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.
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.”