Once the lay-out of New York has been mastered--its avenues and numbered
cross streets--it is the most difficult city in the world in which to
lose one's way. But Boston is different. I found Boston hard to learn,
although it was a pleasant task to acquire knowledge, for I was led into
some of the quietest little Georgian streets I have ever been in,
steep though some of them were, and along one of the fairest of green
walks--that between the back of Beacon Street and the placid Charles.
Against Boston I have a certain grudge, for I could find no one to
direct me to the place where the tea was thrown overboard. But that
it was subjected to this indignity we may be certain--partly from the
testimony of subsequent events not too soothing to English feelings,
and partly from the unpopularity which that honest herb still suffers
on American soil. Coffee, yes; coffee at all times; but no one will take
any but the most perfunctory interest in the preparation of tea. I found
the harbour; I traversed wharf after wharf; but found no visible record
of the most momentous act of jettison since Jonah. In the top room,
however, of Faneuil Hall, in the Honourable Artillery Company's
headquarters, the more salient incidents of the struggle which followed
are all depicted by enthusiastic, if not too talented, painters; and I
saw in the distance the monument on Bunker's Hill.
My cicerone must be excused, for he was a Boston man, born and bred,
and I ought never to have put him to the humiliation of confessing his
natural ignorance. But the record is there, and legible enough. The
tablet (many kind correspondents have informed me since certain of
these notes appeared in the _Outlook_) is at 495 Atlantic Avenue, in the
water-front district, just a short walk from the South Station, and it
has the following inscription:
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