Boston Transcript

“ Almost every Sabbath I meet the female orphans, who, in uniform, follow their instructresses to the house of worship. This city, I am happy to say, not only abounds in profession, but there is no city in the world, of its population and ability, which abounds more in works of charity and benevolence. The friendship and kindness of the inhabitants of Boston are proverbial in all parts of the Union, and a Bostonian is respected throughout the world. ”

“ I have seen in Boston, or rather in Nahant, a small watering-place in the neighbourhood of that city, two girls,—one the daughter of a president of an insurance-office, and the other the child of a merchant,—supporting their heads with their elbows, and in this position staring at each other for several minutes across a public table; each believing that her standing in society entitled her to the longest stare, and that the other, being the daughter of a man of less consideration and property, should have modesty enough to cast down her eyes. ”

“ The mass of the people in Massachusetts who think at all, are indignant; but so far as I can learn, the men who control the politics of Boston, or who have controlled them until the last week, feel no considerable interest in the matter. In New York, men of great property and high standing came together and protested against this iniquity. New York has been, for once, and in one particular, morally in advance of Boston. ”

“ Boston is a great city. I should like to hear any one dare to deny that; but, then, people here say that, in the way of financing, the Hub knows how to save, and skimp, and deposit, and get twice her share of offices out of the President of the United States; but, outside of that, she is nowhere, compared to New York. ”

“ The society of Boston is very delightful; it wins upon you every day, and that is the greatest compliment that can be paid to it.
Perhaps of all the Americans the Bostonians are the most sensitive to any illiberal remarks made upon the country, for they consider themselves, and pride themselves, as being peculiarly English; while, on the contrary, the majority of the Americans deny that they are English. ”

“ Frostwinch belonged, beyond the possibility of any cavilling doubt, to the most exclusive circle of fashionable Boston society. Boston society is a complex and enigmatical thing, full of anomalies, bounded by wavering and uncertain lines, governed by no fixed standards, whether of wealth, birth, or culture, but at times apparently leaning a little toward each of these three great factors of American social standing. ”

“ The city sat primly on her little hills, decorous, civilised, European-looking. It is homely after New York. The Boston crowd is curiously English. They have nice eighteenth-century houses there, and ivy grows on the buildings. And they are hospitable. All Americans are hospitable; but they haven't quite time in New York to practise the art so perfectly as the Bostonians. It is a lovely art.... But Boston also makes you feel at home without meaning to. A delicious ancient Toryism is to be found here. "What is wrong with America," a middle-aged lady told me, "is this Democracy. ”

“ Carew of Boston. I would be glad to have this verified and to be supplied with all available data of birth, marriage and death of these people and their ancestors.
5. Hopkins. Sarah Hopkins, daughter of Charles and Margaret (Henchman) Hopkins, married John Goldthwaite in Boston, March 13, 1701, and died Oct. 31, 1715, in Boston. I would like data of her parents and date of her birth. Her mother was a sister of Major Thomas Henchman, an officer in the Indian Wars. ”

“ The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded—often evading British laws—with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. ”

“ There is no spot upon our shores where the sea plays a wilder or more solemn dirge than on the rocky peninsula of Nahant; the long connecting beach is here a scene of angry commotion from the constant and heavy swells of the broad ocean.
At a distance of about ten miles in the South-West lies Boston. The eye always rests upon the dense smoke that enshrouds it first, piercing which, loom up the spires of its numerous churches, and towering above them all, the noble State House is distinctly seen. ”

“ The Town of Boston are deeply sensible that our publick Affairs as you justly observe are in a critical Scituation: yet our Intention was, not to obtrude THEIR Opinions upon their Fellow-Countrymen, as has been injuriously said, but to be informd, if possible of their real Sentiments, at a time when it was publickly & repeatedly given out that this Country in general was perfectly reconciled to the measures of the British Administration. ”

“ I fear the man most hated in this town would be found to be some one who had only sought to do mankind some great good, and stepped before his age too far for its sympathy. Truth, Justice, Humanity, are not thought in Boston to have come of good family ”

“ It is the most scholarly city of the United States—one of the greatest centres of erudition in the world.
Boston Society is less showy than that of New York, the women have, perhaps, less chic, but they have more colour in their faces and more repose in their manner.
Nothing is more diverting than to hear the dwellers in each great American town criticise the dwellers in the others. All these societies, each almost in its infancy as yet, are jealous one of another. At Boston, for instance, you will be told that the Chicago people are all pig-stickers and pork-packers. ”

“ Here I am in America—in Boston—and every day I spend here makes me more and more satisfied with my change of situation. The very air here is free and inspiring, full of new hope and life. The old world with all its restraints and bounds, its musty prejudices, its time-honored inconveniences and hindrances, is a thing gone by; it is blue in the dim distance, and I see before me a free, generous, noble country that offers everything equally to all. I like Massachusetts; I like Boston ”

“ This revolution, when finally it came about, was quite within the spirit of the British Constitution. The Whigs believed they were right, and had no fear of the consequences. No testimony to their virtues, as the backbone of a new nation, will speak louder than their present attitude. External testimony is not hard to quote. "The people of Boston and Massachusetts Bay," wrote Thomas Hollis but a few weeks before this time, "are, I suppose, take them as a body, the soberest, most knowing, virtuous people at this time upon earth." ”

“ With the exception of a few Revolu­tionary statesmen and elderly clergymen, a political essayist like Ames, and lawyers like Samuel Dexter and Theophilus Parsons, Massachusetts could show little that warranted a reputation for genius; and, in truth, the intellectual prominence of Boston began as the conservative system died out, starting with the younger Buckminster several years after the century opened.
The city was still poorer in science. Excepting the medical profession, which represented nearly all scientific activity, hardly a man in Boston got his living either by science or art. ”

“ Une ou deux{28} rues tirées au cordeau, point d’édifices publics remarquables, un hâvre très-vaste et défendu par des îles qui ne laissent que deux entrées très-étroites, une situation qui rendrait la ville imprenable si elle était fortifiée, voilà tout ce que j’ai à te dire de Boston. Les habitans n’ont ni délicatesse ni honneur ni instruction, et il n’y a rien de trop à l’égard de leur probité, non plus qu’à l’égard de celles des Français qui sont établis ici et qui sont fort haïs des naturels du pays. On s’ennuye fort à Boston. ”

“ The last known issue was on February 22 of that year.
END OF NEWS-LETTER
In this way The Boston News-Letter had a continuous exist- ence for practically seventy-two years. Loyal to the Home Government, it had the distinction of being the only paper pub- lished in Boston while Washington was besieging the city. That it did not survive longer was doubtless due to its malicious at- tacks upon Washington and other generals of the Revolution: the Boston patriots, aroused by their desire for independence at any cost, refused to tolerate a Tory paper which they had long dubbed The Court Gazette. ”

“ America shakes all dust from off her feet, even that of great men's bones; though indeed Boston, which is not wanting in esteem for its respectable antecedents, has made a feeble attempt to do honor to the Father of his Country. ”

“ Look, I will not say at the squalid dress of these children, as you see them prowling about the markets and wharves, or contending in the dirty lanes and by-places into which the pride of Boston has elbowed so much of her misery; look at their faces! Haggard as they are, meagre and pale and wan, want is not the worst thing written there, but cunning, fraud, violence and obscenity, and worst of all, fear! ”

“ He has made it the largest and most effective organization of its kind in the country, and the draughtsmen of Boston have every reason to be thankful to him for his unselfish devotion to their interests. ”

“ In America, almost every newspaper of the few printed, was filled with arguments, epigrams, parables, sonnets, dialogues, and every form of expression favorable to the resistance made in Boston to the arbitrary acts of government ”

“ We are told for truth that he is now eight thousand strong. We live in continual expectation of alarms. Courage I know we have in abundance; conduct I hope we shall not want; but powder,—where shall we get a sufficient supply? I wish we may not fail there. Every town is filled with the distressed inhabitants of Boston. ”

“ They are Puritans from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, but they are indulgent, and there is no bitterness about their Puritanism. What struck me most about the women of Boston was the harmony of their gestures and the softness of their voices. Brought up among the severest and harshest of traditions, the Bostonian race seems to me to be the most refined and the most mysterious of all the American races. ”

“ In the afternoon, malgré a cutting east wind, which was anything but agreeable after the hot weather I had been living in, I took a long walk about the town, accompanied by an old friend of mine and a constitutional grumbler, who yet joined with me in declaring that a first impression of Boston could hardly fail pleasing any man who could be pleased by a near view of a city, well and substantially built, as it is undoubtedly nobly situated. ”

“ Yet the good men still left in Boston, their heart not wholly corrupt with politics and lust of gain, rejoiced that Boston was innocent of the great transgression of her sister-cities, and thought of the proud days of old. ”

“ Boston is high-toned. I believe the taxes here are higher than in any other city in the country. I would like to say a good deal more about Boston, but being a Boston man myself, my modesty prevents me. You will always notice this peculiarity in a Boston man—he seldom mentions Boston. ”

“ The idea of the state as a collection of units has fatally misled us in regard to our duty as citizens. A man often thinks of his share in the collective responsibility for Boston as a 1/500,000 part of the whole responsibility. ”

“ Always one of the most important of colonial towns, it conducted itself in sturdy Puritan style, fearing God, honoring the King—with reservations—burning witches and Quakers, waxing prosperous on codfish, and placing education above every earthly thing in value, until the exciting events of the Revolution, which has left behind it relics which make Boston a veritable "old curiosity shop" for the antiquarian, or indeed the ordinary loyal American, who can spend a happy day, or week, or month, prowling around the picturesque narrow streets, crooked as the proverbial ram's horn, of Old Boston. ”

“ And what reward will he require of us, to ensure his silence?'
'Mother,' said Josephine, in a decided tone—'We must quit this city forever. We can dwell here no longer with safety. Let us go to Boston, and dwell there under an assumed name. I have heard that Boston is a great city, where licentiousness and hypocrisy abound, in secret; where the artful dissimulator can cloak himself with sanctity, and violate with impunity every command of God and man. Yes, Boston is the city for us.'
'I agree with you, my dear,' rejoined her mother—'it is the greatest lust market of the Union. ”

“ And being a Bostonian he has a very strong sense of public duty and is interested in the spread of civilization. And he thinks that architecturally Boston is the last cry of beauty in this country, and that there's not much chance there for a new man to put his stamp on the city the way there is in one of the cruder towns. ”

“ Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found “Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet.” Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston “town” was drawing society from the “country.” ”