been offered. One writer has suggested that they began their proceedings
in jest but, partly from fear of punishment if they confessed, partly
from an exaggerated sense of their own importance, they continued to
make charges against men and women whom they heard their elders mention
as probable witches. In that little settlement there were property
disputes, a church quarrel, jealousies, rivalries, and much
misunderstanding, which had their influence. Another writer lays stress
upon “hypnotic influence” and believes these young girls and nervous
women were improperly influenced by malevolent persons, probably John
and Tituba the Indian slaves. But a more natural explanation is that
they were the victims of hystero-epilepsy, a nervous disease not so well
understood in the past as to-day, which has at times convulsed the
orderly life of a school or convent, and even a whole community. Then,
too, the belief in witchcraft was general. Striking coincidences,
personal eccentricities, unusual events and mysterious diseases seemed
to find an easy explanation in an unholy compact with the devil. A
witticism attributed to Judge Sewall, one of the judges in these trials,
may help us to understand the common panic: “We know who’s who but not
which is witch.” That was the difficulty. At a time when every one
believed in witchcraft it was easy to suspect one’s neighbor. It was a
characteristic superstition of the century and should be classed with
the barbarous punishments and religious intolerance of the age.
Eventually, justice, so far as possible, was done to the survivors. The
Legislature voted pecuniary compensations and the church
excommunications were rescinded. Ann Putnam, one of the more prominent
of the “afflicted children,” confessed her error and prayed for divine
forgiveness. Rev. Samuel Parris offered an explanation that might be
considered an apology. Judge Sewall, noblest of all the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities implicated in this tragedy, stood up in the
great congregation, Fast Day, in the South Church, Boston, and
acknowledged his error in accepting “spectral evidence.”
“Spell and charm had power no more,
The spectres ceased to roam,
And scattered households knelt again
Around the hearths of home.”
Salem grew in wealth and population slowly but substantially. In 1765
there were only 4469 inhabitants. With the rest of the Colony she was
putting forth her strength in the French-Indian wars and also resisting
what she termed the usurpations of the Royalist governors or English
Parliament. It was a public-spirited as well as high-spirited life.
Soldiers and bounties and supplies were generously furnished for the
wars. Pirates were captured or driven from the coast. A valuable
commerce was developed, churches were built and schools increased. In
1768 the _Essex Gazette_ was founded, with the motto, “_Omne tulit
punctum qui miscuit utile dulci_,”--a motto that measures the social
changes from the time of Endicott and Williams.
The citizens of Salem were not wanting in patriotism or courage in the
years immediately preceding the Revolution. They met in the old
town-house to protest against the Stamp Act, to denounce the tax on tea
and the closing of Boston port, and in 1774, in defiance of General
Gage, to elect delegates to the First Continental Congress about to meet
in Concord. As early as 1767 a committee had been appointed “to draft a
subscription paper for promoting industry, economy and manufactures in
Salem, and thereby prevent the unnecessary importation of European
commodities which threaten the country with poverty and ruin.” The
report of the committee was not accepted but the movement was
characteristic of the attitude of Salem.
A just claim is made that the first armed resistance to the British
government was made
[Illustration: T Pickering. (signature)]
in Salem at the North Bridge, Sunday, February 26, 1775, when the
citizens assembled and took their stand on the north bank of the river
to prevent Colonel Leslie and his three hundred soldiers from marching
into North Fields in search of cannon supposed to be concealed there.
The British officer thought of firing upon the citizens who, after
crossing the bridge, had raised the draw and now stood massed on the
opposite bank. But a townsman, Captain John Felt, said to the irate
officer who had looked for an unimpeded march, “If you do fire you will
all be dead men.” His prompt utterance appears to have restrained the
firing. Tradition says that there was a struggle to capture some boats,
one of which at least was scuttled. After an hour and a half of delay,
in which time Rev. Mr. Barnard of the North Church was conspicuous for
his moderate counsels, the vexed and defeated Colonel Leslie promised
that if the draw were lowered and he were permitted to march his men
over it a distance of thirty rods, he would then wheel about and leave
the town, an agreement fairly carried out. A commemorative stone marks
this place and significant event at the beginning of the Revolution.
[Illustration: SOME OLD DOORWAYS.]
The years from 1760 to the War of 1812 were the period of commercial
prestige. At the beginning of the Revolution Washington turned to the
coast towns for a navy, and Salem answered by furnishing at least 158
privateers. Many were the prizes brought into the harbor as the war
continued, and, as a result of this seamanship, an immense impetus was
given to ship-building and the development of foreign commerce. This may
be called the romantic era in the life of the venerable town. At the
close of the war the town could boast of its great merchants and
adventurous captains whose vessels were found in every port. Where did
they not go, these vessels owned by Derby, Gray, Forrester,
Crowninshield, and many another well-known merchant!
Under the stern rule of Endicott the old Puritan town had banished
Quakers and Baptists and Episcopalians, but in the early years of this
century her sons were intimate with Buddhist and Mohammedan and Parsee
merchants. In 1785 “Lord” Derby, as Hawthorne called him, sent out the
_Grand Turk_ which, nearly two years later, brought back the first cargo
direct from Canton to New England. At this time it is with peculiar
interest we read that in 1796 this same “Lord” Derby sent the _Astrea_
to Manila, which returned the following year with a cargo of sugar,
pepper and indigo upon which duties of over $24,000 were paid. That was
the time when a sailing-vessel after a long voyage might enter the
harbor any day, and therefore the boys of the town lay on the rocks at
the Neck, eager to sight the incoming ship, and earn some pocket-money
for their welcome news. Significant is the motto on the present city
seal: _Divitis Indiæ usque ad ultimum sinum_. They were a hardy
race--these Vikings of New England--bold, self-reliant, shrewd,
prosperous, equally ready to fight or trade, as occasion might demand.
The sailors of that day were the native sons of Salem, sturdy citizens,
often well-to-do, who might have an “adventure” of several hundred
dollars aboard to invest in tea or sugar or indigo. At fourteen or
fifteen the Salem boy went out in the cabin of his father’s vessel, at
twenty he was captain, at forty he had retired and in his stately
mansion enjoyed the wealth and leisure he had bravely and quickly
earned. In 1816 _Cleopatra’s Barge_, a vessel
[Illustration: BOWDITCH DESK AND QUADRANT.]
of 190 tons burden, was launched in the harbor, and George Crowninshield
went yachting in the Mediterranean in this luxurious vessel,--perhaps
the first American pleasure yacht, as much admired in Europe as in New
England. Many are the traditions of this romantic and prosperous era.
Many are the famous names of merchants and sailors--men of great wealth
and public spirit, mighty in time of war and influential in affairs of
state, as Colonel Timothy Pickering, and Benjamin W. Crowninshield,
esteemed at home and abroad for their enlightened, progressive, humane,
public-spirited services to town and State.
Many of their stately mansions still remain to attest the wealth and
fashion and gracious hospitality of that period. The spacious rooms,
rich in mahogany furniture, carved wainscoting, French mirrors, and
Canton china, were the scenes of elegant and memorable entertainments
when Washington, Lafayette, and many other celebrated men of Europe and
America visited the old town. As regards the beautiful objects of
interior decoration,--now so eagerly sought, and often purchased at high
prices,--Salem is one vast museum, almost every home boasting its
inherited treasures, while a few houses are so richly dowered that the
envy of less fortunate housekeepers can be easily pardoned.
The commerce in time went to Boston, and many of the sons of Salem
followed it to help build up the wealth and character of the larger
city. In fact where have not the sons, like the vessels, of Salem gone?
Their memory is green in the old town and the citizen points with pride
to the former residence-site of many a distinguished man she calls her
son; of Bowditch, mathematician and author of the famous _Navigator_, of
Judge Story and his no less eminent son, the poet and sculptor, of W. H.
Prescott, the heroic historian of Spain, of Jones Very, poet and mystic,
and of many another man of mark in law and literature.
But of all the distinguished sons of Salem no one makes so eloquent an
appeal to the popular heart as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Visitors are
particularly interested in the places associated with his life and
romances. Of these
[Illustration: Wm H. Prescott]
there are many, for the novelist lived at one time or another in half a
dozen Salem houses, while several are identified with his stories. To
appreciate Hawthorne one should read him here, in the old Puritan town
with its ancient houses, several of which date from the seventeenth
century, its commemorative tablets, ancient tombstones, family names,
and the collections of the Essex Institute. With magic pen he traced
the greatness and the littleness of the Puritan age, its austere piety,
its intolerance, its stern repression of the lighter side of human
nature, its moral grandeur and its gloomy splendor. He did for our past
what Walter Scott did for the past of the mother-country. Another
“Wizard of the North,” he breathed the breath of life into the dry and
dusty materials of history; he summoned the great dead again to live and
move among us.
The visitor will be interested in all the houses associated with his
name,--the modest birthplace on Union Street, the old residence on
Turner Street popularly but erroneously called the House of the Seven
Gables, the Peabody homestead, beside the Old Burying Point, where he
found his wife and also _Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret_. The visitor will be
most interested, however, in the three-story, wooden building with the
front door opening into the little garden at the side, after the fashion
of many Salem houses, where he lived when Surveyor of the Port and wrote
the immortal romance of Puritan New England. Here his wife wept over the
woe of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, and hither came James T.
Fields to hear the story which he so eagerly accepted. After one has
read the facts of history in Felt and Upham and the diaries and
chronicles of the seventeenth century, it is well to turn to Hawthorne
for the realistic touch that makes the Puritan characters live once more
for us. His sombre genius was at home in the Puritan atmosphere. How
clearly its influence over him is acknowledged in the Introduction to
_The Scarlet Letter_! He had the literary taste and the literary
ambition, and he found his material in the musty records of the
Custom-house, in the town pump so long a feature of Salem streets, in
the church steeple, the ancient burying-ground, the old gabled houses,
even the Main Street that had witnessed the varied pageants of more than
two centuries. He was always leaving Salem and always returning, drawn
by the “sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.” Here his ancestors lay
buried, and here, although he has said he was happiest elsewhere, lay
his inspiration. The strange group of Pyncheons, Clifford, Hepzibah and
the Judge, the _Gentle Child_, the _Minister with the Black Veil_, _Lady
Eleanore_ in her rich mantle, and the tragic group of _The Scarlet
Letter_--these are not simply the creations
[Illustration: Nathaniel Hawthorne]
of a delicate and somewhat morbid imagination, even more are they the
marvellous resurrection of a life long dead.
The old town has a genuine pride in her great son whose fame, assured in
England as in America, has added to her attractions. But owing to his
invincible reserve and long absences he had only a limited acquaintance
in Salem, and there is comparatively little of reminiscence and anecdote
among those who remember him. He chose his companions here, perhaps in
reaction from the intellectual society he had had in Concord, perhaps in
search of literary material, from a jovial set with many a capital tale
to tell of the old commercial days when the Custom-house with its
militant eagle aloft was the centre of a bustling, cosmopolitan life
that surged up and down its steps and over the long black wharves of
Derby Street. Like many men of genius his character had more than one
side and can now be studied in the abundance of material which the
unwearied industry of his children has given us.
The novelist has gone, as the merchant and sailor went, as the Puritan
magistrate and minister went. Another set of priceless
[Illustration]
associations is added to the old town which now must confess to
factories and a foreign population like many another New England
seaport. The resident of Salem lives in a modern, progressive, handsome
city, made the more attractive by eccentric roofs, “Mackintire”
doorways, carved wooden mantels and wainscoting, ever suggestive of the
venerable and impressive past, a past that may well serve as a challenge
to the children of Viking and Puritan, inviting them to a fine
self-control and a broad public spirit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
BOSTON
THE TRIMOUNTAIN CITY
BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
[Illustration: SUCCORY OR “BOSTON WEED.”]
The summer traveller who approaches Boston from the landward side is apt
to notice a tall and abundant wayside plant, having a rather stiff and
ungainly stem, surmounted by a flower with soft and delicate petals and
of a lovely shade of blue. This is the succory (_Cichorium Intybus_ of
the botanists), described by Emerson as “succory to match the sky.” But
it is not commonly known in rural New England by this brief name, being
oftener called “Boston weed,” simply because it grows more and more
abundant as one comes nearer to that city. When the experienced Boston
traveller, returning to his home in late summer, sees this fair blossom
on an ungainly stem assembled profusely by the roadside, he begins to
collect his parcels and hand-bags, knowing that he approaches his
journey’s end.
The original Boston, as founded by Governor John Winthrop in 1639, was
established on a rocky, three-hilled peninsula, in whose thickets wolves
and bears were yet harbored, and which was known variously as Shawmut
and Trimountain. The settlement itself was a sort of afterthought, being
taken as a substitute for Charlestown, where a temporary abode had been
founded by Winthrop’s party. There had been much illness there, and so
Mr. Blackstone, or Blaxtone, who had for seven years been settled on the
peninsula, urged the transfer of the little colony. The whole tongue of
land then comprised but 783 acres--an area a little less than that
originally allotted to Central Park in New York. Boston now includes
23,661 acres--about thirty times the original extent of the peninsula.
It has a population of about 500,000--the State Census of 1895 showing
496,920 inhabitants. By the United States Census of 1890
[Illustration: Copyright by Daniel W. Colbath & Co., Boston, 1898.
TRINITY CHURCH.]
it had 448,477, and was then the sixth in population among American
cities, being surpassed by New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn,
and St. Louis; and the union of New York and Brooklyn probably making it
now the fifth. In 1880 it ranked fifth, St. Louis having since
outstripped it. In 1870 it was only seventh, both St. Louis and
Baltimore then preceding it. As with most American cities, this growth
has been partly due to the annexing of suburbs; but during the last
fifteen years there has been no such annexation, showing the increase to
be genuine and intrinsic. The transformation in other ways has, however,
been more astonishing than the growth. Of the original three hills, one
only is now noticeable by the stranger. I myself can remember Boston, in
my college days, as a pear-shaped peninsula, two miles by one, attached
to the mainland by a neck a mile long and only a few yards wide,
sometimes actually covered by the meeting of the tide-waters from both
sides. The water also almost touched Charles Street, where the Public
Garden now is, and it rolled over the flats and inlets called the Back
Bay, where the costliest houses of the city now stand.
The changes of population and occupation have been almost as great as of
surface. The blue-jacketed sailor was then a figure as familiar in the
streets as is now the Italian or the Chinese; and the long wharves, then
lined with great vessels, two or three deep, and fragrant with spicy
Oriental odors, are now shortened, reduced, and given over to tugs and
coasters. Boston is still the second commercial port in the country; but
its commerce is mainly coast-wise or European only, and the picturesque
fascination of the India trade has passed away. Even on our Northwest
Pacific coast the early white traders, no matter whence they came, were
known by the natives as “Boston men.” The wealth of the city, now vastly
greater than in those days, flows into other channels--railways,
factories, and vast land investments in the far West--enterprises as
useful, perhaps more lucrative, but less picturesque. It is a proof of
the vigor and vitality of Boston, and partly, also, of its favorable
situation, that it has held its own through such transformations.
Smaller cities, once powerful, such as Salem, Newburyport, and
Portsmouth, have been ruined as to business by the withdrawal of foreign
trade.
[Illustration: BOSTON IN 1757.
FROM A DRAWING BY GOVERNOR POWNALL.]
Boston has certainly, in the history of the country, represented from an
early time a certain quality of combined thrift and ardor which has made
it to some extent an individual city. Its very cows, during its rural
period, shared this attribute, from the time when they laid out its
streets by their devious wanderings, to the time when “Lady Hancock”--as
she was called--helped herself to milk from the herd of her
fellow-citizens in order to meet a sudden descent of official visitors
upon her husband, the Governor. From the time when Boston was a busy
little colonial mart--the epoch best described in Hawthorne’s _Province
House Legends_ and _My Kinsman Major Molineux_--through the period when,
as described in Mrs. Quincy’s reminiscences, the gentlemen went to
King’s Chapel in scarlet cloaks,--down to the modern period of
transcontinental railways and great manufacturing enterprises, the city
has at least aroused a peculiar loyalty on the part of its citizens.
Behind all the thunders of Wendell Phillips’s eloquence there lay always
this strong local pride. “I love inexpressibly,” he said, “these streets
of Boston, over which my mother held up my baby footsteps; and if God
grants me time enough, I will make them too pure to be trodden by the
footsteps of a slave.” He survived to see his dream fulfilled. Instead
of the surrendered slave, Anthony Burns, marching in a hollow square,
formed by the files of the militia, Phillips lived to see the
fair-haired boy, Robert Shaw, riding at the head of his black regiment,
to aid in securing the freedom of a race.
During the Revolution, Boston was the centre of those early struggles on
which it is now needless to dwell. Faneuil Hall still stands--the place
from which, in 1774, a letter as to grievances was ordered to be sent to
the other towns in the State; the old State House is standing, where the
plans suggested by the Virginia House of Burgesses were adopted; the old
South Church remains, whence the disguised Indians of the Boston
Tea-Party went forth, and where Dr. Warren, on March 5, 1775, defied
the British officers, and when one of them held up warningly some
pistol-bullets, dropped his handkerchief over them and went on. The Old
North or Christ Church also remains, where the two lights were hung out
as the signal for Paul Revere’s famous ride, on the eve of the battle of
Lexington.
So prominent was Boston during this period that it even awakened the
jealousy of other colonies; and Mr. Thomas Shirley, of Charleston, South
Carolina, said to Josiah Quincy, Jr., in March, 1773: “Boston aims at
nothing less than the sovereignty of this whole continent.... Take away
the power and superintendence of Britain, and the colonies must submit
to the next power. Boston would soon have that.”
One of the attractions of Boston has long been, that in this city, as in
Edinburgh, might be found a circle of literary men, better organized and
more concentrated than if lost in the confusion of a larger metropolis.
From the point of view of New York, this circle might be held
provincial, as Edinburgh no doubt seemed from London; and the resident
of the larger
[Illustration: Copyright by Daniel W. Colbath & Co., Boston, 1895.
“OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE.”]
community might scornfully use about the Bostonian the saying attributed
to Dr. Johnson about the Scotchman, that “much might be made of him if
caught young.” Indeed, much of New York’s best literary material came
always from New England; just as Scotland still holds its own in London
literature. No doubt each place has its advantages, but there was a time
when one might easily meet in a day, in one Boston bookstore--as, for
instance, in the “Old Corner Bookstore,” built in 1712, and still used
for the same trade--such men as Emerson, Parker, Longfellow, Lowell,
Holmes, Whittier, Sumner, Agassiz, Parkman, Whipple, Hale, Aldrich, and
Howells; such women as Lydia Maria Child and Julia Ward Howe. Now, if we
consider how much of American literature is represented by these few
names, it is evident that if Boston was never metropolitan, it at least
had a combination of literary ability such as no larger American city
has yet rivalled.
I remember vividly an occasion when I was required to select a
high-school assistant for the city where I then lived (Newport, Rhode
Island), and I had appointed meetings with several candidates at the
bookstore of Fields & Osgood at Boston. While I was talking
[Illustration: Oliver Wendell Holmes]
with the most promising of these--the daughter of a clergyman in
northern Vermont--I saw Dr. O. W. Holmes pass through the shop, and
pointed him out to her. She gazed eagerly after him until he was out of
sight, and then said, drawing a long breath, “I must write to my father
and sister about this! Up in Peacham we think a great deal of authors!”
Certainly a procession of foreign princes or American millionaires would
have impressed her and her correspondents far less. It was like the
feeling that Americans are apt to have when they first visit London or
Paris and see--in Willis’s phrase--“whole shelves of their library
walking about in coats and gowns”; and, strange as it may seem, every
winter brings to Boston a multitude of young people whose expressed
sensations are very much like those felt by Americans when they first
cross the ocean.
The very irregularity of the city adds to its attraction, since most of
our newer cities are apt to look too regular and too monotonous. Foreign
dialects have greatly increased within a few years; for although the
German element has never been large, the Italian population is
constantly increasing, and makes itself very apparent
[Illustration: PUBLIC LIBRARY.]
to the ear, as does also latterly the Russian. Books and newspapers in
this last tongue are always in demand. Statues of eminent
Bostonians--Winthrop, Franklin, Samuel Adams, Webster, Garrison,
Everett, Horace Mann, and others--are distributed about the city, and
though not always beautiful as examples of art, are suggestive of
dignified memories. Institutions of importance are on all sides, and
though these are not different in kind from those now numerous in all
vigorous American cities, yet in Boston they often claim a longer date
or more historic associations. The great Public Library still leads
American institutions of its class; and the Art Museum had a similar
leadership until the rapid expansion of the Metropolitan Museum of New
York City. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New England
Conservatory of Music educate large numbers of pupils from all parts of
the Union; while Boston University and Boston College hold an honored
place among their respective constituencies. Harvard University, Tufts
College, and Wellesley College are not far distant. The Boston Athenæum
is an admirable model of a society library. The public-school system of
Boston has in
[Illustration: The TOWN of BOSTON IN _New England_]