now and
then had come from the clashing of outposts ; won it,
in the final analysis, through discerning the capacity
of Henry Knox and the importance of Dorchester
Heights. And that is why this hill, situated amid
what are now commonplace surroundings, takes on
the high aspect of romantic and vital history. But
even as thoughts came to me of the contrast between
the romantic past and the commonplace present, the
picturesque appeared, for, as I walked about the hill,
two Roman Catholic nuns suddenly appeared, passing
slowly by, each wearing her headdress of white and
her kirtle of blue, each with the great, plain, starched
linen headdress pinned tightly about the lines of the
face. It was as if they had serenely walked out of
Normandy only to walk serenely around the corner
into Normandy again, on this American hill.

The height is topped by a shapely, impressive, fit-
ting monument, of white marble, with a steeple-like
marble top that in shape is like the steeple of some

220

HEIGHTS REACHED AND KEPT

admirable old American meeting-house ; an admirable
idea admirably executed. And this hill, with its
space of greenery about the monument carefully pre-
served, is in itself a noble monument to American
genius and patriotism. It is seldom seen by Bosto-
nians, although it can readily be reached in less than
half an hour from the center of the city, and the
reason for neglect is probably that the victory of
Dorchester was won without the bloodshed that seems
to be needed to make a picturesque appeal to most
people. It was a victory of brains, not blood.

There is a splendid portrait of Knox, by Gilbert
Stuart, that is proudly preserved in Boston in the
Museum of Fine Arts. Few things are better for a
country than the possession of admirable paintings
of those of its citizens who have done great deeds;
and here is the real Knox. As you look at him you
see at once that of course he would get those guns!
Of course he would do whatever he set out to do.
Here he stands, alive and alert, one hand on his hip
and the other resting upon a cannon, and thus clev-
erly, as Stuart meant it, concealing the absence of
two fingers, lost not in battle, but in a gunning acci-
dent before the war. Knox looks out of the canvas as
if still alive ; masterful, capable, good-humored, firm,
self-controlled, efficient; a handsome man, too, with
high and heavy eyebrows and florid face; and he
wears his uniform, of the mellowest of buff and the
deepest of blue, with an air ! Boston is fortunate in-
deed in her mementoes of Dorchester Heights, for
not only has she the Heights themselves, but she has

221

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

Gilbert Stuart's paintings of the two men to whom
the victory was owing — she has his most famous
Washington, and this superb portrait of Knox.

■mi'L

CHAPTER XVIII

'COLLEGES RED AND COMMON GREEN'

"^

|0 people in general, away from
Boston, Harvard means Cam-
bridge and Cambridge Harvard ;
the names are used as if prac-
tically interchangeable ; al-
though, as a matter of fact,
every one knows that there is
at least something in Cambridge
that is not included within the
university — for is there not the
home of Longfellow! Another
general idea is that Cambridge is part of Boston,
whereas in reality Cambridge is a separate city, al-
though it is just on the other side of the Charles and
ought, for various reasons, to be included within Bos-
ton limits. To most intents and purposes it is really
a part of Boston, and Bostonians so consider it.

There is really a great deal of Cambridge outside
of Harvard. There is Eadcliff e, that active and grow-
ing college for young women ; and there is a thriving
city besides, with numerous features of interest. It
may be regretted that so much of the city is painted
from the same pot of paint, a dingy drab, that has
been used on the houses of most of Boston's suburbs,

223

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

for dingy drab as a permeative color is not inspiring;
but after all, that is a minor point.

Cambridge is a busy city, with its student life and
its active Harvard and Eadcliffe, but as I think of
it there comes, for the moment, in place of the picture
of its business and social and educational life, that of
one of the most beautiful of cemeteries, in every re-
spect restful, as a beautiful cemetery ought to be;
that of Mount Auburn. For Mount Auburn repre-
sents so much of the best history of Boston, holds so
much of the dust of Boston genius.

It occupies a great area of gently rolling land, on
the farther edge of Cambridge; it is thickly dotted
with trees, it is charming with birds and squirrels,
there are fountains tossing their water high, and there
are great beds of flowers ; and it is astonishing what
a number of famous New Englanders have found their
resting-place here. Here lies James Bussell Lowell,
under a dark-colored stone, amid a group of other
Lowells who are gathered about him, including sev-
eral who died in the Civil "War. Not far away is the
little headstone which marks the grave of Motley.
Near Motley is the dignified tomb of Longfellow, and
close at hand are the graves of Parkman and Holmes.

It is amazing; for this notable group of men were
practically neighbors and friends and contemporaries
while living, and now they are neighbors in their
final rest. So close-gathered are they within this
great cemetery that they might almost be under one
monument ! And, were it not for the Concord group,
such a monument might almost stand to the memory

224

"COLLEGES EED AND COMMON GEEEN"

of New England literature. Seldom, elsewhere, has
there been such a close concentration of literary fame.

On the way back into Cambridge, Elmwood is
passed, the home of Lowell, the house where he was
born, and where he lived his life of honored achieve-
ment, and where he died; an attractive old Colonial
house, with a fetching line, on either side of the door,
of low box-bushes shaded by great elms which are
fading away, like innumerable other beautiful elms
here in Cambridge and elsewhere in New England,
under the attacks of the destructive descendants of
that imported moth that won dubious fame for the
Harvard professor who carelessly allowed it to fly
away after his experiments. Countless elms have
already perished from the ravages of the gypsy moths,
themselves of more than countless number; but at
least every American member of that family of moths
can unquestioningly, if there is any satisfaction in
the fact, trace his descent from the moth who was
bred at Harvard.

Lowell was not the first famous inhabitant of his
beautiful house, for it has the distinction of having
been the home of the very last of the royal governors
of Massachusetts, and, also before it became the
Lowell home, it was that of Elbridge Gerry, the poli-
tician whose ambition was to be known as a mighty
statesman, and who really won high place, but who
succeeded only in sending his name down to posterity
linked with the notorious Gerrymander.

In Lowell's time it was deemed a mere nothing to
walk from Cambridge into Boston and back; Lowell

225

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

himself often did it ; and even the ladies of Cambridge
used frequently to walk into Boston to do their shop-
ping and then would likewise return on foot. Some-
how, the people of those days managed to accomplish
a great deal without motor-cars or trolleys ; in these
degenerate times it is considered very tiring to most
people to walk, not from Boston — that would be im-
possible! — but even the short distance from Cam-
bridge Common to Lowell's house and back.

A little farther toward the center of Cambridge
is the house that was long the home of Longfellow, a
beautiful old Colonial building, dignified in its buff
and white, with its plain pilasters, its dormered and
balustraded roof, its fine chimneys, its generous lines,
its terraced front. The terrace wall is thick-greened
with ivy, great elms shade the house and grounds, and
along the sidewalk line is a high hedge of lilacs. Lilac
hedges, indeed, are a delightful characteristic of Cam-
bridge, and one which I do not remember having
noticed as a feature in any other town.

It has somewhat become the fashion among certain
classes to deem Longfellow a poet of insignificance,
which is as much of a mistake as to deem him among
the very greatest. He put so much of beauty and
sweetness and fine Americanism into his poetry as to
deserve high place in the regard of the world and
particularly in that of his own country. His excel-
lent English is always so excellently simple that some
think it is a sign of inferiority ! But even Browning
thought no less of him on that account, but loved both
his poetry and himself, and walked the London streets

226

"COLLEGES EED AND COMMON GREEN"

with him in eager talk — the English poet literally arm
in arm with the American !

Distinguished though any house would be by the
long residence of Longfellow, this house of his has
another and even greater fame ; for it was the head-
quarters of General "Washington during most of the
time that he was conducting his operations against
Boston. The fine old house, loved and lived in by
men of such diverse greatness, stands as if with a
sort of sedate pride in such associations.

For some years between the time of its occupation
by Washington and that by Longfellow it was the
home of a certain cunning Andrew Craigie who, it is
worth remembering, as a warning not to apply the
word "patriot" to everybody connected with early
times, was an apothecary-general in the hospital serv-
ice in the Eevolution and was believed to have made a
fortune through using his special opportunities to
buy medicines cheap and sell them to the army
dear. "Graft," and unscrupulous holders of office,
are evidently not products of modern days exclu-
sively.

Next door to the stately Longfellow house is one
that is even finer and more stately; indeed, the en-
tire neighborhood hereabouts is full of charming
homes, mostly Colonial, or admirable copies of the
Colonial style. Cambridge displays a great area of
beautiful living, with beautiful houses, sloping lawns,
and green trees, and it is a pleasure to notice that
these trees are largely horse-chestnuts, after knowing
what ravages are taking place among the elms.

227

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

A few minutes' walk from the Longfellow house
takes one to the site of one of the most thrilling events
in the world, at least one of the most thrilling to any
American, the spot on Cambridge Common where
George Washington first took command of the Ameri-
can army. Here, soldiers and officers stood in array
before him, as he sat upon his horse under an elm that
even then was old, and in a few simple words de-
clared that he assumed command. And that old elm
is still standing ! It is only a wreck, now, this ancient
tree, only a fragment, a remnant, and trolley wires
crisscross it and trolleys rumble close beside, but it is
still there, still alive, a monument to that event of
significance. It stands in the center of a tiny bit of
green, at a street intersection at the edge of the Com-
mon, and a tablet commemorates the event with a sim-
ple dignity which befits the event itself.

Under this Tree

Washington

First took Command

of the

American Army,

July 3, 1775.

On the Common itself stand several cannon, big,
black, heavy, long-barreled things ; not only old can-
non, but very distinguished old cannon, for at least
two of them were among the very ones that General
Knox brought down so marvelously from Ticonderoga
when "Washington needed them to use in his siege
operations against Boston.

The ancient Washington elm, and these cannon, are

228

"COLLEGES RED AND COMMON GREEN"

among the things that ought to be seen by every
American.

Off at the edge of the Common, close to where the
Harvard buildings begin, is an open space where the
American soldiers, some twelve hundred of them, lined
up for their march to Bunker Hill, on the night before
the battle; a brave and solemn thing to do, for all
knew that they were not only about to risk death in
battle, but that they were to take the even more seri-
ous risk of death as traitors should they fail. The
President of Harvard stood on the steps of a gam-
brel-roofed, elm-shaded, altogether delightful old
house, to pray for the soldiers as they stood solemnly
before him. The fine old house has disappeared;
within my own memory it has been torn down, appar-
ently without reason, for no other house has taken its
place ; but although the beautiful old house has been
demolished, and although that Harvard president be-
came long since dust, the bravely impressive scene
has not been forgotten — and ought never to be for-
gotten.

And it also need not be forgotten that this was the
house in which, some quarter of a century after the
Revolution, Oliver "Wendell Holmes was born.

Another old house, now known as the Wadsworth
house, was until recent years the home of the Harvard
presidents, in honored sequence ; in fact, it was built,
in 1726, for the very purpose of being the home of the
presidents. Its back is toward the university grounds
and buildings, but it faces out on busy Massachusetts
Avenue, and its porticoed door is directly on the side-

229

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

walk. The narrow portico would just keep the rain
off a president as he stood while putting the key in
the lock. Two plain wooden columns support a pedi-
ment with severe triglyphs, and there are such plain,
simple, good ornaments as to make it a delight among
porticoed doorways. The door itself is eight-paneled,
with a high-set knoh and with four lights of glass
above to light the entry. And it is the door through
which Ealph Waldo Emerson used to pop in and out !
For he was "President's messenger" when working
his way through Harvard.

Harvard University was founded almost three cen-
turies ago ; it was founded as far back as 1636 ! And
what those early Americans determined upon was ex-
pressed in words that are perpetuated in an inscrip-
tion at the principal gateway to the Harvard grounds :

"After God had carried vs safe to New England, and wee
had bvilded ovr hovses, provided necessaries for ovr liveli-
hood, reard convenient places for Gods worship, and setled
the civill government, one of the next things we longed for
and looked after was to advance learning and perpetvate
it to posterity."

It was in 1636 that the General Court of Massachu-
setts Bay agreed to give four hundred pounds towards
a "schoale or colledge," half to be paid the next year
and half when the building should be finished, and it
was ordered that the school be established at Newe-
towne, and that Newetowne should thenceforth be
called Cambridge, and later it was ordered that the
college "shall bee called Harvard Colledge": which
directions were duly followed.

230

"COLLEGES EED AND COMMON OEEEN"

Harvard dislikes outside criticism, but enjoys hu-
morous flings if it flings the humor itself; as when
Harvard men some years ago flung paint humorously
upon John Harvard's statue — only to find, in that
case, that it did not seem so very humorous after all !
And as to that statue, with its inscription, "John
Harvard, Founder, 1638," even dignitaries of the uni-
versity are prone to refer to it as the "statue of the
three lies"; for John Harvard was not the founder;
and it was not even in the year of the founding, but
two years afterwards, that he made the bequest, of all
his library, some three hundred books, and half of his
fortune of some fifteen hundred pounds, which actu-
ally acted as the needed impulse to carry out the initial
inspiration; and, finally, the figure does not really
represent John Harvard, for it is made from the
sculptor's imagination of what he ought to look like!
And it does not, it may be added, give precisely the
impression of what John Harvard really was — a cul-
tured, earnest minister, of only thirty-one years of
age. And few men dying at thirty-one have been able
to link their names with a movement or institution so
famous.

Another of the flings from within Harvard came
from the beloved Lampoon, which, referring to a not-
so-very-long-ago president, noticeably cold in general
mien, suggested that a monument be raised to him on
a certain spot, with an inscription declaring that there
he actually spoke to a freshman.

The fine gateways to the Harvard grounds, all of
them memorials or gifts, add materially, in connection

231

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

with the wall which surrounds a great part of the
grounds, in giving an effect of harmonizing and bind-
ing together college buildings which are really a con-
glomeration of architecture ; wall and gateways almost
give character and distinction to the entire group of
buildings ; although some of the buildings, considered
individually, cannot be deemed either distinguished
or attractive.

It is pleasant to note that, although many a modern
college or university is not content without the am-
bitious name of "campus," old Harvard is quite satis-
fied in honoring its great, reposeful, tree-shaded,
grassy rectangle, surrounded as it is by college build-
ings, with the name of "yard."

The most interesting and at the same time the oldest
of all the Harvard buildings is Massachusetts Hall, an
attractive old structure of time-dulled brick, standing
just inside the main entrance. It was built two cen-
turies ago and is an admirable example of its fine
period, with twin-chimneyed gable at either end, with
shingled gambrel-roof, with its long row of dormers,
its long wooden balustrade, its small-paned windows,
and the lines of slightly projecting brick which mark
the floor-lines and give special distinctiveness.

The finest of all the buildings is the great modern
structure, built in memory of one of those drowned on
the Titanic, known as the Widener Memorial Library,
a magnificent structure that represents lavishness of
wealth and a deep sense of classical beauty. The
splendid front looks out on charming greenery, on
grass and elms, with here and there a maple or pine or

232

"COLLEGES RED AND COMMON GREEN"

chestnut. The entrance door is approached by a broad
flight of granite steps, and at the top of the steps is
a long colonnade of mighty pillars of stone, fronting
the fagade in splendid dignity. The interior of the
building is temple-like in beauty, in its soft glory of
smooth but unpolished stone. There is a curious and
impressive vista when one enters ; for ahead, at a sort
of vanishing point of sight, through and beyond the
superb hall, is the effectively placed portrait of
Widener himself, as if looking pleasantly at each man
who enters.

The other day. I saw a full-page description of this
building in one of the Boston dailies, and quite a part
of the reading matter — twenty-four lines of it and a
subhead, to be precise — was devoted to what was
termed the "most curious book" in the library that
the great building holds. "It is curious, not because
the book is rare or splendid or has the most remarka-
ble associations or represents the highest flights of
an immortal author." You see, it is not notable for
any of the reasons which would arrest attention in
Chicago or San Francisco or New York or Paris or
London. But the newspaper, after tantalizingly go-
ing on about non-existent reasons, at length works up
to the climax, the real cause of the book's being singled
out for distinction. It seems that it is a presentation
copy, with a personal inscription to the man whose
name gives name to the library, and that the inscrip-
tion spells the word "guild" without the "u"! — just
"gild"! That is absolutely all. A great Boston
newspaper accepts the contribution of some one of its

233

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

staff who is so little conversant with English as not to
know that the word in question may properly and with
authority be spelled "gild" ; no editor, no copyreader,
checks it or looks it up ; and the splendid library and
the remarkably beautiful building are held up to Bos-
ton scorn because of the newspaper's own deficiency
in orthographic knowledge; and, according to the
newspaper, as the supposed error is noted, "your face
wears a smile of amused wonder." I tell of this, be-
cause it is so typical of Boston's absolute certainty
that nothing can be right which is not done precisely
as a Boston man would do it.

It is a natural transition from the most beautiful of
the buildings of Harvard to that which is furthest
from beauty — the great Memorial Hall, which was put
up some half a century ago as if to be a notable exam-
ple of that bad period when scarcely anything of
beauty was built. But although this building itself is
unbeautiful, the idea that caused it to be built was
nobly beautiful; for it was erected as a memorial to
the men of Harvard who gave their lives for their
country in the Civil War. And much of the interior is
of striking effect. Down the lofty and impressive
main corridor there are tablets to one after another of
the many who thus died — a thrilling list. One sees
such old New England names as Peabody, Wadsworth,
and Bowditch ; one sees the name of Fletcher "Webster ;
one sees that an Edward Bevere died at Antietam and
a Paul Bevere at Gettysburg.

One end of the building is given over to a great col-
lege dining-hall, imposing and lofty-roofed, and so

234

"COLLEGES BED AND COMMON GKEEN"

remindful of the dining-hall of Christ Church at Ox-
ford as clearly to show that it must have been inspired
by that noble hall, although it is without the wealth of
finished beauty that the Oxford hall presents. Still,
this Harvard hall is very impressive ; in spite of the
mistake of ill-placed rows of hat-racks, and in spite of
the heaviness of the crockery on the long rows of long
tables, and in spite of an Ethiopian and his water-
pitcher at the end of each row.

But what is most notable here are the portraits,
which extend around the great hall in lines of grave
dignity; most of the paintings are by the best of the
early American artists, and are priceless in that they
bring down to posterity the appearance of the great
men of the past, while at the same time the greater
number are notable achievements of art as well.

Here is Thomas Hancock, worthy uncle of the patri-
otic and famous John ; a painting by Copley, made in
1766. Hancock is standing on a floor of tessellated
marble, and is gorgeous in showy clothing, and coat
of bottle-green velvet, with ruffles at his wrists and
ornate buckles on his shoes. And here is a fine Wash-
ington, by Trumbull, a portrait given to Harvard,
while Washington was still alive, by that Craigie
whom we have seen making money out of army medi-
cines. And here is a John Adams by Copley; an
Adams quite unknown to Boston — for he is repre-
sented in full court dress ; a costume that in the early
anti-English days he would scarcely have dared to
wear. And here, too, is a painting understood to be a
Benjamin Franklin, sent from England by Franklin

235

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

himself as a gift for Ms brother ; but it does not at all
meet the usual ideas of Franklin's appearance, as it
shows him quite a youngish man with curly hair and
bishop-like sleeves ; it is with some difficulty that one
realizes that Franklin was ever a youngish man, there
being but two general impressions of him, one as a
boy with a bun and the other as an aged philosopher.
Here, too, is an excellent portrait by Chester Harding
of that many-titled man, the Earl of Aberdeen, Vis-
count Gordon, Ambassador to Vienna, Prime Minister,
and so on ; one of the many notable paintings that this
American artist from the backwoods made in Eng-
land.

That the hall is rather dark adds materially to the
general impressiveness, but does not make it a better
medium for the display of old-time paintings ; and be-
sides, most of these paintings are skied on the lofty
wall.

The social life of the university, at least from the
standpoint of some of the newer members of the
faculty, possesses a certain frigidness not incompati-
ble with Boston and Cambridge social life in general.
"The winter climate of Boston is distinctly arctic,
and society life, from sympathy, perhaps, seems to
pass through a long period of cold storage"; thus,
toward the close of his long life, wrote the late Charles
Francis Adams, who knew all that was to be known of
the best of Boston and Cambridge society; and I
thought of this when I was told, recently, of a call
made upon the wife of a new professor by the wife of
a professor of long standing. She found the younger

236

''COLLEGES BED AND COMMON GREEN"

woman in tears. "Oh, I am so glad you came!" she
sobbed. "Now — now — somebody knows me! I've
been so lonely and I've been crying, for I thought that
nobody knew me and — if I should die — there 'd be no-
body in Cambridge to come to my funeral!"

A happier story of social life was related to me, of
an absent-minded professor who, at a dinner, was
offered an ice served on a doily of exquisite work-
manship, and taking it, but continuing his conversa-
tion, he absent-mindedly twisted the doily with his
fork, round and round in the ice — and then swallowed
it ; to the amazed distress of his hostess !

Even from early days Cambridge has always
seemed a part of Boston, and it is now, by means of
rapid subway trains, really only a few minutes from
Boston Common, and therefore seems more than ever
a part of the big city. But the Cambridge people like
to remain under a government of their own ; only, it
may not be amiss to suggest, altogether charming
though that part of Cambridge is where stand the
homes of Longfellow and Lowell, there is, in the cen-
ter of the town and in its approaches from Boston, a
little too much of shabbiness, a shabby and drab aspect
associated with the old reputation of Cambridge for
dust.

And yet, there is so much of charm about the place,
there is so much of thrilling interest about it, in ad-
dition to its collegiate associations, that one wishes
only to think of that summary of the place made
long ago by one of the most distinguished of Ameri-
cans:

237

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

"Nicest place that ever was seen,
Colleges red and Common green,
Sidewalks brownish with trees between."

And the university itself remains a pleasant mem-
ory, with its throngs of Harvard men in the making;
of whom I think it was a Bostonian who said, that you
can always tell a Harvard man — but you can't tell him
much!

•«*v ' wVV^,/iL,<

CHAPTER XIX

AN ADVENTURE IN PUKE KOMANCE

"ATHANIEL HAW-
THORNE, master of the im-
aginatively romantic, tried
to make his very life one of
actual romance, and never
more so than when, with the
fire as if of romantic youth,
although he was then well on
toward forty, he flung him-
self and his little fortune into
the adventure of Brook Farm.

Throughout his life he was eager to find the ro-
mance of actual living. His ideal days at the Old
Manse, rambling in the woods and floating on the Con-
cord or Assabeth, his life in romantic Italy, his love
for the romantic countryside of England, his return,
toward the close of his life, to the romantic surround-
ings of his beloved Concord — always he sought for the
finest possible in life : he aimed for rugged independ-
ence but tried to achieve independence romantically.
And the most romantic feature of his life was his
connection with Brook Farm.

He did not start that remarkable movement. He
had nothing to do with its inception. But in its possi-

239

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

bilities it so appealed to him that he went into it with
enthusiastic buoyancy. Those who think of Haw-
thorne only as a cold and uncordial recluse miss alto-
gether the Hawthorne who rowed and camped and
talked with Ellery Channing ; they miss altogether the
Hawthorne who threw himself with unreserve into the
experiment of Brook Farm.

George Bipley, a man of high ideals who had found '
it due to his own conscience to leave the ministry, was
the founder. He dreamed of a community in which
mental advancement and physical well-being would go
hand in hand; he dreamt of a society of intelligent,
cultured, cultivated people, who were to live together,
with each one improving himself and all the others,
and each one doing his share of the mental and physi-
cal toil which would be necessary to keep up the ex-
penses of living. Life was to be simplified and made
glorious. There was to be a school, and there were to
be mechanical industries, and fruit and vegetables and
milk were to be the product of their own farm. Each
one, man or woman, was to do his share of work, physi-
cal and mental, and all were to participate in the mu-
tual intellectual benefits of association. After the
founding, by a little group of friends, no one was to
be admitted without probation and a vote, and, thus
safeguarded against undesirables and impracticables,
the community was to represent the mental activity of
a wide variety of thinkers in conjunction with the plain
good sense of chosen farmers and mechanics. Each
thinker was at the same time to be a worker, and each
worker a thinker.

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AN ADVENTUEE IN PUEE EOMANCE

The venture was begun in the spring of 1841. The
shares were five hundred dollars each, and twenty-four
were taken by the first group, the founders. And
Hawthorne did not wait coldly to see if it were to be a
success. He was eagerly ready to devote himself to
the work and to associate with other chosen souls.
Nor was his enthusiasm merely of the spirit; he
showed it practically, with a pathetic earnestness.
He had saved — he, the master of American fiction — he
had saved one thousand dollars from his salary in the
Boston Custom House, and this sum he paid in for two
of the Brook Farm shares. There could be no deeper
proof of his sincerity.

Hawthorne was even made chairman of the finance
committee — the last position in the world, one would
think, for so unworldly a man ; and it is vastly interest-
ing to know that, after paying $10,500 for the property
the committee promptly negotiated a mortgage loan
of $11,000 for the purpose of expenses and new build-
ings. A mortgage for more than the purchase price !

The Brook Farmers were to fleet the time carelessly,
as they did in the golden world, but they were also to
work. Charles A. Dana, then a young man, joined.
George William Curtis joined. The man who was
to achieve fame as Father Hecker, founder of the Paul-
ists, joined. Eipley was the guiding spirit. Emer-
son looked on with sympathy and encouragement, even
though Brook Farm did not draw him from his be-
loved Concord. Margaret Fuller did not join, but she
lent to the community the frequent gleam of her per-
sonality. That Hawthorne daily milked a cow is one

241

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

of the joyful memories of the Farm, and that he play-
fully christened the cow Margaret Fuller, because
of its intelligent face and reflective character, is an-
other.

But Brook Farm was not a practical success. The
land that Bipley had picked out was wretchedly poor
for farming, nor were the mechanic industries, such as
sash-making, at all prosperous. But for a while the
effort went on nobly. There was wholesome life and
companionship. Scholars and gentlemen hoed and
plowed and milked; well-bred ladies washed clothes
and scrubbed floors. The nights were filled with talk
and music and cheerfulness. Some new buildings
were erected, which seem, from descriptions, to have
been more astonishingly ugly than could fairly have
been expected of romantic philosophers, and perhaps
it is well that they burned down, as they did, either
while the Brook Farmers were there or in the years
after their departure.

I think the fact that there were more men than
women militated against success; and it seems sur-
prising that more women did not join; with such men
as Hawthorne and Dana and Bipley and Curtis there,
it would seem that women would joyously have en-
tered into the enthusiasm of it all. In this twentieth
century they doubtless would, but in the 1840 's women
were still cabined, cribbed, confined.

It is interesting, and it is striking, that not one of
the Brook Farmers ever admitted that Brook Farm
was a failure. Of course, they admitted that the com-
munity broke up, and with financial loss, but all of

242

AN ADVENTURE IN TTJEE ROMANCE

the people connected with it, both men and women, al-
ways believed that there had, for all of them, been
more of profit than of loss ; each was sure that every
one was benefited. It was really a glorious thing to
do, a glorious effort to make.

Hawthorne himself, when at length he saw that the
movement was doomed to failure, was wise enough to
leave. He seems to be picturing himself when, in the
novel that was one of the fruits of Brook Farm, the
"Blithedale Romance," he represents Miles Cover-
dale, on the eve of his departure, thus setting down
his thoughts of the people he was to meet out in the
world, away from his companions at the Farm: "It
was now time for me to go and hold a little talk with
the conservatives, the writers of the North American
Review, the merchants, the politicians, the Cambridge
men, and all those respectable old blockheads who still
kept a death-grip on one or two ideas which had not
come into vogue since yesterday morning."

He left, and married the woman of his choice, and
continued on his career of fame, winning more and
more the reputation of being cold and repellent —
which his associates at Brook Farm knew so well that
he was not ! And he wrote his novel of the place —
the name of Blithedale itself declaring what charm
and poetry he had found there — and he incorporated
in that story the feeling of what Brook Farm had
meant to him.

Brook Farm itself is still largely, in appearance,
what it was when it knew the wonderful community.
The spot is but ten or eleven miles from Boston Com-

243

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

mon, yet urban and suburban development have alike
missed it, except as to a gathering of cemeteries in the
region close by. It is easily reachable, by train to
West Roxbury, or even more conveniently by trolley.
And there are still the traces of the main entrance and
gateway ; there is still the same general aspect, of walls
trailed over with the scarlet barberry, of rolling mead-
ows and woodland, of dips and hollows alternating
with little heights, of pine trees, scattered or thickly
massed.

A Lutheran Home stands on the spot where the main
building of the farmers stood, and, such having been
the fiery devastation, the only house standing that
stood when they were there is a little place which
somehow gained the name of "Margaret Fuller's cot-
tage"; for the reason, as it was long ago quaintly said,
that it was the only building there with which Mar-
garet Fuller had nothing to do ! But it was a building
with which, undoubtedly, Hawthorne and Dana had to
do, and probably all of them.

It stands on a still lonely spot ; a small house, steep-
roofed, four-gabled, of broad and unplaned clap-
boards, and with windows of so oddly unusual a size
as to lead to the impression that the sash are probably
some of the very sash that the Brook Farmers made
and unsuccessfully tried to market.

Pictorial pudding-stones of enormous size dot the
landscape — one marvels that with such outward and
visible signs of an unkindly soil Eipley could ever have
deceived himself and the others into faith that the
land had possibilities ! — and immediately in front of

244

AN ADVENTURE IN PURE ROMANCE

this cottage is such a stone, over six feet in height and
of twice that length. All about stretches away a land
without levels, with little pools in the hollows, with
trees in clumps and singles and masses, with rocky-
rolling swells, and with the Charles flowing quietly by.
And the breeze blowing across the meadows blows
fresh from a land of pure romance.

About the same distance from the center of Boston
as is Brook Farm, but off to the eastward, near the
coast, are two small homes which also are important
in New England history and which also stand for ro-
mance, though here the romance is of a different char-
acter, for it is the typically American romance of suc-
cess, the romance of rising from humble surroundings
to lofty place.

It is in Quincy that these two small homes stand,
the little homes in which were born two men of Ameri-
can romance. And I do not mean John Hancock, al-
though he was born in Quincy, for he was not of finan-
cially straitened ancestry; I mean those two Quincy-
born men, John Adams and his son John Quincy
Adams. And the town of Quincy is the only place that
enjoys the honorable distinction of being the birth-
place of two Presidents of the United States.

The houses in which these two Presidents that were
to be, were born, are of rather humble type, but sweet
and cheerful and comfortable, with an air, as it were,
of self-respect. The two stand close to each other, al-
most touching shoulders. One looks first at the house
in which John Adams was born, small and unimpres-
sive as it is, and then at the house to which he took his

245

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

wife, a home just as simple, where their son John
Quincy was born. It is amazing and it is inspiring to
realize that from such homes men could rise to the
highest places of leadership and to the very Presi-
dency, and the close conjunction of the two houses
adds much to the dramatic effect.

John Adams fell in love with a connection of the
Quincys, a powerful and wealthy family, and they
from the first discerned his unusual qualities and did
not oppose the match, and the marriage was of great
practical aid in his advancement. And his wife, Abi-
gail Smith, instead of being one who was always urg-
ing him to extravagance or pretentiousness, as a
daughter of the wealthy Quincys might so easily have
been, was a woman of much good sense and of modera-
tion. It is delightful to find her writing to him, when
she learns that he is likely to be sent as ambassador
abroad, and when it would be expected that she would
eagerly urge such brilliant advancement, that "this
little cottage has more heart-felt satisfaction for you
than the most brilliant court can afford." And that
this Abigail of the aristocrats was really a finely
sturdy American was further shown in many ways, as
by her answer to an Englishman, on the ship on which
she herself crossed the ocean ; for when he asked, over
and over, what was the family of this or that Ameri-
can, she told him "that merit, not title, gave a man
preeminence in our country; that I did not doubt it
was a mortifying circumstance to the British nobility
to find themselves so often defeated by mechanics and

246

AN ADVENTURE IN PUEE ROMANCE

mere husbandmen ; but that we esteemed it our glory-
to draw such characters not only into the field but into
the senate."

Adams, from such a humble birthplace and such a
humble home, was quite equal to upholding his dignity
and that of his country abroad, and to hold with honor
the office of President of the United States. But it is
rather amusing, and it is highly interesting, looking at
these plain and little homes, to remember that, in a
letter to his wife, in 1797, after his election to the
Presidency, he wrote, addressing his wife as "My
dearest friend," a form in use at that period between
married folk, and signing himself "Tenderly yours,"
a form even yet not entirely gone out of fashion:

"I hope you will not communicate to anybody the
hints I give you about our prospects ; but they appear
every day worse and worse. House rent at twenty-
seven hundred dollars a year, fifteen hundred dollars
for a carriage, one thousand for one pair of horses, all
the glasses, ornaments, kitchen furniture, the best
chairs, settees, plateaus, &c, all to purchase, and not
a farthing probably will the House of Representatives
allow, though the Senate have voted a small addition.
All the linen besides. I shall not pretend to keep more
than one pair of horses for a carriage, and one for a
saddle. Secretaries, servants, wood, charities which
are demanded as a right, and the million dittoes pre-
sent such a prospect as is enough to disgust any one.
Yet not one word must we say. We must stand our
ground as long as we can."

247

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

John Adams was very much of a man; and it should
be remembered that it was he who, New Englander
though he was, was broad enough to nominate, in the
Continental Congress, George Washington to be com-
mander-in-chief of the American forces. Jefferson
said of John Adams that he was "our Colossus on the
floor ; not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent, but
with power both of thought and of expression."

Adams and Jefferson, it will be remembered, both
lived until the fiftieth anniversary of the event with
which both had so much to do, the making of the Dec-
laration ; and both, by one of the most remarkable co-
incidences in history, died not only in 1826, the fiftieth
year, but actually on July the Fourth.

The two Adamses, the two Presidents, father and
son, were not only born in adjoining houses, but sleep
their last sleep in adjoining tombs; for both lie in
granite chambers beneath the portico of the Stone
Temple, that fine-looking church, solid and of excellent
proportions, with round-topped tower, which faces
into Quincy Square.

There are at least three homes of the Quincy family
in Quincy, but it is one in particular that is meant
when the "Quincy homestead" is referred to by any
one of the neighborhood. (The Massachusetts way
of pronouncing "Quincy" is as if the family suffer
from a well-known affection of the throat.)

The homestead is away from the thick-settled part
of the city of Quincy, and is set nestlingly beside a
stream, now little, which in the long ago was navigable

248

AN ADVENTUKE IN PUKE EOMANCE

for smallish, boats. It is a great dormer-windowed
mansion, quaint, rambling and romantic, with attrac-
tive roof lines, and is now in the possession of a patri-
otic society, and filled with its own furniture of the
past. It is a house of innumerable spacious and low-
ceilinged rooms; it was always an aristocrat's house,
and presumably it was deemed none the less aristo-
cratic from its owner being a bit of a buccaneer. It
is a house of one romantic room after another ; a house
unusually full of charm, even compared with other
ancient houses; a house dating back, as to its main
portion, for over two centuries ; that main part having
incorporated within it a still earlier portion dating
back into the sixteen hundreds. And it contains what
seems surely the most elaborate and most cleverly
constructed secret hiding space, between floors, in
America, this space being an entire false room, en-
tered by a secret entrance, and of quite unsuspected
existence through any outward appearance, the room
above it and the room below being reached separately
from each other from another part of the house.

This building, so extremely interesting in appear-
ance and age, possesses a definite interest in that it
was the home of the two Dorothy Q.'s, those delight-
fully cognomened young women who float with that
romantic designation through New England history
and reminiscences. And the adherents of either one
of the Dorothy Q.'s are always ready to do battle for
her as being of more prominence than the other Doro-
thy Q. Perhaps none but New Englanders would be

249

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

interested in following out the precise genealogical
lines, but at least one may say that the Dorothy Q.
who is remembered because she figures pleasantly in
American poetry, was born here in 1709, and that the
other Dorothy Q. was born here some forty years
later and became the wife of John Hancock.

A pleasant tradition still keeps in mind that it was
in a room with a beautiful wallpaper newly imported
from Paris that Hancock proposed to his Dorothy Q.
and was accepted, and the very room is remembered
and the very wallpaper is still on the walls ; an oddly
striking paper, with much of queer red in its composi-
tion and with little Cupids and Venuses often recur-
ring.

A little farther along the coast, to the southward
from Quincy, is Marshfield, long the beloved home of
Daniel Webster, and where he died. To some extent
the mighty "Webster has already been forgotten; his
immense and overshadowing fame has to quite a de-
gree vanished ; and this is largely owing to his having
disappointed all New England by his ill-fated "Icha-
bod" speech on the subject of compromise with slav-
ery. And that Whittier, a poet far from first-rate,
could by his tremendous "Ichabod" lines be conqueror
of one of the mighty orators of all history, shows curi-
ously the essential strength of literature as compared
with oratory. The people of New England could not
forget that they had honored and trusted Webster
absolutely, they could not but see that he acted against
their prof oundest principles ; they might in time have

250

AN ADVENTUKE IN PUBE EOMANCE

forgiven, through realizing that Webster discerned,
what they could not discern, how dreadful would be the
impending conflict, and that it was because of this that
he was willing to temporize. But Whittier wrote
"Ichabod," and the proud crest of "Webster sank.

Webster owned two thousand acres of land, border-
ing on the sea. Much was woodland ; much was given
over to fruit trees ; he was an enthusiastic farmer and
tree grower. Planted under his personal direction
were fully a hundred thousand trees, and he had a
great stock of pedigreed cattle, with many horses and
even some llamas ; he had poultry of the finest breeds,
and even peacocks. He saw to the making of paths
and pools and walls. He lived like a princely farmer,
spending money with lavishness. But always first in
his affection was the ocean, with its might and mys-
tery.

His house was burned, some years after his death,
and all the barns and outbuildings but a single tiny
little one-story structure, really but a hut, which he
sometimes used as an office or study, in accordance
with the practice of the old-time New England law-
yers. Another house has been built, but there is a
general sense of something lost and wanting.

It is pleasant to know that Webster's own neigh-
bors, his immediate friends, in Marshfield and Boston,
were loyal to him at the last ; it is pleasant to know
that after his final speech, in Boston, in 1852, the year
in which he died, a huge crowd followed him to his
hotel in that city and that he was escorted by a thou-

251

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

sand horsemen ; it is pleasant to know that, going down
to Marshfield, thousands and thousands met him, men
and women and children, and that many of them ac-
companied him throughout the ten miles from the sta-
tion to his home — there was then no nearer station —
and that for all that distance the way was lined with
his admirers, strewing garlands.

When he knew he was dying, he loved to look off
toward the beloved ocean, and at night he loved to see
the light that swung at the masthead of his yacht;
and as Death crept nearer, he one day had himself
placed at his door, while his cattle and horses were
led by in a long procession.

On the very last of his days he was heard to mur-
mur, "On the 24th of October all that is mortal of
Daniel "Webster will be no more." He was buried in
his favorite costume, with blue coat with gilt buttons,
with white cravat, with silk stockings, waistcoat,
trousers, patent-leather shoes and gloves. And more
than eight thousand people solemnly followed his body
to the grave.

It is a lonely place, a spot of peculiar desolateness,
where "Webster lies buried. It is a long distance from
any house; a little tablet by the roadside, near the
house that has been built where his own home once
stood, points the traveler down a pathway that winds
far off to a distant burying-ground, upon a little bit
of low-rising land, in the midst of a great salt-marsh
meadow. It is desolate, it is lonely. Once an ancient
little church stood beside this burying-ground, but it

252

AN ADVENTUEE IN PURE EOMANCE

long ago vanished, leaving no sign of why the few
graves are here, although among them are some of
very early Pilgrim stock. But the lonely graveyard
is not neglected, and it is impressive in its barrenness,
its desolation. In all, it is even beautiful here, with a
strange and somber beauty.

One thinks of his triumphant oratory, his splendid-
ness, of the power he possessed, of the idolatry he in-
spired. And what superb poise the man possessed,
whether one trusts to humorous stories or to grave!
He could thrill immense audiences with a word, a
gesture, even with his moments of stately silence. It
might have been of the Orator instead of the Bellman
that the poet wrote when he said: "They all praised
to the skies — such a carriage, such ease and such
grace ! Such solemnity, too ! One could see he was
wise the moment one looked on his face!" That is
just it: Webster not only was a great man, but he
looked the part as much as any man ever did.

But there was also a cheerfully human side to him;
with his friends, he was a delightful dinner companion
and story-teller, cheerful and gay; yet even at dinner
he did not forget his stately poise ; I suppose he could
not put it away even if he would ; and one remembers
the perhaps apocryphal tale of his carving, at dinner,
and unfortunately letting the bird slip into his neigh-
bor 's lap, and of the booming intonation of his calm
request, ' ' May I trouble you for the turkey, madame ? ' '
And one remembers the immensely illustrative tale,
not apocryphal, of Webster at the Jenny Lind con-

253

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

cert in Boston, when the Swedish singer, aglow with
happiness, came out and bowed to the great audience
in response to tumultuous acclaim and the mighty
Daniel arose in his place in the audience and returned
the bow!

y- if ".;. .<w

mm %

CHAPTEE XX

A TOWN THAT WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

ful verse.

|HE ancient Wayside Inn, at
Sudbury, dates from the latter
years of the 1600 's; it is be-
lieved that at least a good part
of it was built in 1688; and
it was a well-known stopping
place for generations before
Longfellow put it into delight-
It stands on one of the main roads leading
from the west to Boston, and Washington went past
here, and probably halted for a little, and Knox and
his Ticonderoga cannon went by these doors. It is
distant from any town; it has always been notable
among inns for its isolation; and, when railroads
came, the nearest one, as if respecting decades of
seclusion, remained a mile or more away, and thus
the ancient inn is as isolated as ever it was, and has
kept on adding to its aspect of mellow romance. And
it is really so very romantic! It is stately fronted
and very large ; I feel sure that I have never seen an
old gambrel-roof ed house as large as this ; it is peace-
ful, it is full of atmosphere, and its ancient rooms, its
taproom and sitting-rooms and huge dining-room, are
furnished with things of antique time.

255

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

"As ancient is this hostelry as any in the land may
be ; built in the old Colonial day, when men lived in a
grander way, with ampler hospitality": Longfellow
wrote of it with glowing appreciation, in those "Tales
of a Wayside Inn" in which he fancied one after an-
other of a group of friends telling stories there. But,
although the plan of the many poems was fanciful, the
friends to whom he imaginatively ascribed them were
really friends of his. The poet was Parsons, the mu-
sician was Ole Bull, the Sicilian was Luigi Monti, the
theologian, Professor Treadwell, the student, Henry
Wales, the merchant, Israel Edrehi — an interesting
group of friends, for a Cambridge poet! — and the
landlord was Howe, one of a line of Howes who for
many years were landlords in succession.

Longfellow, well as he knew the surroundings of
Boston, knew nothing of the famous inn until told of it
by that good angel of the Boston authors, James T.
Fields ! And yet, it is barely thirty miles from Bos-
ton. The old inn instantly appealed to Longfellow's
fancy, and without ever seeing it he began his tales,
giving them the inn setting. Some time after that, on
a day in 1862, Fields drove Longfellow out to the inn ;
had it not been for that, Longfellow would have been
like most Bostonians, of his own day and of the pres-
ent time, in never seeing the fine old place at all. It
would not have checked Longfellow's Wayside poems,
however, not to have seen the Wayside ! For it was
an idiosyncrasy of his, frequently indulged, not to see
places about which he wrote. It was in 1839 that he
wrote of the "Beef of Norman's Woe," yet as long

256

A TOWN WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

after as 1878 he wrote to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps that
he had ' ' never seen those fatal rocks, ' ' though they are
right at Boston's door ! Longfellow was a great trav-
eler, too ; it was not that he was a stay-at-home. Yet
I have seen it stated that he never saw Acadia, to
which so many thousands pilgrimage to do him honor !
One does not quite like to inquire whether or not he
ever saw the definite localities of Miles Standish and
John Alden.

It is not alone the houses and places definitely con-
nected with great events of the past, or with great
authors, that are of interest. The spirit of the past is
often finely represented by old houses which are with-
out great associations, but are fascinatingly mellowed
by the salt and savor of time. The ancient Wayside
Inn, rich in its associations with Longfellow's admira-
bly told tales, would have had great fascination even
without them.

New England still possesses a number of very old
houses, delightful in their general presentation of the
past, without needing much of definitely great asso^
ciations. There is the Eoyall house at Medford, one
of the oldest houses still standing in this old country
of ours, built, the greater part of it, in the early 1700 's,
but with part of it probably dating back into the
previous century. Nothing is more difficult, in most
cases, than to fix upon the precise building date of an
old house, and the difficulty is greater if the house has
passed through the hands of various families, and in
addition has been altered or enlarged. In most cases,
when a house, now old, was built, no one was thinking

257

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

of far-distant future interest in the precise date of
construction. Sometimes, when a house was built, the
date was set up in a corner of the gable; sometimes
the date seen in a gable represents the date of an addi-
tion or is a modern guess at the date of the original
building. Most often there was no marking whatever,
and ancient deeds of real-estate seldom throw light on
the subject, because they mention the land alone or
may refer to an earlier house.

The Boyall house is one of the most interesting in
appearance of old New England houses. Although it
is a village house, not a house on an isolated estate, it
is more retired and exclusive in its situation than was
the case with New England village or town houses in
general, which were mostly set near a main street or
road. A great open space is still retained about this
Boyall house, with great old trees, with shrubs, with
part of an ancient lilac hedge with white and pur-
ple flowers, with the marks of ancient paths and drive-
ways, with even the ghost of a garden still retained
within the fragmentary boundary of an ancient wall
of brick.

Near the old house there is a little ancient build-
ing which it is well to look at, for it represents a
feature of early New England life; for this little
building, believed to be the only one of its kind still
standing in Massachusetts, was the quarters of the
slaves ! — of whom, so records tell, twenty-seven were
owned by the master of this Boyall house, in 1732.

The Boyall house is a house with two fronts : either
back or front may almost be termed the front; and

258

A TOWN WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

it is a big house, with fine doorways and windows.
And that there is record of twenty-one weddings
known to have been solemnized within this ancient
home is quite as important as if it had been a rendez-
vous for soldiers or had sheltered some fleeing patriot
or Eoyalist. As a matter of fact, the owner, when the
Eevolution came, was a Eoyalist who fled to Halifax
and England; he yearned deeply to return to the
stately house, set in its stately environment of trees
and garden and grass, but he died an exile, before the
war came to an end.

The house is maintained by one of the patriotic
societies and is furnished throughout with the furni-
ture of the past: and in a corner stands a chest, of
greenish Chinese lacquer, an odd-looking, unex-
pected thing to be there: and you learn that it is
reputed to be one of the very chests thrown into
the harbor at the Boston Tea Party, and picked up,
afterwards, floating in the water.

There is a staircase of delightfulness, with newel-
post and balusters exquisitely fine ; there are notably
beautiful interior pilasters in the upper hall; there
are paneling and window seats and fireplaces and
cornicing and a secret stair: there is abundance of
rambling roominess and everywhere are the belong-
ings and the very atmosphere of the past. For such
houses are in themselves the very past.

It is near the Mystic: a quiet stream, sedate and
solemn, slowly winding its way in sweeping bends
through marshy levels to the sea. In this house Gen-
eral Stark early made his headquarters ; and his wife,

259

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

pleasantly remembered as "Molly Stark," watched
from the roof the topmasts of the British ships, in
the distance, as they moved out of the harbor at the
evacuation of Boston.

Also on the Mystic, and not more than two miles
or so from this house of the Eoyalls, is a house still
older, the Cradock house. On the way to this house
one passes an ancient-looking little shipyard, whose
little ships poke their bowsprits out over the very
sidewalk.

From the foreground of the Cradock house and of
several oldish houses that neighbor it, the salt
marshes of the Mystic stretch away into the distance,
and far off, above them, rises the city of Boston, on
its hill. A mist was gently falling, as I looked, and it
dimmed the stream and the marshes with mystery —
all was becoming literally Mystic! — and the mist
came sweeping softly toward the ancient Cradock
house, and wrapped it as in the mist that comes with
the centuries.

The house is of red brick, and stands on a low knoll,
and is admirable in shape, with its gambrel-end of
felicitousness, and its many-paned windows, and the
little oval windows at the side. Vines clamber
thickly upon it, and although it is somewhat spoiled
by inferior immediate surroundings, it is itself fine
and sweet, it is itself a notable survival, standing so
happily on its knoll and looking off toward Boston.

This Cradock house, in Medford — easily reachable
by trolley — is remindful of another and still more
fascinating house, of about the same date; a house

260

A TOWN WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

which, indeed, looks the older of the two, and prob-
ably is: the Fairbanks house at Dedham: and this
also may be readily reached by trolley. And I men-
tion this because train service is often inconvenient,
to many a point, and because not every tourist goes
about with a motor car.

The Fairbanks house is of three periods, all of
them, so it is believed, in the 1600 's ! The middle and
oldest portion of the building dates back to before
1650, and it very likely deserves the honor of being
the oldest house in New England, although, as has
been mentioned, the precise dating of ancient homes
is a doubtful matter.

The first impression is of an entrancing medley of
roof lines : literally of roofs ; there seems to be noth-
ing but roofs! — for the roofs of the center and the
wings come, alike, almost to the very ground. The
general aspect of the house is positively fascinating :
it is so rambling, so long, so romantic, so fetching,
as it stands on its slight rise of land, shaded and shel-
tered by giant hoary trees. There is no other house
in New England which more satisfactorily represents
very early America. It is not the grandest of early
houses, but it is thoroughly homelike, thoroughly at-
tractive, a Puritan homestead. It stands at the junc-
tion of two highways, and its approach, from Boston,
is through an avenue of giant willows that archingly
intermingle their branches above the road. And the
house is forever protected, by having been purchased
by the Fairbanks Family of the United States, incor-
porated for the purpose.

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

The ancient town of Marblehead possesses the
house, the Lee mansion, the home of Colonel Jere-
miah Lee, which in costliness of interior finish of a
home stands first among the pre-Revolutionary man-
sions of New England. It was built less than ten
years before the beginning of the Eevolution, and is
said to have cost the sum, at that time deemed enor-
mous for a house, of ten thousand pounds. That
Washington was received here as an honored guest,
that subsequently Lafayette was received here, that
at a still later date Andrew Jackson was a guest, are
but casual claims to fame ; the chief claim is the house
itself, in its stately beauty and dignity.

But in the first place one notices that it stands near
the sidewalk, with distinctionless houses close on
either hand, and that ordinary houses face it from
across the narrow way. Costly as was this mansion,
the home of a merchant who owned a hundred ships
and was of high social standing, there was never the
slightest attempt at aristocratic exclusiveness, or to
have it one of a number of houses in joint aristocratic
environment, as with the superb houses of Chestnut
Street in nearby Salem. A few other rich houses
are in the neighborhood, but they, like the Lee man-
sion, are closely surrounded by the homes of the
butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.

It should be remembered that the wealthy colonel,
the owner of this house, gave his life for his country.
He was searched for by the British, at the very be-
ginning of the B evolutionary struggle, as he was one
of an active committee of safety. The British, on

262

A TOWN WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

their night march to Lexington, passed near a house
where the committeemen were gathered, and Lee,
with one or two others, lay in a field, in hiding, for
some hours, and he shortly afterwards died from that
exposure. Well, he gave his life for his country.
But what an opportunity he missed! He was a
colonel, a man of affairs, a leader; he could have won
immortal renown had he headed the farmers against
the British, instead of fleeing and getting his death
from the chill of a night in early spring; and he let
the farmers win immortality without any leader
of prominence. Like John Hancock and Samuel
Adams, Colonel Lee, after getting other men to fight,
fled from the actual conflict ; even though, also as with
Adams and Hancock, on that night before Lexington
and Concord, the British soldiers were so close upon
him that it was with difficulty he got away. Had he
accepted the opportunity that Fate was trying to
force upon him he might not only have won splendid
fame, but might have lived after the war, for years,
in his splendid home.

The mansion, now maintained by the Marblehead
Historical Society, is entered through a superb por-
tico and a superb ten-paneled door. The hall is noble
in proportions and size, being forty-two feet long and
sixteen feet in width. The stairway is of the noble
width of six feet and eleven inches, and rises in
stately ease, with beautifully twirled banisters of
mahogany. The stair turns, at a landing, where
there is a wonderful beehive window and a felicitous
windowseat, with a pair of beautiful pilasters at

263

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

either side. I do not remember any staircase and
landing to equal the beauty, the serenity, the nobility
of this, in any, even of the grandest, of other Colonial
houses, South or North. The house is rich in panel-
ing, and one of the finest rooms is paneled in solid
mahogany. And a strikingly distinguished feature
is the wallpaper of the hall ; huge pictured paper, still
in perfect preservation, showing great classical land-
scapes, in black on cream-colored ground, with tem-
ples and arches and streams. This magnificent paper
antedates the Bevolution and is supposed to have
been made by an Italian in London.

Within sight of the Lee mansion is that of Lee's
brother-in-law, "King" Hooper, as he was called
from his wealth and magnificence; he was another
merchant prince, and the house is especially notable
from the fine banquet hall, still preserved, in the
upper story of the big building. And not far away
is another Lee mansion, the home of a brother of Col-
onel Lee.

Marblehead is a town of old houses, although most
of them are of a far more modest kind than these
great mansions. And it is an interesting town in its
general aspect of the olden-time. ' ' The strange, old-
fashioned, silent town — the wooden houses, quaint
and brown"; and indeed it is a study in browns!
And in its older portion, beside the shore, it is still
little more than a maze of paths and byways, of nar-
row streets incredibly twisting. Houses are set down
at all sorts of angles, shouldering one another into
or away from the roadways. Many of these houses

264

A TOWN WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

are ancient, and there is still in use a fascinating,
ancient-looking shipyard, with high-perched ships
under construction, directly on the line of one of the
streets, as with the one at Medford; it is a yard full
of ships and chips. And there are black rocks, with
black pools among them, and a rocky shore ; and there
is a broad stretch of harbor, thick-dotted with fishing
boats. The people who live in this most old-
fashioned portion of the town are still full of old-
fashioned ways and beliefs, and many of them have
actually heard the shrieking woman: the ghost of a
woman who was put to death by Spanish pirates at
what is now called Oakum Bay, and who shrilly
shrieks on the yearly night of her murder, just as she
shrieked in actuality, dismally rousing the town from
its slumber, so long ago.

George Washington was especially desirous of see-
ing Marblehead, on the journey that he made to Mas-
sachusetts in 1789; I say "especially," not that he
gave any reason, but because in his diary he singled
the place out for mention as one to which he wished
to go ; and it was an extremely unusual thing for him
thus to write of any place. Going to Salem, he de-
toured to Marblehead, "which is four miles out
of the way, but I wanted to see it." It is rather
tantalizing that, after so writing, he kept his impres-
sions of the place to himself !

Perhaps he went to Marblehead because it was the
home town of the gallant General Glover, who did so
much at Long Island and the Delaware. And the
home of Glover is still preserved. It is up one of the

265

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

crookedest and narrowest of the lanes, a stone's throw
from the water's edge, in the heart of an ancient nau-
tical neighborhood ; it is a white house, with fine door-
way and gambrel roof, and has a fine aspect of
dignity.

Here in Marblehead still stands the house in which
lived Captain Blackler, one of General Glover's men,
who was intrusted by Glover with the command of
the very boat in which Washington crossed the Dela-
ware! And compared with such a memory, how lit-
tle does it matter that this house of Blackler 's was
also the birthplace of Elbridge Gerry!

Marblehead is mainly known, to many people, from
the stirring lines depicting Skipper Ireson, Whittier
having lived in the town for a time and having be-
come saturated with the legends and spirit of the
place. But Marblehead does not relish the lines,
picturing, as they do, the supposed cowardice of one
of its captains, and has striven hard to throw off the
odium by claiming that it was not Skipper Ireson 's
wish to desert the ship that asked for aid, but that he
followed the united demand of his crew; an amusing
defense of the honor of the town, to put the blame on
many rather than on one ! It has seemed to me that
the endeavor to reject the story has really been more
on account of the desire to throw aside the odium
of Marblehead 's women engaging in the pastime of
tarring and feathering, a sport supposed to have been
left to men. But New England women did early do
tarring and feathering on occasion, as in a case men-
tioned by Baroness Eiedesel, in her memoirs, as hav-

266

A TOWN WASHINGTON WANTED TO SEE

ing occurred in Boston, a case in which a party of
Boston women seized the wife and daughter of a self-
exiled loyalist and tarred and feathered them and led
them through the city. I am afraid that a good many
things that were not very pretty took place in the
good old days.

So far as bravery is concerned, Marblehead needs
no defender; Ireson was an exception — or his men
were exceptions, if the town prefers to put it that
way. Marblehead is said to have given more men to
the Bevolutionary army, in proportion to the popula-
tion, than any other town in America ; and it was not
only quantity of men but quality; Marblehead men
were famed for bravery. It was to a Marblehead
man, in his armed schooner, that, in 1775, the first
British flag was struck. And some Marblehead men
sailed into the St. Lawrence, also before 1775 was over,
and not only captured English boats, but actually
landed on Prince Edward's Island and made the
governor a prisoner. But the list of the Marblehead
brave is too long to name.

The old Town House of Marblehead still stands,
full of years and memories. And there still stands
the home of a certain Moses Pickett who, reputed a
miser and dying in 1853, left his house and his entire
little fortune for the poor widows of the town, thus
with his thirteen thousand dollars doing far more
good in the world than many a wealthy man has done
by blindly throwing away millions. And here is still
standing the home of that Captain Creesy who, with
the Flying Cloud, won the reputation of being the

267

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

best skipper, with the fleetest sailing ship, in the
world. And here is the house in which the famous
jurist, Judge Story, was born.

A church is still standing, St. Michael's, which is
over two hundred years old, but it has been consider-
ably altered from its original appearance. And there
is a delightful association connected with it. For an
early rector of this church left it to take, instead, a
church in Virginia, and while in Virginia he was called
upon to marry two people who came to be a very
prominent couple in the eyes of the world — for they
were George Washington and the Widow Custis !

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CHAPTEE XXI

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOBT OF SALEM

'N the minds of many, Salem is
chiefly notable on account of Haw-
thorne ; in the minds of others the
city is equally notable on account
of the witches; yet most of the
Salem people themselves do not
relish any talk of witches ; in their
treatment of which unfortunates,
after all, this city only followed
the example set by Boston; and
as to Hawthorne, he for his part frankly disliked
pretty much everything connected with the place even
though he was born in Salem and achieved his greatest
triumph while he lived there.

The ancient house where Hawthorne was born on
the patriotic day of July 4th, 1804, at 27 Union Street,
is still preserved, and it is a house that could never
have been very attractive, and is situated in a faded
quarter of the town which was never of the best.

Salem was settled at about the same time as Boston,
but a little earlier than the big neighbor that was to
outgrow it; it was settled almost ten years after the
landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth ; and among the
various and notable things in the long history of Salem

269

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

there has been nothing finer than its standing undaunt-
edly by Boston when Boston's port was closed in pun-
ishment for unrest and outspokenness shortly before
the beginning of the Revolution; Salem might have
profited by a rival's misfortune, but would not, and
nobly set forth, in formally phrased declaration, that
"We must be dead to every idea of justice, lost to all
feelings of humanity, could we indulge a thought to
raise our fortunes on the ruin of our suffering neigh-
bors."

Hawthorne lived in Salem in several different
houses in turn, and in one of these houses, the house
on Herbert Street where he lived as a boy and as a
young man, and twice at different periods afterwards,
he wrote, in 1840, "If ever I should have a biographer
he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my
memoirs, because here my mind and character were
formed. By and by, the world found me out in my
lonely chamber"; and it was of this Herbert Street
house that he wrote, "In this dismal chamber Fame
was won." Future fame, in the person of another,
had certainly found him out as far back as when he
was a boy, when he lived in this Herbert Street house,
for at one time, when he was kept from school through
having hurt his foot, his kindly school-teacher came
here to call upon him, this quiet school-teacher being
a man of the name of Worcester, himself to be famous
as the author of a dictionary honored on both sides of
the Atlantic !

In his earlier years and well into middle life Haw-
thorne had no doubt of his claims to high literary fame,

270

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

but, as with, many another author, doubts came to him
with lack of financial returns, and when, at the age of
forty-five, he wrote his masterpiece, he was so afraid
that it was a failure that he actually feared to show it ;
he had had so little of practical success that he could
not believe that he had really written a book that was
even worth looking at; he was utterly downhearted;
and this brought about the most interesting happening
in the entire history of this town of Salem, the dis-
covery of the "Scarlet Letter." And I do not mean
the supposititious discovery, by the author, of the let-
ter itself, but the actual discovery of the novel by the
publisher.

James T. Fields came out here to Salem to see Haw-
thorne one day in 1849, when Hawthorne was living at
14 Mall Street, and encouragingly asked for material
for a book, to which Hawthorne only replied, gloomily,
that he had been doing nothing. ' ' And who would pub-
lish a book by such an unpopular author as I am?" he
demanded. Whereupon, "I would," promptly re-
sponded Fields. His publishing instinct told him that
Hawthorne had really been at work and had something
ready. "You have a book already completed," he in-
sisted, in spite of the author's demurs; and at length
Hawthorne reluctantly admitted that he had really
been writing something and that it was enough for a
book. And he reluctantly took from a drawer the
manuscript of the greatest of all American stories.

Fields took it with joy, hurried with it back to Bos-
ton, sat up that night to read it, realized its greatness,
and hurried back next day, aglow with enthusiasm.

271

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

He found Hawthorne still discouraged, awaiting his
report on the story, but the discouragement swiftly
vanished when he found that Fields was bubbling over
with energy and happiness, and eager to make a con-
tract for the book's publication. And that was how
the "Scarlet Letter" saw the light.

Previous to this inspiration and encouragement on
the part of Hawthorne's publisher there had been the
encouragement and inspiration of Hawthorne's wife.
For when, downhearted, thinking that without a salary
he could not live, he had gone home to her with the
news that he had lost the place in the Salem Custom
House that had come to him from the friendship of his
old-time college-mate, President Pierce, his wife
neither joined him in repining nor urged him to seek
some other salaried place, but, instead, put down be-
fore him money that she had been saving, unknown to
him, from the domestic allowance, and said cheerfully,
' ' Now, you can write your novel. ' ' It was under that
inspiration that he wrote it, and when, the work done,
fear came upon him that it was not good, it was from
his publisher's inspiration that it saw the light. In
all, a strange story of literature and of Salem !

Near the waterside, in the older part of the city,
looking out at a lovely view across the water of the
harbor and off toward the broad Atlantic, is an
ancient, nestled, low-set house, with ancient stack-
chimney of brick ; a house overhung by great trees and
pleasantly surrounded with grass, and reached by a
little private-looking lane known as Turner Street,
which leads down from a main thoroughfare. Haw-

272

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

thorne wrote of this house, which even when he wrote
was about a century and three quarters old, and he
gave it fame as the "House of the Seven Gables."

Within my own memory this house had only five ga-
bles, in spite of its fame-given seven and its actual
present seven, for it has not only been restored and
kept in repair on account of its association with Haw-
thorne, but an architect discovered, or thought he dis-
covered, that it originally had seven gables, just as
Hawthorne described it, and so the necessary two were
built out again ! And a wonderful roof -line the house
has, with its clustered gables and that old central
chimney, "stacked" like those of Tudor days. Per-
haps it was not altogether desirable to put on the two
gables; Hawthorne had no desire to have the house
precisely match his description ; he pictured it in his
imagination and that was quite enough. Hepzibah's
"cent shop" has also been given to the building, and
its interesting old rooms are open to the public for a
small fee.

Hawthorne began to write the "Scarlet Letter" at
a high desk in the Custom House, a satisfactory, good-
looking, old square building down near the waterfront,
while he held the appointment of surveyor for the port
of Salem, and it was after he lost that official position
that he finished the story.

Hawthorne felt very critical toward the people of
Salem, not having found precisely congenial surround-
ings there, even though it was in Salem that fame came
to him, with some of his early work, and even though
his wife was a young woman of Salem. He kept very

273

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

much to himself while he lived in that town, at least in
his maturer years, and his attitude is expressed by a
letter in which he comments on an invitation which he
has just received, for his unsocial expression is, "Why
will not people let poor persecuted me alone?" It
need not be thought that he was a recluse, but at no
time in his life did he care to spend time with people
who did not interest him.

Hawthorne has somehow managed to offer for fu-
ture generations such an atmosphere and detail of the
past of old Salem, and thereby of all of old New Eng-
land, as shows us the very life and feeling of the an-
cient time. He could see and feel the fine old romance
of the past, the charm of it, the beauty of it, and he
could also see the vivid human nature of it. And
Salem could never quite forgive him that he recog-
nized also the impermanence of much that was so good
in it, and that in that very town he discerned what he
termed ' ' worm-eaten aristocracy. ' ' It was his ability
to see and to feel the past not only in its romantic
colors but in its entirety that made it possible for him
to write his greatest works, "The Scarlet Letter" and
"The House of the Seven Gables."

One's first impression of Salem is that it is rather
an uninteresting place, for the entire central district
near the railway station has been made unattrac-
tively brick-red and modern; but by getting away
from this central region, one finds that there is still
left very much of the interesting.

Gallows Hill, on which the witches were hanged, is
a hill that seems to be a solid rock, at the edge of the

274

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

town, bare of trees but covered with grass and dwarf
sumac. The actual place where the gallows stood has
been forgotten, but the general position is remembered
and avoided, and the city itself owns the land. Not
far away, however, quite a settlement has grown up
and the people who live there have formed themselves,
with cheerful bravado, into a Gallows Hill Association,
and when the children of Salem not long ago paraded
in a pageant, those from this part of the city dressed
themselves proudly as little witches.

At the court house in Salem, some ancient witch-
craft mementoes are preserved, including some of the
"witch pins" that figured in the evidence, and the
curious death warrant that directed the sheriff to hang
one of the witches until "dead and buried" — which
was an unintentional order to carry vengeance beyond
the grave.

Under the old English Common Law, which was in
force in America until modified by local laws, convic-
tion for felony involved confiscation of property, but
there was no provision for procuring conviction in
case the accused refused to plead. Nowadays, in case
of such refusal the court enters "Not Guilty," but for-
merly there was nothing to do but try to force a plea
by the frightfully painful method known as peine forte
et dure, which was the heaping of stones and weights
upon a man's chest until he yielded or died. If a man
was brave enough to bear the torture to the bitter end,
he could not be convicted, and there could be no for-
feiture, whereupon his heirs inherited his property;
and now and then a man actually bore the pain to win

275

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

that result. In all American history there has been
but one example of peine forte et dure. Giles Corey,
accused at Salem of witchcraft, and knowing that if he
stood trial he was certain, in those days of blind ex-
citement, to be convicted, refused to plead and hero-
ically bore the punishment of pressing to death.

There can be no possible appreciation of Salem with-
out going from end to end of Chestnut Street. Yet
even a mention of this street is likely to be omitted in
Salem guide-books, merely because no incident ever
happened there. But no greater mistake can be made
by any one who wishes to understand the past than to
look only at places connected with definite occurrences,
for the history of the past and the interest of the past
often lie even more deeply in houses and localities
that only represent the past with indirectness. And
Chestnut Street is in itself a remarkable American
street.

Among the most interesting streets in America are
Chestnut Street of Salem, Chestnut Street of Boston,
and Chestnut Street of Philadelphia, and each of these
has justly been deemed a street with much of the old
American charm of architecture, each has been a
stronghold of aristocratic living, each has still much of
the flavor of the past, each is a street of houses of
beauty and good taste, and all these three Chestnut
Streets still preserve a great degree of their original
felicitousness, even though the greater part of the
Chestnut Street of Philadelphia has lapsed into busi-
ness.

Salem is proud in the belief that of the three Chest-

276

ROMANTIC CHESTNUT STREET, IN SALEM

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

nut Streets its own has always been the best ; and it
really has been, and that is a great deal to say of even
the best street of a little city like Salem. These Salem
houses on Chestnut Street were built in the first quar-
ter of the 1800 's by the rich merchants of that period,
and there is not only a superb line of mansions, well
kept up, but also even more superb lines of huge trees,
glorious trees, trees that splendidly overarch the en-
tire length of the street, the houses themselves being
just far enough back from the sidewalk line to permit
of the complete rounding of the shapes of the trees.
One cannot well be too enthusiastic, too appreciative,
of this street of mansions, fine American in style as
they are, and designed, most of them, by the Salem
architect, Mclntire, or at least built under his influ-
ence. It is the finest street, taken in all, of any of the
streets of old-time mansions in America, and the
double line of old mansions is remarkably unbroken.

Toward the other end of the city, with staid old
homes built about it, is "Washington Square, with its
iron-railed and elm-bordered training-green. The
houses of wealth and dignity that front this green are
of the same general period as those of Chestnut Street,
and both of these sections show the fine and even mag-
nificent living of the period of Salem's highest pros-
perity, when her great shipping fortunes were made ;
and, indeed, by far the greater part of the fortunes of
New England had their origin in the glorious days of
American shipping.

As one goes about Salem, the first impression that
there is little of interest here entirely disappears ; one

277

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

forgets entirely the portions that at first jarred ex-
pectation ; and there comes the full understanding that
the city is remarkably rich in interesting houses of the
past. And it is one of the chief charms of the place
that upon these houses of the past the hand of the re-
storer has been but lightly laid, and that they remain
as their builders intended them to remain.

One of the most interesting of the many old houses
is the Pickering house on Broad Street, a particularly
attractive home that has stood there for two and a half
centuries ; it has actually stood, right here in Salem,
since the later years of the time of Cromwell, or at
least since 1660, the year of the restoration of the
Stuarts ! How unexpectedly far away this seems, for
America, even after one has come to a realization that
this is not a new country! For it is hard to realize
that actual living was so fixed and comfortable here so
long, long ago. This Pickering house is still pre-
served and cared for by Pickering descendants, and
the building serves to keep in mind not only the gen-
eral charm and interest of the charming and interest-
ing past, but the career of a particular Pickering who
was born in this house and who won unique honors —
that Timothy Pickering who, as a right brave fighter,
was an officer at the battles of Germantown and Bran-
dywine, who, as a legislator, was successively repre-
sentative and senator, and who, in Washington's Cab-
inet, was given the successively high distinctions of be-
ing postmaster-general, secretary of war and secre-
tary of state.

The best parts of Salem are interesting not only be-

278

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

cause of the admirable buildings but because of the
not infrequent fine and planned harmony of mansion
and carriage-house and garden, arranged and de-
signed as a complete whole. There is a house at 80
Federal Street which, with its surroundings, is a par-
ticularly good example, a house built in 1782, a house
which ought to be seen by any visitor ; it is of fine New
England architecture, and I remember its doorway as
a work of special beauty, and it has carved urns of
most admirable classic design on its gateposts, show-
ing how very beautiful may be a plain gateway with
posts and ornaments of wood ; and this house, with its
garden and adjuncts, is one of the excellent examples
of harmonized planning.

More than most other Eastern cities Salem offers
direct inspiration for visitors from the West, because
from the first it has been built with detached homes,
each with grass plot and garden, instead of with
houses ranged closely, shoulder to shoulder, as in
Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

One of the most famous of naval fights, that between
the Chesapeake and Shannon, the gallant "Don't give
up the ship!" action, was fought so near Salem, just
off its harbor, that the heights along the shore were
thronged with Salem people who watched the progress
of the battle with eager suspense. Always a brave
city, this ; a city ready to encourage others in bravery
and to do brave things itself. It is said that in the
War of 1812 forty armored vessels of the two hundred
and fifty furnished by the entire country were from
Salem. And the mettle of Salem was shown in the

279

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

brave way in which it faced the devastation of the fire
of 1914, that swept away hundreds of houses ; for in-
stead of helplessly yielding to what might well have
seemed an irreparable disaster, the city began at once,
and on a broad scale, the task of rebuilding.

A fortunate thing with that fire was that with few
exceptions it did not take away the old-time buildings
of the city. They still remain. In fact, there is no
better place, and there is probably no place even as
good except a remote town like Guilford in Connecti-
cut,- where the various styles and periods of American
buildings may be seen. Salem still has houses of the
1600 's, with their overhanging stories and stack chim-
neys; it has houses of the 1700 's, with their gambrel
roofs or roofs of double pitch ; it has the great square-
fronted stately houses of the period from 1790 to 1825.
Those who would study the old houses of America
should go to Salem.

And there is many a little detail here, too, that is
noticeable, as well as the houses themselves; for ex-
ample, all over Salem there is the opportunity to see
excellent designs in old-time door-knockers.

The Bopes mansion, a house of the 1700 's, is inter-
esting both in itself and in the way in which it has been
preserved, for it is an endowed memorial of the past,
left by its late owner to be kept, with all of its old fur-
niture and with its garden planned as an old-fashioned
garden of finest type, not as a museum held by one of
the patriotic societies, but as a possession of the public
into which the public may freely go. The house, with
its belongings, is forever to be shown to one generation

280

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

after another, with no chance of being sold or torn
down at the whim of some tasteless heir.

Yet, if all these old houses, with their wealth of old
belongings, should be destroyed, the Salem of the past
would still be represented if it should still retain the
treasures of its Essex Institute. The building that
holds these treasures is a three-story structure of gen-
erous proportions, standing near the center of the city,
on Essex Street ; and that where this house now stands
there once stood the house of a man named Downing,
is remindful of one of the romantic facts in regard to
early America. For the son of this Downing went
over from here to London and became so strong a
friend of Cromwell as to be made Minister to The
Hague, and then by a swift transfer of allegiance, in
order to retain his ambassadorship, he swung over to
the cause of Charles the Second; and eventually he
gave name to Downing Street ; that street of all streets
that is most typical of the English, the street whose
name typifies the English government itself !

The Essex Institute holds, in itself, Old Salem.
Enter the door — and the building is freely open to en-
trance by any one who is interested — and instantly you
are generations away from the present, for there is
nothing that does not tell Of the past, and the past is
shown with infinite picturesqueness and particularity.
There is a great central portion, and there are little
alcoved rooms full-furnished as rooms of the olden
time, all in immaculate ship-shape order. There are
paintings of the men and women of the past ; there are
the very costumes that they wore, the gowns, the bon-

281

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

nets, the coats, the waistcoats; there are wedding
gowns and there are uniforms and there are the very
looking-glasses in which those old-timers saw the re-
flection of their faces. Here are the very glasses from
which they drank and the very dishes from which they
ate ; and these are preserved in amazingly great quan-
tity and in amazingly good condition; and glass col-
lectors would like to know that one item alone is of
some one hundred and fifty cup-plates of glass of
Sandwich make !

Here in Essex Institute is the furniture of our fore-
fathers, tables and sideboards and chairs, and among
them is a black, heavy three-slat chair with high-
turned posts which was the favorite chair of that be-
loved Mary English, who, with her husband, the rich-
est shipowner of Salem, had to flee from Massachu-
setts for very life under the shadow of witchcraft ac-
cusation ; and this excellent old chair seems to stand as
a reminder that neither wealth nor high character nor
charm of manner nor social position can be relied
upon to check a popular delusion.

On the whole, the relics are remindful of a cheerful
past, a happy, bright, refreshing, pleasant past ; and
the surprising number of spinets that have been pre-
served would alone show that the early days were far
from being days of mere gloom and severity.

But not only the personal belongings of the past,
and the furnishings of the old buildings, are preserved,
here at the Essex Institute, and not only is there a de-
lightful old house of the seventeenth century, with
overhanging second-story and peaked roof-windows,

282

THE FAMOUS OLD SEAPOET OF SALEM

actually within the grounds of the Institute, but fas-
cinatingly among the possessions of the museum are
portions of old houses that have been destroyed: for
here are pilasters and balusters, pillars and window-
tops, here are the very cornices of rooms, here are the
essential fragments of buildings that have gone. It
would seem as if not only in cases of demolition of old
houses, but in the fewer cases of restoration and "im-
provement," the Institute has been on the watch for
treasure. Some time ago the old house in which Haw-
thorne was born had some of its window sash replaced
by larger panes — and the little window through which
the eyes of Hawthorne first looked forth to the sky and
the great world is preserved at the Essex Institute.

A few miles from Salem, out beyond Danvers, is the
old Putnam homestead ; a sturdy old house, gambrel-
roofed, and built around a great central chimney.
Spacious rooms, great fireplaces, old sideboard, sofa
and chairs, old-time portraits and silhouettes, all tell
of the long-past time. Here many a Putnam was born,
including the famous General Israel Putnam, "Old
Put," who so bravely galloped down the stone steps
in Connecticut and who left a general impression of
going gallantly galloping through the entire Eevolu-
tion. Putnams still live in the old house, and the pres-
ent small-boy Putnam has the big, frank, blue eyes of
the distinguished Israel.

There is an inclosing tall thorn hedge, and the house
is shaded by great elms and by a monster willow tree
that was anciently planted by a Putnam slave. The
house is away from the center of Danvers, in a charm-

283

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ing region of hills and dales and stone walls and apple
orchards ; it is a countryside not greatly changed since
the Eevolution — except that the State has set a mon-
strous ugly asylum on a hilltop near by; a poor re-
turn for the loyalty of the Putnams.

And what a wonderful family these New England
Putnams — who changed their name from the English
form of Puttenham — were! It is believed that they
gave more men to the Union army, in the Civil War,
than did any other single family; it seems even more
sure that they gave more men to the Eevolutionary
army than did any other family; and on the great day
of Lexington and Concord there were more Putnams
than men of any other name who eagerly hurried to
take part in the conflict. Seventy-five Putnams, all
supposed to be connections, from various Putnam
homes, responded to the call that day; the more dis-
tant could not come up till the British were back
within the Boston lines, but many arrived before that
— and the family toll for that very first day was one
wounded and two killed.

B

CHAPTEE XXII

THE MOST IMPORTANT ROAD IN AMERICA

(HE road between Boston and
Concord is the most important
in America, for it was on this
road that America was made.
The halt of the British troops
at Lexington long enough to
fire the first fatal shots, their
advance to Concord, the brief
contest there and the beginning of the flight, their sec-
ond arrival at Lexington, where they cast themselves
down with their tongues hanging out like those of dogs
after a chase, as a British account had it, then the
flight on to Boston, with the British constantly drop-
ping under the fire of the sharpshooters — that day and
that road marked not only the beginning of the war,
but foretold its close. The clear-sighted Burgoyne
wrote of the fight at Lexington that, although it was
but a skirmish, in its consequences it was as decisive
as the battle of Pharsalia.

As if to make the day in every respect typical, the
most prominent of the English was the gallant Percy,
later to be Duke of Northumberland and master of
countless miles of countryside and of Alnwick, one of
the greatest castles in the world. But the English sol-

285

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

diers, though thus led by one of the proudest of the
English peerage, fell back in rout; neither English
peerage nor English soldiers were to be masters in
America.

That day, the 19th of April, 1775, was curiously the
day of the white horse. It was a white horse that the
future Duke of Northumberland rode, as he galloped
here and there along the frightened line, exposing
himself freely to the fire of the farmers. And most
marked among the Americans was a gray-haired
farmer on a white horse; Wyman of Woburn — how
Scott would have loved such a man and such a name !
And during the miles of retreat, and to the very edge
of Boston, Wyman of Woburn seemed like a pursuing
fate, as safe from English shot, on his white horse, as
was Percy from American shot on his, but galloping
across fields and over the low slopes, setting his horse
at the stone walls, time and again firing with such un-
erring aim that an appalling cry of dread of him went
through the British ranks.

It is difficult, at this day, to realize what bravery was
required to stand up against the British troops. It
was not only resistance to apparently overwhelming
authority, not only resistance to the British govern-
ment, but resistance to the King, at a time when the
brief episode of Cromwellianism had been long de-
plored and forgotten, and when to oppose the King
seemed not so very different from opposing Heaven
itself.

Unrest had been growing. The British officers, in
Boston, were told that the men of New England were

286

THE MOST IMPORTANT EOAD IN AMEEICA

about to rise and that warlike supplies had been gath-
ered at Concord. So eight hundred soldiers were sent
out, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith and Major Pit-
cairn, to destroy the supplies there and to capture, if
possible, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were
reported to be in hiding at Lexington.

It was on the night of the 18th that Paul Revere was
sent out to warn the countryside. He reached little
Lexington in the darkness, and the minutemen of the
village were aroused and toward daybreak they gath-
ered on the triangular village green. The green was
then, as it is now, a place of quiet beauty, of charm,
edged with huge elms and ash trees and faced by
homes of dignity. The gras3 grows very, very green,
as is curiously usual with the grass on battlefields.

Lexington is still a village of such charm as befits a
great national happening, in spite of the coming in,
with the passage of years, of somewhat of the unpic-
turesque. There are cedars set pictorially on the
stony slopes; there are oaks by the roadside; there
are grounds of sweet spaciousness and elms in lovely
vistas. And the village, although it has been a point
of pilgrimage for a hundred and fifty years, is still
entirely without tourist characteristics. A beautiful
white-pillared meeting-house looks out over the green,
but the meeting-house which stood at the very point
of the green, in 1775, has vanished. A few of the old
houses still remain, such as the fine square Harring-
ton homestead, facing the green with its prim little
low-setting eaves. An old monument stands on a lit-
tle mound on the green, with the bodies of the men

287

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

slain on that great day buried around it, and on this
monument and on tablets throughout the village are
descriptions that must thrill the heart of every Amer-
ican, particularly impressive being the simple mark-
ing of the line where a few men made the first actual
stand against England.

It was a lovely April morning; from two o'clock the
minutemen had been ready ; and as the early dawn was
beginning to appear they gathered once more, for
news had come that the British were actually at hand.
It was now about half -past four.

In all some fifty or sixty Americans formed, in two
narrow parallel rows. The British came in sight,
their arms glinting and their red coats glowing in the
soft spring light. Catching sight of the Americans,
they broke into double-quick, but, "Stand your
ground; don't fire unless fired upon; but if they want
to have a war let it begin right here," said Captain
John Parker; and the bravely solemn words are en-
graved for all time upon a boulder that has been
placed where he stood. Major Pitcairn rode forward
and sternly ordered the minutemen to disperse; but
they stood firm, and swiftly there came a volley against
them and a number fell. Several were killed ; others
were wounded. There were a few scattering shots in
reply. The Americans dispersed. And the British
hastily resumed their march toward Concord. That
was all — all, except that from Lexington came freedom.

Never was there greater capriciousness of happen-
ing than in the different fates of two Jonathan Har-
ringtons who stood with the line at Lexington : for one

288

THE MOST IMPOETANT ROAD IN AMERICA

Jonathan Harrington, mortally wounded, dragged
himself to the door of his own house, fronting the
green, and died at the feet of his young wife, whereas
the other Jonathan Harrington lived longest of any
of the company, not dying until seventy-nine years
afterwards, and at the great age of ninety-eight.

The road from Lexington to Concord, along which
the British continued and back over which they were
to hurry in disastrous retreat, is still a sweet and a
charming road, a road of wildness, with rarely a house
to be seen in the six miles of its length, and thereby a
road that gives a deep impression of its lovely loneli-
ness in early days.

Bordered for a short distance by trees that arch
over the entire width of road — thus it begins. It
climbs a rolling sweep, lush with greenery, and then,
passing beyond a little group of modern houses, be-
comes a narrow lane with widely sweeping views. It
goes twistingly on, bordered by ancient stone walls.
Continuously there is loneliness. Purple hills billow
into the distances. The road goes up and down over
little sloping rises ; it is rarely straight, but goes con-
stantly bending. There are pine trees, there are
ponds and pools, there are thick masses of piney wood-
land, there are groves of little white birches, there are
fall asters and the scarlet sumac. There is much of
rock and ruggedness, and, rounding a rocky bluff,
the road bends with the bending hill away, and you
come to one of the spots where the British, retreating,
tried in vain to rally; and here all is as wild as on that
April day of so long ago, and perhaps even wilder;

289

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

there were likely enough a few more houses in this
region then than there are now ; indeed, a glow of red
in a lonely spot on the farther side of a bleak swamp
turns out to be the fruit of an ancient orchard, where
no longer is there either house or barn. Always there
is a foreground of forest or the distant sweep of tree-
covered hills ; it is astonishing, the continued loneliness
of effect, and this but a few miles out from Boston.

And thus, past lines of birch that overhang the road,
and gracious elms that dot the open glades, and walls
of stone that fence the rocky fields, we go on into sweet
and charming Concord — a place that, once known
to the full of its attractiveness, remains a wistful
memory.

A trolley leads from Boston to Lexington, following
for much of the distance the route taken by the British,
but from Lexington to Concord it follows another
road, leaving this part untouched and unspoiled.

Concord is felicitously named, for it has an atmos-
phere of peace ; but it was far from being a place of
concord with the British ! When the British reached
Concord they were separated into several parties,
which searched houses and destroyed gun-carriages
and powder, and at the old Wright Tavern, still stand-
ing, Pitcairn stirred his brandy and vaingloriously de-
clared that thus should the blood of the patriots be
stirred. And it was stirred ! — but not precisely as he
meant it.

A party of perhaps a hundred went through the vil-
lage to the bridge over the Concord River, following
what was then a public road, though afterwards the

290

THE MOST IMPOETANT KOAD IN AMEEICA

line of road was changed, leaving this a cut-off at the
bridge, and it is now a quiet spot beside the water,
among the trees, away from traffic.

The Americans, outnumbered by the main body of
the British, had retreated to this bridge, and with the
passing of the hours hundreds and hundreds more
came hurrying in.

The Continentals stood at one side of the "rude
bridge that arched the flood" — how perfectly Emerson
phrased the entire scene, in the first stanza of his
Concord lines ! The bridge that literally arched the
river long since disappeared, but the new structure
reproduces it in shape and size ; and the stream that
now moves on with such full gentleness moved on with
sweet, full gentleness on that long-ago April day.

The Americans were under the command, in a sort of
informal way, of Captain Buttrick ; they had not heard
of what had occurred at Lexington ; they felt that the
solemn responsibility lay upon them of war or peace.

The British came to the other side of the bridge.
Captain Laurie was in command. And what thoughts
the name of a Laurie evokes ! For the home of Annie
Laurie actually exists in Maxwellton in Scotland, and
what is deemed her portrait is there shown, and por-
traits of several military Lauries are upon the walls.
It would be curious indeed if this Laurie at Concord
was a kinsman of the beloved Annie.

The British halted; there was angry parley, then
the British fired and two Americans fell dead and sev-
eral were wounded ; instantly the Americans fired and
two Englishmen were killed and nine were wounded.

291

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

There was no thought of retreat on the part of the
Americans. Captain Laurie drew off his force and
retreated toward the main body of the British at the
center of the village, The Americans cut across the
hills to intercept all of them at Merriam's Corners.
And it is a curious fact that another party of a hun-
dred or so of British, returning over this very bridge
from a search for munitions, a little after the conflict
there, saw no combatants, alive, of either side.

The British knew now that the entire countryside
was roused, and they decided upon a retreat. They
started doggedly back to Lexington, fired at by sharp-
shooters hidden behind barns and houses and stone
walls, but before they reached Lexington the retreat
became a frantic rout and they were in direst straits.

At Lexington there was a brief respite, for at this
point they were met by a reenf orcement of a thousand
men who had been hurried out from Boston, under
Earl Percy, at the first news of real trouble.

Percy did all that bravery and ability could do. He
placed field cannon so as to sweep the road and ridge
and hold the Americans briefly in check. He had quite
a number of the wounded men treated. He made his
headquarters at the Monroe Tavern, a square-fronted
old building, still existent, on the main road ; and the
farthest point of his advance has in recent years been
marked by a stone cannon set at the roadside.

Earl Percy, Duke of Northumberland as he was to
become, seems to stand in a special degree for the re-
gime of the aristocracy that the Bevolution overthrew.
And personally he won the reputation of being a most

292

THE MOST IMPORTANT EOAD IN AMERICA

brave and likable man. I remember, a portrait of
him, in the office of the president of Harvard, and it
shows him with full eyes, arched brows, and extremely
long Roman nose, and a pleasant expression, dressed
in a uniform with facings and epaulets and with lace
at the breast and at the cuffs. He was idolized by his
soldiers, for he was always doing some thoughtful
kindliness, such as sending home to England, at his
own expense, the widows of those of his regiment who
were killed at Lexington and Bunker Hill. His pic-
turesque presence seemed to mark the futility of the
greatest of the English nobility in the face of our Rev-
olution.

The retreat of Percy and Smith and Pitcairn from
Lexington to Boston was galling and disastrous.
Tablets along the roadside tell much of the tale, but
they do not tell of the burning of houses by the British
soldiers and they tell little of their killing of unarmed
men; the British were maddened by the incessant
shooting from right and left, and got quite beyond the
control of their harassed officers. A party of sol-
diers set upon an old farmer of over eighty, after he
had slain 4;wo of them, and they clubbed and shot and
stabbed him into unconsciousness. Besides general
bruises he had seventeen bayonet wounds ! But, octo-
genarian of enviable stamina that he was, he recovered
and lived to nearly the century point !

It was a sultry day, a day of early and intense spring
heat, which made the carrying of gun and accouter-
ments for twenty miles of deadly retreat after twenty
miles of night advance, a heavy task.

293 *

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

It was almost eight o'clock when the soldiers came
to the edge of Boston and found safety under the guns
of their battleships in the harbor. Not till then did
the pursuit cease. On that day the British loss was
almost three hundred men, to less than a hundred of
the Americans ; the British lost more in this defeat by
farmers than they had lost to capture Quebec !

Here at Concord the scene may still be visualized.
Here is the famous road, leading into the heart of the
village, with the low ridge bordering it at one side and
level meadows sweeping off at the other; here are
bullet-marked houses standing that witnessed the
gathering and the flight. Here is a beautiful old
church, not indeed the one that stood here in 1775, but
one needfully following that design and giving com-
pletion to the general effect, with its beauty of detail
and proportion. And at the bridge, the brimming
river calmly flows, and close beside the battlefield still
stands the sweet Old Manse, weather-worn, dun-col-
ored, almost gloomy, shaded by great pines and
fronted by an avenue of ancient ash trees ; and at the
side of the house is the old road to the bridge, lined by
a mighty double line of gloomy firs, and in their shade
is the grave of the first two of the British to be killed,
who, as the inscription has it, came three thousand
miles to die.

The minister's wife watched the skirmish from the
Old Manse, from the window of a room afterwards to
be the study, in turn, of Balph Waldo Emerson and
Nathaniel Hawthorne. For this ancient Manse has
associations even better known than those that connect

294

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THE MOST IMPOETANT EOAD IN AMERICA

it with the battle. In fact, when. Concord is men-
tioned, it is probable that more people think of its
literary associations than of its connection with our
warlike history. And probably no house was ever
given a more charming description than was given by
Hawthorne to this romantic Old Manse, to which he
and his wife came to make the first home of their mar-
ried life. But both Emerson and Hawthorne moved,
in turn, to other homes in the village.

The house which was the home of Emerson for the
best part of his lifetime, a square-front building of
much dignity, is but a few minutes' walk from the cen-
ter of the village, on the road along which the British
advanced and retreated. Emerson was dearly loved
by the entire village ; he seems to have been the benefi-
cent deity of the place, though ever far from being a
rich man. When, returning from a visit to Europe,
he found that the townsfolk had repaired his house,
which had been injured by fire, and that they had gath-
ered to give him a loving welcome home, he was too
much overcome to speak, and could only bow his head
and move silently toward his door, only to force him-
self to turn, for a moment, to show his heartfelt appre-
ciation, and to say that he was sure this was not a trib-
ute to him, an old man, returning home, but to the
"common blood of us all, one family, in Concord."
The best of the world were his friends, in person or
by correspondence, but he none the less loved to meet
his humble neighbors, and to take his part in town-
meetings — and he even joined the fire company ! He
had come to Concord after forever giving up the

295

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

ministry; he had driven over, in a chaise, from Ply-
mouth, with his bride — the drive being his wedding
journey — and he had lovingly made his home in the
lovely town.

The house is owned by descendants of Emerson, and
his library is maintained just as he quitted it ; there is
the same reddish carpet with its great roses, there are
the same chairs, the same Boston rocker, the same
table, the same row of book-shelves, ceiling-high and
crowded with mellow books; and every evening his
lamp is lighted just as if he were expected to come in.

Emerson and Hawthorne liked and respected each
other, but there was little personal communion be-
tween them, for Hawthorne was everything that Emer-
son was not, and Emerson was everything that Haw-
thorne was not. The solemn Hawthorne, easily bored,
would never put himself out to interest or be inter-
ested by those whose companionship he did not enjoy,
and he kept from intercourse with the townsfolk
whom Emerson treated in such neighborly fashion.
Naturally Hawthorne often grew as tired of himself
as of others. Once, when his wife went away on an
absence of some days, he determined, so he wrote in
his journal, to speak not a word to any human being
during the entire time of her absence; only to find
Thoreau come to his door, whereupon he grudgingly
admits him, and reluctantly confesses to his journal
that to hear Thoreau talk is like hearing the wind
among the boughs of a forest tree.

Thoreau, that other man of Concord, must have been
intensely interesting; that both Emerson and Haw-

296

THE MOST IMPOKTANT ROAD IN AMERICA

thorne admired him would alone be tribute sufficient ;
he was manly, he was a marvelous observer of trees
and plants and animals ; he would sit so silently, to
watch some forest animal, that, as Emerson records,
the animal would itself go toward him, in fearless curi-
osity, to watch the watcher !

It was here, in Concord, that the peripatetic Alcotts
found their home ; more even than in Boston. They
had three successive homes in Concord, and that which
is particularly associated with their life, the house in
which Louisa M. Alcott wrote her "Little Women,"
has remained practically unchanged since their time.
It stands charmingly at the foot of the wooded ridge,
not far from the Emerson house, but on the opposite
side of the road. Beside it is the little building once
famous as the School of Philosophy; and surely there
was never any other American place where such an
undertaking could have seriously and successfully
been carried on ! Bronson Alcott, forgotten as he is,
was the kind of man of whom Emerson could say, in
all seriousness, that he had the finest mind since Plato ;
and before taking this statement with a critical smile,
perhaps we ought to reflect that few ever knew as
much of both Plato and Alcott as did Emerson !

The home of the later years of Hawthorne — Ha-
thorne, the novelist's ancestors spelled it, but he
changed it by adding the "w" — is next to the "Little
Women" home of the Alcotts — whose name, by the
way, was changed by the philosopher from Alcox.
The house, which Hawthorne, on acquiring it, pleas-
antly named the "Wayside," had itself been one of

297

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

the earlier homes of the Alcotts, and such unphilosoph-
ical things were done to it as quite destroyed its pre-
Eevolutionary aspect. It was never among the finest
of the old-time homes; the general type, hereabouts,
largely from the absence of dormer windows, was not
nearly so attractive as in much of old New England.
Hawthorne made further alterations to please his own
taste, and developed the place into a pleasing home,
quiet and attractive. It is hemmed in by solemn ever-
greens, and from its place at the foot of the ridge looks
out across the sweeping meadows.

On the low hills behind the center of the village is
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and here lie buried Louisa
May Alcott and her father, and the nature lover
Thoreau, and Balph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel
Hawthorne ; "there in seclusion and remote from men,
the wizard hand lies cold. ' '

At the very center of the village, on the ridge-side,
stands a more ancient graveyard, where lie the early
pioneers; and among the ancient headstones, flaking
and blackening with time, I noticed one that was par-
ticularly black and flaked: with difficulty the inscrip-
tion was deciphered, and it is to the effect that the
stone was designed by its durability to perpetuate the
memory, and by its color — its color! — to "signify the
moral character," of a certain Abigail Dudley, on
whom Time has played so ungallant a jest.

One of the very oldest houses of Concord is main-
tained as a local museum, and within it are fascinat-
ing relics of the past : old china, old furniture — notably
some Jacobean chairs and a court cupboard, dear to

298

THE MOST IMPORTANT EOAD IN AMERICA

any collector's heart — with things remindful of the
writers of Concord; and also there are memorials of
the great day at Concord, the day of the fight at the
bridge — and that is something that, with its lessons,
should never be overlooked or belittled or forgotten.
As one of the wisest of American humorists long ago
paraphrasingly said — and every really great humorist
has wisdom as the basis of his humor — "In the brite
Lexington of youth thar aint no sich word as fale."

It is odd, that a little place like Concord should have
won such a mingled reputation for loveliness, fearless-
ness and literature. I remember meeting a scholarly
Englishman, on a St. Lawrence steamer, who had
landed at Quebec, as he told me, in order to see Canada
first, but who would soon cross the boundary. "Most
of all, ' ' he said, ' ' I wish to see Concord, for it is classic
ground." And that is it. Concord is classic ground.

CHAPTER XXin

PLYMOUTH AND PBOVINCETOWN

LOSE behind Plymouth,
close beside this home of
the Pilgrims, close to this
spot where three hundred
years ago began the cam-
Is J&. paign against the wilder-
J ness, there is still an im-
mense tract of wild and
lonely woodland, there are miles and miles of wild-
ness almost unbroken except by roads ; there are seem-
ingly endless stretches of oak trees intermingled with
lovely pines and sentineled by cedars, and underneath
is a tangle of huckleberries and sweet fern and
bracken, with frequently the white sand gleaming
through the darker soil that has tried to accumulate.
In the very heart of this wilderness one may come
with almost startling unexpectedness upon some old
house aflame with trumpet-vine or white with flower-
ing masses of paniculata, but the few homes are widely
isolated. The region is even now wild enough for one
to imagine the presence of the prowling bear and the
prowling Indian of early days ; and, in fact and with-
out imagination, the deer and the fox are frequently

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PLYMOUTH AND PROVINCETOWN

to be met. "Ye whole countrie, full of woodes &
thickets, presented a wilde & savage heiw," as Brad-
ford himself, leader among the Pilgrims, wrote.
Much of Massachusetts has reverted to wilderness;
immense tracts that once were a succession of farms
have gone back to scrub woodland ; but nowhere is it
more noticeable than here.

The ancient town of Plymouth still has much of an
old-fashioned aspect in spite of the inroad of modern
buildings; it is still a comely American town, sitting
decorously beside the sea, with its older portion close
to the water-front, where a few old houses still stand,
in shingle-sided irregularity, beneath the low-round-
ing rise where the first burials were made in graves
that were left unmarked from fear of the Indians
creeping in and counting the deaths ; away from this
there sweeps a little stretch where the greater part of
the town was built and where still is much of an aspect
of staid dignity; and behind all this is the watch-hill
that became the principal graveyard of the settlement.

Little fishing boats lie at their moorings, and fisher-
men in yellow oil-skins lean, gregariously gossiping,
against the buildings beside the piers, and nets are
stretched out to dry, and sea-gulls go curving and dip-
ping and flying, and across the water are barrier spits
of sand, greened with grass, and along the shore are
scattered a few attractive homes, with greenery close
about them, and far out at the left of the bay and far
out at the right, are jutting promontories, tree-clad.

But it is not a stern and rock-bound coast; it is a
sandy coast ; and it is seldom that the breaking waves

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dash high in this sheltered nook; and yet they were
inspired lines that Felicia Hemans wrote, for they
represented the bravery and the loneliness of it all,
the unbreakable, undaunted spirit that moved those
early Pilgrims ; and the lines ought never to be for-
gotten by Americans :

"Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear —
They shook the depths of the desert's gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer."

It is curious that this British woman so felt and ex-
pressed the spirit of the band of exiles who moored
their bark on this wild New England shore ; and it is
curious that she, who could so perfectly express the
feeling of early America, has better than any other
poet expressed the sense of the beauty and finish of
England, in her lines beginning ' ' The stately homes of
England, how beautiful they stand!"

On this sandy shore it must have been difficult for
the Pilgrims to find a boulder big enough to land upon,
but, as if recognizing that posterity would really need
a Plymouth Bock, they managed to find one, and here
it is, carefully preserved, at the waterside, after hav-
ing wandered about the town, from one stopping-place
to another, in the course of the centuries, and even
having suffered in its travels a fracture which was
carefully repaired. It now has the protection of a
stone canopy and a gated iron fence, but the gates
are usually kept open, for there is such a general and
profound respect for this stone that no one thinks of

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PLYMOUTH AND PEOVINCETOWN

treating it carelessly, and I have seen even little chil-
dren who have run under the canopy in a sudden
shower rub their hands gently over the stone as if in
reverence. It has not been chipped or spoiled, as
stone monuments open to the opportunities of vandal-
ism are so likely to be. Bound about the memorial
is a little grassy spot that has been made charming
with roses and barberries.

The low rise that was originally the burial-hill is
still surprisingly steep, for it has never been graded
away; a little back from it stand a hotel and some
homes, but at the very edge a little landslide a few
years ago uncovered some of the bones of the very
earliest settlers. Away from this low rise there runs
the little stream beside which the Pilgrim leaders
first met Massasoit, and the garden plots that lie be-
hind the backs of the houses mark the original "meer-
steads" or homestead limits of the original allotment.

Old records have been kept, and among them is one
narrating how, seven years after the landing, the Pil-
grims divided by lot, with meticulous particularity,
the few cattle and goats into thirteen portions each :
"the Greate Black cow came in the Ann" as it is set
down; "the red Cow and the Heyfers," so it is writ-
ten, with freedom of spelling and capitalization,
"came in the Jacob"; and there are various details
in regard to "the greate white backt cow" and the
other stock.

Plymouth possesses a great deal of attractiveness,
and indeed real beauty. The deep blue of the water,
edged by the promontoried greenery of trees, makes a

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charming frontage, and within the town itself there
are many huge trees, some of them carefully marked
with records of their planting ; there are great elms,
and there are lindens of giant size. In any direction
one may see masses of dahlias, or the flowering honey-
suckle, and there are ancient gardens charmingly in-
closed within the greenery of ancient box.

There are houses of red brick and there are houses
of white-painted frame ; there are houses with gambrel
roofs and great old chimneys and pillared porticoes.
There is still many a dignified old front, broad and
generous with doorway of loveliness; there are still
some of the old-time fan-windows over the entrance-
ways; there are reeded pilasters; there is still much
of the bulgy old-time window-glass.

On the way up the low slope from the water is an
interesting looking old gambrel-roofed house with
wooden front and brick ends, and somehow it pleased
me to hear a little girl who was sitting on the steps
called " Barbara" by her father, for the name seemed
to fit the old-time house as did also the ancient looking
pussy-cat sitting there in dignified sedateness. And
a tablet upon this old house shows that it stands on
the spot where an even more interesting house once
stood for it was "erected by the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts to mark the site of the first house built
by the Pilgrims. In that house on the 27th of Feb-
ruary, 1621, the right of popular suffrage was exer-
cised and Miles Standish was chosen captain by a
majority vote."

Just up the slope and but a short distance from the

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Bock, stands an old mansion of interest as a survival
of early architecture, although of a time much more
recent than that of the Pilgrims; it is a house of
unusually noble beauty and spaciousness and about
it is a garden of flowered charm.

The modern and unattractive that have come into
the town may easily be disregarded by those who
desire to see old Plymouth. Much of the old, much
that has made the atmosphere of the past and which
rouses memories of the brave old times, is still here.

A streak of meticulousness must have become im-
planted by the early itemizing of the thirteen shares
of cattle, for in what other town would one find a
notice to motorists warning them of a dangerous
corner fifty-eight feet away ! And as to other public
notices — well, stop to gaze at some interesting-looking
tablet and you will probably find it a warning that
there will be a fine of twenty dollars if you spit on
the sidewalk.

The First Church in Plymouth — although it is
really the fifth first church — is tableted as a "meeting
house," although in reality it is a solid stone building,
early Norman in design. It faces the little town
square, where three veteran elms shade the yellow
sand that covers the open space. Diagonally across
from this structure, and also looking out upon the
little square, is a much older church, a highly attrac-
tive building in white painted wood, with white pillars,
and attractive pillared tower. This church is called
the Church of the Pilgrimage.

Burial Hill, the height that rises from these two

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churches, is dotted thick with gravestones, and among
them are noted the boundary spots of the early fortifi-
cations. This hill was beacon hill and fort hill and
burial hill in one, as if to show very materially that
life and death depended upon watchfulness and fight-
ing. On the highest part is a stone that marks the
grave of doughty old Bradford, the several times gov-
ernor. Looking down upon the town from this hill-
top one sees a broad massing of the greenery of trees,
with here and there the white or red of the houses
peeping through and with three lovely belfries rising
in variant charm, one being covered with copper,
another being all white, and the third showing a top
of gold.

Standing on top of this hill the memory came to me
of the top of that hill on Hope Bay, in Bhode Island,
where King Philip made his last stand against the
white man; and I thought of it not only because the
two hills are in a general way alike in looking over an
expanse of land and water along a generally level
coast line, but because the head of King Philip, that
noble Indian who had been given his name by the
white men from King Philip of Macedon, was brought
here to Plymouth and placed publicly on a spike,
where it remained a memento of ignoble triumph for
many years. Webster, in an oration at Plymouth,
said, "like the dove from the Ark, the Mayflower put
forth only to find rest"; but the people who came in
the Mayflower were certainly not all doves. The
barrel of the very gun that belonged to King Philip
has been preserved, not as a matter of shame but of

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PLYMOUTH AND PEOVINCETOWN

pride, and it is shown in the museum of Plymouth in
Pilgrim Hall.

It is pleasant to notice on the stones above the
graves the frequency of the name of Priscilla, and the
dates show that it was a common name, even before
the time when Longfellow made it so famous, thus
showing that from early days the history of this sweet
young Pilgrim girl fascinated the general imagina-
tion ; or, as Longfellow himself would have expressed
it, that the region was "full of the name and the fame
of the Puritan maiden Priscilla."

Priscilla was a very real girl, and her last name was
Mullines; not the "Mullins" into which the name has
been rather commonized. But the name was spelled
with some variety even by Governor Bradford, who
mentioned it three times in his history and each time
differently, the most important entry being that "Mr.
Molines, and his wife, his sone, and his servant, dyed
the first winter. Only his dougter Priscila survied,
and maried with John Alden, who are both living,
and have 11. children. And their eldest daughter is
married, & hath five children."

Bradford himself did not stand much for romance,
and it is from other sources that there comes the
story of the courtship of John Alden. It seems, so
the old story has it, that Alden first presented the pro-
posal of Standish, not to Priscilla, but to Priscilla 's
father, who promptly called Priscilla into the confer-
ence, with the result that she made the forever-to-be-
remembered query of the bashful John as to speaking
for himself. What her father said or thought is not

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on record, but it was very shortly after the proposal
that John and Priscilla were married ; and the tradi-
tion is, not as Longfellow gives it, that Standish and
Alden again became friends, but that Alden was never
forgiven by Standish. John Alden 's daughter Sarah,
however, did afterwards marry Standish 's son Alex-
ander.

Courtships and marriages went very quickly in
those early days, when children were a decided asset
to any family in aiding to clear the wilderness, and
when loneliness was a great disadvantage. As an ex-
ample, the wife of Winslow died in March of 1621, the
husband of Susanna White died in February of the
same year, and in May of that year the short-time
widower Winslow and the short-time widow White
married. Miles Standish, in his courtship of Pris-
cilla, was similarly hasty, for his wife, whom he had
married in England, died late in January, 1621, and
as Alden and Priscilla were married early in that year
it may be seen how swift was the courtship of Stan-
dish, and also that Alden was not at all slow in follow-
ing up his own desires. After this refusal Standish
waited three years before he married for the second
time, but it is possible that some other woman refused
him meanwhile.

There is a collection at Plymouth, in Pilgrim Hall,
which is rich in mementoes of the very early days.
There is the great circular gate-legged table, almost
six feet across, rigid and strong and plain and under-
braced, which was the council table when Winslow
was governor. There is the very chair of the first

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PLYMOUTH AND PKOVINCETOWN

governor, John Carver, who died in the first winter,
a plain, massive turned chair, which seems as severe
as the popular idea of the most severe belongings.
There is the veritable sword of Miles Standish, a
Damascus blade. There is a dear little wicker cradle,
a Dutch cradle, in shape like a basket with a hood to
keep off the draft, carried with the Mayflower for
little Peregrine White, named from the peregrinations
of his parents, and the first white child born on the
soil of New England. Little Oceanus Hopkins might
have taken away the title of precedence from Pere-
grine had Oceanus not been born, as his name implies,
before the Mayflower reached the promised land.
Many other things, little and big, are preserved.
There are early spoons and early needle work.
There is some superb ecclesiastical silver designed for
the early churches and preserved with record of
where it was made.

Standing anywhere along the shore at Plymouth,
or on the hill, one cannot but notice a monument that
rises, lofty and striking, far out beyond the leftward
stretch of the bay ; and this is the monument to Miles
Standish. Although he was not a Puritan, and not
really a Pilgrim, for he was a soldier of fortune, who
had been fighting for the Dutch against the Spanish
and then as a soldier of Queen Elizabeth, a Dalgetty,
who was out of employment as a fighter when the
Pilgrims sailed and was engaged as an excellent man
to meet the savages, he has been given a far more
prominent monument than has any other of those
early men ; and so nobly did he develop, at Plymouth,

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in bravery, in self-sacrifice, in the finest qualities of
manhood that he well deserves prominent remem-
brance. The old chronicle has it Captain Standish
and Elder Brewster, more than any others, "to
their great comendations be it spoken, spared no
pains night nor day, but with abundance of toyle
and hazard of their own strength helped others in
sickness and death, a rare example worthy to be re-
membred"; and in addition Standish was a man of
absolute bravery.

The monument is reached by a roundabout way, of
several miles, from Plymouth. The figure of Stan-
dish tops the structure; and by some unexplainable
freak he is made to face away from the town that
honored him and for which he did so much. The
monument is on the summit of a considerable hill and
there is in view a long, long line of shore ; and looking
toward the sea one may see, as I have seen, the water
dotted with the mackerel fleet, setting homeward ; and
a thin gray vagueness on the horizon marks the
distant line of Cape Cod. Looking landward, one
sees endless miles of bluish pine woods through which
the white spire of a meeting house rises with effective
unexpectedness, and looking across the bay toward
Plymouth there is a wonderful effect as if the city
is still a place crowded against the waterside at the
edge of a vast wilderness.

A rather small old house, a story and a half high,
sleeping under the shelter of this hill, a house with
a sort of distinction in spite of its smallness, and

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PLYMOUTH AND PROVINCETOWN

with a great lilac bush at its front, a house that must
always have been rather solitary, is the house in which
some have believed that Standish lived for the last
years of his life ; but in reality it would seem that his
own house, long vanished, stood close beside where
this house stands and that this was put up by an im-
mediate descendant.

That Standish was a short man, sinewy and robust,
and that his little library actually contained, just as the
poet has described it, the Commentaries of Csssar, are
among the rather slender facts known in regard to
his personality, but an inventory of the property left
by him at his death itemizes that in his possession,
among other things, were 4 bedsteads and 1 settle
bed, 5 feather beds with blankets and sheets, 1 table-
cloth and 4 napkins, 4 iron pots, 3 brass kettles and
one dozen wooden plates — with no plates of any bet-
ter material mentioned. There were muskets and
sword ; and, as if in defiance of the spinning-wheel of
Priscilla which, after all, was more a matter of con-
cern to Alden than to him, there were two spinning-
wheels. Horses and cattle must have increased in
the colony since the earliest days for he left at his
death 2 mares, 2 colts and 1 young horse, 4 oxen, 6
cows, 3 heifers, 1 calf, 8 sheep, 2 rams, 1 wether and
14 swine.

At quite a distance, naturally, from this spot, is
where John Alden and Priscilla lived, but, like this,
within the limits of Duxbury. It is a pleasant drive
across country, from one place to the other, through

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a region of blue inlets setting in from the blue, blue
sea, with much of pine woods, and of the little bushes
that bear beach plums.

The house built here by John Alden has dis-
appeared, but the present building stands on its site
and, it is believed, was built by a grandson. But it
looks old enough to have been built toward the end of
John Alden 's long life, and it is possible, though not
probable, that he actually lived in it. Often, it is im-
possible to fix the precise date of construction of an
ancient house, as the only definite records are likely
to be of land alone and not the buildings.

This Alden house stands on the top of a low mound ;
it is shingled-sided ; and the present occupant confided
to me that if he did not keep a close eye on visitors
every silvery old shingle would soon be stripped off
as a souvenir! The entire front of the house is
massed in a luxurious greenery of grapevines, en-
twined with scarlet dotted trumpet- vines ; a peach tree
is espaliered on the side and a great trumpet-vine
has clambered upon the roof; and nearby is a field
that, when I saw it, was a great yellow splendor of
golden-rod, bordered empurplingly with asters.

How strange it must all have seemed to Alden ! He
never intended to be a Pilgrim. He was a cooper,
hired at Southampton when the Mayflower touched
there, and it was expected that he would return in
the ship from America. But he was ' ' a hopf ull young
man," and the leaders quietly hoped that he would
remain — and Priscilla did the rest. It is so pleasant ,
to think of the poetic wedding journey with the bride^

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mounted on the white bull, that it is needlessly
iconoclastic to point out that the very first cattle,
three heifers and a bull, did not reach Plymouth until
1624.

It is sometimes forgotten that the first landing of
the Pilgrims in the New "World was not made at Ply-
mouth but at the inside of the tip of Cape Cod; where,
not long after their visit, the settlement of Province-
town was made.

Cape Cod, at the time of their visit, was a desolate
region, but had earlier been visited by others. First,
the Norsemen; afterwards, Bartholomew Gosnold,
who gave the cape its fishy name ; even the picturesque
Champlain made a brief stop here, as did the equally
picturesque Captain John Smith, who described the
fields of corn and "salvage gardens." So many peo-
ple were here before the Pilgrims as to give almost
an effect of crowded life ! But it was lonely enough
when the Pilgrims actually came, though they did
finally see some Indians, who, although they ran off,
did so, "whistling to their dogge" !

Sand is the principal product of Provincetown. The
whole Cape is shifting sand, that changes with every
wind, and that makes hills into valleys and valleys
into hills, and that threatens to destroy the little town
itself.

Many have been the wrecks on Cape Cod; and most
interesting was that of the Somerset, on the outer
edge of the narrow cape. This was the big man-of-
war, of from forty to sixty cannon and a crew of al-
most five hundred men, under whose lee, when it

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

was in Boston harbor, Paul Revere was rowed when
starting with the message to Lexington. It aided in
the bombardment of the Americans on the day of
Bunker Hill, and afterwards won a cruel reputation
for its seizures of American shipping. In a great
storm in 1778 it was driven ashore here, and the tra-
dition of the Cape has it that, most of the men being
absent on military duty, the women took an active
share in holding captive the men from the wreck and
in getting the guns to land to save them for the use
of the American army. The wreck was completely
dismantled; gradually it was covered with sand and
the very place was forgotten. Years afterwards, a
storm uncovered it, and then the sands covered it
again, and many years later it was again uncovered
and fully identified by details of its structure from
official records furnished by the Admiralty in Lon-
don. Before the sands covered it again I saw it my-
self, with its grim and blackened vertebrae; and it
was fascinating to find such a memento of the Revolu-
tion lying on this lonely outward shore, so near little
Provincetown.

Growing wild in hollows among the dunes, with
scrub pines and oaks, is the marvelously fragrant bay-
berry from which the early settlers made their can-
dles and from which a later generation made bay rum.
And in these hollows wild roses grow in luxurious-
ness, and innumerable red beach-plums.

Provincetown is distinctly a sailor's town; there
are sailors here who have been all over the world ; but
it will be noticed that "barges" are not boats but

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PLYMOUTH AND PKOVINCETOWN

wagons ! A figurehead from some old ship leans for-
ward from a post; fish-shaped weather-vanes turn
with the varying winds ; you naturally see a seamen's
bank; a profusion of binoculars pervades the place;
you may even catch sight of the backbone of a whale
in a captain's yard ; wreckage is stacked for fire-wood ;
and in some of the old pilastered or porticoed houses
there are preserved the original logs of whaling trips,
showing whales, pictured in ink that long since yel-
lowed, to mark the days of fortunate catches.

Every sailor seems to have the title of captain;
most, in fact, have a right to the title, for each has
been in charge of at least a fishing-boat; and these
captains are men of individual interest. One is a
gatherer of ambergris (romantic name!), and he also
sells watch-makers' oil, which he poetically procures
from porpoise heads. Another of the captains, a
gentle soul, is a story-teller who, unfortunately, has
so out-told himself that the same narratives are given
over and over. "Have I ever told this before?" I
heard him interrupt himself to ask one day ; and when
the goaded interlocutor, another captain, replied that
he had, the first captain responded, gently tolerant,
"Oh, well, I'll tell it again then." Another captain,
confiding to me that he had been married fifty-five
years, gravely added, as he pointed to his old dog
lying beside him, "And that is all I've got left to show
for it." Another told of a life-time sea-friend who
had recently died at the age of ninety-two. "Did he
leave any family?" "No," said the captain. "His
father and mother were both dead. ' ' When, speaking

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

with another, I commented on the roses growing in
profuse loveliness in the gardens of the town, in spite
of the difficulties of sand, he replied, from some pessi-
mistic association of ideas : "Yes, but if there is ever
a year when the rose-bugs don't get after the roses the
dogfish are sure to get after the mackerel." But op-
timism is the prevailing note, as with a captain, an
ancient, earnest citizen, who exclaimed to me: "Why,
the man who would complain of this Cape Cod climate
would complain if he were going to be hung!"
Another still tells the story of a sea-serpent ;that he
saw many years ago ; and I was told that when his
townsmen ridiculed him and frankly told him, from
knowledge of his idiosyncrasies, that he must have
been drinking, he went before a notary and made
affidavit that ' 'I was not drinking on the day I saw the
sea-serpent" — and he still fails to see why everybody
laughs. Another, speaking of the general truthful-
ness of the place, deemed it measurably referable to
ancient strictness of law, giving as an example that in
the good old formative days "a captain was fined five
dollars for lying about a whale."

The Portuguese, always locally referred to as "Por-
tygees," have come in so freely from the Azores and
the Cape de Verde Islands, that they give a markedly
alien touch, with their distinctive language, religion,
dress and costumes. The town is permeated by them.
They are active rivals, on the sea, of the descendants
of the early Americans, and I remember that a sail-
ing race, open to all, was won by a boat whose captain
and crew were all Portuguese ; but none the less did

316

PLYMOUTH AND PEOVINCETOWN

Provincetown royally welcome the victors, and deck
its streets with brooms and buckets. A still further
alien touch is given by a lofty monument, set up a
few years ago as a memorial to the landing here of the
Pilgrims, and which, from some odd reason, is of dis-
tinctly Italian style.

A town-crier still busies himself with the crier's
ancient duties, and the townsfolk claim that the cus-
tom has kept on undisturbed from early times.

The talk and interests of Provincetown are of cod
and mackerel and haddock, and when a boat comes
in with a catch the event is eagerly discussed along
the entire three miles of far-flung water front. The
town is principally one long and sinuous and atten-
uated street, but there are also little lanes twisting
away from it. A few old-time houses still remain
with silver-gray shingles on their roofs and sides.
Everywhere is an aspect of scrupulous neatness, as if
on shipboard, and the houses in general have a snug-
gled and tucked-in look as if triced down for a storm.
Many are shaded by big trees ; and it is curious that
there are so many great elms and enormous swamp-
willows in spite of the discouraging environment.

"When the tide sweeps out, great flats of green and
yellow and gray stretch off in front of the town, and
amphibious horses, half submerged, draw far out, in
the track of the receding tides, little carts, likewise
half-submerged, into which to unload such fishing-
boats as return at a time when they cannot reach the
piers.

But sand is the prevailing feature. Surely, round

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

about Provincetown is where the "Walrus and the Car-
penter walked together. You remember the lines?

"The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand :
'If this were only cleared away,'
They said, 'it would be grand!' "

CHAPTER XXIV

'the night shall be filled with music"

SAIL from Liverpool on Saturday for
Boston," writes Thackeray to "My
dearest old friend," Edward Fitzger-
ald, and lie says he is "very grave and
solemn," and he writes with gravity
and solemnity of what may. happen to
"**? his wife and daughters if anything

should happen to him !

It seems odd that a journey to Boston, whether by
an American or an Englishman, should ever have
aroused such tragic forebodings. Equally curious is
the description, by William Dean Howells, of his own
first visit there, for he went, as he set it down, "as
the passionate pilgrim from the West approached his
Holy Land in Boston. ' ' And Boston still likes people
to come in this spirit !

One is tempted to wonder if Boston does not spend
too much time looking at her intellectual features in
the mirror ; after all, she is pretty old for that — she is
almost at her three hundredth birthday. But, if it
should really be that the city displays a little too much
self-consciousness, a little too much readiness to re-
sent anything that even slightly savors of criticism,

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THE BOOK OF BOSTON

there is much of gratification in being not only a city
of famous places and famous deeds but at the same
time one of character and of individuality. Little
things may mark individuality, quite as well as great
or even better; and it has always interested me
that Boston once had an ordinance forbidding any
person to keep a dog over ten inches in height, and
that even now rump-steak is gladly paid for by most
Bostonians as the most expensive of cuts! In all
seriousness, the city has a very real individuality.
And with a city of individuality almost anything can
be overlooked.

And there is so much of the picturesque in Boston ;
the old houses and their old environment, the sea-
gulls on a sunny winter's day circling and crying over
Beacon Hill; the fine old tales and traditions. The
very "twilight that surrounds the border-land of old
romance" is in Boston.

And one does not need to enumerate the list of
statesmen and writers who have aided to make Boston
glorious and who have shone in the glory that they
helped to create. And yet, the attitude of Boston to-
ward Hawthorne and Poe, perhaps the two most dis-
tinctive geniuses of American literature, ought also
to be remembered.

Boston did not recognize Hawthorne when he was
struggling for literary foothold, even though for a
time he lived here. And Poe, though few Bostonians
know it and none boasts of it, was Boston-born ! Poe
was the child of a pair of poor traveling actors; it
would seem, though there is no precise certainty, that

320

"THE NIGHT FILLED WITH MUSIC"

the house where he was born was in the vicinity of
where afterwards was built the Hollis Street Theater.
Poe's associations with Boston were not happy; he
was here later in his life, as a young man, poor and
disappointed, and enlisted here under an assumed
name, as a private soldier. He called Boston "Frog-
pondium," meaning the same as the late Charles
Francis Adams, Bostonian of Bostonians, who frankly
wrote, as his last word, that "it is provincial; it tends
to stagnate." As to Poe, I think that the severe re-
spectability of Boston has caused him to be ignored :
he was the son of poor players, not Bostonians ; and
he was a man who sometimes drank too much!

Howells, who knew the city well, has somewhere set
down that "Boston would rather perish by fire and
sword than to be suspected of vulgarity; a critical,
fastidious, reluctant Boston, dissatisfied with the rest
of the hemisphere. ' ' But, he might well have added,
a brave Boston, a vastly interesting Boston, a Boston
that every American should see and know.

Of all my memories of Boston I think that the most
fascinating is that of the Christmas Eve observance
on Beacon Hill, an affair of extraordinary beauty.

The sun sets on a Beacon Hill immaculately swept
and garnished. Every window has been washed until
it glistens. Every knocker and doorknob has been
polished. And at the windows of almost every house
are set rows and rows of candles, along the sills, along
the middle sash, in straight lines, in curves, in tri-
angles. Frequently there are as many as twenty
candles to a row, or forty to a window, or even more

321

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

where the rows are banked. Nor are the candles little
Christmas-tree things, but the stout, white candles of
use, and in some cases there are even the great church-
altar candles, and some houses show the rare old silver
candlesticks of the past.

Nor is it only the principal windows of a few houses ;
it is practically every window of almost every house ;
and some even put candles in the queer Bostonian
octagon cupola or lantern that stands upon the very
roof above the central halls and stairs.

Shortly after seven o 'clock the illumination begins.
One by one, window by window, house by house, the
lights flare softly up. And such a wonderful illumi-
nation as is made! From basement to garret the
lights shine softly out into the night.

With the first lighting, visitors have begun to come ;
not foreign-born visitors, but visitors distinctly Amer-
ican ; it is an American observance among these fine
old American homes. The people go pacing quietly
about on Chestnut Street, Mount Vernon, Pinckney,
Cedar and Walnut Streets, and Louisburg Square —
and the fine old district is finely aglow, for hundreds
of houses are illumined.

Enchanting glimpses may be had into paneled and
pilastered rooms, rich in their white and mahogany;
glimpses of decorous and beautiful living; glimpses
of chairs of stately strength, of sideboards of delect-
able curves, of family portraits by Stuart or Copley.
And every doorknocker has its holly or wreath.
Each of these old streets is a soft blaze of candle-light

322

"THE NIGHT FILLED WITH MUSIC"

with, myriad reciprocating reflections from the lighted
windows of one side to the windows opposite ; and the
soft light brings into newer beauty the curved lines
of the house-fronts and the fine old distinguished
shapes. The crowds increase; the streets gradually
become thronged ; all are thrilled with quiet, expectant
interest.

And at length comes the distant sound of music, the
sound of voices singing an ancient carol of Christmas-
time. Nearer and nearer come the singers, caroling
as they come, and they pause in front of one of the
houses to sing, while all about them are hushed and
quiet. Perhaps some of them will carry old-time
watchman-lanterns, in their hands or aloft on poles,
ancient lanterns of perforated tin with candles burn-
ing inside.

On the caroling company slowly goes, and after a
while you hear another company come singing, and the
people, massing the streets, are all absorbed, earnest,
impressed, for it is all so beautiful, this sweet caroling
in the candle-lighted streets. In all, in the course of
the evening, there are probably four or five different
companies, and one group in particular are the singers
from the Church of the Advent, at the foot of the
Hill, and these generally come later than the others,
each group choosing its own hour for starting. "When
the carolers pause in front of a house a few people are
likely to come and stand at the windows ; but, if any,
it is only a few; no welcoming is expected, no greeting
or thanks. The singers do not sing as in any sense

323

THE BOOK OF BOSTON

a personal tribute. They carol because it is Christ-
mas. They go about on Beacon Hill because it is Old
Boston.

They stop in front of a pair of old houses used as
a Protestant Episcopal nunnery ; the houses are ablaze
with candles, like the other houses all about, and a few
Sisters come quietly to the windows, making a posi-
tively mediaeval scene in this American setting, with
their gentle faces within the broad white lines of
coiffe and collar, contrasting with the somber black
of their robes.

Not all the singers are old nor are all young; they
are of varied ages, young men and young women,
older men and older women. And most of the carols
that are sung are the old-time carols that have come
down through the centuries, and one or two are even
sung in the old Latin. The last of the singers finish
their rounds about ten o 'clock and until that time the
crowd still lingers. But ten o 'clock is late in Boston,
for this is an early city; and at ten o'clock one hears
the final singing of these fine old tunes, echoing and re-
echoing between these fine old-fashioned houses.

The night 's candles are almost burned out. Shorter
and shorter they have been getting, but none the less
bravely have they continued to blaze. And now,
house by house, window by window, candle by candle,
the lights are extinguished and the streets go grad-
ually to darkness. Almost suddenly, now, they are
deserted. Almost suddenly the last of the people
have gone. The houses are dark, whole streets are

324

"THE NIGHT FILLED WITH MUSIC"

dark. The entire hill is in darkness. The hill is in
silence. It all seems like an unreal memory — Christ-
mas Eve in Boston.

INDEX

A

Abbey, mural decorations by,

201.
Acorn Street, 32.
Adams, Abigail, 246, 247.
Adams, Charles Francis, 236;

his estimate of Boston, 321.
Adams, John : birthplace of, 245 ;

at feast at Dorchester, 208;

grave of, 248; portrait by

Copley, 235; relations with

Hancock, 123.
Adams, John Quincy: birthplace

of, 245; grave of, 248.
Alcott, Bronson: characteristics,

46; Emerson's opinion of,

297; homes of, 45, 47, 297.
Alcott, Louisa M.: on Boston

Common, 18; in Concord,

297; homes of, 45, 47, 49, 297;

death of, 47; grave of, 298;

"Little Women," 297.
Alden, John, 307, 308; home of,

in Duxbury, 311, 312.
Aldrich, homes of, 40, 42, 44;

"Story of a Bad Boy," 44.
"America," first sung, 107.
Ancient and Honorable Artillery

Company, 111, 138.
Andr6 and General Knox, 214.
Andros, Lady, funeral of, 109.
Appleton, the wit, 107.
Arnold Arboretum, 161.
Athenavum, the, 101-103.
Authors, nomadic, 49.
"Autocrat of the Breakfast

Table," 59.

B
Back Bay, 188-194; its extent,

327

188; its statues, 189; opinion
of, by Henry James, 192; with
the Fenlands, 202.

Bancroft, 145.

Beacon Hill, 20-34; Christmas
Eve observance on, 321-325;
greenery of, 30, 31; houses of,
22, 30, 33, 35-48; steepness of,
20-22; Thackeray and "Es-
mond," 37.

Beacon Street, 24, 37, 191.

Beacons in early days, 21.

Bellingham Court, 29.

Blaxton, the hermit, 63.

Bookshops of Boston, 157.

Booth, Edwin, 89.

Boston Bags, 158.

Boston Massacre, 13, 128, 131.

Boston Tea Party, 139, 140.

Bradford Manuscript, 69, 119—
121.

Brook Farm, 239-245.

Brooks, Phillips, 99.

Brown, Alice, home of, 96.

Buildings, height of, 146.

Bulfinch, 66, 67, 72, 93, 95, 134,
135.

Bunker Hill, 180-187; battle
watched by Gage, 166 ; soldiers
reviewed for, 229; monument,
seen from Charlestown, 180,
from Copp's Hill, 171; Web-
ster's oration, 183.

Burgoyne, General: his opinion
of Bunker Hill, 182, of Lexing-
ton, 285; watching Bunker
Hill battle, 166.

Burying-Grounds : Cambridge,
224; Central, 11-13; Concord,
298; Copp's Hill, 170, 171;
King's Chapel, 110, 111, 115;
Old Granary, 102-106; Old

INDEX

South Church, 115; Plymouth,
303, 305; Webster's, 252.

C

Cambridge, 223-238.

Cambridge Elm, 228.

Candles, in windows, 321, 322.

Carols, on Beacon Hill, 322-324.

Cats, in Louisburg Square, 26.

Central Burying-Ground, 11-13.

Channing, 43, 99.

Charles, the, 32, 188, 190.

Charles Street, 39, 40, 41.

Charles Street Square, 191.

Chavannes, mural decorations
by, 201.

Chesapeake and Shannon, 279.

Chestnut Street, Boston, 24, 50,
51.

Chestnut Street, Salem, 276-277.

Christmas Eve on Beacon Hill,
321-325.

Churches: Hollis Street, 107;
King's Chapel, 112-115; at
Marblehead, 268; Old North,
164-170; Old South, 115-121;
Park Street, 106-108; at
Quincy, 248; at Plymouth,
305; Trinity, 202.

Cod Fish, the Sacred, 70-71.

Columbus and Aristides, statues
of, 25.

Common, the, 5-19; British sol-
diers on, 15; cows on, 8;
Emerson, 7, 8; trees of, 9; no
streets through, 6; the spin-
ning maidens, 17.

Commonwealth Avenue, 188-190.

Concord, 285, 287, 290-292; the
bridge, 291; Concord Fight,
relics of, 69; literary associa-
tions, 295-299; present aspect
of, 294.

Copley, portraits by: John
Adams, 235; Hancock and
Dorothy Q., 78; Thomas Han-
cock, 235; his frames made by
Revere, 174.

Copley Square, 200, 202.

328

Copp's Hill Burying-Ground, 170,

171.
"Coronation," 131.
Cows on the Common, 7, 8.
Cradock homestead, 260.
Craigie, Andrew, 227.
Custom House, the old, 144, 145.
Custom House, the new, 146.

D

Danvers, 283.

Dedham, 261.

Deland, Mrs., homes of, 42, 43,
49, 192; "Old Chester," 43.

Dickens, and the blind man, 35;
liking for Boston, 36; "Mar-
tin Chuzzlewit," 38.

Dogs, in Boston, 17, 320.

Dorchester Heights, 208-222.

"Dorothy Q.'s," the, 78, 80, 81,
249, 250.

Downing of Downing Street, 281.

Duxbury, 311.

E

Emerson: on Boston Common, 7,
8; at Concord, 295, 296; his
grave, 298; and Margaret Ful-
ler, 87; "President's messen-
ger," 230.

Enthusiasms, in Boston, 18, 125.

"Esmond"; Thackeray's gift to
Prescott, 37.

Essex Institute, 281-283.

Evacuation of Boston, 219, 220,
260.

Executions, on Boston Common,
16; in Salem, 275.

F

Fairbanks homestead, 261.

Family, importance of, in Bos-
ton, 194-196.

Faneuil Hall, 133-138; farce
given at, 185.

Fenlands, the, 202-204.

Fenway Court, 203.

INDEX

Melds, James T.: with Dickens,
35; home of, 39; as a host,
41; position in Boston, 40;
"The Scarlet Letter," 271; the
Wayside Inn, 256.

Fish, kinds of, in Boston, 143.

Fort Hill Park, 144.

Frankland, Sir Henry, 114.

Franklin: his birth and bap-
tism, 115, 116; his parents,
103, 116; his portrait in Cam-
bridge, 235.

Fuller, Margaret; at Brook
Farm, 241, 244; with Emer-
son, 87.

Furniture, Old: on Beacon Hill,
33, 322; in Concord, 299; at
Essex Institute, 282; John
Hancock's, 73; in Museum of
Fine Arts, 203, 204; at Ply-
mouth, 308, 309.

G

Gallows Hill, 274.

Gardner, Mrs., home of, 203.

Gerry, Elbridge, homes of, 225,

266.
Glass, purple, in windows, 27.
Glover, General, 189, 265.
Granary Burying-Ground, 102-

106.
Grant, Robert, home of, 203.

H

Hale, Edward Everett, 99.

Hamilton, Alexander, statue of,
189.

Hancock, John, 73-83; his
clothes, 76, 77; his cows on
the Common, 8; the "empty
barrel," 123; furniture of, 73
home of, 73; marriage of, 80
portrait of, 78; grave of, 103
his pasture for the State
House, 72; where he proposed,
250; his widow, 74; relations
with Washington, 123.

Hancock, Thomas, portrait of, by
Copley, 235.

329

Harding, Chester, 101, 236.

Harvard, John, statue of, 231.

Harvard University, 223, 230-
238; School of Medicine, 205.

Hawthorne: in Boston, 145; at
Brook Farm, 239-243; at
Concord, 295, 296, 297; his
marriage note, 45; grave of,
298; "House of the Seven
Gables," 272, 273; in Salem,
269-270, 273, 274; "Scarlet
Letter," 271; original of
Hester Prynne, 111; visited
by Worcester, 270.

Holmes: birthplace of, 229;
homes of, 41, 49, 57, 58, 59,
60, 61, 191; grave of, 224; the
"Long Path," 11; the "Auto-
crat," 59; "Old Ironsides,"
179; his importance to Bos-
ton, 55; at King's Chapel,
115; teacher of anatomy,
55-57; "boring" through nar-
row streets, 150; poems about
lectures, 198; wit of, 57, 100,
104.

Hooper, "King," home of, 264.

Houdon; his Washington, 102.

"House of the Seven Gables,"
272, 273.

Howe, Julia Ward: home' of, 50;
meeting with Henry James, 50.

Howells: his estimate of Bos-
ton, 321; feelings, approach-
ing Boston, 319; home of, 47.

Huntington Avenue, 200.

"Ichabod," 250.
India Wharf, 140-141.
Ironwork, Old, 33, 37, 52, 59, 67.
Italians in Boston, 163, 164, 168,
172.

J

James, Henry: the Back Bay,
192; Julia Ward Howe, 50;
Mount Vernon Street, 23.

Julien, and his soup, 11.

INDEX

Keayne, Eobert, 111, 137, 138.

King Philip, 306.

King's Chapel, 112-115.

King's Chapel Burying-Ground,
110-111, 115.

Knox, General: bookshop of, 126,
212; getting cannon for Dor-
chester Heights, 212-217; his
cannon in Cambridge, 228;
meeting Andre, 214; portrait
of, 221.

Lafayette: at Bunker Hill cele-
bration, 184; greeting Han-
cock's widow, 74.

Lectures, in Boston, 197-198,
206.

Lee mansion, 262-264.

Lexington, 285, 287-289.

Lexington and Concord, road be-
tween, 285, 289, 290.

Libraries: Athenseum, 101-103;
Boston Public, 200-202 ;
Emerson's, 296; Widener Me-
morial, 232-234; Washing-
ton's, 102.

Lind, Jenny, 25, 253.

"Little Women," 297.

"Long Path," the, 11.

Longfellow: home of, 226; grave
of, 224; with Browning, 226;
"Reef of Norman's Woe," 256;
the Wayside Inn and its char-
acters, 47, 48, 255, 256.

Louisburg Square, 24-26, 33, 47,
63, 322.

Lowell, James Russell, 102, 224,
225.

Lowell Lectures, 198.

M

Mall, Beacon Street, 16.
Marblehead, 262-268.
Marshfleld, 250.
Massachusetts Hall, 232.

Mayflower, the: babies of the
309; grave of first woman
who landed from, 110; "Log"
of, 119.

Medford, 257, 260.

Memorial Hall, 234-236.

Monuments: Banks and Devens,
101; Boston Massacre, 13;
Phillips Brooks, 99; Bunker
Hill, 183, 186; Channing, 99;
Dorchester Heights, 220;
Ether, 100; Glover, 189; Hale,
99; Hamilton, 189; John
Harvard, 231; Hooker, 100;
Lexington, 288 ; Louisburg
Square, 25; Prescott, 186;
Provincetown, 317; Shaw, 13;
Soldiers and Sailors', 14;
Standish, 309 ; Washington,
189.

Moth, the gypsy, 225.

Motley, 50, 224.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, 224.

Mt. Vernon Street, 23, 24, 32,
54, 322.

Museum of Fine Arts, 203, 204;
Stuart portraits in, 221.

Music, in Boston, 198-200.

Musicians, street, 33.

N

Navy Yard, Charlestown, 177-

180.
North Church, Old, 164-170.
North Square, 172.

O

Old Granary Burying-Ground,

102-106.
"Old Ironsides," 176, 178, 179.
Old Manse, 295.
Old North Church, 164-170.
Old South Church, 115-121.

330

Parkman, 51, 224.

Park Street Church, 106-108.

INDEX

Parkways, 160-162.

Parsons, Thomas, 48.

Percy, Lord: at Dorchester, 218;

at Lexington, 285, 286, 292,

293; portrait of, 293.
Pickering, Timothy, home of,

278.
Pigeons, on the Common, 16.
Pinckney Street, 32, 44, 45, 46,

322.
Pitcairn, Major, 104, 166, 287,

288, 290.
Plymouth, 300-311; Emerson's

wedding trip from, 296.
Plymouth Rock, 302.
Poe: birthplace of, 321; attitude

of Boston toward, 320; his

estimate of Boston, 321.
Portuguese at Provincetown,

316.
Post-Office, 148.
Prescott, General, monument to,

186.
Prescott, the historian, home of,

37.
Priscilla and John Alden, 307,

308, 311-313.
Provincetown, 313-318.
Putnam homestead, 283, 284.

Q
Quincy homestead, 248-250.
Quincy Market, 137.
Quincy, town of, 245, 248.

Radcliffe College, 223.

"Reef of Norman's Woe," 256.

Restaurants, 86, 157.

Revere Beach, 161.

Revere, Paul: character and
achievements, 172-176; copper
for State House, 66; as a den-
tist, 174; home of, 172; grave
of, 103; his lanterns, 169, 170;
at Lexington, 287; his prints,
131; his midnight ride, 169-
170; his silversmithing, 131,
173, 204.

Riedesel, Baroness, 21, 266.
Royall house, 257-260.

S

Salem, 269-284.

Salem Street, 163, 168.

"Scarlet Letter," 111, 271, 272,
273.

Shaw Memorial, 13.

Silver, Old: at Museum of Fine
Arts, 204; of the Old North
Church, 167; made by Paul
Revere, 131, 173, 204.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, 298.

Social life in Boston; opinion of
Charles Francis Adams, 236.

Somerset, the: at Boston, 169;
guns from, 175; existent wreck
of, 313.

Spinning Maidens, 17.

Standish, Miles, 309-311; hasty
courtship of, 308; his sword,
309; site of home, 310.

Stark, "Molly," 259, 260.

State House, New, 9, 20, 62;
Bulfinch front, 66; interior,
67-72.

State House, Old, 126-132.

Steepness of Beacon Hill, 20, 22.

Street cries, old, 151, 152.

Street signs, 154, 155.

Streets: names, in Back Bay,
192; complexity and narrow-
ness of, 149, 150; names
changed, 122, 124; pavements
of, 150, 151.

Stuart, Gilbert: home of, 144;
grave of, 12, 13; Chester
Harding, 101 ; his portraits on
Beacon Hill, 53, of Knox, 221,
of Washington, 12, 135, 137.

Students' Quarter, 204, 205.

Sunday laws, 82, 84.

Sunday observance, 85, 87.

Surriage, Agnes, 114.

331

Tablets: Boston Tea Party, 139;

INDEX

British retreat, 293; British
soldiers, 294; Charming, 43;
Hancock, 76, 79; Holmes, 55;
Lexington, 288; Old North
Church, 169; Old South
Church, 115; Pitcairn, 166;
Plymouth, 304, 305; Gilbert
Stuart, 13.

Thackeray: sailing for Boston,
319; with "Esmond" on Bea-
con Hill, 37; eating American
oysters, 36; going to lecture,
35; inspiration for "Virgin-
ians," 38.

Theaters: locations, 87, 88; no
Saturday night performances,

87, 89; the Boston Theater,

88, 89, 90.

Thoreau, 297, 298; visiting Haw-
thorne, 296.

Ticknor, George, home of, 52.

Trees, on Boston Common, 9; at
Plymouth, 304, 305; at Salem,
277.

Trinity Church, 202.

Views : of the Back Bay, 193 ; of
Bunker Hill Monument, 171 ;
of the Charles, 32; of the
Granary Burying-Ground, 105;
of the State House, 9; from
the State House, 62.

"Virginians, The"; Boston in-
spiration for, 38.

W

Wadsworth house, 229.
Wapping Street, 177.

Warren, General, 114, 118, 174.

Washington: visit to Boston in
1756, 217; in 1789, 122; in
British farce, 185; opinion of
Bunker Hill, 182; in Cam-
bridge, 227; taking command,
228; at Dorchester Heights,
208-222; relations with Han-
cock, 123; at King's Chapel,
113; his library, 102; at Mar-
blehead, 265; married by
clergyman from Marblehead,
268; portraits of, 12, 135-
137, 235; acquaintance with
Paul Kevere, 175; first statue
of, 167; Houdon's statue, 102;
equestrian statue, 189.

Washington Street, 122, 124,
125.

Wayside Inn, 47, 48, 255, 256.

Weather, of Boston, 158, 159;
winter observances, 153.

Webster: Bunker Hill oration,
183; Jenny Lind concert, 253;
"Ichabod," 250; home of, 250,
251; death of, 252; grave of,
252.

Wellesley College, 161.

West Cedar Street, 47.

Weston, beautiful road to, 160.

Wharves, 140-144.

Whittier: "Ichabod," 250 ; "Skip-
per Ireson's Bide," 266.

Widener Memorial Library, 232-
234.

Winstanley, 135-137.

Women, importance of, in Bos-
ton, 90-92; in telephone direc-
tory, 96.

Women's City Club, 93.

Wyman of Woburn, 286.

332

A