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Boston as its novelists placed it, held because the names fiction used are evidence of the names people used.","text_extract":"nut \n\n\ntttfonal \n\n\na \n\n\n.it \n\n\nili>i II \n\n\nHi i! t \n\n\nffi ifcJT' \n\n\nHffiTHl&n \n\n\nt0ton Car \n\n\nUam \n\n\nClass _E13l \nBook JJ \n\n\nCopyrights \n\n\n\"J3^ \n\n\nCOPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES IN AND \nABOUT BOSTON \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nin & about \n\nBy \n\njfranccs Weston Carrutf) ft \n\nAuthor of \"Those Dale Girls\" \"The \nWay of Belinda\" etc. \n\n\nALDI \n\n\nNEW YORK \nft£c£Iurc, tftyiHiptf an& Companp \n\nMCMII \n\n\nRY OF \n\nNOV. 10 1902 \n\nCLASS (X' XXc. No. \n\nB. 2 \n\n\nCopyright, 1902, by \nMcClure, Phillips & Company \n\n\nPublished October, 1902, N \n\n\nCo ttjosc 15o0tontan0 \n\n$0y &unt0 \n\nCl)r0f Hamblrs in S^fir City \n\n2it affectionately ^IngrribfD \n\n\nCONTENTS \n\nPART I. IN MODERN BOSTON P4rv \n\n1 AGE \n\ni Beacon Hill and Street . . 3 \n\n11 The West End 21 \n\nin The Charles Street Neigh- \nbourhood 49 \n\niv In and About the Common . . 61 \n\nv A Ramble Round the Public \n\nGarden 88 \n\nvi The Back Bay 109 \n\nvii The South End 144 \n\nPART II. IN OLD BOSTON \n\n1 About the Wharves . . . .157 \n\n11 The Heart of the Old North \n\nEnd 176 \n\nin In and Around Dock Square . 204 \n\nix \n\n\nCONTENTS \n\niv State Street and the King's page \nChapel Neighbourhood . . 220 \n\nv When Commercial Boston Was \n\nResidential 245 \n\nvi In Tremont Street and Music \n\nHali 267 \n\nPART III. ABOUT BOSTON \n\n1 Cambridge and Lexington . . 283 \n\n11 Harvard 3T3 \n\nin Westward 339 \n\niv Toward the Blue Hills . . 346 \n\nv Nahant and Nantasket . . . 365 \n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS \n\nPAGE \n\nLongfellow's Grave Frontispiece \n\nThe gilded dome of the State House 5 \n\nThe Old Beacon 8 \n\nThe Athenreum ir \n\nAn Ancestral Home in Mrs. Moulton's \"Miss Eyre'\" ... 13 \n\nTablet marking site of Hancock House 15 \n\nThe home of Mildred Wentworth 17 \n\nThe semi-circular windows of the Somerset Club. — -Crawfords \n\n''American Politician \" 19 \n\nBeacon Steps. — Howetts's \"A Woman 's Reason\" .... 23 \n\nMount Vernon Place 27 \n\n41 Mount Vernon Street— the home of Mrs. Harrison Gray \n\nOtis 28 \n\n48 Mount Vernon Street — the home of the Coreys .... 29 \nThe perfect Gothic arch formed by the trees that line both sides \n\nof Mount Vernon Street. — Helen Reed's \"J/tss Theodora \" 31 \n\nNo. 59 Mount Vernon Street 35 \n\nA row of old houses in Mount Vernon Street 39 \n\n82 Mount Vernon Street — the home of the Randolphs ... 41 \n\nHome of Rose Jenness in \"Two Bites at a Cherry\" ... 42 \nI.ouisburg Square — former homes of Louisa Alcott and Mr. \n\nHowells 43 \n\n73 Pinckney Street — the home of the Lacys ...... 46 \n\nAfrican Methodist Church, 68 Charles Street ... . . 50 \n\nThe Church of the Advent and Clergy House, Brimmer Street. 51 \n\nCharles Street 54 \n\nxi \n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS \n\nPAGE \n\nThe Telescope in the Mall 63 \n\nTicknor Mansion. Union Club. Park Street Church. Mall 65 \n\nThe Common ... 69 \n\nThe Long Path 73 \n\nThe Pond in the Hollow 77 \n\nCows on the Common Si \n\nThe Liberty Tree 85 \n\nThe Public Garden 91 \n\nThe Statue of Washington, near Commonwealth Avenue . . 96 \n\nVenus Fountain in the Public Garden 97 \n\nThe Swan Boats 99 \n\nThe Arlington Street Church from under the Kilmarnock wil- \nlow by the pond in the Public Garden 103 \n\n\\n Apothecary's Window, Mentioned in James's \"Bostonians\" 105 \n\nThe Home of Mrs. Mesh in Arlington Street 107 \n\nHome of Mrs. Adams (\"Truth Dexter\") in Beacon Street . . 10S \n\nThe Harvard Bridge — part of the Back Bay Ill \n\n296 Beacon Street (The Oval Doorway), the home of \" The \n\nAutocrat.\" 302, the home of Mr. Howells 120 \n\nMarlborough Street 122 \n\nMrs. Rangeley's house on Marlborough Street. — Arlo Bates s \n\n\" The Puritans\" 123 \n\nThe Home of the Maxwells . . 124 \n\nThe Home of the Chauncey Wilsons 125 \n\nThe Avenue through the Park 126 \n\nThe St. Botolph Club — No. 2 Newbury Street 127 \n\n233 Clarendon Street — the home of the late Bishop Brooks 128 \n\nTrinity Church 129 \n\nInterior Trinity Church . 133 \n\nThe Library 137 \n\nThe Museum 139 \n\nxii \n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS \n\nPAGE \n\nThe latter-day edition of the historic < >ld South Church . . 141 \n\nConcord Square 145 \n\n28 Rutland Square — the home of Mrs. Louise Chandler \n\nMoulton 152 \n\nThe Shipping at the foot of State Street 159 \n\nThe inspiration of a bit of Hawthorne allegory 164 \n\nThe old Salt House, where Hawthorne wrote \" The Scarlet \n\nLetter\" ... 167 \n\nThe Lieutenant-Governor's elegant mansion 178 \n\nFrankland's house 182 \n\nThe Home of Paul Revere 1S3 \n\nSalutation Alley 186 \n\nThe Old North Church 189 \n\nHome of the M'Murtaghs. — Stimsoris \"Pirate Gold\" . . . 193 \n\nThe house on Hull Street, where Gage is said to have planned \n\nthe Battle of Bunker Hill 194 \n\nCopp's Hill Burying Ground 195 \n\nThe spot from which Lionel Lincoln watched the battle of \n\nBunker Hill 199 \n\nThe House of John Tileston in Bynner's \" Zachary Phips\" . 201 \n\nUnion (Boston) Stone 206 \n\nFaneuil Hall 207 \n\nThe old Brasier Inn 210 \n\nA bookshop in Cornhill 211 \n\nThe Old State House 221 \n\nThe Old Colony Bank 226 \n\nBurying-ground by King Charles' Chapel 231 \n\nKings Chapel . 235 \n\nInterior of King's Chapel 239 \n\nGreenough's Statue of Benjamin Franklin — City Hall . . . 242 \n\nThe Corner Bookstore 243 \n\nxiii \n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS \n\nPAGE \n\nOld South Church 259 \n\nProvince House 265 \n\nGrave of Benjamin Woodbridge 270 \n\nEntrance to the Music Hall 275 \n\nMansion at Medford 2S7 \n\nChrist Church Graveyard 291 \n\nBirthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes 295 \n\nWashington Elm 298 \n\nThe Longfellow Mansion 299 \n\nElmwood 303 \n\nThe Road to Concord 307 \n\nMonroe Tavern — Lexington 308 \n\nLexington Common 310 \n\nThe Lexington Minute Man 311 \n\nThe Johnston Memorial Gate and Harvard Hall 317 \n\nThe College Yard 321 \n\nThe Library 325 \n\nHolworthy 329 \n\nMemorial Hall 335 \n\nCountry Club, Brookline . . 342 \n\nThe Upper Charles River 345 \n\nThe Governor Shirley Mansion 351 \n\nJamaica Pond 354 \n\nA Roxbury Garden 355 \n\nThe Quincy-Butler Mansion 359 \n\nThe Stream. — Stimsoti 's \" King Noanett\" 363 \n\nThe Cliff. — Stimsoti 's \" Pirate Gold\" 366 \n\nPulpit Rock, Nahant 369 \n\nNantasket Beach 375 \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\n\" Come, seek the air ; some pictures we may gain \nWhose passing shadows shall not be in vain.\" \n\nHolmes. \n\nAWORLD of fascinating romance un- \nfolds itself to those who seek to iden- \ntify the homes and haunts of the \ncharacters in Boston fiction. If, as the great \ndramatist has told us, it is the part of the po- \net's genius to give to airy nothings a local \nhabitation and a name, it may interest the ad- \nmirer and follower of the makers of fiction to \ndevote himself to searching out and giving- \npermanence to persons and localities which, \nthough in sober fact they never had any exist- \nence, yet have been and always will be as real \nas any historic characters of the past ; forming \na drama of life such as is woven by the artist \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\nin colours so vivid and impressive that the ac- \ntors become a part of ourselves — their haunts \nand habitations to be individualized, identified \nand held in tender remembrance. \n\nTo the traveler the Old World owes its at- \ntractiveness quite as much to the creations of \nShakespeare, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Bal- \nzac, Hugo and Dumas as to the princes, states- \nmen and soldiers of whose births and deaths \nhistory tells us with so much pomp and preci- \nsion. It was said by an admirer of Henry \nEsmond that the charm of the Potomac River \nwas not in the military associations so insepa- \nrably blended with it, but in the fact that on \nits banks Esmond and the woman who had so \npatiently waited for his wooing had established \nthemselves ; linking the noble Virginia stream \nwith the memories of the Stuarts and Addison, \nwith the English meadows and with the cam- \npaigns of Marlborough. Gibraltar's towering \nmight impressed a devotee of Marryat not as \nbeing England's gateway fortress of the Med- \niterranean, held more than once against a world \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\nin arms, but as the scene of the exploits of Mr. \nMidshipman Easy and the discomfiture of the \nsurly boatswain. Every year a throng of tour- \nists wander through the land of Evangeline \nasking persons native to the soil to point out \nlocalities whose names, as a rule, mean nothing \nto them who are questioned, unless, perchance, \nthey may have read Longfellow's immortal \npoem. Robinson Crusoe's island has been ex- \nplored as thoroughly as for buried treasure — \nthe seekers looking not for gold or iewels, but \nto identify the spring, the cave, or the spot on \nthe sands where Robinson was startled by the \nsolitary footprint. \n\nSo Boston has been the scene of much that \nwill live in American fiction ; but it ma)' be \ndoubted if it has yet fulfilled all that may be \nrequired of it by the poet or novelist. For \nmany years it was the town not only of New \nEngland, but of North America, leading polit- \nically and commercially as well as intellect- \nually, but the men who gave it world-wide \nfame in literature were not writing fiction. \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\n\nPuritan theology stamps the first Boston lit- \nerature which, gradually showing a tendency \ntoward broader development, took the form of \nessays and poetry. About 1830 Nathaniel P. \nWillis, Boston bred but not born, was the fore- \nmost youne American writer. \" Longfellow \nwas not yet conspicuous,\" says Holmes. \" Lo- \nwell was a schoolboy. Emerson was unheard \nof. Whittier was beginning to make his way \nagainst the writers with better educational ad- \nvantages whom he was destined to outdo and \noutlive. ... If the reader wishes to see the \nbubbles of reputation that were floating, some \nof them gay with prismatic colours, half a cen- \ntury ago, he will find in the pages of a small \nvolume entitled Truth, A Gift For Scrib- \nblers, a long catalogue of celebrities he never \nheard of.\" \n\nOf all the brilliant classic-literature-making \ngroup which later centered about Emerson and \nLongfellow, only Hawthorne and Holmes \nstrayed into the realms of fiction. James Rus- \nsell Lowell, perhaps, should be included, for he \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\npublished a novel called My First Client which \nmet with a dubious fate and long ago disap- \npeared. Those were the days when \" Liter- \nature in Boston,\" says Mr. Howells, \"was so \nrespectable and often of so high a lineage that \nto be a poet was not only to be good society, \nbut almost to be good family.\" As poet and \nessayist, Holmes, \"the last leaf upon the tree,\" \nwrote of the Boston which he knew and loved \nwith a deeper sense of kinship and affection \nthan any of his contemporaries. But the \nscenes of his fiction are with one exception \naway from the city by him clubbed \" the Hub.\" \nThis exception is TJie Guardian Angel — one \nof what an old lady called his \"medicated \nnovels,\" to the great amusement of the author. \nIn spite of all that novelists have had to say \nabout Boston, to Mr. Arlo Bates belono-s the \n\no \n\ndistinction of having presented it in kaleido- \nscopic form. The many-sidedness of the town \nand the marked characteristics of its people \nwhich stamp them Bostonese the world over \npervade his novels, giving them an intense \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\nlocalism which is never provincialism. He \nstrikes the true key in presenting it on its \nsesthetical, ethical, fashionable, practical and \nreligious sides — the evolution of modern \nBoston emerging from pro-Puritanism. This, \nin a more or less degree, is the Boston we find \nin the pages of such fiction as Truth Dexter, \nThe Sentimentalists, Margaret Warrener, The \nTurn of the Road, Miss Brooks, Ballantyne \nand Her Boston Experiences. Mr. Howells, a \ndominant writer of Boston fiction, saturating \nhis pages with its business, social and intel- \nlectual atmosphere, personifies varied types, \nwhich, photographic as they are, fail to present \ncertain phases of the genuine Bostonese. This \nmay be because of his tendency to draw \" a \nBostonian, not the Bostonian,\" which was Dr. \nHolmes's way of putting it in referring to one \nof his characters. The Bostonians was chosen \nby Henry James as the title for a novel in \nwhich he finds ample space for elaborate and \nbrilliant analysis of women of the class of \nOlive Chancellor, amoncr whom the movement \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\nfor the emancipation of their sex was rampant ; \nother and equally strenuous types appear in \nthe pages of his New England Winter. A \nbrilliant literary and legal light of Boston, \nJudge Robert Grant, has purposely refrained, \nhe says, from giving his novels a Boston set- \nting, and one looks in vain through his fiction \nfor the streets and monuments of his native \ncity. Politically, Mr. Crawford with An \nAmerican Politician and Mr. Wainwright \nwith A Child of the Century have the field \npretty much to themselves. Delightful and \nthoroughly genuine are the Bostonians of Dr. \nEdward Everett Hale and Mrs. Louise Chand- \nler Moulton, while we turn to Mrs. Harrison \nGray Otis's The Barclays of Boston for a pic- \nture of fashionable life in the Hub in the \nfifties. Other phases of this and an earlier \nperiod are depicted in Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's \nfiction and in such novels as Mr. Stimson's \nPirate Gold, Miss Cummins's The Lamplight- \ner, and Mr. Trowbridge's Martin Merrivale. \nThe old colonial town, rich in history and \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\ntraditions, strongly appealed as a background \nfor romance to Hawthorne, Cooper, Bynner \nand Lydia Child. \n\nWriters of Boston fiction have as a rule \nmade use of the actual street nomenclature, \nwhich greatly aids the rambler to discover in \nfact or conjure up in imagination real or ficti- \ntious haunts and habitations. Much of this \nnomenclature is picturesque and interesting as \nreminiscent of the city's history. In that part \nof the town known as the North End the \ncrooked, narrow, winding streets such as Fleet, \nMoon, Garden Court, Prince, and Hanover are \nsuggestive of the old London so dear to the \nheart of the early colonists. Every Bostonian \nknows that Beacon Hill and street take their \nname from the old beacon erected in 1634 on \nthe summit of the hill ; that Tremont Street \nis from Traemount or Tri-Mountain which the \nsettlement was first called ; that Shawmut Av- \nenue gets its name from the peninsula. More \nmodern is the broad avenue named for the Com- \nmonwealth and running across it the street \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY \n\nnamed for the State. The great Copley and the \nlesser Allston are suggestive of the art world; \nBlackstone, Franklin, and Boylston are remem- \nbered while now and then the name of a na- \ntional hero appears on the lamp-posts, as in \nthe recent instance of Dewey Square. \n\n\nIN MODERN BOSTON \n\n\nI. BEACON HILL AND STREET \n\nTR U E to the traditions of the Bostonese, \nall the fiction writers of the city pay \ntheir tribute to the State House with \nits splendid gilded dome, which stands on the \nsummit of Beacon Hill. \n\nAround the green, in morning light, \nThe spired and palaced summits blaze, \n\nAnd, sunlike, from her Beacon height \nThe dome-crowned city sfireads her rays. \n\n\" High in the air, poised in the right place, \nover everything that clustered below, the most \nfelicitous object in Boston — the gilded dome of \nthe State House,\" writes Henry James in \nA New England Winter. Mrs. Campbell's Bal- \nlantyne, in her novel of that name, returning \nto Boston from the west, stretched his arms to \n\n3 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nthe Sfilded dome, as if he would embrace it and \nall Boston at once. And the Autocrat's most \ncelebrated saying is, \" Boston State House is \nthe hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry \nthat out of a Boston man if you had the tire of \nall creation straightened out for a crowbar.\" \nAgain and again he lovingly reverts to it. \n\" Boston,\" at another time he writes, \" has glor- \nified her State House and herself at the expense \nof a few sheets of gold-leaf laid on the dome, \nwhich shines like a sun in the eyes of her citi- \nzens, and like a star in those of the approach- \ning traveller.\" \n\nOpposite the State House steps the fictional \nrambler finds the impressive Shaw monument \nwhere Mr. Pier's vacillating hero of The Senti- \nmentalists paused to ponder on the contrast of \nthe fine young soldier's life with his. He had \ncome up to the gray marble slab, says the \nauthor, rising from the ed \n\n|H \n\n■< \n\n.Q \n\nc \n\n= \n\n-^ \n\no \n\nif) \n\nt— 1 \n\nw. \n\ntn \n\n£ \n\nO \n\ng \n\n_R \n\n.J \n\n^■£ \n\n\"^ \n\nbf \n\n•« \n\nQJ \n\nR - \n\n•3 \n\nU \n\nC \n\n- \n\nR \n\n„ \n\nO \n\nrt \n\nR \nrt \n\n\"g \n\nifl \n\nO \n\nbjo \n\ng \n\ni„ \n\nV \n\nR \n\n^ \n\nO \n\ng \n\n~ \n\n\" \n\n■J3 \n\n. ^ \n\n? \n\n^ \n\n< \n\n>. \n\n1- \n\n\\ \n\nS> \n\na \n\nc« \n\n0 \n\nJ \n\n3 \n\n: \n\n& \n\nu \n\n«J \n\nR \n\n| \n\n- \n\n-. \n\n•,/ \n\nrt \n\n: c c - js \n\n\nf 0 \n\n\nU \n\n\n19 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nPolitician and his friends, one of whom, Van- \ncouver, was particularly fond of standing- in \none of the semi-circular windows and watching \nthe passers-by. At the corner below is the \nsmaller Puritan Club, likewise a haunt of \nWarren Hartwell's ; and of Vernon Kent, one \nof the sentimentalists in Mr. Pier's novel of \nthat name. The atmosphere of this locality \nis sympathetically expressed by the heroine of \nHer Boston Experiences, who says she \" al- \nways peers around for a fleeting glance of \nPriscillas, John Aldens, or other far-away peo- \nple who rightfully belong among those quaint \nold houses, still breathing out history and ro- \nmance.\" \n\nII. THE WEST END \n\nFOR the western and northern slopes of \nBeacon Hill many novelists have a \nstrong predilection, notably Mr. How- \nells, who, particularly on the northern side of \nthe hill, finds in the homely life of the unfash- \nionable residents ample material for the por- \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ntrayal of certain types of Bostonians which he \npresents to us with such fidelity. These are \n\"those old-fashioned thoroughfares at the West \nEnd of Boston which are now almost wholly \nabandoned to boarding-houses of the poorer \nclasses. Yet they are charming streets,\" and \nin them lived the Hallecks, the Hubbards (A \nModern Instance), Lemuel Barker {The Min- \nuter s Charge), Dr. Olney, Rhoda Aldgate \nand Mrs. Meredith (An Imperative Duty), \nand many other of Mr. Howells's fictitious char- \nacters. Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, too, is partial \nto this locality with its \" streets of charming \nhouses without any modern improvements over \nbehind Beacon Hill, and beyond the State \nHouse. In her recent story, Miss Theodora, \nHelen Leah Reed gives us a delightful series \nof pictures of the old West End. \n\nNumber 9 Beacon Steps (Howells's A Wo- \nman's Reason) is given as the residence of \nJoshua Harkness and his daughter Helen. \n\" The house was rather old-fashioned, and it \nwas not furnished in the latest taste, but it \n\n\n\"BEACON STEPS.\" — HOWELLS's \"a woman's REASON.\" \n\n\" Streets of charming houses over behind Beacon Hill and beyond \nthe state House.\" — Mrs. A. /). T. Whitney's '■'Hitherto\" \n\n\n-3 \n\n\nIN AND A B O U T BOSTON \n\nmade the appeal with which things out of date \nor passing- out of date touch the heart.\" Bea- \ncon Steps is not Beacon Street, says Mr. \nHowells in the novel, \" but it is of like blame- \nless social tradition.\" \n\nAs an actual street it never had any exist- \nence in fact, but the name was suggested to \nMr. Howells by a short flight of steps which \nlead down from the State House to Temple \nStreet, and though no definite house was in- \ntended, this was the locality he had in mind. \nIn another of his novels, A Modern Instance, \nhis Clover Street is in reality Myrtle Street, \nwhere, a few doors from Joy Street, is the little \nhouse rented by the Bartley Hubbards. \"It \nseemed absurdly large to people who had been \nliving for the past seven months in one room ; \nand the view of the Back Bay from the little \nbow-window of the front chamber added all out- \ndoors to their superfluous space.\" To the east \nof them, at 63 Hancock Street, is the boarding- \nhouse to which Janet ( Eliza Orne White's Miss \nBrooks) came in search of young Rheinhart. \n\n25 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nPassing down Derne Street and through \nBowdoin Street, we come to Bulfinch Place, \non the right, called Canary Place by Mr. \nHowells, who finds lodgings there for the \nBartley Hubbards shortly after they came to \nBoston. Here, too, on the southern side of \nthe street, is the Hotel Waterson, described \nin The Minister s Charge as the St. Albans, \nwhere Barker worked in various capacities un- \ntil (in the novel) the hotel burned. North of \nthis, in Bowdoin Square, is the Revere House, \nin and around which transpires much of An \nImperative Duty. The Bartley Hubbards also \nstopped at this hotel, where Bartley entered \nhis name on the register with a flourish. Bril- \nliantly lighted Bowdoin Square and the high- \npillared portico of the Revere House were also \nwonderingly observed on his wanderings by \nBarker's The Minister s Charge. This hotel \nwas one much patronized by Mr. and Mrs. \nHowells during their residence in Belmont \nwhen, attending social functions or the theatre \nin Boston, they found it more convenient to \n\n26 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nspend the night in town. \" Some colour of \nmy prime impressions has tinged the fictitious \n\n\n\" That commodious nook which is known as \nMount Vernon Place.\"' — Henry James 's \"A New \nEngland Winter.'\" \n\nexperiences of people in my books,\" Mr. How- \nells says in his Literary Friends and Ac- \nquaintances. \n\nIf we now climb \"those up-hill streets that \nconverge to the State House,\" and stop at the \n\n27 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ntop of the Hill, we come directly under the \nshadow of the dome, to \" that commodious \nnook which is known as Mt. Vernon Place,\" in \n\n\n41 MOUNT VERNON STREET — THE HOME OF MRS. \nHARRISON GRAY OTIS \n\n\nwhich resided Henry James's Miss Lucretia \nDaintry (A New England Winter) — delightful \nMiss Lucretia, \"who wore her bonnet as scien- \ntifically poised as the dome of the State House, \nand had in an eminent degree the physiog- \nnomy, the accent, the costume, the conscience, \nand the little eyeglass of her native place.\" \n\n2S \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\n\n48 MOUNT VERNON STREET THE HOME OF THE \n\nCOREYS \n\n\" The whole place wears an air of aristocratic \nseclusion.\" — Howells's \"Rise of Silas Laphafti\" \n\n\nNorth of this \"nook\" is Mount Vernon \nStreet, in which lived an astonishing- number \n\n29 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nof fictitious persons, whose literary creators \ngive it a preference over Beacon Street as an \naristocratic residential thoroughfare. A fine \nold house, Number 41, at the corner of Joy \nStreet, was the home of Miss MehitableOuincy, \nwhom we meet in Mrs. Louise Chandler Moul- \nton's Miss Eyre. This house has interest in \nfact as well as fiction, for here lived that bril- \nliant woman, novelist and social leader, Mrs. \nHarrison Gray Otis, who wrote The Barclays \nof Boston there. \n\nA few doors down on the same side of the \nstreet is Number 48, the home of the Coreys \n(Howells's The Rise of Silas Laphani). This \nhouse is now a small hotel called the Curtis, but \nwas formerly the home of one of Mr. Howells's \nfriends, and its entrance and part of the inter- \nior remain as when he knew and described it. \nTo many, Bromfield Corey is by far the most \ndelightful of Mr. Howells's creations, and it is \nwith pleasure that we meet him in more than \none of the author's books. No one forgets \nthat memorable dinner given for the Laphams \n\n30 \n\n\nI? \n\n\n&.=< \n\n\nv \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nby the Coreys, in the reading of which we can \nscarcely be made to believe that we are not \nactually attending it, so strong is Mr. How- \nells's realistic touch. Familiar with the dining \nroom we are keenly interested in the rest of \nthe house, and delighted when we are permit- \nted by the author to wander into Mr. Corey's \nsanctum, the library, where Lemuel Barker \n(The Ministers Charge) \"found himself \ndropped in the midst of a luxury stranger than \nthe things they read of in those innumerable \nnovels. The dull, rich colours on the walls, \nthe heavily rugged floors and dark wooded \nleathern seats of the library where he read to \nthe old man ; the beautiful forms of the famous \nbronzes, and the Italian saints and martyrs in \ntheir baroque or Gothic frames of dim gold; the \nlow shelves with their ranks of luxurious bind- \nings, and all the seriously elegant keeping \nof the place flattered him out of his strange- \nness.\" Corey, at this time, it will be remem- \nbered, was alone at home while his family were \nat the shore, because he \" would rather be blind \n\n33 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nin Boston than telescopic at Beverly or any \nother summer resort.\" \n\nLooking down from the Coreys, we get a \nmost beautiful view of \" the perfect Gothic \narch formed by the trees that line both sides \nof Mount Vernon Street\" (Helen Reed's Miss \nTheodora). At Number 59, at the top of the \nhill, we find the home of the poet and novelist, \nThomas Bailey Aldrich. His near neighbour \nis the imaginary Mrs. Buskirk (Pier's The \nSentimentalists), who lives in one of this \" row \nof stately fine old houses, with little plots of \nlawn in front and high iron fences ; they were \nof four high-ceilinged stories with well-propor- \ntioned bay-windows and deep vestibules, in \nwhich were tall jars of plants and palms.\" In \nhis Two Bites at a Cherry, Mr. Aldrich speaks \nof crisp crocuses blooming in these little front \nyards in the spring. \n\nMr. Arlo Bates rarely has an actual house in \nmind in describing residences, but so real to \nhim are the homes of his characters that he \nhas fallen into the way, he says, of inserting an \n\n34 \n\n\n35 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nimaginary house in the desired locality. So, \nthough the action rambler may not literally \nnumber them, he can pretty safely conclude \nthat in this block of Mount Vernon Street \nlived Mrs. Gore {The Puritans), in whose \ndrawing-room occurred the Persian reading \nwhen \" Persian was the latest ethical caprice,\" \nand one of the forms of the \" ethical jugglery, \nthe spiritual and intellectual gymnastics such \nas the Bostonians love.\" Here we also find \n\" the iron gate which, between stately stone \nposts, shuts off the domain of the Frostwinches \n{The Puritans) from the world, and marked \nwith dignity the line between the dwellers on \nMount Vernon Street, and the rest of the \nworld.\" If we follow Ashe and Mrs. Fenton \ninto the drawine-room of this house, we enter \n\"an apartment whose very walls were incrusted \nwith conservative traditions. . . . The chief \ndecoration, one felt, was the air of the place's \nhaving been inhabited by generations of so- \ncially immaculate Boston ancestors. There \nwas a savor of lineage amounting almost to \n\n37 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ngodliness in the dark, self-contained parlours ; \nand if pedigree were not in this dwelling im- \nputed for righteousness, it was evidently held \nin becoming reverence as the first of virtues.\" \n\nIn this exclusive neighbourhood must have \nlived Peter Calvin {The Philistines), \"a \nwealthy and well-meaning man against whom \nbut two grave charges could be made — that \nhe supposed the growth of art in this country \nto depend largely upon his patronage, and that \nhe could never be persuaded not to take him- \nself seriously. Mr. Calvin was regarded by \nPhilistine circles in Boston as a sort of re-in- \ncarnation of Apollo, clothed upon with modern \nenlightenment, and properly arrayed in re- \nspectable raiment.\" \n\nJudge Rathmire, whose fortunes were so \nclosely intermingled with The Curse of the \nOld South Church, is described in that novel \nas living in splendid style in Mount Vernon \nStreet. A view of the charming block of \nhouses before which we have been loitering \nwas to be had by the Rents ( Pier's The Senti- \n\n33 \n\n\na ^ \n\n\n39 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nmentalists), who lived directly opposite in a \nthin, flat-fronted house by which Mr. Pier \n\n\n82 MOUNT VERNON STREET — THE HOME OK \nTHE RANDOLPHS \n\n\"He had almost reached their house when he \nsaw a slender girl coming down the steps.\" — \nMiss Whites \"Miss Brooks.\" \n\nmeant anyone of the several that answers to \nthis description. Helow the Kents on the same \nside of the street at Number 82, is the house \n\n41 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nin which the creator of the happy-go-lucky \nRandolphs (Miss White's Miss Brooks) im- \n\n\n\" One of the last spells of the past was lifted \nfor him when he saw strange faces looking out \nof those sun-purpled window-panes.\" — 7'. B. \nAldricli s \" Two Bites at a Cherry\" \n\nagined them as living. Here the Brooks girls \nstayed with their sister when they were in town, \nwhile on the steps of this house Janet had that \nchance encounter with fohn which so changed \nthe current of her life. \n\n42 \n\n\n• IT \n\n\n£ \n\nu \n\n•V \n\n« \n\n-r \n\n. \n\n- \n\n3 -2 \ncraq \ni. ■ \n\n\n= *S O \n\n\n.2 c \n\n\n43 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nJohn T. Wheelwright, to whose Child of \nthe Century we have made allusion, lives at \nNumber 99 Mount Vernon Street, and wander- \ning from here through Willow and into Chest- \nnut Street we find a few steps up the hill a \nbeautiful and well-preserved old house which \nanswers to the description of the home of \nRose Jenness in Aldrich's Two Bites at a \nCherry. Whitelaw, the hero of this story, re- \nturning- to Boston after fifteen years' absence, \nfound \" people whom nobody knew occupied \nthe old mansion. One of the last spells of the \npast was lifted for him when he saw strange \nfaces looking out of those sun-purpled window- \npanes.\" This picturesque, vine-covered resi- \ndence was at one time the home of Edwin \nBooth, and is now used as a private school for \nboys. \n\nReturning through Willow Street and cross- \ning Mount Vernon we come into quaint old \nLouisburg Square, where, on the south side we \nfind the former homes, a few doors apart, of \nLouisa M. Alcott and Mr. Howells. At Nuin- \n\n45 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nber 2 Silas Lapham and his associates first \ncame into being-, though the book was not \n\n\n73 PINCKNEY STREET — THE HOME OE THE LACYS \n\ncompleted until after the novelist had moved \nto Beacon Street. In this Square John (Mrs. \nCampbell's Ballantyne) found charming Mrs. \nLeBaron living ; and overlooking the Square, \n\n46 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nin Pinckney Street, was Marion's former home, \nwhere years later, advised by Mrs. LeBaron, \nBallantyne found lodgings in the then \"anti- \nmodern street.\" This house is Number J^, \ngiven over to boarders or lodgers, among \nwhom one might have discovered Craighead \n( Truth Dexter) before he married. \n\nThe character of this once aristocratic street \nis in these days very similar to the change in \nother parts of the Hill. This is remarked \nupon by Anna Farquhar [Her Boston Experi- \nences), who says that this is the section reputed \nto be Bohemia. \" The majority of the old \nhomes in Pinckney Street are converted into \nlodging-houses, although a few professional \nfamilies still occupy an entire house apiece. \nThere are to be found rooming spinsters of \nMayflower descent, generally poor connec- \ntions of the same families residing in Beacon \nStreet not far away, — near enough to mention \nfrequently and intimately; musicians; news- \npaper people ; painters ; incipient authors and \na few full-fledged : teachers; composers; im- \n\n47 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\npecunious youths with high spirits and one \n' dress suit ' among several ; female typewriters \nand private secretaries. Here is the freedom of \nthe Latin Quarter, with but a small amount of \nits license. . . . In truth, this Boston Bohemia \nstands for good spirits and innocent uncon- \nventionality, and is several times more virtuous \nthan Boston society, no matter how pretentious- \nly and flamboyantly the little country tries to \ndisprove its virtue.\" \n\nThis is the atmosphere of that recent and \nbrilliant Boston novel, Margaret Warrener, \nthough it is evident that the author, Miss Alice \nBrown, is purposely vague in locating that in- \nteresting colony which she calls Babine. And \nin Pinckney Street, we are sure, was the cosy \nthird floor sitting-room of that splendid woman \nand sculptor, Helen Greyson (Arlo Bates's \nThe Pagans). \" The apartment,\" we are told \nin the opening paragraph of the novel, \" was \nevidently that of a woman, as numerous details \nof arrangement and articles of feminine use \nsuggested ; and quite as evidently it was the \n\n4s \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nhome of a person of taste and refinement, and \nof one, too, who had traveled.\" \n\nIII. THE CHARLES STREET NEIGH- \nBOURHOOD \n\n\nF \n\n\nROM the western slope of Beacon Hill, \nwhere, as Emerson sing-s. \n\n\n\"Each sired leads downward to the sea, — \" \n\nwe come down into Charles Street and a local- \nit}' closely identified with the fiction of Arlo \nBates, Henry James, Howells and other lesser \nliterary lights. At the period of which Henry \nJames writes in TheBostonians Charles Street \nwas a place of semi-fashionable residences, one \nof which is described by the novelist as the \nhome of Olive Chancellor. To-day, like the \nadjacent streets, it is largely given over to \nboarding and lodging houses, so that it is nat- \nural in many novels to find masculine charac- \nters lodging- there. \n\nTo enter it from Beacon Street we find a \nfew doors along the identical little Italian fruit \nshop where Graham first saw Mary Brooks \n\n4<; \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nAFRICAN METHODIST CHURCH \n68 CHARLES STREET \n\n\n(Eliza Orne White's \nMiss Brooks). \"His \neyes were arrested by \nthe rich colouring of \nthe red apples and \nyellow oranges, which \nshowed off to especial \nadvantage in juxta- \nposition to the large \n\n\" She wished densely to sur- \nblinclies of purple round herself with the blackness \n\nfrom which she had sprung.\" — \nand green grapes, Howetlss \"An Imperative Duty\" \n\nand the dusky red bananas that hung from \nthe walls in great clusters. The dim g-aslio-ht \ngave a semi -obscurity to the place, so that \nits ugly features were softened, and Graham \nthought of certain Dutch paintings he had \nseen abroad. Into this commonplace back- \nground there presently stepped a figure radi- \nant with life and colour. . . . Suddenly the \npoor little shop was transformed, and Graham \nthought of Una, whose face 'made a sunshine \nin the shady place.' \" \n\nHe followed her from the shop up Mount \n5° \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\n\nTHE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT \nAM) CLERGY HOUSE, BRIM- \nMER STREET \n\n\nVernon Street to her \nsister's home, it will be \nremembered, but we \ndetach ourselves from \nthem at the corner to \ntake a passing glance \nat the African Metho- \ndist Church, a rather \npicturesque edifice to \n\n\"The church was appointed which Rhoda (HoW- \nwith a richness beautiful to see.\" \n—Arlo Bates's \"Puritans\" e 1 1 S ' S J III p C V (I t IV C \n\nDitty), sick with the sudden knowledge that \nshe was of negro blood, was led to a meet- \ning by an old coloured woman. \" She had no \nmotive in being where she was except to \nconfront herself as fully and closely with the \ntrouble in her soul as she could . . . she \nwished densely to surround herself with the \nblackness from which she had sprung, and to \nreconcile herself to it by realizing and owning \nit with every sense.\" \n\nWest of this church, clustering at the water's \nedge, is the exclusive Brimmer Street quarter, \n\n51 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nwhich tiny section, a novelist has said, covers \nmore of the real wit, wisdom and worklliness \nthan any one other part of Boston. Here, in \none of the whimsical little streets, amid some \nstrictly Sabbatarian and conventional families, \nand the quality of the artistic life, lived the \nLesters, an evening at whose house was among \nMargaret Allston's Boston Experiences. Here, \ntoo, we find the Church of the Advent, with \nits Clergy House, which, under the thin dis- \nguise of the Nativity, plays a conspicuous \npart in Arlo Bates's novel, The Puritans. \nEvery one will recall the dramatic description \nof the midnight service at the Nativity. \" The \nmusic on this occasion was most elaborate, \nthe very French millinery of sacred music. . . . \nThe church, moreover, was appointed with \na richness beautiful to see. The vestments \nmight have moved the envy of high Roman \nprelates, and the altar plate shone in gold and \nprecious stones.\" The Father Superior of the \nClergy House, in which lived Maurice Wynne \nand Philip Ashe, of the novel, was Father \n\n52 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nFrontford, whom Mr. Bates stoutly denies \nhaving drawn from the actual incumbent. \nMr. Bates says he has drawn but one char- \nacter from life, and that was Dr. Ashton of \nThe Pagans, whose identity was unsuspected \nsave by the prototype and his fiancee. But \nsuch genius has this author for depicting the \nBostonese as he really is that there is no one \nof his fictitious characters who has not been \nfitted by the public to some prominent person. \nThis has been both amusing and annoying to \nMr. Bates, whose tribulations in this line were \nundoubtedly in his mind when he wrote Love in \na Cloud, in which he takes occasion to remark \nthat \" If the scene of a novel be laid in a pro- \nvincial city, its characters must all be identified. \nThat is the first intellectual duty of the readers \nof fiction. To look at a novel from a critical \npoint of view is no longer in the least a thing \nabout which any reader need concern himself; \nb _:t it would be an omission unpardonably stu- \npid were he to remain unacquainted with some \noriginal under the disguise of every character.\" \n\n53 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nNear the Church of the Advent, in Brimmer \nStreet, stands the bachelor apartment where \nBellingham lived (The Ministers Charge), \nthe delightful interior of which Mr. Howells \npictures for us most charmingly on the \nmorning- Barker breakfasted there. \n\nTo turn from here \n\n\ninto Charles Street \nagain we come upon \nthe block of houses \nin one of which lived \nOlive Chancellor \n(Henry James's The \nBostojiians). After \nVerona came to live \nwith Olive, this was \nthe only spot in \nCharles Street that had any significance for \nRansom, the Mississippian, whom we first meet \nin Olive's drawing-room tete-a-tete with her \nsister, Mrs. Luna, who flippantly explains to \nhim that Olive is \"a female Jacobin — a nihilist, \nconsorting with witches and wizards, mediums \n\n54 \n\n\nCHARLES STREET \n\n\" — he heard the door open \nwithin the deep embrasure in \nwhich, in Charles Street, the main \nportals are set.\" — James's \"The \nBostonians\" \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nand spirit-rappers and roaring radicals.\" Olive \nhad the good fortune to dwell on that side \nof Charles Street toward which, in the rear, \n\"the afternoon sun slants redly . . . over \na brackish expanse of anomalous character \nwhich is too bie for a river and too small for \na bay.\" \n\nThis was also the view to be seen from Gra- \nham's chambers (Miss Brooks), which were \nhigh in a house across the way and farther \ndown, at Number 127. These lodgings, as \ndescribed by Miss Eliza Orne White, were the \nactual rooms of her friend, Miss Lucretia Hale, \na sister of Edward Everett Hale, who loved \nher view out over the water, but commonly \nfound, as did Graham, that her friends objected \nto the coal sheds in the foreground. Mary, \nthe heroine of Miss Brooks, when she came to \nthe tea John gave in his chambers, \"went to \nthe window, from which a pale gray strip of \nCharles River could be seen in the distance, \nwith the spires and houses of Cambridge rising- \nabove it, and looking in the misty atmosphere \n\n55 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nlike a blurred charcoal sketch. Her attention, \nhowever, was riveted by some coal sheds that \nloomed up conspicuously in the foreground. \n' You like your view because it is your dispo- \nsition to make the best of things,' she said. \n' Instead of looking facts squarely in the face \nyou idealize them. If I, for instance, with my \ndifferent temperament, were in your place, I \nshould say plainly, ' Those coal sheds are hid- \neous ; they spoil my view.' ' Graham, not \ndrawn as a Bostonian, but one of the most de- \nlightful men in Boston fiction, is a composite \nsketch from two western relatives of the au- \nthor— one middle-aged and the other a young \nman from whose combined characteristics she \nmodelled her hero. \n\nBefore he married and became a United \nStates Senator, John Harrington (Crawford's \nAn American Politician) had rooms in Charles \nStreet, and though Miss Eugenia Brooks \nFrothinoham is va^ue as to localitv, it is safe \nto surmise — since it is the usual abiding-place \nof Boston bachelors in fiction — that Dan and \n\n5^> \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nGarrison {The Turn of the Road) had their \napartment there. \n\nAt Number 164, on the water side of the \nstreet, once lived the Autocrat whose library \nwindows overlooked the basin of the Charles \n— a view from which he drew perpetual inspi- \nration. He found the water craft a source of \nendless interest, and the contemplation of them \ncaused him to write this noble tribute to wo- \nman : \" I have seen a tall ship glide by against \nthe tide, as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, \nwith a hundred strong arms pulling it. Her \nsails hung unfilled, her streamers were droop- \ning ; she had neither side-wheel nor stern- \nwheel, still she moved on stately, as if with \nher own life. But I knew that on the other \nside of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk \nthat swam so majestically, there was a little \ntoilincr steam-tuQ- with heart of fire and arms \nof iron, that was hugfginef it close and dra°f- \nging it bravely on ; and I knew that if the \nlittle steam-tug untwined her arms and left the \ntall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and \n\n57 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ndrift hither and thither, and gfo off with the \nrefluent tide, no man knows whither. And so \nI have known more than one gfenius, hisdi- \ndecked, full-freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pen- \nnoned, that, but for the bare, toiling arms and \nbrave, warm, beating heart of the faithful little \nwife that nestled close in his shadow, and clung \nto him, so that no wind or wave could part \nthem, and dra^o-ed him on against all the tide \nof circumstance, would soon have gone down \nthe stream and been heard of no more.\" \n\nNearby, at 148, we find an interesting liter- \nary centre in the home of Mrs. James T. Fields, \nwho lingers on in the old house so full of as- \nsociations. Not the least of the charms of this \nhouse, the front of which presents a common- \nplace exterior to the passer-by, is the deep \ngarden at the rear, with its benches and trees \nand shrubs and flowers, and always at its edofe \nthat bit of the sea known to the Bostonese as \n\" the river \" or \" the bay,\" beloved by Mrs. \nFields and felt in many of the stories of Sarah \nOrne Jewett, who spends much time with her. \n\n5S \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT B O S T O N \n\nQuaint and elaborately designed landscape \nscreens are to be found in most of the win- \ndows of the Charles Street residences — a \nmark as distinctive of this neighbourhood as \nare the purple window-panes of Beacon Hill. \n\nBeautiful gardens were not uncommon at \nthe West End when Mr. Howells first knew \nBoston, and not far from Mrs. Fields, in lower \nPinckney Street, which he calls Rumford, he \npictures in A Modern Instance a charming one. \n\" Mrs. Halleck liked better than mountain or \nsea the hiorh-walled crarden that stretched back \nof their house to the next street. . . . They \nlaid it out in box-bordered beds, and there were \nclumps of hollyhocks, sunflowers, lilies and \nphlox in different corners ; grapes covered the \ntrellised walls ; there were some pear trees that \nbore blossoms, and sometimes ripened their \nfruit beside the walk.\" It was Halleck. it will \nbe remembered, who said : \" I don't think \nthere is any place quite so well worth being \nborn in as Boston. It's more authentic and \nindividual, more municipal after the old pat- \n\n59 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ntern, than any other modern city. Even Bos- \nton provinciality is a precious testimony to the \nauthoritative personality of the city.\" \n\nAt the end of Charles Street, stretching \nnorthward across the water, is the bridge where \nDan {The Turn of t lie Road) walked alone to \nfight the horror of his approaching blindness, \nand there had a chance encounter with Kate \nRandolph, for whom at that time, he found it \ndifficult to conceal his contempt. This bridge \nis the one of which Graham [Miss Brooks) said \nthat he often wished he could make his poorer \nneighbours feel the refreshment, almost the in- \nspiration in a walk across it just at sunset, or \nin the twilight when the lights were beginning \nto come out one by one. \n\nIn Mar fin Merrivale, Mr. Trowbridge re- \nlates how his hero, accompanied by Cheesy and \nthe others in their tramp to Boston crossed \nthe bridge to enter the city just at dusk. \nCheesy, a typical country boy, gives his first \nimpressions of the city in a characteristic com- \nment : \" I had no ide' it was settled so clust \n\n60 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nhere.\" Over the bridge for many years ran \nthe horse cars to Cambridge, — a line patron- \nizedby Basil ( Tlic Dostonians) when he went out \nthere to see Verona Tarrent — the same tedious \nroute over which Mrs. Tarrent had spent hours \nin \"jingling, aching, jostled journeys\" — what \nBostonian or Cantabridgian does not remem- \nber them ? — \" between Charles Street and her \nsuburban cottage.\" \n\nThe old wooden bridge of which these \nnovelists wrote has given way to a modern \nsteel structure, which may or may not make its \nappearance in the Boston fiction of the future. \n\nIV. IN AND ABOUT THE COMMON \n\nTO the fiction rambler the Common, that \ngreat stretch of green a forest of \nsplendid trees in the very heart of the \ncity, is full of flitting shadows — peopled by \nold friends and acquaintances, whom, in imagin- \nation we meet at every turn. \n\nToiling heavily up the Park Street mall late \non a hot summer day, we seem to see Mr. \n\n61 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nJoshua Harkness (Howells's A Woman's \nReason), struggling to get home, but so ill that \nhe drops at last on a bench, remaining there \nuntil an obliging policeman finds a carriage to \ntake him home. At the head of this mall Bart- \nley Hubbard and Marcia (Howells's A Alodem \nInstance), taking their first stroll here one win- \nter's day, stopped to see the boys coasting \nunder the care of the police between two long \nlines of spectators. \n\nIn this mall, too, on one of the near-by \nbenches Martin Merrivale, in the novel of that \nname, and the little blind Alice sat many a day \nwhile he described the beautiful slopes and \nreeal trees about them. \" We are in a magmi- \nficent rolling park,\" he said to her, \" laid out in \navenues and paths, with long, double rows of \nsuch trees as I have described, running in al- \nmost every direction. The city is on three \nsides, but on the west there is a river that \ngleams like silver. Beyond that are blue hills, \nall asleep under the hazy sky. On che hills \nthere are woods and houses, and on the river a \n\n62 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nslow-moving sail. I wish you could see all \nthis, my deal child.\" The gentle Alice, though \n\n\n\" Ever since I had a ten-cent look at the tran- \nsit of Venus . . . through the telescope in the \nMall, the earth has been wholly different to me \nfrom what it used to be.\" — Holmes's \"Over the \nTea- Cups .\" \n\na fictitious character, was suggested to Mr. \nTrowbridge by his friendship with a woman \nwho was an interesting psychologic study, she \n\n63 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nhaving remarkable prophetic visions, as Alice \ndid. \n\nNo doubt Martin and Alice in their walk \ndown the mall often encountered near the \nTremont Street entrance, the telescope man \nwhom Holmes has immortalized : \" Ever since \nI had a ten cent look at the transit of Venus \n. . . through the telescope in the mall,\" he \nsays, \" the earth has been wholly different to me \nfrom what it used to be.\" As in the Autocrat's \ntime, ever cheerfully ready is he to-day to show \nthe wonders of the planet. \n\nAt the head of Park Street, across from this \nmall, stood until within a few years the beau- \ntiful Ticknor mansion — during George Tick- \nnor's time a rallying-point for literary Boston, \nand likewise famed as being the house where \nLafayette stayed during his visit in 1824. This \nis, undoubtedly, the house where Margaret and \nLaura lived in Mrs. Louise Chandler Moul- \nton's A Letter and What Came of It. \n\nNext door down the sloping street is the \nUnion Club, shown, as is the mansion in the il- \n\n64 \n\n\nd > \n\n\nG \n\n\nt> .O \n\n\nZ T3 \n\n\nO to \n\nw .5 \n=* \"2 \n\nO 7n \n\n\"a o \n\n\n5 ^ £ >- \n\n\n— a! ^ \n1- o .ft \n\n\n8 ^ \n\n:-s ^: \n\nC \n\nc •— •-> \n\n3 \n\nMtn\"* \n\nO \n\nrt aj tj- \n\n£ ^ \n\na; \n\nu r* \n\n«\" £ ~S \n\ni-* \n\n£ \"*a § \n\n•- < * \n\no \n\na; _*. \n\n^3 \n\nb \" En \n\naj v7 \n\nC i \n\n. a, • \n\n65 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nlustration, before either had undergone altera- \ntions. Sewell, Mr. John T. Wheelwright's Child \nof the Century, was a member of this club, and, \nit will be remembered, entertained Strong at \nbreakfast there. \"Sewell was a beino- brought \nto manhood under the segis of a protective \ntariff and a Puritan ancestry,\" says his creator. \n\" His whole life had been spent on that part of \nthe earth's surface which is contained in a cir- \ncle with a radius of five miles, and with the \ntarnished gilt dome of the State House as a \ncentre ; that favoured spot of earth where civic \npride contends for the mastery over human \nsouls, with hatred of taxes — for the true Bos- \ntonian never denies his birthplace save to the \ntax-collector. Of course, he had at intervals \nemerged, incrusted with prejudices as with an \narmour, from this magic ring, in short, tangent \ntrips, having had the daring to penetrate one \nwinter to the mournful live-oaks and gladsome \nskies of Florida, to dodge the treacherous east \nwinds ; and in an autumn ramble as far north \nas the Saguenay, flowing majestically through \n\n67 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nthe great Canadian forests ; but the centrip- \netal force of this ' Hub planet,' so to speak, \nhad always a much stronger effect upon him \nthan the centrifugal ; and like those red woolen \nballs fastened to a rubber string, which in our \nboyhood caused us glee, he sought his native \ntown with the more rapidity, the farther away \nfrom it he strayed. Though he did not revel \nin existence there, somehow he seemed to be- \nlong in the old town.\" \n\nThis is a photographic picture of the con- \nservative Boston type. Sewell, however, was \ncapable of doing the unexpected, and in the \nopening chapter of the novel, having suddenly \ndecided to go to Europe, we learn that \" he \ntacked upon his office-door the legend : ' Back \nin five minutes,' engrossed in his neatest legal \nhand-writing, walked up to his rooms, packed \nhis valise, hailed a coupe, and drove to the \nstation without a word of good-bye to a soul \nin the city, after thirty years of residence.\" It \nis interestine to know that Mr. Wheelwright \noriginally intended Sewell to be a kind of \n\n68 \n\n\no ^ \n\n\nE *> \n\n\n— CD \n\n\n-»-• 'f. •Z \n\n\nc o& \n\n\nt* £ \n\n\n.£ «> \n\n\n \n\nr/T ^ fe \n\ntres \nath \n'I \n\n.en 2,,. \n\nJ3 !=e2 \n\no c \"5 \n\no o w \n\n\"57> \n\nw.§ K \n\n4-. U \n\n1) > E \n\n•5^ S^- \n\nj 3 3^^ \n\n-> ^ \n\n>-H • << \n\ni a .- . « \n\nrt h ^ \n\n*3 D - -* \n\nfe ■ | « ^ \n\n- o oV \n\nrv. 5L.fi * \n\nh me \nfore \npart \n\nocrat \n\nj_i D -v. \n\n<— ^ J_ \n\nw-O ^ 2j \n\nS-1^ \n\n-&*>>-< „ : \n\nc. - \n\nO yTjSj \n\n-H^i Wl \n\n0J -th .Th ■ \n\n-N S 0 \n\nu take \ne.' ' \nnterpr \nwith \\ \n\no h >*$ \n\nilly \neasi \nhall \npat \n\n£-&m&P \n\n- X! .^ \n\n73 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nused as seats was hard by, — the one you may \nstill see close by the Gingko-tree. — Pray, sit \ndown, — I said. — No, no, she answered, softly, \n— I will walk the long pat ' h with you ! \" How \ndelightful to have been the old gentleman who \nmet them about the middle of the way down, \nwalking; arm in arm ! The granite seat has \nbeen removed from the mall, but the gingko- \ntree remains, and no doubt its delicate flutter- \ning leaves are still whispering love secrets to \nthe neighbouring tree-tops. \n\nFrom the Joy Street mall across the hollow \nwhich holds the Frog Pond is the most charm- \ning view on the Common, we are told by Mr. \nArlo Bates in The Pagans, one of the charac- \nters of which novel, Helen Greyson, frequent- \nly traversed this path on her way from her \nhome on Beacon Hill to her studio. The \nFrog Pond is described by Mr. Howells in \nThe Ministers Charge as the place where, \nafter a wretched night on one of the near-by \nbenches, Barker washed his hands and face, \nwhile other people were asleep all round him. \n\n75 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nAcross the green in the Tremont Street \nmall used to sit old Mr. James Bowdoin (Stim- \nson's Pirate Gold) for half an hour before \nbreakfast every morning, walking over from \nhis home in Colonnade Row over the way. \nAnd here, no doubt, sat the hero of Looking \nBackward, \" finding an interest merely in \nwatching the throngs that passed, such as one \nhas in studying the populace of a foreign city, \nso strange since yesterday had my fellow-citi- \nzens and their ways become to me.\" \n\nThe Common, with its malls and well-regu- \nlated intersecting paths, is not now quite the \nsunny meadow and pasture for cows Cooper's \nLionel Lincoln, in the novel of that name, found \nit when first he came to Boston, though soon \nafter his arrival the bucolic rusticity of the \nscene was broken by the quartering of British \nsoldiers. The impish Job Pray, whose weird \nand daring- utterances astonished his red-coat \nauditors, told Lionel he objected to the sol- \ndiers because they starved the cows. \" Boston \ncows,\" said he, \" don't love grass that British \n\n76 \n\n\nO -J \n\n\nJ! I \n\nrt 4) \n\n\nD c \n\n4_, t/) \n\nc c \n\n4- [T< \n\n\n77 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nsoldiers have trampled on.\" Many a time \nin those anxious days Lionel, listening for \na stir of soldiery on the Common, heard \nonly the \"faint lowing of cattle from the \nmeadows.\" \n\nIn The Rebels Lydia M. Childs pictures the \nCommon invaded by the British, and so, too, \ndoes Mr. Chambers in his colonial novel, Car- \ndigan. \" I had never before seen so many sol- \ndiers together,\" says the hero, \" nor such a \nbrilliant variety of uniforms. The townspeople, \ntoo, lingered to watch the soldiers, some sul- \nlenly, some indifferently, some in open enjoy- \nment. These latter were doubtless Tories, for \nin their faces one could not mistake the expres- \nsion of sneering triumph. Also many of them \ntalked to the soldiers, which earned them un- \nconcealed scowls from passing citizens.\" \n\nOf the Common thus invaded Holmes con- \ntributes his picture : \n\nAnd over all the open greeti, \n\nWhere grazed of late the harmless kine, \nThe cannon's deepening ruts are seen, \n\nThe war-horse stamps, the bayonets shine, \n\n79 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nThe clouds are dark with crimson rain \n\nAbove the murderous hireling ' s den, \nAnd soon their whistling showers shall stain \nThe pipe- clayed belts of Gage's men . \n\nWhat would seem to us now as strange a \nspectacle as the cows was the spinning craze, \nwhich led the belles of the colony to bring \ntheir wheels to the Common. This odd scene \nBynner describes in Agnes Surriage. \" Rows \nof young women with their spinning wheels \nwere busy at work in the open air,\" he says, \n\" while elderly men and matrons went up and \ndown the hill to give them countenance and \nkeep at a distance the gaping crowd. ' Tis the \nfashion,\" Frankland explained to Agnes. \" to \nencourage industry and thrift ; these are the \ndaughters of our most substantial citizens come \nforth here to give an example to the meaner \nsort.' \" From the coquetry of the pretty minxes \nhe suspected they enjoyed the admiration of \nthe swains close at hand, and he laughingly \nhurried Agnes away lest she join the ranks. \n\nNear the Common half-way down in West \nStreet, was the Latin School attended by the \n\nSo \n\n\n8i \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nhero of Wheelwright's A Child of the Century, \nand Philip Sanderson in Mrs. Otis's The Bar- \nclays of Boston. just around the corner in \nMason Street is \" the Old Elm, that subter- \nranean retreat known to bachelors and busy \nhusbands,\" where the elder Craighead ( Truth \nDexter) heard his son unpleasantly discussed. \nTurning from here through an alley to \nWashington Street, and walking down a short \ndistance to the corner of Washington and Es- \nsex Streets, we come upon the exact spot \nwhere in Revolutionary days stood the Lib- \nerty Tree. Of this section of the town as de- \nscribed in the novels of colonial life nothing \nactually remains ; but strolling in this locality, \nimagination sweeps away the modern business \nblocks and whirr of traffic, to conjure up a pic- \nture of these stirring days when the Sons of \nLiberty flitted about this neighbourhood, then \nalmost pastoral. In The Rebels we are told by \nthe novelist that there was shot into Governor \nHutchinson's rooms one evening an arrow to \nwhich was fastened a slip of paper bearing \n\n33 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nthese words : \" Lieutenant Governor, Member \nof the Council, Commander of the Castle, \nJudge of the Probate, and Chief Justice of the \nSupreme Court ! You are hereby commanded \nto appear under the Liberty Tree within one \nhour, to plight your faith that you will use no \nmore influence against an injured and exasper- \nated people.\" Discussing this, the Governor \nexplained to Somerville that the Liberty Tree \nwas a large elm opposite Frog Lane, where \nthe mob dared to suspend their insulting effi- \ngies. This historic tree stood beside a smaller \none in the yard of a dwelling, where it re- \nmained until the British cut it down in Au- \ngust, 1775. The rambler who finds it difficult \nto picture this in imagination may be inter- \nested to look up on the wall of the business \nbuilding in Washington, just below Essex \nStreet, and see the memorial bas-relief of the \nLiberty Tree, which has been placed there. \n\nA few steps north, about opposite the present \nHaywood Place, stood in Washington (then \ncalled Newbury) Street the White Horse Tav- \n\n84 \n\n\nSs \n\n\n'■£. « f-1 \n\n\n1.2. 2 \n\n\n,— 1 -5- \n\n\n^3 \n\nO q= \n\n■*-' \n\n4> \n\nT3 \n\nbj \n\n■o b \n\no \n\n!5 0 \n\nS S \n\na n \n\nfa c \n\nO 1- \n\n1) \n\nu m \n\nTJ \n\nv \n\no \n\n43 \n\nu iS \n\n-< \n\n\"^ 3 \n\n%i \n\nT3 \n\n(- \n\n\" > \n\nN, \n\no -£; \n\n*^ \n\n3 rt \n\nO X \n\n^•5 \n\n\"y \n\n85 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nern, of which Miss Child writes in The Rebels. \n\"Willing,\" she says, \"to ascertain more fully \nthe state of public feeling, Captain Somerville \nentered the White Horse Tavern, and carelessly \nglancing over the London Chronicle, kept a \nwatchful eye on those who entered and de- \nparted.\" There he heard his uncle — Governor \nHutchinson — unfavourably commented on a- \nmid general mutteringsof discontent by a group, \nin the centre of which was Samuel Adams, ex- \nhorting them to remember that nothing- was to \nbe gained bv violence; evervthingf bv calm and \ndignified firmness. Poor young Benjamin \nWoodbridge,over whosegrave the Autocrat and \nthe Schoolmistress mourned, is said to have been \na frequenter of this tavern, to which he came for \nhis sword before that duel with Phillips on the \nCommon, which caused his death. It is of scenes \nsimilar to those we find graphically described in \nthe semi-historical novels that Emerson wrote: \n\nThe townsmen braved the English King, \n\nFound friendship in the French, \nAnd Honour joined the patriot ring \n\nLow on their wooden bench. \n\n87 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nV. A RAMBLE ROUND THE PUBLIC \nGARDEN \n\nIN the childhood of a Bostonian born in 1 840, \nwhat is now the Public Garden was in pro- \ncess of evolution from a public dump and \ndesolate ash-heap into something resembling \nits present condition, though many years were \nto elapse before it became the thing of beauty \nit is to-day. It already rejoiced in the name of \nGarden, but its floral inhabitants were few, and it \nwas a favourite camping-ground for the circus, \nand the menagerie, together with such side- \nshows as followed in the wake of the clown and \nthe elephant. It supported some lofty swings \nfor the amusement of the young and with these \nwas a fandango, so called, — a tall shaft revolv- \ning vertically with seats at each end which \nwere alternately soared into the air and then al- \nmost touched the ground. About this time the \nGarden received its sea-wall of granite, which \nmade its western boundary ; and all beyond \nwhat is now the eastern edge of Arlington \nStreet was the Back Bay, where boats sailed and \n\n88 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nwhere, in the cold winter, men and boys cut \nholes in the ice, and erecting a canvas screen \njust large enough to shelter them from the \nsweep of the wind, stood spearing eels with \nwhich the Bay abounded. \n\nThe beautiful Public Garden as it is to-day \nhas been made use of scenically by practically \nevery writer of Boston fiction — \" my Garden,\" \nas the Autocrat loved to call it with that sense \nof proprietorship so strong in him where his \nbeloved city was concerned. \n\nTo enter it at the corner of Beacon and \nCharles Streets is to come at once upon the \nBeacon Street path which Alice and Dan \n( H owells's April Hopes ) paced so slowly when, \ninstead of taking his Cambridge car, Dan ling- \nered in rapturous enjoyment of her society. \n\" The benches on either side were filled with \nnurse-maids in charge of baby-carriages, and of \nyoung children who were digging in the sand \nwith their little beach shovels, and playing their \ngames back and forth across the walk unre- \nbuked by the indulgent policeman. A number \n\ns9 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nof them had enclosed a square in the middle \nof the path with four of the benches, which \nthey made-believe was a fort. The lovers had \nto walk round it ; and the children, chasing one \nanother, dashed into them headlong, or, back- \ning off from pursuit, bumped up against them. \nThey did not seem to know it, but walked slowly \non without noticing ; they were not aware of an \noccasional benchful of rather shabby young \nfellows who stared hard at the stylish girl and \nwell-dressed vouno; man talking together in \nsuch intense low tones, with rapid interchange \nof radiant glances.\" Alice, Mr. Howells tells \nus later on, felt out of the social frame in stroll- \ning here, for this garden path \" was really only \na shade better than the Beacon Street Mall of \nthe Common.\" \n\nOther young people whose love affairs were \nmore or less interwoven with the garden are \nfound in Mr. Bates's Love In a Cloud. Every- \nbody in their set knew perfectly well, says the \nnovelist, that Jack Xeligage had been in love \nwith Alice Endicott from the days when they \n\n9o \n\n\n91 \n\n\ni ■ : i \n\n?_'-'.: : -=. - i - ' 7 \n\n\n: - : \"--r~ : : :.ivt \" nr:e: \n\n• : - : : : - ^ . : : : r :: \n\n: .- .7 \".v \nof unusual constar. \n\nMost of the characters Bos \n:.--r:r ~ \nbut few. and they are rare! \ni; \". ii7.- : -: r. . ■ - it- 7- :: \n\n_ \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nelists to so far diverge from the social code as \nto sit there. Mrs. Daintry (Henry James's A \nXcw England Winter) always crossed the \nGarden in going from her home on the \" new \nland\" to Miss Lucretia Daintry's on \"the hill,\" \nand we are given here a brief glimpse of the \nwinter aspect of the garden — the denuded \nbushes, the solid pond, and the plank-covered \nwalks, the exaggerated bridge and the patriotic \nstatues. \n\nMore attractive is it as it appeared to Craig- \nhead ( Truth Dexter) crossing it from Arling- \nton Street on his way from Mrs. Adams's, in \nBeacon Street, \" when the flower-beds were \nbrilliant with crocuses, tulips and hyacinths. \nThe smell of the upturned earth was pungent \nwith life. In a single night Spring's bridal \ntunic had by fairy looms been woven.\" These \nbright patches of flowers are what Dr. Holmes \ncalled \" the pretty-behaved flower-beds \" which \nhe did not admire so much as nature in a more \nriotous mood. \n\nMarion Crawford, in An American Poiiti- \n\n94 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\ncian, also comments on the carpet of bright \nflowers. Harrington, the politician, on return- \ning to Boston in the late spring, found the \ngarden a delight. \" The breath of spring has \nbeen everywhere, and the haze of the hot sum- \nmer is ripening the buds that the spring has \nbrought out. . . . There is a smell of violets \nand flowers in the warm air, and down on the \nlittle pond the swan-shaped boats are paddling \nabout with their cargoes of merry children and \ncalico nursery maids, while the Irish boys look \non from the banks and throw pebbles when the \npolicemen are not looking, wishing they had \nthe spare coin necessary to embark for a ten \nminutes voyage on the mimic sea.\" \n\nVirginia Kent (Pier's The Sentimentalists), \na westerner, be it understood, is one of the \nfictitious persons who took great pleasure in \nstrolling1 about and sitting in the Garden. Near \nthe Commonwealth Avenue gate it is pleasant \nto sit down on a bench for a moment where she \nlingered \" to watch the gardeners who were \ntaking the stocks out of a flower-bed and lay- \n\n95 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLEs \n\n\ning them in a wheel- \nbarrow, then mould- \ning and smoothing \nthe earth. . . . She \ncontrasted thesegood \nworkmen with the \nmen sitting about on d \nbene;. a ding \n\nnewspapers, and won- \ndered what occupa- \ntion they could ha \nit seemed to her a \nwitless sort of life. It \ndid not occur to her that most of them wen; \n\nling the >apers in search of occupation. \n\nhington bestrode his fretful and apparently \n\nharness-hampered steed on one side of her; in \n\nthe centre of a fountain on the other side stood \n\n.all, all but nude woman, with the extreme \nof bashfulness that a mere frag- \nment of clothing permits one to assume. And \nr through the sculptor's cynical design, \nor > on of his want of skill, the expres- \n\n-/• \n\n\n.-.monweal' \n\nnue. . . . Washington tx \n\nful and apparently K \n\n/f her.\" \n\n— /'/ i \n\n\nI N AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\n\nsion seemed to be of \nan emotion distinctly \n\nperfunctory and af- \nfected. . . . From the \npond near by came \nthe frequent tapping \nof a gong- as the \nswan-boats, with gay \nawnings, made their \nleisurely circuits and \ndischarged the tour- \nist-. Virginia \nthought the Garden \nrather pretty and just absurd enough to be in- \nteresting— she halt expected to see a banana \ntree grafted onto a beech — just to be decora- \ntively unique, and the gardeners, she said, had \ncontrived to make the statues seem designed for \ncentres and reliefs to their flower schemes. \nShe thought there couldn't be too many statues \n— \"the good ones are beautiful and the bad \nones are quaint. They're different from bad \npoetry or bad pictures.\" \n\n97 \n\n\n\" Hartley, who was already be- \nginning to get up a taste for art. \nboldly stopped and praised the \nVenus.\" — Hi ■ \"A .' \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nWestward from the bench where Virginia \nwas sitting is the Ether Monument mentioned \nin Truth Dexter, while the Washington and \nVenus statues in close proximity to her are \nmany times alluded to in Mr. Howells's fiction, \nnotably in The Minister s Charge, where we \nlearn that Barker, for the first time in the Gar- \nden, observed the ima^e of Washington on \nhorseback and a naked woman in a granite \nbasin, which he thought ought not to be al- \nlowed there — the Venus shocked his inexperi- \nence. Bartley Hubbard (A Modern Inst a nee), \nhowever, who was already beginning to get up \na taste for art, boldly stopped and praised the \nVenus. He and Marcia during their first \nmonths in Boston frequently resorted to the \nGarden, where they admired the bridge and \nthe rockwork and the statues. \n\nFord ( The Undiscovered Country), who \nstrolled here when the whole precinct rested in \npatrician insensibility to the plebeian hour of \nseven, surprised the marble Venus without her \nshower on, but he never sat by the statue, \n\n\nJ3.Q «5 \n\n\n■m \n\n\n~ •£ •« \n\n\nSLS» i \n\ns \n\n\n \n\n01 \n\n~52 \n\n< \n\nu \n\n.C^ \n\nX \n\nin \n\nw \n\n3 \nO \n\n\"43 <-> \n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nside,\" fashionably speaking\", is \" possible,\" and \nno novelist, intent upon picturing smart society \nin the Hub, fails to be cognizant of these dis- \ntinctions. \n\nOf these two residential streets, Beacon, \nthough less beautiful, is more aristocratic. \nFrivolous, worldly Beacon Street, Mrs. Farrin- \nder (James's The Bostonians) called it, to the \nannoyance of Olive, who hated to hear it talked \nabout as if it were such a remarkable place, \nand to live there were a proof of worldly glory. \nIn A New England 1 Tinier the same novelist \ntells us that Florimond greatly admired this \n(then) new street on the artificial bosom of the \nBack Bay. \" The long straight street lay air- \ning its newness in the frosty day, and all its \nindividual facades, with their neat, sharp or- \nnaments, seemed to have been scoured, with a \nkind of friction, by the hard, salutary light. \nTheir brilliant browns and drabs, their rosy \nsurfaces of brick, made a variety of fresh, vio- \nlent tones, such as Florimond like to memorize, \nand the large clear windows of their curved \n\n113 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nfronts faced each other across the street, like \ncandid, inevitable eyes. There was something \nalmost terrible in the windows ; Florimond had \nforgotten how vast and clean they were, and \nnow, in their sculptured frames, the New Eng- \nland air seemed, like a zealous housewife, to \npolish and preserve them. \n\nNot far from Arlington Street in Beacon \nwas, we imagine, the home of Mrs. Sam Wynd- \nham (Crawford's A7i American Politician). \nShe was a woman, the novelist says, who did \nher duty in the social state in which she was \ncalled in Boston, reserving the ricrht to do \nmany things according to her mood while fol- \nlowing most of the established Beacon Street \ncustoms. Beacon Street receives Monday af- \nternoons, and all Boston came to Mrs. Wynd- \nham's receptions, \" excepting all the other \nladies who live in Beacon Street, and that is a \nvery considerable portion of Boston, as every \nschoolboy knows.\" We are at once told the \nage of Mrs. Wyndham, for \" it is as easy for a \nBostonian to conceal a question of age as for a \n\n114 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\ncrowned head. In a place where one-half of \nsociety calls the other half cousin, and went to \nschool with it, everyone knows and accurately \nremembers just how old everybody else is.\" \nThis matter of cousinship on the Hub is also \ncommented on by Mr. Arlo Bates in Love In \na Cloud : \" May, as it is the moral duty of \nevery self-respecting Bostonian to be, was re- \nlated to everybody who was socially anybody.\" \nIt has been repeatedly said that Marion \nCrawford drew Mrs. Sam Wyndham from a cer- \ntain world-renowned social leader, whose beau- \ntiful home until recently was on \"the water \nside \" not far from Arlington Street, and he is \nnot the only novelist thus accused, for this same \nbrilliant woman is at once proclaimed the pro- \ntotype of any feminine character of marked in- \ndividuality and social prominence who appears \nin the pages of Boston fiction. Of course, \nknowingly says the public, she is the original \nof Mrs. Sam Wyndham, and of Mrs. Chauncey \nWilson (Bates's The Puritans), and did not \nMiss Anna Farquhar exactly picture her as \n\n115 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nMrs. Bobby Short {Her Boston Experiences), \nwho always sailed in late to receptions with a \nstring of men in tow \" like a graceful ship in \nfull sail with several tuofs steaming in her wake.\" \nThis determination on the part of the public \nto see in purely fictitious women an actual one \nis a little hard on the supposed \" model,\" and \nthose novelists whose characters are the crea- \ntures of their brain. \n\nTo return to the house of Mrs. Sam Wynd- \nham, Crawford makes a most amusing comment \nrelative to its number. \" It is a peculiarity of \nBoston to put the number of the houses on the \nback instead of the front, so that the only cer- \ntain course to follow in searching for a friend \nis to reach the rear of his house, by a circuit- \nous route through side streets and back alleys, \nand then, having fixed the exact position of his \nresidence by astronomical observation, to re- \nturn to the front and enquire for him. It is \ntrue that even then one is frequently mistaken, \nbut there is nothino- else to be done.\" \n\nEvidently Mrs. Sam Wyndham did not, like \n\n116 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nMrs. Daintry (James's A New England Win- \nter), follow the old Boston custom of ornament- \ning her door with a large silver plate, the \nexhibition of which Mrs. Daintry preferred to \nthe more distinguished modern fashion of sup- \npressing the domiciliary label. The Autocrat \nmakes mention of these Beacon Street door \nplates, which in his day were a matter of \ncourse. \n\nIn the neighbourhood of Mrs. Sam Wynd- \nham lived Miss Schenectady, at whose house \nwe first meet John Harrington, who is the \nAmerican politician which gives the novel its \ntitle. This Harrington, says his creator, was \na constant source of interest, and not infre- \nquently of terror, to the good town of Boston. \n\" True, he was a Bostonian himself, a chip of \nthe old block, whose progenitors had lived in \nSalem, and whose very name breathed Pilgrim \nmemories. He even had a tea-pot that had \ncome over in the Mayflower. This was greatly \nvenerated, and whenever John Harrington said \nanything more than usually modern his friends \n\n117 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nbrandished the tea-pot, morally speaking, in \nhis defense, and put it in the clouds as a kind \nof rainbow — a promise that Puritan blood \ncould not go wrong. Nevertheless, Harring- \nton continued to startle his fellow-townsmen \nby his writings and sayings, so that many of \nthe grave sort shook their heads and swore \nthat he sympathized with the Irish and be- \nlieved in Chinese labor.\" \n\nBeacon Street was the locality in which lived \nBayard's uncle, Mr. Hermon Worcester (Miss \nPhelps's A Singular Life), though the author \nsays she had, and never does have, for the \nhomes of her characters any particular houses \nin mind. Bayard, she has told us in her Chap- \nter From a. Life, is her dearest hero. \n\nThe house of most interest as we stroll down \nthe water side of Beacon Street is No. 296, \nonce the home of the Autocrat and now of \nhis son Judge Holmes. Mr. Howells, for three \nyears his near neighbour,opens the door for us \nin a charming fashion {Literary Friends and \nAcquaintance), and having conducted us to \n\n118 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nthe library, shows us the view from the win- \ndow as the Autocrat saw and loved it. \" He \nsaid that you could count fourteen towns and \nvillages in the compass of that view, with the \nthree conspicuous monuments accenting the \ndifferent attractions of it : the tower of Me- \nmorial Hall at Harvard ; the obelisk on Bun- \nker Bill ; and in the centre of the picture that \nbulk of Tufts College which he said he ex- \npected to greet his eyes the first thing when \nhe opened them in the other world. But the \nprospect, though generally the same, had cer- \ntain precious differences for each of us, which \nI have no doubt he valued himself as much \nupon as I did. I have a notion that he fan- \ncied these were to be enjoyed best in his \nlibrary through two oval panes let into the bay \nthere apart from the windows, for he was apt \nto make you come and look out of them if you \ngot to talking of the view before you left. \n\nIn this pleasant study he lived among the \nbooks, which seemed to multiply from case to \ncase and shelf to shelf, and climb from floor to \n\n119 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nceiling. Everything was in exquisite order, \nand the desk where he wrote was as scrupu- \n\n\n- \n\n\n296 BEACON STREET (THE OVAL DOORWAY), THE \n\nHOME OF \" THE AUTOCRAT \" \n\n302, THE HOME OF MR. HOWEl I - \n\n\"When you come to the Back Bar, give me the \nwater side of Beacon Street.\" — ffowells's \"The Rise \nof Silas Lap ham.\" \n\nlously neat as if the sloven disarray of most \nauthors' desks were impossible to him. He \nhad a number of ingrenious little contrivances \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nfor helping his work, which he liked to show \nyou ; for a time a revolving bookcase at the \ncorner of his desk seemed to be his pet ; and \nafter that came his fountain pen, which he used \nwith due observance of its fountain principle, \nthough he was tolerant of me when I said I \nalways dipped mine in the inkstand ; it was a \nmerit in his eyes to use a fountain pen in any- \nwise. After you had gone over these objects \nwith him, and perhaps taken a peep at some- \nthing he was examining through his micro- \nscope, he sat down at one corner of his hearth, \nand invited you to an easy chair at the other.\" \n\nAt No. 302, just below the Autocrats, is the \nhouse occupied by Mr. Howells, in the library \nof which he wrote much of his later Boston \nfiction. He had this block in mind in describ- \ning the home of Miss Kingsbury (A Woman's \nReason), and also the site of the ill-fated man- \nsion of Col. Lapham {The Rise of Silas Lap- \nham). \" When you come to the Back Bay,\" \nsaid the Colonel to young Corey while showing \nhim over the house, \"give me the water side \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nof Beacon Street. . . . The Bay spreads its \nglassy sheet before them, empty but for a few- \nsmall boats and a large schooner, with her sails \nclose-furled and dripping like snow from her \nspars, which a tug was rapidly towing toward \n\n\n\" Marlborough, a straight, long street with \nhouses just alike.\" — ffowells's \" The Minister's \nCharged \n\n\nCambridge. The carpentry of that city, em- \nbanked and embowered in foliage, shared the \npicturesqueness of Charlestown in the dis- \ntance.\" \n\nParallel to and one block south of Beacon \nStreet is Marlborough, \" a straight, long street, \nwith houses just alike on both sides and bits \nof grass before them,\" called by Mr. Howells. \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nBolingbrook in describing it as the street in \nwhich lived the Rev. Mr. Sewell, whom the \nnovelist has intimately involved in the affairs \nof Silas Lapham and in The Minister s Charge. \n\n\n\" — theyneared Mrs. Rangeley's house on Marl- \nborough Street.\" — Arlo Bates's \" The Puri- \ntans.\" \n\n\nHalf a block away lived Miss Vane, of the lat- \nter novel, and somewhere in this street lived \nMrs. Rangeley (Bates's The Puritans), where \nso much that was eventful happened to Mau- \nrice Wynne. \n\nAt No. 459 Marlborough Street is the town \nhouse of Mr. J. F. Stimson, the novelist and \n\n123 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\ny-^ i \n\ntWfll \n\np^H \n\ni \ni \n\nThe home of the Maxwells on \nthe \" sunny side \" of Common- \nwealth Avenue. — Eliza Orne \nWhite s \"Miss Brooks\" \n\n\nauthor of Pirate \nGold, the characters \nof which are old \nfriends, many of \nwhose haunts and \nhomes we have dis- \ncovered in our ram- \nbles. \n\nCommonwealth \nAvenue, or in the \nvernacular, \"the Ave- \nnue,\" with its beauti- \nful park through the centre, is next in impor- \ntance to Beacon Street in the pages of Boston \nfiction. We know that the Maxwells (Miss \nBrooks) lived there, as did the Rowans and Dr. \nMcDowell (The Sentimentalists*) ; so, too, did \nthe Chauncey Wilsons (The Puritans), Mrs. \nWiley {Truth Dexte?-), we suspect, and the \ninconsequent Grangers (Her Boston Experi- \nences) were quite content with it when they \nmight have lived in Beacon Street ! \n\nAll these persons being fashionables, lived \n124 \n\n\nBOSTON \n\non \" the sunny side \" \n— the Maxwells be- \ntween Arlington and \nBerkeley Streets, in \na beautiful vine-cov- \nered house, while be- \nlow them is the gray \nstone dwelling of the \nRowans — the girl, \n' u /u W.,J but not her brother, \n\nThe home of the Chauncey \\\\ ll- \n\nsons— at the corner of Common- Qne Qr t]le most pro- \nwealth Avenue and Hereford Street. l \n\n—Arlo Bates's \" The Puritans.\" nOUHCed of TkcScilti- \n\nmentalists. Indeed, her temperament is re- \nsponsible for the fact that the title of Mr. Pier's \nnovel is plural rather than singular. It was \norio-inallv his intention to build this story \nmainly around his hero, Vernon Kent, but \nFrances Rowan developed such an excess of \nsentimentality, and Mrs. Kent became so in- \nsistent that a change of title was necessary. \nIn Mrs. Kent we have a case of a character \ndominating her creator. She was intended \nto play a clever second to her son, instead \n\n125 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nof which she showed a decided preference \nfor the centre of the stage, which she kept \nwith such persistence that Mr. Pier was \nforced to let her take things into her own \nhands, as a result of which she is one of the \n\n\n■%-;, rW \n\n\nW&\"* \n\n\n■k^ktimii \n\n\nmost interesting women \nto-day in Boston fiction. \nAt the corner of the \nAvenue and Hereford \nStreet we find the im- \nposing house described \nby Mr. Bates in The< \nPuritans as the home of \nthe Chauncey Wilsons. \n\nTHK AVENUE THROUGH THE ^Jfl ll\\Q pTOpeT SlCie OI \n\nthe Avenue with a regal \n\n\" Mrs. Daintry was very fond \n\nof this beautiful prospect.\"— front of marble and with \n\nJames's \"A New England win- \nter:' balconies of wrought \n\niron before the wide windows above, one of es- \npecially elaborate workmanship having once \nadorned the front of the palace of the Tuileries. \nPillars of verd antique stood on either side of the \ndoorway, as if it were the portal of a temple.\" \n« 126 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nTurninof now to stroll down the Avenue \nthrough the park, we come upon the much dis- \ncussed and much despised statues of states- \nmen— one for every block, to which Virginia \n\n\nTHE ST. BOTOLPH CLUB NO. 2 NEWBURY \n\n\nKent calls Ballington's attention. Mr. Bates's \ncharacters in The Philistines were greatly agi- \ntated over plans for a new statue, about which \nthey had conflicting and most violent opinions, \nwhich leads the author to say: \"The inner \nhistory of the effigies which in Boston do duty \nas statues would be most interesting reading, \n\n127 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBL) - \n\namusing or depressing as ged to \n\ntake it. To know what causes led to the pro- \n\n\ni — \n\n- \n\n. ■ - — \n\n\nduction and then to the erection of these mon- \nstrosities could hardly fail to be instructive, \nalthough the knowledge might be rather \n\n:;• \n\n\nz I \n\n\n•- L \n\n~Z — \n\n\n- > \n■- - \n\n\n- - J:- \n\n- Z. x \n\n\n<- \n\n\n£ 2 -« \n\n\n-~ \n\n\n129 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\ndreary.\" The Autocrat, too, enters his protest \nwhen he tells us that he and his fellow-citizens \nhave had their sensibilities greatly worked \nupon, their patriotism chilled and their local \npride outraged by the monstrosities which had \nbeen allowed to deform their beautiful public \ngrounds. \n\nFrom the avenue turning into Berkeley and \nthence into Newbury Street, we find at Num- \nber 2 the St. Botolph Club, where Watson \nand Willis (Aldrich's Goliath) used to play bil- \nliards, and members of which were Craighead \nand Norton ( TrutJi Dexter). But it becomes \nbetter known to us through the pages of Mr. \nBates's fiction, notably The Pagans — who \nwere all members — and The Philistines, in \nboth of which novels it figures under the dis- \nguise of the St. Filipe Club — \"which for \nmore than a quarter of a century had main- \ntained the reputation of leading in matters of \nart and literature.\" \n\nFarther down in the same street lived Mrs. \nDaintry (James's A New England Winter), \n\n131 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nand around the corner from her in Clarendon \nStreet, her daughter Joanna and her six chil- \ndren ; but Clarendon Street is of greater fic- \ntional interest than this, for at the corner of \nNewbury we come upon the home of the Rev. \nMr. Strathmore [The Puritans), a house \nknown through the country as the home of the \ngreat Bishop Brooks. If it was not Mr. \nBates's intention to draw Mr. Strathmore \nfrom the celebrated bishop, he has, neverthe- \nless, unconsciously done it with so sympathetic \na touch that it is impossible not to recall him \nin every line. \"Strathmore was of commanding \npresence ... a man who appealed strongly to \nthe common heart, both by his sympathy and \nby flexibility of character and temperament, \nwhich made it impossible for him to be repel- \nlently stern or austere. He preached high \nideals ... he demanded high purpose and high \nlife, noble aims and unfailing charity ... he was \nlooked up to by the general public as a great \nspiritual leader, and loved with an affection \nexceedingly rare in this unpriestly age.\" \n\n132 \n\n\n\" The lovely day became a still lovelier day within, enriched by \nthe dyes of the stained windows through which it streamed.\" — \nHowells 's \"April Hopes.\" \n\n\n133 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nAdjacent to this low vine-covered house is \nthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology \nwhere Susan ( E. E. Hale's Susans Escort) \nattended lectures and from which were gradu- \nated the young men in Miss Reed's Miss \nTheodora. From the corner where we are \nstanding stretches out to the right of us \nCopley Square, which, with its beautiful Trinity \nChurch, Art Museum, Public Library and New \nOld South Church, combine, says Margaret \nAlston, to form the most interesting Square \narchitecturally in America. Trinity, with its \ngreat domed interior, harmonious tones, and \npeaceful sanctity, called to her mind the char- \nacter of the man who had unconsciously built \nthe glory of this edifice. \n\nHere the consecration of Mr. Strathmore \n{The Puritans) took place on a \"beautiful \nJune day, and was as imposing a function in \nits line as Boston had ever seen. Trinity was \ncrowded to over-flowing, and if the ceremonv \nwas less imposing than would have been the \ninduction of a Catholic bishop, it was impres- \nts \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nsive and dignified. The sunlight filtering \nthrough the windows of stained glass splashed \nfantastic colours over the long surpliced train \nwhich wound through the aisles down to the \nchancel, singing processionals of joyous hope ; \nthe air was full of the sense of solemn meaning ; \nthe organ pealed ; the noble words of the fine \nold ritual spoke to the hearts of the hearers, \nand carried their message of a faith which took \nhold upon the unseen. Above all the circum- \nstance, the form, the conventions, the creeds, \nrose the spirit of the worshipers, uplifted by \nthe thrilling realization of the outpouring of \nthe soul of humanity before the unknown \nEternal.\" \n\nMiss Theodora's Earnest attended service \nhere Sunday afternoons content to stand for \nan hour in the crowded aisle to hear the up- \nlifting word of the great preacher, while \nHowells gives us a picture of its interior \nwhen his hero and heroine of April Hopes \nare finally married there. \n\nThese two young people, earlier in the \n, 136 \n\n\nC3 \n\n8 \n\n... \n\nV \n\n> \n\n~ \n\n^ \n\nz \n\nE \n\n:t : a- < ■ . ; - as Frit ;-:\". J;-.:r: \n\ninson mansion ts gardens ^ back \n\n\n. - — \n\n■ - \n\nto Fleet and Hanover Streets s given \nChild in The Rebels. The large brick house \nwas ornamented in front with four Corinthian \nTi- inters and the r. - iat when the \n\nLieutenant-Governors young; nephew, Captain \nSomerville arrived from England, he \n\n- \n\n\n■ ■ ■ \n\nios . ' \" _ \n\n: c . . - ' . : • -- ' - . \" : i- : r : ' \n\n- \n\n_ :~ \"j -,--'■ ~~_~- — .-■~'-~ ~— ~. z .ri: :: \n\n' . - 2_~ . ~ - . \" _ \n\n_~ I \" ~ ~ - - - \n\n: .1 - ■ \n\n'. — ■- \".- \" - * \n\noff Ezrr- ' \n\nIr - \n\ninn J~L' RritrJs, moon-. '.''-\"\"\". \n\n\" ' . \" ' - \n\n: -.■:- —ZiT-z-z i j :.: - - - ~ <- —. - : - - = : : t v . : .- \n\n: 7i_i.\" : \" t ~ti ic.rc iv :-:\"-\"\" : \" ~ - \n\n----■\"\" \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ntounded quests. More thrilling things than \nthese happened in the library of the house on \na night early in the story when the Governor \nand Dr. Byles were quietly deciphering a \nmanuscript brought over from England by the \nyoung captain. Take a peep into this room of \nthe scholar and the antiquarian and see how \nsplendidly it was hung with canvas tapestry, \n\" on which was blazoned the coronation of \nGeorge II., here and there interspersed with \nthe royal arms. The portraits of Anne \nand the two Georges hung in massive frames \nof antique splendour, and the crowded shelves \nwere surmounted with busts of the house of \nStuart.\" \n\nInto this scholarly atmosphere came Somer- \nville with news of the infuriated state of the \npopulace outside, which hardly had he imparted \nwhen the mob was heard at the doors crying \nvengeance on \" stingy Tommy,\" heartily de- \ntested. The family escaped through the gar- \nden and the mob wreaked its anger on the \nhouse which half were for burning, but satis- \n\n180 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nfied themselves by joining the others in ruth- \nlessly destroying the beauty of the interior. \nThe library particularly suffered. Books were \nstripped from their covers, manuscripts torn to \npieces, the royal portraits rent from top to bot- \ntom, and the beautiful swan-like neck of Mary \nStuart was all that remained of the proud line \nof busts. \n\nNext door to this mansion stood the scarcely \nless noted one of Sir Harry Frankland, from \nthe windows of which the self-imprisoned, un- \nhappy Agnes Surriage, in fact as well as in fic- \ntion (Bynners Agues Surriage), wistfully gazed \ndown upon those haughty dames who passed \nher by. Plain to severity was the exterior of \nCollector Frankland's house, but this, the novel- \nist assures us, was merely an architectural mask \n— a Puritanical cloak, as it were, covering the \nswashing bravery of a Royalist and courtier. \nA buffet groaning with massive plate and a \ncellar stocked with choicest wines were not the \nleast of the ornaments of a luxurious house, the \nerrand staircase of which was so broad and \n\n181 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\neasy of ascent that Frankland used to ride his \npony up and down. Like a body reft of its \nsoul Agnes sat amid the splendour of her new \n\n\n\" Plain to severity was the exterior of the collec- \ntor's house, but this was merely an architectural \nmask, a Puritanical cloak, as it were, covering the \nswashing bravery of a Royalist and courtier.\" — \nBy niter's \"Agues Surriage\" \n\n\nhome, and departed from it with thankfulness \nwhen eventually they took up their residence \nat Hopkinton. \n\nUsing this Frankland house, which he places \nin Tremont Street, as the abode of the aristo- \n\n182 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\n\ncratic Mrs. Lechmere, the aunt of Lionel Lin- \ncoln, Cooper describes it at length as the most \nsplendid in the town. He permits his hero to \ndwell there for some time as the guest of his \naunt and young cousins, one of whom he mar- \nries while the other, \nAgnes Dan forth, marry- \ning an American officer, \ncontinues to live in the \nold house after her \ngreat-aunt's death. \n\nGarden Court Street \nleads directly into \nNorth Square, always \na triangle, where on the \nnorth side stands to- \nday the house of Paul \nRevere from which he \nstarted on that famous ride which Long- \nfellow has made immortal. The little frame \nhouse is not imposing, having sunk to the \nlevel of an Italian shop and tenement, but \nit is interesting to the rambler as being\" \n\n183 \n\n\nTHE IK 'ME OF PAUL \nREVERE \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\none of the few old North End houses re- \nmaining. \n\nTurn east and pass out North Square \nthrough Moon, which is just below Garden \nCourt Street. Hereon the east side, halfway \nbetween the Square and Fleet Street, Sir \nHarry Frankland had as his neighbour the \nwitty Rev. Samuel Mather, with whom he \nloved to parley. Bynner (Agnes Surriage) de- \nscribes their meeting one evening in Moon \nStreet, when the eccentric parson urged him \nto come to prayer meeting, promising to make \nhim a special subject of supplication in return \nfor the box of lemons the Collector had sent \nhim. To which Frankland makes reply that \nhe had ample payment in the clever verses re- \nturned. These verses written February 20, \n1757, were as follows : — \n\nYou know from Eastern India came \nThe skill of making punch, as did the name; \nAnd as the name consists of letters five, \nBy five ingredients it is kept alive, \nTo purest water sugar must be joined \nWith these the grateful acid is combined; \n184 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nSome any sours they get contented use, \nBut men of taste do that from Tagus choose. \nWhen now these three are mixed with care. \nThen added be of spirit a small share ; \nAnd that you may the drink quite perfect see, \nAtop the musky nut must grated be. \n\nFrom Moon pass into Fleet Street and \ndown to North, turning east a block to Clark \nStreet where we do not see the present squalor \nbut instead conjure up the old \" Ship Tavern,\" \na famous ordinary to which Bynner's Zachary \nPhips used frequently to be running after \n'baccy for the sailors, and there Mr. James \n(Stimson's Pirate Gold) sometimes took his \nfather, Mr. James Bowdoin, for a glass of \nflip. \n\nA short distance along North Street Salu- \ntation Alley strikes across to Hanover and \nretains one at least of the characteristics fic- \ntion has ascribed to it, for the narrowest street \nin the town it was and is, and in it stood a \nquaint hostelry called Salutation Tavern or \n\" The Two Palavers,\" where Agnes {Agnes \nSurriage) went in search of Job Redden and \n\n185 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nfound him in the tap-room. In her excite- \nment it is doubtful if she took note of the \nquaint sign-board on which were painted two \nold gossips in the act of greeting, which \ngave the name to both inn and street. \n\nFarther down the al- \nley was the home of \nZach (Zachary Pliips) \nwho seldom entered his \nfather's home by the \nstreet door, but pre- \nferred the rear by way \nof the garden which \nstretched back to Bat- \ntery Street. And here \nJob Pray brought Li- \n\" He wended his way to Sal- onel (Cooper's Lionel \n\nutation Alley.\" — Bynner's Za- T . f - , , \n\nchary Phips'.\" -Lincoln), on that round- \n\nabout excursion through narrow and gloomy \nstreets, terminating at Copp's Hill. \n\nSalutation Street, or Alley, as in the old \ndays it was called, comes out opposite Charter \nStreet, and it is a walk of three short blocks \n\n186 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nup Hanover to North Bennett Street where \nMaster Tileston, a personage in his day, taught \nnot only the fictitious Zach Phips but all the \nactual boys of Boston in his famous Old North \nWriting School. \"His cocked hat, his pow- \ndered wiof, his lonsf-skirted coat, his volumin- \nous waistcoat, and lastly his silver-headed \nMalacca stick,\" says the novelist, \" were the \naccessories of a person not to lightly encount- \nered save by the innocent and pure in heart.\" \nSkirmishes went on among the boys while \nMaster Tileston, familiarly called \"Johnny \nCrump,\" was seemingly intent on copybooks, \nand Zach, one day, was caught whispering. \nSo merciless was the thrashing given him that \nthe boy whirled about on the pedagogue with \na \"you'll never lick me again, old johnny \nCrump, Crumpity Crump ! \" and darted from \nthe room never to return, before the amazed \nmaster could interfere. A large public school \nnow stands on the site of the frame house \nwhere the irascible master held sway. \n\nParallel with North Bennet Street and one \n187 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nblock east is Tileston Street, named for Bos- \nton's illustrious school-master and interesting \nto all lovers of the Agnes Surriage, of the \nnovel, as beino- the street in which she lived \nwhile makinof her first home in the town with \nthe Widow Ruck. Frankland, whose protege \nthe girl then was, found this boarding place \nfor her and there she faithfully applied herself \nto the somewhat arduous task of taking on the \nfine polish of a lady. From the windows of \nher room, Bynner tells us, lay outspread the \nTown Dock to far off Froe Lane, bristling \nwith the many characteristic features of pro- \nvincial Boston — the fine new hall just given \nby the munificent Faneuil; the Town House ; \nthe frowning fortifications of Fort Hill ; the \nshabby little King's Chapel, the towering \nsteeple of the Old South ; the royal colors flying \nabove Deacon Shem Drowne's Indian imaee on \nthe distant province house; the last but not least, \nfarther to the west, triple-peaked Beacon Hill. \n\nThe Widow Ruck, an amusing and wholly \nfictitious character, had, the novelist says, a \n\niSS \n\n\nThe belfry tower of the Old North Church, \nAs it rose above the graves on the hill, \nLonely and spectral and sombre and still.\" \n\nLongfellow s \" Paul Revere 's Ride \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nlarge thrifty garden which covered a space now \noccupied by several brick blocks, and an odd \ncorner of this she was induced, by the persua- \nsive Frankland, to turn over to Agnes. Here \nthe then happy fisher girl and the debonnair \nCollector botanized. The hitherto neglected \ncorner was speedily filled with curious and \nbeautiful plants, for every time Frankland \ncame it was with some choice plant or seed \nfetched from abroad which Aones tended with \ndevotion. This pretty pastime was fact and \nnot fiction, and for this rare garden the novel- \nist thinks Frankland laid the world under con- \ntribution. \n\nOnly a stone's throw farther on lies Salem \nStreet winding as in the old days east and \nwest. Part of this ancient street in i 708 was \nknown as Back Street from the fact that it \ndescribed the limits and sea margin of the \ntown. Fictional interest centres at once in \nChrist Church, the dominant building not only \nof the street but the entire North End. Erected \nin 1723, this church is the oldest in Boston \n\n191 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nstanding on its original ground. Bynner's \ncharacters did not attend it, but he speaks of \nFrankland's keeping his chronometer by its \nbells which tolled the curfew hour. Mr. Stimson's \npretty heroine Pirate Gold, Mercedes, some- \ntimes attended the services in Christ Church, \nescorted by the clumsy Hughson. Here, in \nthose anti-Episcopal days, \"were scarcely a \ndozen worshippers ; and you might have a \nsquare, dock-like pew all to yourself, turn your \nback upon the minister, and gaze upon the \npainted angels blowing gilded trumpets in the \ngallery.\" A poet's rhymes have immortalized \nthe steeple of Christ Church as all readers of \n\"Paul Revere's Ride \" know. \n\nBeside Christ Church in Salem Street stands \nto-day the curious little house where the child \nMercedes (Stimson's Pirate Gold) was taken \nto live when James McMurtagh adopted her. \nJamie, who was Scotch, liked it because it \nmight have been a little house in some provin- \ncial town at home. Later in the story Jamie \nsold this house and removed to a more fash- \n\n192 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nionable quarter only to return to it in after \nyears, and there the noble, unselfish old soul \n\n\nHOME OF THE M MURTAGHS — SALEM STREET \n\n\" Jamie liked it because it might have been a little \nhouse in some provincial town at home.'\" — Stimson's \n\"Pirate Gold.\" \n\n\nin his sixtieth year was attacked by that \nillness which so nearly proved fatal. How \nthe heart throbs in watching by his bed- \n\n193 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nside, where the pathetic old fellow \" lay un- \nconscious of earthly things. For many weeks \nhis spirit, like a tired bird, hovered between \n\nthis world and the next, \nuncertain where to \nlight.\" To the infinite \nrelief of the reader it \nlights on terra firma and \nwe leave Jamie happy \nto live again for his lost \nMercedes's little Sarah \nin the old house in Sa- \nlem Street. \n\nTurninof north from \nthis picturesque dwell- \ning, we pass up Hull \nStreet, which is directly \nopposite Christ Church. \nThis quaint street leads \nup a short ascent to \nCopp's Hill burying-ground. Before reaching \nthat inclosure, however, we pass on the left, \nhalf-way up the hill, an old gambrel-roof house, \n\n194 \n\n\nTHE HOUSE IN HULL STREET \nWHERE GAGE IS SAID TO HAVE \nPLANNED THE BATTLE OF \nBUNKER HILL \n\n\n•p .a \n\nc \n\nu \n\nA \n\no H \n\n(1 \n\nw \n\nS k \n\nY, \n\n0) « \n\nr\" \n\nt \"^ \n\nrt & \n\n\n.2 s \n\n\n195 \n\n\nI N A X D ABOUT BOS T O X \n\nto which — so Job Pray said (Cooper's Lionel \nLincoln i Gage secretly retired to plan the battle \nof Bunker Hill. Remarkably well preserved \ninside and out is the house, unchanged since it \nwas built. It is now occupied by a venerable \nlittle Irishman \"bowed with his fourscore years \nand ten \" — a well-known and unique character \nin a neighbourhood Italian— who is persuaded \nsometimes to allow within his gates the \nstranger permitted not to conjure up the \nshades of Cooper's characters, but quaintly \nmade conversant of the fact that mine host, \nnow retired from active business, is the oldest \nliving fish merchant on T \\\\ harf. \n\nIt is but a few steps on to Copp's Hill bury- \nino--oround where \n\nEach in his narrow cell former laid \n\nThe rude forefathers of the hamlet sle $ \n\nHere, too. sleeps the gentle Grace Osborne, \nwho moves like some spirit from another world \nthrough the pages of The Rebels, the hero of \nwhich. Captain Somerville, breaking faith with \nher. likewise broke her tender heart. Even-one \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nremembers the exquisite letter of forgiveness \nand farewell she left for him and which was \nfowarded to the King's Head Tavern, Balti- \nmore, where he was then supposed to be. \n\" Three weeks after a young man called upon \nthe sexton and requested the key of Mr. Os- \nborne's tomb. With weak, irregular steps he \nentered the house of death, and raised the lid \nof the coffin last placed there. ... Not a \nsigh-, not a tear relieved the bursting- anguish \nof his heart. His eye accidentally rested on \nthe inscription: — Grace Osborne, aged 19. \nDeparted this life May 27th, 1769.\" A month \nlater Captain Somerville died and was laid to \nrest not far from his mourned love, in the south- \neast corner of the cemetery where the tomb of \nthe Hutchinson family, of which he was a \nmember, still remains. The beautiful coat-of- \narms of the aristocratic family emblazons the \nslab of sand-stone which covers the entrance to \nthe tomb desecrated by an act of vandalism, for \nthe name of Hutchinson has been obliterated \nand that of Thomas Lewis cut in its place. \n\n198 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nWith broad and brilliant strokes in Lionel \nLincoln Cooper paints for us this famed hill. \n\n\nTHE SPOT FROM WHICH LIONEL LINCOLN \nWATCHED THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL \n\n\" — he, too, is for Copp's, where we can all take \na lesson in arms by studying the manner in which \nHowe wields his battalions.\" — Cooper 's \"Lionel \nLi )i coin.\" \n\nHe has described it by moonlight, when the \nscene was so weird and uncanny that Lionel \nrefused to wander there among the graves ; \n\n199 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\naeain at night in stirring times when, restless \nand excited, Lionel found himself issuing upon \nthe open space that is tenanted by the dead. \n\" On this eminence the English general had \ncaused a battery of heavy cannon to be raised, \nand Lionel, unwilling to encounter the chal- \nlenge of the sentinels, inclining a little to one \nside, proceeded to the brow of the hill, and \nseating himself on a stone, began to muse \ndeeply on his own fortunes and the situation \nof the country. . . . The stillness of midnight \nrested on the scene, and when the loud calls of \n\"all's well\" ascended from the ships and batter- \nies, the momentary cry was succeeded by a quiet \nas deep as if the universe slumbered under this \nassurance of safety.\" From this elevation, with \nClinton and Burgoyne, Lionel watched through \na spy-glass the fighting at Bunker Hill — told \nby the novelist in so graphic and pictorial a man- \nner that Bancroft, the historian, says it is the \nfinest description of the battle we have. \n\nIn these days there was an unobstructed \nview of Charlestown, and the whole scene of \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nthe bloody struggle lay before these men, who, \nin the beginning, thought it a glorious spectacle \nbut quickly began to realize that the incessant \nroll of the American musketry was something \nto be respected, nay feared ; and when, as the \nconflict proceeded the result was known, the \nbewildered group on Copps gazed in each \nothers' faces with undisguised amazement, and \nthen made a mad rush down the hill to the \nshore and a boat which they ordered to quickly \nconvey them to the scenes of operations. To \nappreciate the sensation of Major Lincoln and \nhis brother officers of that momentous day cne \nmust turn to the sixteenth chapter of Lionel Lin- \ncoln which alone would have given Cooper fame. \nA stone's throw from Copp's Hill, at the \ncorner of Prince and Margaret Streets, stands \nthe home of Master John Tileston (Bynner's \nZachary Phips). Time has laid its destruc- \ntive hand on the old house, which, neverthe- \nless, holds its own as one of the few remainino- \nexamples of the simple architecture of pre- \nRevolutionary days. \n\n203 \n\n\nDOCK \n\nT- \n^h S - \n\naross - - \n\n- \n- \n\n• so doing \n\n- - jl - ,: \n\n- \n- - sooeofl \n\nare - - \n\n\" - - - . \n\n- \n\n- - - ■ ■ . \n\nriest -- \n\n- : \n\" ~ \" \" \" \" - the \n\n\nIN B O \n\n\"Wild :ribed in \n\n\\V. Chambers's colon The \n\ntavern — an ancient, discoloured, rami \nstructure a \n\nred porch infr \n\n„n-boar \ncrea: re hich doub: \n\nan \nt ^cratic neighbourhood. \"Warehouses, ship- \nchandlers, ro: - ops \nline :h vacant, bar- \n\nfcs F groun rare! -:»undec \n\nwooden fei . . Northward across the \n\nmis: le roof and \n\ntown reddened in the sun ; to 1 \ncannon on Copps g red. p tine sea- \n\nlover the N est iter W IL From \n\nlere in th-r : . :he beating of \ndrums and the faint squei ng f fifes \"ion \n\nbanner /and flapped from Beacon Hill: \n\nned the summit of \nishesc : the Beacon sm-: \nas first ren bv \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nReturning now to Blackstone Street and \ncrossing it, we continue a few steps in Hanover \nStreet, when a sharp turn to the left brings us \n\ninto Marshall Street \nand up to the Boston \nStone, where, on the \nnight of the 14th of \nAugust, 1765, Henry \nOsborne lingered to \nwatch the ominous \nbon-fire on Fort Hill \nso vividly described \nin the opening chap- \nter of The Rebels. \nThough this stone \nbears the date of \n1737 and has a \nunique history, it is \npassed unnoticed by \nthe majority of per- \nsons who frequent the neighbourhood. \n\nFrom here we pass down Union Street or \ntake a short cut to North Street by Creek \n\n206 \n\n\nh^-^' nin — '. — \n\n\" He leaned a moment on Un- \nion (Boston) Stone listening to \nthe distant tumult.\" — Lydia M. \nChild's \" The Rebels.\"' ' \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nLane and Scottow's Alley, emerging upon \nFaneuil Hall, in Dock Square. \n\nFrankland, the Collector (Bynner's Agnes \nSurriage), attended the great meeting there \nwhen Master John Lovell pronounced the fu- \nneral oration upon the widely mourned Peter \nFaneuil, and the novelist gives us an amusing\" \naccount of a conversation after the meeting, \nbetween the Collector and Master Pelham, \nwho, jealous of the honour conferred on his \nbrother pedagogue, consoled himself by tart \ncriticism of the oration. In The Rebels is \nalso pictured a Faneuil Hall meeting, this an \nexciting one called by Samuel Adams to pro- \ntest against the ruined mansion of Hutchin- \nson and petition the Legislature to repair it at \nthe expense of the State. \n\nOn the south side of Faneuil Hall, partially \nhidden in old Corn Court, is standing the his- \ntoric Hancock Tavern which figures in Byn- \nner's Zachary Phips. The stable yard where \nZach loved to mingle with the crowd of teams- \nters, hostlers and hangers-on, is no more, but \n\n209 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nthe house itself has undergone few changes \nand its bar would seem to be doing at the \npresent time as flourishing a business as in the \ndays of Zach and again of Talleyrand, who is \n\nsaid to have sojourned \nthere when in Boston in \n1 795. The sign of the \ntavern bearing the \nweather-stained features \nof Governor Hancock \nhas been removed from \nthe door and placed in \na room teeming with \nhistoric but, alas! no lit- \n- erary interest. \n\nSuch interest, how- \never, centres in the neigh- \nrtrte. bourhood of Dock \n\nyard of the old Brasier Inn.\" — c ~ ,..l,.Vk ,V ^1-,^ \n\nBynn^s-ZacharyPhipsr Square, which is the \nscene of much of Lionel Lincoln. When the \nyoung British major frequented it, its centre was \na swinging bridge thrown across an inlet from \nthe harbour and extending a short distance into \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nthe area, forming a shallow dock. The square \nwas composed of low, gloomy buildings, in one \nof which, a warehouse standing within the \nmemory of many persons, the mysterious \nRalph lived with Abigail and Job Pray. \n\nA short walk up through here across Adams \nSquare and we come upon Cornhill, as quaint \nand interesting as its London prototype. \nThe character of the street has changed some- \nwhat since Trowbridge's. Mart in Merrivale, the \nhero of the novel of that name, sought out \na publisher there for his precious manuscript, \nThe Beggar of Bagdad, but if publishers have \nlargely abandoned it to other trades, booksellers \nstill find it a lucrative field, and on either side \nof its winding street are fascinating antiquar- \nian shops. Martin Merrivale hopefully seek- \ning out a publisher lives through sensations \nstill vivid in the experience of his creator, John \nT. Trowbridge, when, as a young man, he went \nto Xew York to seek his literary fortunes \n\nIt is more than probable that to Cornhill \nalso came the brave-hearted old Master Byles \n\n213 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nGridley (Holmes's The Guardian Angel), \nbringing his protege, the embryo poet, Gifted \nHopkins, to call on a publisher who might be \npersuaded to purchase his MS., a collection \nof poems entitled \" Blossoms of the Soul.\" In \nreferring to this fictitious young poet Holmes \nsays: \"Perhaps I have been too hard with \nGifted Hopkins and the tribe of rhymesters to \nwhich he belongs. I ought not to forget that \nI, too, introduced myself to the reading world \nin a thin volume of verses, many of which had \nbetter not have been written, and would not \nbe reprinted now, but for the fact that they \nhave established a right to a place among my \npoems in virtue of long occupancy. Besides, \nalthough the writing- of verses is often a mark \nof mental weakness, I cannot forget that \nJoseph Story and George Bancroft each pub- \nlished his little book of rhymes, and that John \nOuincy Adams had left many poems on record, \nthe writing of which did not interfere with the \nvast and important labors of his illustrious \ncareer.\" \n\n214 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nAcross from Cornhill, on the space now oc- \ncupied by Codmen's Buildings, once stood \nEarl's Coffee-house, from which Zach (Bynner's \nZachary Phips) started out to New York on \nthe fast mail coach, the Flying Cloud. At the \nhead of Cornhill, in the former residence of \none John Wendell, was the Royal Custom \nHouse at the time Frankland (Bynner's Agues \nSurriage) was Collector. Near by was the \nstudio of John Smybert, who, by Frankland's \norder, painted the portrait of Agnes. Some- \ntimes at her sittings, the novelist says, she ran \nacross the little Jack Copley whom Smybert \nwas teaching, and of whom he truly prophesied \nwhen he said : \" He hae the richt stuff in him. \n. . . he's bound to go far ahead o' his old mais- \nter ane o' thae days.\" Through this old Scot's \nestate Brattle Street in after times burst forth \ninto Scollay Square. \n\nJust south of here in Queen Street, now \nCourt, lived the Osbornes {The Rebels) where \nGovernor Hutchinson and his family took \nrefuge at the time his mansion was attacked. \n\n215 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nIn Queen Street, says the author of Cardigan, \nwas the elegant mansion of Mrs. Hamilton \nwho plays a leading part in the book. Here \nalso was the Court-house and prison where \nCardigan and Jack Mount were confined. \n\" From the 29th of October until the 15th day \nof December chained ankle to ankle, wrist to \nwrist, and wearing a steel collar from which \nchains hunor and were riveted to the rino-s on \nmy legs, I lay in that vile iron cage known as \nthe ' Pirates' Chapel' in company with Mount \nand eight sullen, cursing ruffians.\" \n\nIdentified with this street are the tragic fig- \nures of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter of which \nHolmes wrote : \n\n/ snatch the book, along whose burning leaves \nHis scarlet web our wild romancer weaves. \n\nThe jail where Hester Prynne was confined \nwas the Old Prison in Prison Lane, as it was \ncalled before it became Queen and later Court \nStreet. This is not the jail described in Car- \ndigan, but a structure of a much earlier date. \n\" Some fifteen or twenty years after the settle- \n\n216 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nment of the town {The Scarlet Letter) the \nwooden jail was already marked with weather- \nstains and other indications of age, which gave \na yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and \ngloomy front. The rust on the ponderous \niron-work of its oaken door looked more an- \ntique than anything else in the New World. \nLike all that pertains to crime, it seemed never \nto have known a youthful era. Before this \nugly edifice, and between it and the wheel- \ntrack of the street, was a grass-plot, much \nover-grown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, \nand such unsightly vegetation, which evidently \nfound something congenial in the soil that had \nso early borne the black flower of civilized \nsociety, a prison. But, on one side of the por- \ntal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a \nwild-rose bush, covered, in this month of June, \nwith its delicate gems, which might be imagined \nto offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to \nthe prisoner as he went in, and to the con- \ndemned criminal as he came forth to his doom \nin token that the deep heart of Nature could \n\n217 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\npity and be kind to him.\" This jail as well as \n\"Pirates' Chapel\" (Chamber's Cardigan) \nstood on the site of the present old Court \nHouse in Court Street. \n\nThe immediate neighbourhood was the mar- \nket place in which Hester Prynne (The Scarlet \nLetter) was forced to exhibit herself with her \nbaby in her arms and the ignominious letter \non her breast, and at the western extremity of \nthe market place was the scaffold, \" a penal \nmachine which now for two or three trenera- \ntions past, has been merely historical and tra- \nditional among us, but was held, in the old \ntime, to be as effectual an agent, in the promo- \ntion of good citizenship, as ever was the guil- \nlotine among the terrorists of France. . . . Hes- \nter's sentence bore that she should stand a cer- \ntain time upon the platform, but without under- \ngoing the grip about the neck and confinement \nof the head, the proneness to which was the most \ndevilish characteristic of this ugly engine.\" \n\nThe scaffold stood nearly beneath the eaves \nof Boston's earliest church situated where now \n\n218 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nstands the Rogers building'. Historically this \nwas the first church of Boston built originally \non ground at the head of what is now State \nStreet, a site occupied by Brazer's Building, \nbut in 1640, just before the opening of The \nScarlet Letter romance, it was removed to the \nlocality Hawthorne describes. There the Rev. \nMr. Dimmesdale preached the Election Ser- \nmon, and vivid in every mind must be his sen- \nsational disclosure and the events preceding \nand following it. That The Scarlet Letter \nis founded on fact is well known, but it has \nbeen stoutly denied that Hawthorne drew his \nerring minister from the Rev. Thomas Cob- \nbett, of Lynn, who, in 1649, tne >'ear named, \nactually delivered the Election Sermon. \n\nIn this locality stood the town pump in \nCourt Street, which, aided by Hawthorne's \nMuse, thus invoked the passer-by : \" Like a \ndram-seller on the Mall at muster-day I cry \naloud to all and sundry, in my plainest accents \nand at the very tip-top of my voice : ' Here it is, \ngentlemen ! Here is the good liquor ! Walk up, \n\n219 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nwalk up, gentlemen, walk tip, walk up. Here is \nthe superior stuff ; here is the unadulterated \nale of Father Adam — better than Cognac, Hol- \nlands, Jamaica, strong beer, or wine of any \nprice ; here it is by the hogshead or single \nglass, and not a cent to pay ! Walk up, gen- \ntlemen, walk up, and help yourselves !' ' \n\nIn modern Court Street was the office of \nMr. David Willis (Aldrich's Goliath) and pre- \nsumably of another lawyer in fiction, Tom \nHarbinger (Bates's Love in a Cloud) who was \nnever known to stir from his orifice without his \nbag — \"a lawyer's green bag is in Boston as \nmuch a part of his dress as his coat is.\" \n\nIV. STATE STREET AND THE KING'S \nCHAPEL NEIGHBOURHOOD \n\nWE now reach the head of State \nStreet where stands, as in the old \ndays, the Town House, now \nknown as the Old State House. In one of its \nstate rooms occurred the celebration in honour \nof the Louisburg- heroes to which reference has \n\n\nffi ^ ^ ^ \n\n1 333 B -i I \n\nH 3 ?g u \n\n\nTHE OLD STATE HOI \n\n\n' Through days of sorrow and of mirth, \nThrough days of death and days of birth, \nThrough every swift vicissitude \n\nOf changeful time, unchanged it has stood \n& — Longjello't \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nbeen made of the description of this event in \nthe pages of Agues Surriage. Among the \nmany pictures adorning the rooms of this his- \ntoric building, now preserved as a museum, two \nhave distinct literary value — one, the full- \nlength portrait of that noted woman and novel- \nist, Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis ; the other a re- \nproduction of the portrait of Holmes's cele- \nbrated \"Dorothy O.\" his \n\nGrandmother s mother : her age, I guess \nThirteen summers, or something less; \nGirlish bust, ut womanly air ; \nSmooth, square forehead with uprolled hair. \nLips that lover has never kissed; \nTaper fingers and slender wrist; \nHanging sleeves of stiff\" brocade; \nSo they painted the little maid. \n\nStanding beneath the lion and the unicorn \nof the old State House we find Jamie McMur- \ntagh (Stimson's Pirate Gold) on the twenty- \nseventh day of May, eighteen fifty-four, \nwatching a scene memorable in the history of \nBoston and thus graphically pictured for us \nby the novelist: \"Through historic State \n\n223 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nStreet, cleared now as for a triumph, marched \na company of Federal troops. Behind them, \nin a hollow square, followed a body of rough- \nappearing men, each with a short Roman \nsword and a revolver ; and in the open centre, \nalone and handcuffed, one trembling negro. \nThe fife had stopped, and they marched now \nin a hushed silence to the tap of a solitary \ndrum ; and behind came the naval marines \nwith cannon. The street was hung across \nwith flags, union down or draped in black, but \nthe crowd was still. And all along the street, \nas far down as the wharf, where the free sea \nshone blue in the May sunshine, stood, on \neither side, a close rank of Massachusetts \nmilitia, with bayonets fixed, four thousand \nstrong, restraining, behind, the fifty thousand \nmen who muttered angrily, but stood still. \nThus much it took to hold the old Bay State \ndown to the Union in 1854, and carry one \nslave from it to bondage. Down the old \nstreet it was South Carolina that walked that \nday beneath the national flag, and Massachu- \n\n224 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nsetts that did homage, biding her time until \nher sister State should turn her arms upon the \nemblem.\" \n\nA familiar tramping ground was this busy \ncommercial thoroughfare to Jamie, who always \nwalked \" twice daily up the street to the Old \nColony Bank, bearing in a rusty leathern wal- \nlet anything, from nothing to a hundred thou- \nsand dollars, the daily notes and discounts of \nJames Bowdoin's Sons.\" This bank, under \nthe disguise of the Old Colony, is the Boston \nNational Bank, which, since 1803, has been \ndoing business at Number 50 State Street. \nThe imaginary Mr. James Bowdoin was one of \nthe directors, as was in reality his prototype, \nMr. Josiah Bradlee, and it will be remembered \nthat Jamie took a clerkship there when his old \nfirm ceased to do business in India Wharf. \nJamie, a most Dickensy character, owes his \nbeing to the brain of Mr. Stimson, but it was \nsaid that he is suggestive now and then of a \nformer messenger of a bank named Brecken- \nridge, who, early in the century, began life as \n\n225 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nan \" inside man \" — as the Boston phrase is — \nin the Bradlee family. The pirate gold from \n\n\n\" Jamie always walked twice daily up State Street to the Old \nColony Bank, bearing in a rusty leathern wallet anything, from \nnothing to a hundred thousand dollars, the daily notes and discounts \nof James Bowdoin's Sons.\" — Stimsoris ''Pirate Gold.\" \n\nwhich Mr. Stimson's story gets its title, and \nwhich was responsible for all the joy and misery \nin Jamie's life, really lay, as described, in its little \n\n226 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nmouldy bag \" for nearly thirty years, high on a \nshelf, in an old chest, behind three tiers of \ntins of papers, in the deepest corner of the \nvault of the bank. It was never merged in \nother funds, nor converted, nor put at interest. \n. . but carried, in specie, in its original pack- \nage • four hundred and twenty-three American \neao-les and fifteen hundred and fifty-six Span- \n\nish doubloons. Deposited by ■ de Soto, \n\nJune twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and \ntwenty-nine; for the benefit of whom it may \nconcern? And it very much concerned Jamie, \nwhom to know is to sorrow for and love. \n\nThe State Street of to-day is graphically de- \nscribed by Mr. Edward Bellamy in Looking \nBackward. \" Toward three o'clock,\" the hero \nsays, \" I stood on State Street, staring, as if I \nhad never seen them before, at the banks and \nbrokers' offices, and other financial institutions, \nof which there had been in the State Street of \nmy vision no vestige. Business men, confi- \ndential clerks, and errand boys were thronging \nin and out of the banks, for it wanted but a \n\n227 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nfew minutes of the closing hour. Opposite \nme was the bank where I did business, and \npresently I crossed the street, and going in \nwith the crowd, stood in a recess of the way \nlooking on at the army of clerks handling \nmoney, and the cues of depositors at the teller's \nwindows. An old gentleman whom I knew, a \ndirector of the bank, stopped a moment. ' In- \nteresting sight, isn't it, Mr. West?' he said. \n'Wonderful piece of mechanism; I find it so \nmyself. . . . It's a poem, sir, a poem, that's \nwhat I call it. Did you ever think that the \nbank is the heart of the business system ? \nFrom it and to it, in endless flux and reflux, \nthe life blood goes. It is flowing in now. It \nwill flow out again in the morning ;' and pleased \nwith his little conceit, the old man passed on \nsmiling. . . . Alas for the poor old bank direc- \ntor with his poem ! He had mistaken the \nthrobbing of an abscess for the beating of the \nheart.\" \n\nRetracing our steps back again through \nCourt Street we come to Tremont Row where \n\n223 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nthe hero of Miss Phelps's A Singular Life \nhad his unpleasant quarter of an hour with the \nmaudlin Job Slip. Bayard, it will be remem- \nbered, was driving to the station with Helen \nCarruth when he came upon the delinquent. \n\" Struggling in the iron grip of two policemen \nof assorted sizes, the form and tongue of Job \nSlip were forcibly ornamenting Tremont Row.\" \nRescued by his minister, \"Job, who was not \ntoo far gone to recognize his preserver, now \nthrew his arms affectionately around Bayard's \nrecoiling neck and became unendurably maud- \nlin. In a voice audible the width of the street, \nand with streaming tears and loathsome bless- \nings, he identified Bayard as his dearest, best, \nnearest, and most intimate of friends.\" \n\nJust beyond here in Tremont Street is the \nMuseum, a theatre dear to the hearts of the \nBostonese, where Edward Everett Hale's de- \nlightful characters go frequently to see the \nwell-remembered William Warren. In A \nModern Instance Mr. Howells describes the \nplace as old Bostonians remember it : ' They \n\n229 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\npassed in through the long colonnaded vesti- \nbule, with its paintings and plaster casts, and \nrows of birds and animals in glass cases on \neither side, and Marcia gave scarcely a glance \nat any of those objects, endeared by associa- \ntion, if not by intrinsic beauty, to the Boston \nplaygoer. Gulliver, with the Liliputians \nswarming upon him ; the painty-necked os- \ntriches and pelicans ; the mummied mermaid \nunder a glass bell ; the governor's portraits ; \nthe stuffed elephant ; Washington crossing the \nDelaware ; Cleopatra applying the asp ; Sir \nWilliam Pepperel at full length, on canvas, and \nthe pagan months and seasons in plaster, . , . \nwere dim phantasmagoria amid which she and \nBartley moved scarcely more than real.\" \n\nAdjoining the Museum is the venerated \nburying-ground and \n\n— Chapel, last of sublunary tilings \n\nThat shocks our echoes with the name of Kings. \n\nHawthorne tells us that Dimmesdale and \nRoger Chillingworth (The Scarlet Letter) \ndwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the \n\n230 \n\n\ne \n\n \n\nc-1 \n\n\" %. \n\n— -- \n\nn 5 \n\n ^ \n\n•C«q \n\n\" 1 \n\nb£-' \n\nC ,• \n\n.2 fe \n\n-^ \n\nu 2 \n\nu G \n\n£ ■* \n\nrt m \n\n&j 5 \n\n•E-g \n\n35i \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nbreaking up was a long time in making his \nadieux.\" \n\nThough Kingshaven in Eliza Orne White's \nMiss Brooks, is not intended to be Roxbury, \nyet here is the beautiful old-fashioned garden \ndescribed as the Brookses where the family \nspent so much time, Janet particularly. And \nthere, one beautiful moonlight night, Graham \nfound her sobbing her heart out. \" The o^ai-den \nhad an aspect of romance and mystery in this \nhalf light in striking contrast to its appearance \nunder a midday sun. The carnations and the \nlate roses were etherealized, and a tall bush \nwith a feathery white flower made a delicate \nfrost-work with its graceful branches. There \nwas a touch of fog in the air which brought \nout a mixture of sweet odours.\" \n\nBeyond Roxbury is Jamaica Plain, where \nMrs. Sam Wyndham (Crawford's American \nPolitician) gave her skating party on Jamaica \nPond. \" The water was covered with a broad \nsheet of ice that would bear any weight. . . . \nTwo and two, in a certain grace of order, the \n\n353 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nlittle party came out from the shore into the \nmoonlight. A very pretty sight is a moonlight \nskating party, and Vancouver knew what he \nwas saying when he hinted at the mysterious \nand romantic influences that are likely to be \n\n\nH» MA' \n\n\nsprrr \n\n\n<»* ♦ \n\n\nJAMAICA POND \n\n\" — the water was covered with a broad sheet of ice that would \nbear any weight.\" — Crawford* s \"An American Politician.\" \n\nabroad on such occasions.\" Mr. Crawford \ncomments on the fact that skating was not at \nthat time fashionable in Boston, so that the \nWyndham party had the pond practically to \nthemselves. This would not be their expe- \nrience to-day, when all during the skating sea- \nson it is crowded to its utmost capacity, day \nand evening. \n\n\n354 \n\n\n°q \n\n\nH \n\n\n355 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nKeeping on toward the Blue Hills we come \nto Wallaston, a part of Quincyand of fictional \ninterest because here is Mount Wallaston, the \nscene of the revels of Hawthorne's Maypole \nof Merrymount and of Motley's Merry mount, \nthe latter story being one of the two novels \nwritten by the historian. \n\nAbout 1628 one Captain Wallaston had \nplanted himself in the neighbourhood of the \nhill, which still perpetuates his name. Thomas \nMorton, the wily, overthrew him and made \nhimself Lord of Merry-Mount, as he named \nthe place. Says the novelist : \" The crepuscu- \nlar period which immediately preceded the rise \nof the Massachusetts Colony possesses more \nof the elements of romance than any sub- \nsequent epoch. After the arrival of Winthrop \nwith the charter, the history of the province is \nas clear as daylight, but during the few previ- \nous years there are several characters flitting \nlike phantoms through the chronicles of the \ntime the singularity of whose appearance \ngives them a certain romantic interest.\" Such \n\n357 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\na character is Motley's hero, Morton, the Lord \nof Misrule and Sachem of Merrymount, who is \nalso the hero of Hawthorne's story, The May- \npole of Merry Mount. \n\nIn this tale, written before Motley's novel, \nbut which, the novelist - historian tells us, he \ntook pains never to read, Hawthorne has \npainted for us fantastic facts without need to \ndraw upon his wealth of imagery. The masques, \nmummeries and festive customs which made \nthe revels of the nuptials of the Lord and \nLady of the May as he describes them, were \nin accordance with the manners of the aofe. \n\"All the hereditary pastimes of old England \nwere transplanted hither,\" he tells us. \" The \nKing of Christmas was duly crowned, and the \nLord of Misrule bore potent sway. On the \neve of St. John they felled whole acres of the \nforest to make bonfires, and danced by the \nblaze all night, crowned with garlands and \nthrowing flowers into the flame. At harvest- \ntime, though their crop was of the smallest, \nthey made an image with the sheaves of \n\n353 \n\n\n35<; \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nIndian corn and wreathed it with autumnal \ngarlands, and bore it home triumphantly. \nBut what chiefly characterized the colonists of \nMerry Mount was their veneration for the \nMaypole. It has made their true history a \npoet's tale. Spring decked the hallowed em- \nblem with young blossoms and fresh green \nboughs; summer brought roses of the deepest \nblush, and the perfected foliage of the forest ; \nautumn enriched it with that red and yellow \ngorgeousness, which converts each wildvvood \nleaf into a painted flower ; and winter silvered \nit with sleet, and hung it round with icicles till \nit flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen \nsunbeam. Thus each alternate season did \nhomage to the maypole, and paid it a tribute \nof its own richest splendour. Its votaries danced \nround it, once, at least, in every month ; some- \ntimes they called it their religion, or their altar ; \nbut always, it was the banner staff of Merry \nMount\" \n\nIn Quincy, of which Wallaston is a part, is a \npleasure-ground called Merrymount, after the \n\n361 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nhome of the Lord of Misrule; but to the \nfictional rambler Ouincy's most interesting \nlandmark is the historic Quincy-Butler man- \nsion, haunted by memories of the bewitching \nAgnes Surriage, one of the gayest of the \nguests in a\" country excursion to Mr. Ouincy's, \nwhere the whole part)' with much merriment \ntook part in catching eels they were to have \ncooked for supper from the brook at the bot- \ntom of the garden.\" Like the house the brook \nis still there, and beside it many times, no \ndoubt, sat the celebrated \" Dorothy O.,\" who \nwas born in the mansion. She, as all the world \nknows, was the great-grandmother of the Auto- \ncrat who, justly proud of her, has added to \nher laurels by this poem dedicated to her \nportrait : \n\nDorothy Q. was a lady born ! \nAy ! si ncr the galloping Normans came \nEngland's annals have known her name ; \nAnd still to the three-hilled rebel town \n\nDear is that ancient name s renown ; \nFor many a civic wreath they won, \n\nThe youthful sire and the grey-haired son. \n362 \n\n\n1= s \n\n.s \n\nt« -a \n\n4_, U \n\n\n363 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nFarther on toward the Blue Hills we find \nDedham. \"And this (Stimson's King Noa- \nnett) was the settlement they called Content- \nment, for the Bay people were fond of fine \nnames, taken from the Bible or their books of \nPsalms.\" Most of this country (about 1670) \nwas then a wilderness and the adventures of \nCarew and Courtenay, in their endeavour to \nmake a home, and their encounters with, the \nIndians, make a stirring and romantic picture \nof times little known to the fiction reader until \nMr. Stimson created King Noanett. \n\nV. NAHANT AND NANTASKET \n\nOF the many shore places about Boston \none of the most beautiful and exclu- \nsive is Nahant, on the north shore, \nan island but for the narrow strip of land that \nconnects it with Lynn. \" Cold roast Boston,\" \nit was named by \" Tom \" Appleton, celebrated \nas a wit of the Hub. \"Tom\" Appleton has \nbeen gathered to his fathers, but his nickname \nstill clings. In Truth Dexter ; the novelist \n\n365 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\ntells us that Craighead was most anxious to \nsend his wife down there when the warm \nweather came on, but \" Truth feared the pen- \ninsular resort, having heard it spoken of by \nepicures as 'cold roast Boston.'' \n\nIn this aristocratic atmosphere it is natural \n\n\n'.' At the foot of the lawn was the cliff; and below, a lovely little \npebble beach covered with the most wonderful shells.\" — SHmson's \n\"Pirate Gold\" \n\nto find old Mr. Bowdoin (Stimson's Pirate \nGold) spending his summers, and it is interest- \ning to learn that these summers and all the \nhappy days in them he made for the children \nare described in the novel as they actually oc- \ncurred in the life of Mr. Bowdoin's prototype, \nMr. Josiah Bradlee. Mercedes, \"who came \nfrom the sea,\" never forgot those visits to \n\n366 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nNahant, when, as the steamer reached the \nwharf, Mr. Bowdoin could be seen usually \" run- \nning- down the hill as if too late, his blue dress \ncoat tails streaming\" in the wind, his Panama \nhat in one hand, and a large brown paper \nbag, bursting with oranges, in the other.\" \nIn his capacious pockets the children were \nsure to find Salem \" Gibraltars,\" hard and \nmouth-filling dainties calculated to fill in- \nfantile mouths even as they did the hearts \nwith joy. \n\nWhen the little visitors arrived at the house \nthey were sent out to play on \" a fascinating \nrocky island in the sea, connected by a neck of \ntwenty yards of pebbles \" where they made the \nmost wonderful discoveries. Real candy \ncrystals, pink and white, had been washed into \nthe rocky crevices ! Real bunches of hot house \ngrapes grew on the low juniper bushes ! Real \npeg tops and beautiful, rare shells were to be \nfound among the seaweed on the tiny beach ! \nVerily a good fairy was that old gentleman, \nstretched in a roomy cane chair up on the \n\n367 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\npiazza, in his hand a spy glass with which he \npretended to scan the horizon. \n\nThe house on the outer cliff high above the \nsea where the lovable and eccentric old Mr. \nBowdoin passed his summer days, is still stand- \ning, and remains in the possession of the Brad- \nlee family. \n\nThe Coreys (Howells's The Rise of Silas \nLapliam) always had a house at Nahant, but \nafter letting it for a season or two they found \nthey could get on without it. The people of \nMr. Howells's A Days Pleasure had in mind \nan excursion to Nahant, but they gave the \npreference to Nantasket because they thought \nit much better to see the ocean from a loner \nbeach, than from the Nahant rocks. Of all \nthese splendid rocks which make the shore so \npicturesque, the most imposing is Pulpit at the \nextreme point of the estate of Mr. Henry \nCabot Lodge, whom many persons persist in \nproclaiming the author of that recent and \nmuch discussed anonymous Boston novel \nTruth Lexter. Another Boston literateur who \n\n368 \n\n\n3f>9 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nmakes Nahant his summer home is Judge \nRobert Grant, as a novelist most widely known \nthrough his Unleavened Bread. \n\nThe poet Longfellow was for many years a \npicturesque figure in the summer life of Nahant, \nwhere his sunset reveries were made a \" re- \nquiem of the dying day \" by the ringing of the \nbells in Lynn. \n\nBorne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight \nO'er land and sea they rise and fall, 0 bells of Lynn. \n\nIn a social sense as widely separated from \nNahant as are the poles is Nantasket, only a \nfew miles away, and a part of summer Boston. \nIn Mr. Howells's A Day's Pleasure the party \nwent on one of the steamers down the harbour \nto this Mecca of tourists, but gave up their ex- \npedition to the beach owing to the sudden ap- \npearance of an east wind. \" While you are \nsaying how lovely it is, a subtle change is \nwrought, and under skies still blue and a sun \nstill warm the keen spirit of the east wind \npierces every nerve, and all the fine weather \nwithin you is chilled and extinguished.\" \n\n371 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\n\nThe Silas Laphams spent many summers at \nNantasket, and Mr. Howells has given us vivid \npictures of their surroundings and the trip \ndown to the beach on the boat — a trip fami- \nliar to Bostonians and the summer tourist in the \nHub. The fiction reader will find it immensely \ndiverting to make this little water journey \ndown the harbour in the society of Colonel \nLapham as young Corey so often did. \"He \nhad time,\" says the author, \" to buy two news- \npapers on the wharf before he jumped on board \nthe steamboat with Corey. 'Just made it,' he \nsaid ; ' and that's what I like to do. I can't \nstand it to be aboard much more than a min- \nute before she shoves out.' He gave one of \nthe newspapers to Corey as he spoke, and set \nhim the example of catching up a camp stool \non their way to that point on the boat which \nhis experience had taught him was the best. \nHe opened his paper at once and began to run \nover the news, while the young man watched \nthe spectacular recession of the city, and was \nvaguely conscious of the people about him, \n\n372 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nand of the gay life of the water around the \nboat. The air freshened ; the craft thinned in \nnumber ; they met larger sail, lagging slowly \ninward in the afternoon light; the islands of \nthe bay waxed and waned as the steamer ap- \nproached and left them behind.\" It was al- \nways a matter of astonishment to the Colonel \nwhere the great crowd of people on the boat \ncame from. \" I've been riding up and down \non these boats for six or seven years,\" he said \nto Corey, \" and I don't know but very few of \nthe faces I see on board. Seems to be a per- \nfectly fresh lot every time. Well, of course ! \nTown's full of strangers in the summer season, \nanyway, and folks keep coming down from the \ncountry. They think it's a great thing to get \ndown to the beach, and they've all heard of \nthe electric light on the water, and they want \nto see it.\" The author goes on to tell us that \nthere was little style and no distinction among \nthe crowd. \" They were people who were \nSfoin? down to the beach for the fun or the re- \nlief of it, and were able to afford it. In face \n\n373 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nthey were commonplace, with nothing but the \nAmerican poetry of vivid purpose to light them \nup, where they did not wholly lack fire. But \nthe were nearly all shrewd and friendly-look- \ning, with an apparent readiness for the humour- \nous intimacy native to us all. The women \nwere dandified in dress, according to their \nmeans and taste, and the men differed from \neach other in degrees of indifference to it. To \na straw-hatted population, such as ours is in \nsummer, no sort of dignity is possible. We \nhave not even the power over observers which \ncomes from the fantasticality of an English- \nman when he discards the conventional dress. \nIn our straw hats and our serge or flannel \nsacks we are no more imposing than a crowd \nof boys.\" \n\nFrom the pier, where the boat lands, it is \nbut a short drive up the sandy road past the \nhotels and restaurants to the colony of summer \nhouses, one of which was occupied by the \nLaphams — \"a brown cottage with a vermilion \nroof and a group of geraniums clutching the \n\n374 \n\n\nir-;, \n\n\n> ;t \n\n• 1 \n\n3 \n\ni & \n\nr. \n\ns; \n\n^ \n\ni . \n\nZ \n\n1 \n\nt \n\ni \n\n* 1 \n\nZ \n\n•J \n\nJ \n\nTJ \n\n* \n\n■s \n\nj \n\no \n\nL \n\n••.' \n\n^_, \n\n.* \n\nnl \n\n375 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nrock that cropped up in the loop formed by \nthe road. It was treeless and bare all round, \nand the ocean, unnecessarily vast, weltered \naway a little more than a stone's cast from the \ncottage.\" Here at the Colonel's solicitation \nyoung Corey came frequently to see \" the \ngirls,\" with whom he spent delightful evenings \non the veranda in the moonlight, on the rocks, \nand on the beach which they were much given \nto frequenting, though Penelope confided to \nhim that they had about exhausted its possi- \nbilities. \"We have been here so often \nthat we know it all by heart — just how it \nlooks at high tide, and how it looks at low \ntide, and how it looks after a storm. We're as \nwellacquainted with the crabs and stranded jelly- \nfish as we are with the children digging in the \nsand and the people sitting under umbrellas. \nI think they're always the same, all of them.\" \nIt was the winsome Penelope, it will be re- \nmembered, who captivated Corey, while the \nfamily_and Irene, alas '.— thought it was the \nyounger girl's beauty that attracted him. \n\n\n377 \n\n\nFICTIONAL RAMBLES \n\nNantasket forms part of the setting of Mr. \nStimson's Pirate Gold. At the period of \nwhich this novelist writes it was semi-fashion- \nable and our old friend Jamie McMurtagh, \nthe hero of the novel, socially ambitious for \nhis little Mercedes, felt that he had achieved \nereat things when he rented a cottage at this \ngay watering-place. \"To Jamie it was the \nnext thing to Nahant, which was of course out \nof the question. But the queer old clerk was \nnot fitted to shine in any society, and Merce- \ndes found it hard to make her way alone. \nThey wandered about the beach, and occa- \nsionally to the great hotel where there was a \nhop, of evenings, and listened to the bands ; \nbut Mercedes' beauty was too striking and \nher manners were too independent to inspire \nquick confidence in the Nantasket matrons ; \nwhile Jamie missed his pipe and shirt-sleeves \nafter supper.\" Jamie's only other experience \nof Nantasket was once years before when he \nhad gone there on a week's vacation, but the \nouting could scarcely have enlightened him as \n\n373 \n\n\nIN AND ABOUT BOSTON \n\nto the attractions of the place, for \" his princi- \npal diversion had been to take the morning- \nsteamboat thence to the city, and gaze into \nthe office windows from the wharf.\" \n\nMercedes' isolation, however, finally came \nto an end and her and Jamie's real troubles \nbegan when she met at the Rockland House \nMr. David St. Clair who \" wore kid gloves and \na high silk hat — a white waistcoat and a very \nblack moustache. . . His career was shadowy, \nlike his hair. In those days still a moustache \nbore with it some audacity, and gave a man \nwho frankly lived outside the reputable call- \nings something of the buccaneer. St. Clair \ncalled himself a gentleman, but did not pre- \ntend to be a clerk, and frankly avowed that he \nwas not in trade. Jamie could not make him \nout at all. He hoped, indeed, he was a gen- \ntleman. Had he been in the old country, he \ncould have credited it better ; but gentlemen \nwithout visible means of support were, in those \ndays, unusual in Boston.\" \n\nTo end our rambles here is to leave the so- \n\n379 \n\n\nFICTIONAL R A M B L E S \n\nciety of a number of interesting characters, \namonQf whom are old and valued friends for \nwhose creation we owe the novelist much ; the \nmore that they do not seem to us fictitious, \nbut persons of flesh and blood who live and \nmove and have their being in the Hub and, to \nthe imaginative, people the streets of the Bos- \nton of yesterday, and the Boston of to-day. \n\n\nTHE END \n\n\n380 \n\n\nNOV 1( 1902 \n\n\nLIBRARY OF CONGRESS \n\n\n• ll'll Hill Hill || \n\n0 014 065 615 A I \n\n\n","title":"Fictional Rambles in and about Boston","updated_at":"2026-09-05T09:48:58.351229Z","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:document:fictional-rambles-in-and-about-boston","version":1,"withdrawn_reason":null},"urn":"urn:lemay:boston:document:fictional-rambles-in-and-about-boston","version_history":[{"change_note":"accessioned from the Internet Archive, item fictionalrambles00prina","changed_by":"archive-ingest 0.1.0","recorded_at":"2026-09-05T09:48:58.653031Z","version":1}]}