ring such Oriental
signs as "Coffee and Spices." And so into a bewildering congeries of
crowded streets, where every name on the walls seemed to be Italian, and
where every corner was dangerous with vegetable-barrows, tram-cars, and
perambulators; through this quarter the legend of Paul Revere seemed to
float like a long wisp of vapor. And then I saw the Christopher Wren
spire of Paul Revere's signal-church, closed now--but whether because
the congregation had dwindled to six or for some more recondite reason I
am not clear. And then I beheld the delightful, elegant fabric of the
old State House, with the memories of massacre round about it, and the
singular spectacle of the Lion and the Unicorn on its roof. Too proudly
negligent had Boston been to remove those symbols!

And finally we rolled into the central and most circular shopping
quarter, as different from the Italian quarter as the Italian quarter
was different from Copley Square; and its heart was occupied by a
graveyard. And here I had to rest.

The second portion of the itinerary began with the domed State Capitol,
an impressive sight, despite its strange coloring, and despite its
curious habit of illuminating itself at dark, as if in competition with
such establishments as the "Bijou Dream," on the opposite side of the
Common. Here I first set eyes on Beacon Street, familiar--indeed,
classic--to the European student of American literature. Commonwealth
Avenue, I have to confess, I had never heard of till I saw it. These
interminable and gorgeous thoroughfares, where each massive abode is a
costly and ceremonial organization of the most polished and civilized
existence, leave the simple European speechless--especially when he
remembers the swampy origin of the main part of the ground.... The
inscrutable, the unknowable Back Bay!

Here, indeed, is evidence of a society in equilibrium, and therefore of
a society which will receive genuinely new ideas with an extreme, if
polite, caution, while welcoming with warm suavity old ideas that
disguise themselves as novelties!

It was a tremendous feat to reclaim from ooze the foundation of Back
Bay. Such feats are not accomplished in Europe; they are not even
imaginatively conceived there. And now that the great business is
achieved, the energy that did it, restless and unoccupied, is seeking
another field. I was informed that Boston is dreaming of the
construction of an artificial island in the midst of the river C