For it is to the past that Boston belongs. No city is more keenly
conscious of its origin. The flood of foreign immigration has not
engulfed it. Its memories, like its names, are still of England, New
and Old. The spirit of America, eagerly looking forward, cruelly
acquisitive, does not seem to fulfil it The sentiment of its beginning
has outlasted even the sentiment of a poignant agitation. It resembles
an old man thinking of what was, and turning over with careful hand the
relics of days gone by. If in one aspect Boston is a centre of commerce
and enterprise, in another it is a patient worshipper of tradition, It
regards the few old buildings which have survived the shocks of time
with a respect which an Englishman can easily understand, but which may
appear extravagant to the modern American. The Old South Meeting-House,
to give a single instance, is an object of simple-hearted veneration
to the people of Boston, and the veneration is easily intelligible. For
there is scarcely an episode in Boston's history that is not connected,
in the popular imagination, with the Old South Meeting-House. It stands
on the site of John Winthrop's garden; it is rich in memories of Cotton
and Increase Mather. Within its ancient walls was Benjamin Franklin
christened, and the building which stands to-day comes down to us from
1730, and was designed in obedient imitation of English masters. There,
too, were enacted many scenes in the drama of revolution; there it
was that the famous tea-party was proposed; and thence it was that the
Mohawks, drunk with the rhetoric of liberty, found their way to the
harbour, that they might see how tea mixed with salt-water. If the
sentiment be sometimes exaggerated, the purpose is admirable, and it is
a pleasant reflection that, in a country of quick changes and historical
indifference, at least one building will be preserved for the admiration
of coming generations.

It is for such reasons as these that an Englishman feels at home in
Boston. He is secure in the same past; he shares the same memories, even
though he give them a different interpretation. Between the New and Old
England there are more points of similarity than of difference. In
each are the same green meadows, the same ample streams, the same wide
vistas. The names of the towns and villages in the new country
were borrowed from the old some centuries ago; everywhere friendly
associations are evoked; everywhere are signs of a familiar and