Part 7

Mr. Dudley had given them a note to introduce them to the commander at the navy yard on their return. It proved that he was absent. But they needed no pass nor introduction. They were very courteously received; and, as there happened to be a ship fitting out with stores for the Mediterranean Station, Caroline had her chance to see “a three-masted ship” nearly ready for sea.

Another ship was in the “dry-dock” for some necessary repairs, and they walked about her with that strange feeling of being beneath the level of the sea, which they had seen above before they descended the stairway.

Fourth Day.

Saturday proved to be a warm day, and Mr. Dudley proposed at breakfast that they should carry out Nathan’s plan, and that all hands should go to Nahant, the rocky peninsula which bounds the outer harbor on the northeastern side. His wife put up a substantial luncheon, which was packed in two baskets and carried by the boys.

So equipped, they took the horse car and “transferred” at Sumner Street for the steamboat, which would take them to the Lynn Railroad. They could have taken the Easton Railroad, but the Lynn Road (so called) runs along the water’s edge, and the water sail is longer.

So the young people had their first sniff of sea air from the boat which crosses from Old Boston to East Boston, where the railroad begins. Caroline had chances enough to see “ships with three masts,” brigs, schooners, sloops, barks, brigantines and barkantines, all which the learned Nathan explained to her. After a voyage of a mile or two they took the narrow guage railway and flew along Chelsea Beach, which gave a fine ocean view, and more of the glory of the infinite sea, than the steamboat had done. At Lynn they found public carriages waiting for the drive to Nahant.

Mr. Willis, in his extravagant way, said that Nahant looked like the open hand of a giant who had been struck down in the sea, and that Nahant Beach was his arm. A very thin arm he had, a mere thread-paper arm, for a big hand. For the beach is only a strip of sand and gravel about two miles long, washed by the ocean on both sides. At the southern end, rise, abrupt and bold, the rocks of Nahant. They are mostly of trap-rock, which has been forced by some volcanic effect of the fiery times, up through the hissing sea. They have a reddish color, with stripes of black stone, even harder than the rest. And the perpetual washing of the sea has worn out clefts and chasms of every strange outline and form.

One of these is the Swallow’s Cave, a long passage through wet rocks, covered above by rocks, through which at low tides adventurers can clamber. One is the Spouting Horn, where at half-tide, a sea heavily thrown in by a stiff eastern gale, bounds back in spray and water, as if indeed a sea-god had thrown it up in a great fountain. But the glory of Nahant is not in any one of these sights. It is the glory of the infinite ocean. Southeast and west you have the sea, and it is no wonder that in this perfect sea-climate, so many people are glad to make a summer home.

Mr. Dudley met, by appointment, a Boston friend, after they had crossed the beach, who husbanded their time for them in visiting different points, and before the afternoon closed, asked them to come back to town in his yacht. Their plan had been to take the steamboat, which was waiting ready to take all such children of the public as they.

But in the “Sylph” they were able to vary their voyage. Mr. Cradock showed them from her deck that nearly south of them, a string of little islands shielded the harbor, in a measure, from eastern gales. Of these the three most important are the three Brewsters, on one of which is the outer light-house. The yacht first ran by these. Then she turned inland and he pointed out to them the village of Hull, which on the southeast protects the bay, as Nahant on the northeast. He bade the helmsman bring the vessel up at Fort Warren, and the young people had then a chance to see the arrangements which a great fort makes to repel an enemy. And then, as the sun went down they ran swiftly up to Boston, saw the State House and Bunker Hill monument against the evening glow, and landed after a day of thoroughly satisfactory variety.

The Fifth Day.

Fortunately for the sight seers, as Mrs. Crehere thought, the next day was Sunday, so much chance was there for a day of rest. But she found at breakfast that there were one or two ecclesiastical landmarks which were to be counted in with the others, and that, with perfect gravity and reverence, the young people had arranged to unite their sight seeing with the religious services of the day. To this she made no exception, and in the end she and her husband joined the ten young people, and all together made an addition, not unacceptable as it proved, to summer congregations not crowded.

The first point was King’s Chapel.

“The chapel, last of sublunary things That shocks our senses with the name of King’s.”

Such is Dr. Holmes’s description. It is in the very heart of active Boston. After the Revolution it was long called “The Stone Chapel,” for in those early days stone churches were rare, and nothing bore the name of King. Royal biscuit was then called “President’s biscuit.” But after people were sure that no King George would return, the Chapel people, who were no longer in the habit of praying for the royal family, returned to “King’s Chapel” as the historical name of their church, and found again the neglected gilded crown and mitre, which had once adorned the organ, and restored them to the places from which they had been removed. After the service, which interested all the young people, they remained in the church to look at the curious old monuments. They were specially interested in that of Mrs. Shirley, the lovely wife of Governor Shirley. She died just as he was fortifying Boston against the largest fleet which France ever sent across the seas. This is the fleet of Longfellow’s ballad:

“For the admiral D’Anville Had sworn by cross and crown, To ravage with fire and steel Our luckless Boston Town.”

While Shirley had the whole army of Massachusetts on Boston Common, and was bringing every resource to bear to resist the enemy, his heart was wrung day by day by the sickness and the death of the young bride, whose bust the children saw, and whose epitaph they translated.

Nathan told them that when the King’s Chapel was built there had been no quarries of stone opened. The stones for this building were split and hewed from boulders. By the time it was finished it was currently said and believed that there was not stone enough in the province for another church as big! He took them to the back of the church and showed them, on a little green, Franklin statue, placed in what was the yard of the school-house where he studied as a boy.

King’s Chapel was not popular with the puritan inhabitants of Boston. And, because the lower windows are square and look like port holes, the street boys of a century and a quarter ago nicknamed it “Christ’s Frigate,” somewhat irreverently. On the other side the street was once the school-house, where John Hancock and Sam Adams studied. And Nathan showed them where the “coast” was in winter, which was obstructed by the English officer whom the school boys called to account for his violation of their inalienable rights.

They went to church with their friend Mrs. Cradock, whom they had met at Nahant the day before, and from her house, in the afternoon, they went to Christ Church, which is the oldest church building in Boston now standing on the ground where it was built. It was the second Episcopalian church erected in Boston, and was built in 1723, several years before the present Old South. It is a brick edifice, and has long been known as the “North End Church.” In its day it was considered one of the chief architectural ornaments of the North End. The old steeple was blown down in the great gale of 1804, falling upon an old wooden building at the corner of Tileston Street, through which it crashed to the consternation of the tenants, who however escaped injury. The steeple was replaced from a design by Charles Bulfinch, which carefully preserved the proportion of the original. Its chime was the first in New England, and began to play its charming tunes in 1744.

The Bible, prayer books and silver now in use were given in 1733 by King George I. The figures of cherubim in front of the organ were taken from a French vessel by the privateer “Queen of Hungary,” and presented to the church in 1746. There is an interesting bust of Washington in the church.

From the steeple of this church the historic sexton hung out the lanterns which warned the patriots on the other side of the river that an expedition was starting from the English camp, against Concord.

“One if by land—two if by sea,” says Mr. Longfellow, whose history of those days is more likely to be remembered well than any other. That steeple, as has been said, was blown down in 1804.

As they walked to the Chelsea car, which was to take them home, Nathan led them through the Copp’s Hill burying ground. Copp’s Hill has never been cut away. Fort Hill is wholly leveled, and Beacon Hill partly so. These were the three hills which were the landmarks of old Boston.

The Sixth Day.

On Monday morning the Roxbury boys took their cousins to see their tennis ground, and it may be believed that all parties there joined in one or two games. Mrs. Dudley and Mrs. Crehere went into Boston for some necessary shopping, and came back by the Art Museum, where was a good “Loan Exhibition.” The loan exhibition in summer is generally filled with masterpieces from the private galleries of people who are in their country homes. “I would not pay so much for pictures,” said one of these noble women, “if the people were not to enjoy them nine-tenths of the time.”

But Mrs. Dudley had so arranged her dinner that they might all take a street car for “Dorchester Heights” and see the view of the harbor from that point, and that the boys, who had had no chance to swim at Nahant, might take a sea bath on their return.

Accordingly, about five o’clock they started for South Boston. “Take any car for City Point,” was Nathan’s final direction as the party separated. “Ask for the Reservoir, and we will meet there.”

“Dorchester Heights” is simply the name, which only old fashioned people would understand, of the hills in what is now “South Boston,” now surmounted by the “Blind Institution” and a public park, in which is one of the city reservoirs. Visitors to Boston who are at all interested in education will do well to drop a line on arrival, for Mr. Anagnos, the chief of the Blind Institution, to ask what is the proper day for a visit there. Our friends were obliged to defer this interesting visit till the autumn, and they all gathered on the other hill and enjoyed the spectacle of the harbor, white with the sails of hundreds of yachts, and all alive with the movements of the lolling steamers as they went out, just before sunset, on their voyages to every port of the seaboard, not to say of the world.

These high hills completely command the harbor, in a military sense. Why the English generals did not take possession before Washington did no one ever knew. That was the sort of imbecility George III. got by appointing men to office because they were his relations. When, at last, the winter of 1775-1776 broke up, and no ice had formed strong enough for an attack on Boston over the ice, Washington seized these hills. By the road now called Dorchester Avenue, which Nathan Dudley showed our friends, he sent from the camp in Roxbury (“just behind where we live,” said Nathan) the men and munitions. It was all done by night. On the morning of the fifth of March the Americans had built a fortification which surprised the English officers in Boston as that on Bunker Hill had surprised them nine months before. “It was like Aladdin’s lamp,” wrote one of them.

General Howe’s first plan was to assault the works, as Gage had assaulted those at Bunker Hill. Howe sent an attacking force to the fort held by him on the island. But a storm made this attack impossible. Ward, the commander of the American right wing, strengthened his ranks. Thomas, the general in command on the heights, asked nothing better than an attack. But Howe, at the last, saw that the venture was madness. He entered into negotiations with Washington, and, a fortnight after, withdrew fleet and army. For several months there was not an English soldier on American soil.

The next day, when they visited the Historical Society, Nathan showed his cousins the original gold medal which Congress gave to Washington in honor of this victory. It was designed by a French artist, and struck in Paris. It represents Washington seated on his horse, on Dorchester Heights, as the squadron retires. It bears the proud motto:

“_Hostibus primo Fugatis_,”

which may be translated: “The first Flight of the Enemy.”

“Pray how did this medal come here?” said Caroline.

“By the fortune of war,” said her cousin. On this Monday evening, before they left the park, which now takes the place of the fortification, they looked at the tablet of stone which commemorates the history. They found the name of the mayor who put it up, but no allusion to General Ward who planned the work, or General Thomas, who carried it out. Such, alas, is fame!

When they left the hill the sun was going down. The elders and the girls took a car across Dover Street, by which they could go directly home. But Nathan led the boys to the public bath house, on one of the beaches; and there his western friends had their first experience of the exquisite luxury of a swim in the salt sea.

The Last Day.

On Wednesday the whole western party was to go to Narragansett Pier, and on Thursday the Roxbury party was to start, bag and baggage, for Quonochontaug, which is not far from that resort. But it was determined that on Tuesday the young people should go to Cambridge, where, at Harvard College, John was to make his home for most of the next four years.

They took a steam train into Boston, and at the station of the Providence road found a street car waiting to take them from Park Square to Harvard Square. The ride takes a short half hour. At Harvard Square you are on one side of the College Yard, as the region is called, which in colleges of more pretense would be named the _Campus_. Buildings of all ages and all aspects fill it, from the venerable brick of old Massachusetts, built near two centuries ago, in fond memory of Pembroke College in Cambridge, down to the last “sweet” devices of modern architecture.

They had an embarrassment of riches before them, that they might rightly use their time and gratify every taste of all the party. First of all, Nathan led them to the Library, and while under his brother’s guidance, the young people looked at some of the curiosities there, he took John to the Bursar’s office, to attend to some business about his college room. Then they all called on a young gentleman, to whom the Dudleys introduced the Creheres, so that they saw the comfort of the college rooms of the students. Next they went to Memorial Hall, where are the portraits of the old worthies of the state and college, the trophies of many base ball victories, and, most interesting of all, if you go at a meal time, some five hundred of the young men of to-day, eating with a good appetite. From this place they went to the Agassiz Museum, which is so skilfully arranged that they will all date back to that hour’s visit a clearer knowledge of the great classifications of natural science.

The young people declared that they were not tired even then. Their student friend had asked them to rest in his room after these bits of sight seeing, and they did so, and then, after a little lunch, went up to the Botanic Garden, stopped at the Observatory, and crossed to see the house which was lately the home of Longfellow, and in the Revolution, that of Washington.

Travelers who have the same lions to “do” in one day may find their order a convenient one to follow. And, though these are not landmarks of Boston properly, it has seemed wise not to conclude their story without telling of their Cambridge expedition.

“And now,” said Nathan, as they took at the door of the Longfellow house a car for Boston, “now we have made the beginning, when you come in the fall we can show you Boston.”

VANISHING TYPES.

By REV. EDWARD P. SPRAGUE.

Abundant evidence is afforded in nature that, beside the familiar forms of life of the present, there have been earlier forms, such as are now no longer seen. Each great epoch of the earth’s history, as, to a less degree, each great continent on the earth’s surface, has had certain prevalent and characteristic types; of which some still endure; some have wholly disappeared, and some are just now passing out of sight. And among all these extinct, persistent, vanishing and recent types, there are perhaps none more full of interest, or more worthy of our careful study than the ones that are just now passing away.

Something similar to this is to be recognized also in the varying phases of human life. There are styles of men, habits of life, peculiarities of character, customs, occupations, and conditions which belong almost wholly to the present; others which are common to the present and the past; and still others which are as strictly part of the long ago, as are the megatherium and the plesiosaurus. There are no corresponding forms now, and probably never again will be. There can never more be the old feudal baron, the chivalrous knight errant, or the trouveres and troubadours of mediæval Europe, any more than there can be again the ancient worshipers of Jupiter or devotees of Bacchus. Old forms of government, old ideas of the divine right of kings, old faith in auguries, the old search for the philosopher’s stone and for the elixir of life have passed away, never to return.

More recent, however, than these, and more closely related to the present, are certain types of life with which our fathers were daily conversant, but which promise to seem to our children very strange and remote. Not merely does the regular succession of the generations bring us at length to the last Revolutionary soldier, and to the last survivor of the seemingly exhaustless supply of Washington’s body servants; but at the same time the changes which transpire in local and social life do serve to make rare, and then wholly to remove, the types of men that were only lately distinctively common and prominent. We do well therefore to stop in the midst of our hurrying, driving, self-glorifying age, and study some of these _Vanishing Types_ of life, character, occupation, with varied accompaniments and experiences, which to-day have become or are fast becoming things of the past.

A recent writer in one of our great metropolitan dailies comments in a pleasant strain on the survival in only humorous papers and poor plays of the typical Englishman and typical Yankee, as so long and commonly represented. What has become of the John Bull and the Brother Jonathan of a few years ago? Were they not true characters at all? If not, who will explain the hold they took on the popular fancy, a hold so strong that they are not quite abandoned to-day? They must have been fairly faithful representatives of certain actual types. Are Englishmen and Americans growing different, then, from what they were, or growing like each other, that now these two illustrious characterizations have largely disappeared?

As the writer remarks: _Punch_ still has John Bull as a national type; but shows a great reserve in the use of him, and continually resorts to Britannia as a substitute. Our old friend John, the bluff, stout, honest, red-faced, irascible, rural person, has really been supplanted by a more modern, thinner, nervous, intellectual, astute type. He is, or was a very rude person, and always seemed to take great delight in asserting himself in such a way as to produce as much general annoyance and discomfort as possible. But he is gone, or is going, and the time is coming when we shall regard him as only a survival, a tradition of the past.

And so for English use the Yankee type of Uncle Sam may still serve to represent America, although he belongs to the past as much as slavery does, or the stage coach. He would be a bold man who would attempt to say what our national type is now; but it is safe to say that it is not a long, thin, cute Yankee, dressed in a swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons, whittling a stick, and interlarding his conversation with “I swan,” and “I calc’late.” In fact, if Mr. Lowell were to write “Biglow Papers” now, Uncle Sam would hardly serve his purpose as he did during the war.

Not only are differences between national types rapidly vanishing into the past, so that Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen and Americans no longer seem strikingly unlike; but along with these international, the more domestic and home types are disappearing also. The distinctive kinds of men, and the distinctions which attached themselves inseparably to various classes and occupations are passing away.

Take the men to-day of any one town, village or farming district, and I fully believe you will find fewer odd and strange characters among them than was the case among their predecessors or fathers of a generation ago.

Just this was the complaint of an old farmer who used to delight to drop into my study in northern New York, and have, as he called it, “a talk with the parson.” He was himself a relic of a past generation, a man of marked face and peculiar manner. He had been a school teacher in his earlier days, and quite a man of letters among his associates of that time, and was very fond of describing in a quaint way that was not without discrimination, the life of his youth. While fully admitting the greater advantages and easier times of the present, he would always add: “But everybody is getting to be just like everybody else now-a-days. Why, when I came into this valley every man on all these farms had something peculiar about him, some way of standing, or talking, or dressing, by which I could have described him so that you would have known him the first time you met him. I don’t know,” he would add, “but you may think it an improvement, but the men are all alike now, and I miss the differences.” And looking at the old man, and feeling that he served as a connecting link, a survival of the past into the present, I was ready to believe that what he said was true; the older men had more marked peculiarities than those of to-day.

Let us look now more particularly at some of the types which were distinctive features of the life of a half century ago, but whose successors have lost much of that prominence to-day by means of that gradual tendency toward uniformity which has since then been working.

First among these and foremost, as distinctive and distinguished, stands the “Country Parson” of fifty or more years ago.

No such men are seen to-day; for although the ministry continue, and are always to continue, constituting a distinct class in the community, they are now in no such ways singular and distinctive as then. Dressed always in his clerical black, and in earlier times in the clerical bands also, he was known on the street and saluted with reverence as a man by himself, set apart from the rest of the community, higher and holier than they. His position was unequaled, unapproached even by any other person. He was looked up to by all, honored by all, and feared, if not by all, by all the children at least. His opinions on matters local and civil, personal, social, philosophical and religious had almost the weight of absolute and supreme wisdom, which no one might gainsay.