ouse on Pearl
Street in Boston, and entered his travelling carriage, having in mind a
pleasant day's excursion with his friend, Mr. Daniel Webster, for a
purpose which will hereafter appear.

Though now given up to trade, Pearl Street was then the site of some of
the finest dwellings in the city, and prominent among these was Col.
Perkins's mansion, afterwards munificently bestowed, with other gifts,
upon the Massachusetts Blind Asylum, which then became the Perkins
Institution for the Blind, and occupied the building for its charitable
purposes.

As his comfortable and substantial equipage passed down the gentle slope
towards Milk Street, it met with a general recognition, for Boston was
then a town of some thirty thousand people only, and Col. Perkins one of
its best known citizens.

Born in 1764, at five years of age he saw from his father's house in
King Street the Boston Massacre, and, after receiving a commercial
education, was for more than fifty years a leading merchant in his
native city. His military title was not one of courtesy only, but
conferred upon him as commander of the Corps of Independent Cadets, a
most respectable body of citizens, upon whom devolved the annual duty of
escorting the Governor and Legislature to hear the time-honored Election
Sermon, which marked the opening of the General Court in the month of
January.

Passing up Milk Street, then also a street of dwellings,--among them the
birthplace of Franklin,--the Old South Church, which at that time had
received only its first "desecration," was soon reached, and the
carriage turned into Washington Street, opposite the Province
House--with its two large oak trees in front, and the grotesque gilt
Indian on the roof with bended bow, just then pointing his arrow in
obedience to a gentle breeze from the south-west; then up the narrow
avenue of Bromfield Street, with the pretty view of the State House over
the combined foliage of Paddock's elms and the Granary Burial Ground,
and, turning into Tremont Street, our traveller was soon at Park-Street
Corner.

The noble church edifice which graces this sightly spot, though sadly
dealt with in its general symmetry, still lifts its lofty spire with
undiminished beauty, and justifies the stirring lines of Dr. Holmes:--

"The Giant standing by the elm-clad green;
His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene;
Whirling in air his brazen goblet round,
Swings from its brim the swollen fl