Part 6

Soul of mine, Would’st thou choose for life a motto half divine? Let this be thy guard and guide Through the future, reaching wide; Whether good or ill betide, Rise higher!

From the mire Where the masses blindly grovel, rise higher! From the slavish love of gold, From the justice bought and sold, From the narrow rules of old, Rise higher!

Art thou vexed By the rasping world around thee, and perplexed By the sin and sorrow rife, By the falsehood and the strife? To a larger, grander life Rise higher!

If thou findest That the friends thy heart had counted truest, kindest, Have betrayed thee, why should’st thou Wear for this a frowning brow? Leave their falsehood far behind; Rise higher!

Let each care Lift thee upward to a higher, purer air; Then let Fortune do her worst; Whether Fate has blessed or cursed; Little matter, if thou first Rise higher!

And at last, When thy sorrows and temptations all are past, And the grand Death Angel brings Summons from the King of Kings, Thou shalt still, on angels’ wings Rise higher.

* * * * *

I have a friend who wishes me to see that to be right which I know to be wrong. But if friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.—_Thoreau._

LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.

IN SEVEN DAYS.

By E. E. HALE.

The First Day.

“My dear Isabella!”

“My dearest Kate!”

And the two women threw their arms each around the other’s neck, and, so embracing, they kissed each other.

“And where are the children?”

The children appeared at once. That tall John, who looked little enough like a child, was lifting his sister Caroline from the carriage. Molly followed, and it was explained that the elder John, Isabella’s husband, had undertaken to bring Dick up from the train on foot and by the horse cars, that he might explain to him something of the geography of Boston, so that he might be a guide to the rest. Proper fears were expressed that they might be lost. But of course they were not lost, and, in due time, they also joined the jolly breakfast table, where they found the first comers seated.

The reader, if he be bright, already understands what if he be dull shall be now explained to him. Kate and Isabella are two mothers of families, tenderly attached in early life, who have been parted now in many years. Kate’s husband is a prosperous wool merchant in Boston, and she and her six children live in Roxbury, one of the pretty suburbs of that old town. Isabella and her husband are among the spirited and wise founders of Greeley, in Colorado. And, though they have not lived in that town now for some years, so that their names will not be found on its enlarging directory, all their four children were born there, and until this summer no one of the four has ever left Colorado. This summer all of them have come eastward, that boys and girls may practice their mountain swimming in the bath, well nigh matchless, of the beach well nigh perfect, at Narragansett Pier. And it has been arranged by great correspondence that, for a week before the hotels at the Pier are open, namely, for the second week of June, the whole family shall make a visit in Roxbury, so that they may come to know “Aunt Kate,” as Mrs. Dudley has always called herself, and Aunt Kate’s six children, who are to them all every whit as good as cousins.

All this, as has been said, the thoroughly intelligent reader understood as the different characters came forward. It has now been explained to readers less intelligent, so that we all start fairly together.

“George is so sorry to be away. But he had to take an early train to Providence, to be sure to be with you at dinner. He has left no end of love, and you are to do nothing but rest yourselves to-day.”

The young people of both clans looked amused at the idea of resting on a fine morning in June. And, in truth, the plans were soon made for a series of expeditions—which the reader will follow or not, just as he chooses—in which John Crehere, the father, with the practical assistance of Nathan Dudley, the oldest of Kate’s six children, laid out the seven days of their visit, so that all parties should, with due regard to the demands of pleasure, see in that time, all too narrow, the chief LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.

First Day.

“You see,” said Nathan, who was rather the historical member of the home crowd, and was at home somewhat distinguished for “poking about” in one and another corner—“you see, the absolute original landmarks of Boston are gone, or as much altered as they could be.”

“When the first people came here, old John Blackstone, and even Winthrop and Dudley, our Tom. Dudley, our ancestor, of course it was not called Boston. It was called Trimountain, or Tremont, I suppose by people in the fishing ships, because at the top of Beacon Hill there were three hummocks, like this,” and the boy cut a bit of bread into the shape he meant, two protuberances in the side of a hill a little higher.

“And these were Fort Hill, and Copp’s Hill, and Beacon Hill,” said his Aunt Isabella, as usual willing to show that she also knew something.

“Not quite yet, Aunt Isabella,” said the boy, modestly enough. “Most people think so. And I think most Boston people would tell you so, but they would be wrong. The three hummocks were all on Beacon Hill—that’s where the State House is now. Oddly enough they are all gone. They dug down the highest, where the Beacon was, part of it when they built the State House, and the rest afterward, to fill up the old mill pond. And the others were so steep that they had to be dug down for streets. But when I take you to the State House, and over Mt. Vernon and Somerset streets you will have tramped over them all.”

“I really think, mamma,” the boy added, “that at least the boys had better go to the top of the State House with me, first of all. You know Dean Stanley did.”

It is true that when Dr. Stanley came to Boston, true to the principles of Arnold’s school of history, he was eager first of all, to understand the precise topography of all he was to see. His first visit, therefore, was to the top of the State House, and his last, after his short stay, was to the same observatory, that he might be sure he had rightly placed all that he had seen.

In our case it need not be said that all the children ridiculed any doubts of their ability to climb two hundred and twenty stairs, more or less, and also ridiculed that other idea, that they were tired. Accordingly, though the two mothers took the morning to talk over the events of twenty years by themselves in Mrs. Dudley’s room, and while Mr. Crehere went down town to look up some business correspondents, Nathan was permitted, to his solid satisfaction, to take the young people to the top of the State House, to the Common, and anywhere else he chose. “And we will get our lunch where we do our work, mamma,” he said.

“Cousin Nathan,” said his new friend Caroline, who was no more his cousin than you are, “be sure that I see a ship, a real three-master, before we go away. Steamships I don’t care for.” And he promised.

This article is written in some hope that it may serve as a handy guide for visitors to Boston this summer, who may have time to make any of the excursions which these young people made during the week of their visit. We shall not, therefore, try so much to tell what they saw, as how they saw it, in the hope and wish that others may see the same. A street car brought the party to the head of Winter Street, and here Nathan brought them out of it upon what he called the Lower Mall, on the eastern side of Boston Common. Here he put all the girls upon a seat, while the boys grouped around him, and with his stick he drew a rough map on the ground.

“We may get parted from each other. But if any one is lost while you are in Boston, the streets are just as easy to understand as those of Philadelphia or Chicago, after you once know the law of the instrument.

“This hill we are on is the east slope of Beacon Hill. If we had followed in the car we could have ridden round it to Cambridge, in this open horse shoe which I draw.

“North of us, quite at the north of the town, is Copp’s Hill. We will see that another day. The streets around that are in curves also.

“Off here on the southeast was Fort Hill. The streets there bent to follow the curve. But that is all dug down.

“Then, of course, in a seaboard town, from every wharf or pier, there ran up streets into the town. If you took a fan, and put the center at the Postoffice Square, the sticks would be Water Street, Milk Street, Pearl Street, Federal Street, and so on. Now all this is just as much according to rule as if you made a checker board. Only you must know what the rule is.”

“I think it is a great deal nicer,” said Caroline. And Nathan thanked her.

The rule in practice is said to be: “Find out where the place is to which you go, and take a horse car running the other way.”

“Now we will go up to the State House.” So they slowly pulled up the Park Street walk, up the high steps between the two bronze statues, stopped in the Doric Hall to see the statues and the battle flags, and then slowly mounted the long stairways which lead to the “lantern” above the dome. Fortunately the Legislature had adjourned. When the House is in session visits to the lantern are not permitted, lest the trampling on the stairs above the Representatives’ Hall might disturb the hearers.

When they had regained their breath, they looked round on the magnificent panorama which sweeps a circle of forty miles in diameter, and Nathan lectured. His lecture must not be reported here in detail. But the main points of it shall be stated, because they give the clew to the expeditions which the party made on succeeding days.

They were so high that all the rest of the city was quite below them. Nathan was able to point out—almost in a group, they seemed to his western friends, used to large distances—Faneuil Hall, the old State House, and the Old South Meeting House of Revolutionary times.

“We will do those,” he said, “to-morrow, and then you can see where the tea was thrown over, and the scene of the Boston Massacre. That will be a good Revolutionary day.”

To the north, with a strip of water between, so narrow, and bridged so often that it hardly seemed a deep river, half a mile wide, was the monument on Bunker Hill. The Summit was the only point near them as high as they were. “We will go there on Friday,” said Nathan, “day after to-morrow. And that same day we can see Copp’s Hill, which is the north headland of Old Boston, and we can go to the Navy Yard, and Carry shall see her ship with three masts.

“Saturday—I don’t know what papa will say—but I vote that we go down the harbor. We will see Nahant, which is a rocky peninsula ten miles northeast, or Hull, which is about as far southeast; they make the headlands of Boston Bay.” And he tried to make out both these points. He did show them the outer light-house and the great forts between. And all of the Westerners were delighted with their first view of the sea horizon.

“You do not feel the same at Chicago,” said John; “though you do not see the other side, you know it is there.”

“Then Sunday,” said Nathan, husbanding his days prudently, “some of us can go to Christ Church, where the sexton showed the lantern.”

“And can we not see the church with the cannon ball?

“‘Bears on her bosom as a bride might do, The iron breastpin that the rebels threw.’”

This was Caroline’s question. She quoted Dr. Holmes.

“No,” said John, sadly. “We were barbarians, and pulled that church down.” And he added savagely, “and no good came to the society that did it.”

“That will leave Monday for a good tramp over Dorchester Heights, and Tuesday, if you are not tired, we will go to Cambridge, and see Harvard College.”

And he showed them how high the “Dorchester Heights,” now in South Boston, rose, and how completely they commanded the harbor; so that when Washington seized them the English army and navy had to go. He also showed them Cambridge and the college buildings, lying quite near them, westward, but on the other side of the Charles River. John looked with special interest, because he was to take his first examination there for Harvard College, before the month was over.

To this plan, substantially, the party adhered. And travelers who have more or less time than they, may find it worth while to consult this plan, as they lay out their excursions. For in those seven days the visitors did, in fact, have a chance to see all the more important landmarks of the history of Boston.

As Nathan took them home from the State House he led them down Beacon Street. This is a beautiful street, making the north side of Boston Common. Where the Common ends, Charles Street crosses Beacon Street nearly at right angles. Near this corner, on land now built upon, or perhaps crossed by some street, was the cottage of Blackstone, who lived in Boston for six or seven years before Governor Winthrop and the settlers of 1630 arrived.

They made their first settlement at Charlestown on the other side of the river. The records of Charlestown say: “Mr. Blackstone, dwelling on the other side of Charles River, alone, at a place called by the Indians, Shawmut, where he had a cottage at, or not far from the place called Blackstone Point, came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent spring, inviting and soliciting him thither.”

Blackstone’s house, or cottage, in which he lived, together with the nature of his improvements, was such as to authorize the belief that he had resided there some seven or eight years. How he became possessed of his lands here is not known; but it is certain he held a good title to them, which was acknowledged by the settlers under Winthrop, who, in course of time, bought his lands of him, and he removed out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts to the valley of the Blackstone River.

Of Blackstone’s personal history Nathan afterward read them this note, by Mr. Charles F. Adams:

“He was in no respect an ordinary man. His presence in the peninsula of Shawmut, in 1630, was made additionally inexplicable from the fact that he was about the last person one would ever have expected to find there. He was not a fisherman, nor a trader, nor a refugee: he was a student, an observer, and a recluse. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he had received Episcopal ordination in England. In 1630 he was in his thirty-fifth year. All this is extremely suggestive, for it goes to make of him exactly the description of man who would naturally be found in company with the scholarly and unobtrusive Morell. Further, the probabilities would strongly point to him as Winthrop’s authority where Winthrop, in 1631, speaks of a species of weather record going back seven years since this bay was planted by Englishmen.”

The Second Day.

As the various travelers told their times that evening, a certain plan was laid out for the next day, in which the two ladies agreed to join. And it was finally agreed that they should lunch down town with the gentlemen, and should take the elevator at the “Equitable” Insurance Company, so that the two mothers might have something to substitute for the view the children had had from the State House.

This plan may be recommended to lady travelers. The view is not as sweeping on the west as that from the State House. But, on other sides, it is equally satisfactory. And you can go up by steam—a great matter when you have passed forty years.

But before lunch Nathan took them to the head of State Street, to the “Old State House.”

“This,” said he, “is what the Philadelphia girl called the State Street Meeting House.”

He had brought them in in a Norfolk horse car, so that they saw the building from the southern side. The lion on one side and the unicorn on the other dance on their hind legs at the top, with the roof to part them. Nathan was careful to show John and the rest that as they looked up on the beasts they stood themselves on the very ground of the “Boston Massacre” of March 5, 1770. The English troops were in a little semi-circle on the north side of the street. Attuchs, the mulatto, and the rest of the mob who stoned the troops and snowballed them were in the street, or on the southern side. There were then no sidewalks.

The lower part of the “Old State House” is now used for public offices. But the upper chambers are restored to much the condition in which they were when Sam Adams defied the Governor there, and when Otis made his plea in the “Writs of Assistants cases.”

“Then and there,” said John Adams, afterward, “American independence was born.”

The “Bostonian Society” occupies these halls, simply that they may be open to all visitors, and here the party found many curious mementoes of Revolutionary and of older days, and were able to prepare themselves for their later excursions.

Before the “Town House” was built this spot was occupied as the market place, being the earliest in the town. The first town house was erected between 1657 and 1659, of wood. It was destroyed in the great fire of 1711. In the following year, 1712, a brick edifice was erected on the same spot. This the fire of 1747 consumed, and with it many valuable records were lost. The present Old State House was erected the following year, 1748, but it has undergone many interior changes, the exterior, however, presenting nearly the same appearance as when first erected. From 1750 to 1830 Faneuil Hall was used as a town house, and the first city government was organized there. In 1830 the city government removed to the Old State House, which was on September 17 dedicated as City Hall. But the City Hall has since been removed to School Street.

Leaving the old State House they passed down State Street, where they had a chance to see the merchants who were “on ’change,” and to look in at the Merchants’ Exchange, and by a short street leading north, came into the square between Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” as Boston people like to call it, and Faneuil Hall Market.

Peter Faneuil, a rich merchant of Huguenot origin, told the town that he would build a market house on this spot if they would accept the gift for that purpose, and maintain it forever. “The town,” by which is meant the town meeting, looked a gift-horse in the mouth, and made some difficulty. At the end of a stormy meeting, his proposal was accepted by a majority of only seven votes in a vote of seven hundred and twenty-seven.

Mr. Faneuil set to work at once on the building, which, by the original plan, was to be but one-story high. But he added another story for the town hall, which has made his name famous to all New Englanders. The original hall accommodated only 1,000 persons, being but half the size of that now standing. He died, himself, just as the building was completed, on the third of March, 1743; and it was first opened to public use on the fourteenth of March of that year. The whole interior was destroyed by fire in January, 1763, and rebuilt by the town and state. In 1806 it was enlarged to its present size.

Nathan made them look at the grass-hopper which is the weather-cock which is selected in memory of the Athenian cicada. The Athenian people selected this as their emblem because they believed they sprang from the ground, and they supposed the grass-hoppers did.

The people of Boston long since provided themselves with a much larger market house than Peter Faneuil’s. When they did so, they gave up the market in Faneuil Hall, and used the basement for other purposes. But their lawyers, after a while, recollected that stirring town meeting, and the promise of the town to maintain the market “forever.” Clearly enough, if the town meant to keep the hall, it must maintain the market. So the butchers and fruit men were brought back again, and Mrs. Dudley bade John buy some bananas for the party, in the market, that they might keep Peter Faneuil well in their memory.

The Historic Hall is over the market, and always open to visitors, and here the party spent half an hour in looking at the pictures. Nathan told them of the last and only time when he heard Wendell Phillips there. It is not the largest hall in Boston, but it is still the favorite hall for any public meeting about some public interest, where people are not expecting to sit down.

The gentlemen joined the party by appointment here, and they all went to lunch together. They then went up the Equitable elevator and mounted the tower, so that the ladies might see the sea view. And they finished the day’s excursion by going into the Old South Meeting House.

This old meeting house was twice as big as Faneuil Hall of the Revolution, so that the crowded town meetings of those days often adjourned to the Old South. As the patriots called Faneuil Hall “the cradle of liberty,” Gov. Gage called the Old South the “nursery of rebellion.” The religious society which formerly occupied it built a few years ago a new church in the western part of Boston, and sold this meeting house to an association which wished to preserve it as a memorial of the history of Boston. The sellers did not wish to have any opposition church established in the old building; they therefore put a provision in the deed that for twenty years it should not be used for public religious purposes. It is probably the only spot in the United States, where, by the expressed wish of a church, public worship is forbidden.

The travelers found a great deal to interest them in the meeting house, which those travelers will find who use this guide. The boys obtained leave to climb up the spire, from which, it is said, that the English governor, Gage, saw the embarkation of his troops for Bunker Hill, and what he could see of the battle.

Third Day.

The next day proved favorable for Nathan’s plans, which involved a visit to Bunker Hill monument and the navy yard.

“I had meant,” he said to the girls, “to begin by taking you out to Concord, that you might see the bridge over the Concord River, and the scene of what we call ‘Concord Fight.’ But, if the day prove hot, it would have been tiresome, as we have the monument to climb. For that expedition one needs half a day, or better, a day. You know you would want to see Mr. Emerson’s house and Mr. Hawthorne’s. We will try that next fall.”

They started later, therefore, than the Concord plan would have required. A transfer at Scollary Square, the very heart of active Boston, put them in a Charlestown car. In Scollary Square stands very properly a statue of Winthrop, the founder of Boston, and its first governor; as at the foot of the street stands Sam Adams.

Nathan explained to the girls, when they came to river and bridge, that at the time of Bunker Hill battle there was no bridge. The English army, when it attacked the hill, had to cross in boats, and he showed them on the east, the line the boats took, landing where the navy yard now is. The forces landed there and waited through a hot day before the attack. The battle was fought on a hot June afternoon.

After they came to Charlestown, a short walk brought them to the top of the hill, where a large green park takes in all the ground of the historic Redoubt. A bronze statue of Prescott seems to welcome the visitor.

By an ascent even longer than that they made at the State House, they climbed the monument, and earned their sight of the panorama from its top.