ew Hampshire; six or eight
lines of coaches left there each day. There were lines direct to Boston,
New York, and Stanstead, Canada. Of course there was a vast bustle and
commotion on the arrival and departure of each coach, and a goodly
number of passengers were deposited at the tavern that formed the coach
office--sometimes one hundred and fifty a day. It can readily be seen
what a news centre such a tavern must have been, how much knowledge of
the world must have been gathered by its occupants. It must be
remembered that our universal modern source of information, the
newspaper, did not then exist; there were a few journals, of course, of
scant circulation, but of what we now deem news they contained nothing.
Information of current events came through hearing and talking, not
through reading. Hence it came to be that an innkeeper was not only
influential in local affairs, but was universally known as the
best-informed man in the place; reporters, so to speak, rendered their
accounts to him; items of foreign and local news were sent to him; he
was in himself an entire Associated Press.

The earliest roads for travel throughout New England followed the Indian
trails or paths, and were but two or three feet wide. The Old Plymouth
or Coast Road, of much importance because connecting Boston and
Plymouth, the capitals of separate colonies, was provided for by action
of the General Court in 1639. It ran through old Braintree. The Old
Connecticut Road or Path started from Cambridge, ran to Marlborough,
thence to Grafton, Oxford, and Woodstock, and on to Springfield and
Albany. It was intersected at Woodstock by the Providence Path, which
ran through Narragansett and Providence plantations, and also by the
Nipmuck Path which came from Norwich.

The New Connecticut Road ran as did the old road, from Boston to Albany.
It was known at a later date as the Post Road. From Boston it ran to
Marlborough, thence to Worcester, thence to Brookfield, and so on to
Springfield and Albany.

The famous Bay Path, laid out in 1673, left the Old Connecticut Path at
Happy Hollow, now Wayland, and ran through Marlborough to Worcester,
Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, when it separated in two paths,
one--the Hadley Path--running to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley, and the
other returning to the Old Connecticut Path and on to Springfield.

An inexplicable charm still attaches itself to these old Indian paths, a
delight in attempting to trace the