The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1859-03-24

rAiek Franklin lred, nccessariIy remored-Deseription
~ : - - s's a.o ~ g u eAs1ge s es@" a so1,;an ,em me !,
preseyred-
On the morning Of the 10th of November last,
His Honor Frederic w. Lincoln, Jnr. the present
active and intelligent Mayor of B)ston, called
upon me in his gig and proposed to me to 60
down and see the house of Franklin. at the cor
neT of Union and Hanover streets. He was led
to do this, from the fact that the house and its
impending fate had been the subject Of repeated
conferences between both the present and the
last Mayor and myself. On our way His Homer
suggested to me, that he had called upon me at
a very early hour, in order that We might arrive
perhaps sin season, to witness the first stroke of
the sledge-hammer in demolishing the house"
Demolishing the house of Franklin F, in the City
of Boston, the house of her most illustrious ma
tive Son in the middle of the nineteenth CEN
fury, the house of the Philosopher, Statesman.
and Patriot, who shone among the brightest
lights of the eighteenth, What, shall the mu-
nicipal government OF the american Athens"
demolish the house Of their own Franklin, while
an enraged foreign conqueror could spare the
house of the Beotian Pindar, when every other
edihce in Thebes was ievelled with the dust?3a
circumstance which, by the way, must have ma
terially impaired the value of the one building
left standing, as a piece of real estate. Shall the
inhabitants Of the "Literary Emporium" in
time of peace, withhold from the dwelling of their
own most distinguished fellow citizen that pro-
lection, which Milton did not seruple to demand
for his humble abode in time of civil war from
@Cspsain, or cob-nei. or knight a, arms:'
Tell it not in New York; publish it not in the
streets of Philadelphia; unless YOU publish and
tell at the same time. las you will be sure TO do,
from the amiable instinct which leads us to pro-
claim Just what our neighbors do not want to
hear, } that they also have demolished the houses
of Franklin and Washington
But is it absolutely necessary that the house of
Franklin, at the corner of Union and Hanover
LII L. I,u,l..knI
To answer this question, we must go back to
the origin of the ancient and yenerated Metropo-
lis Of New England somewhat as good Dr. Prince
commences his New England chronology with
the creation Of Adam terrifying the date before
the food, which he assigns TO that important
event, by the authority of Funceius, Bucholzer.
Frankenberger, and other writers equally we'll
known and popular. Boston was not originally
laid out like Philadelphia in squares, nor like
Washington on a system of rectangles traversed
obliauely BY avenues. None of the streets follow
a straight line for any considerable distance,
and their ordinate of curvature has escaped Pro
fessor Pierce, III his entertaining work on ''curves
and functions 1t is such however as TO make
il one of the most important functions of the
CITY government To straighten them. II the
homeIy truth must he told, it is said that the
streets In the ancient City of Boston were
originally laid out by the cows, going to pasture
in what is now Beacon street and Park street,
and returning at night from those distant re-
gions. While the greater part of the penisular
lay in q state Of nature, and the population con-
sisted of a few thousands, not to say a few hum
dreds, no inconvenience attended this primitive
engineering which was certainly more in con-
formity to the age of Adam, with which our
ancient Chronologer begins his work, than to
that Of the Colossus of Roads," who has pre-
fixed a Mac to the family name.
This system of engineering could hardly fail to
produce crooked and narrow streets, of which
CIX 30 <hn 1850. da-
especially by that most dissatisfied and queruious
class Of mankind. the Taxpayers Nor are they
the only class who suffer- In consequence OF
the crookedness of the streets none but u native
Bostonian, who has passed regularly through the
primary and grammar schools, can ind his way
about town without a guide. A stranger who
comes for a few days, especially a Philadelphia,
If he attempts to make his calls alone, generally
brings up at the end of an hour or two on the
stems of the fremont from which he started, with
out having found one of the places for which he
SET out. A few wears since, the choice OF Mayor
was decided by this circumstance. One of the
candidates, having only lived five or six years in
the CITY, could not, it was averred, find his way
about the town. without the directory. His
opponent was a native who could thread his way
round the greater part of the City without a
guide. and so carried the day. He has never
once lost his way, and has just been reelected.
The uarrowness of the streets is a more serious
evil. 1t was Of little consequence, while the
population was small, commerce ineonsiderable,
vehicles of all kinds few, and trucks short but
with a crowded population and an active COM
merce. a truck twenty-five feet in length is some
thing Of a circumstance In a street fifteen or
twenty feet wide. 1t is said the ferret will turn
round in a hole no bigger than himself; but that
a truck twenty-five feet long, heavily loaded, and
drawn by two OF three horses tandem, could turn
round in a street of twenty feet wide would be
incredible. If it were not constantly seen in Bos-
- l. - ,-o-.- fr+ ~ ha "a a.rrOpG cnn
nience, and it having been found that the trucks,
however dangerous to the citizens, cannot be cur
tailed, with any safety to the munipal powers
that attempt it, the alternative policy of WIDEN
ing the streets has been very generally adopted.
And here it NAV be proper, as we are writing
for the information of many OF those benighted
persons, who live at a distance from what is
called by the ssautocrat," (who rules us from the
breakfast table with such mild and absolute
sway,) ssthe hub of the Solar system" viz:
ssBoston State House., - to give n more particular
description of THE Truck. which, in its full
Development, Is a Boston Institution. Things
bearing the name exist in other places, but they
resemble a Boston truck, as Il tadpole resembles
a fuIl-grown Batrachian; as Il pig-nut resembles
a shellbark as the sloe resembles the green
gage; as the crab-apple resembles the Newtown
pippin as the button pear, which takes hold of
YOUR gums and teeth, like a dentists forceps,
resembles q gLou mo,reau; as the dog rose re
sembles the Queen of May as the bitter almond
resembles the Heath peach; in short as a great
many things resemble,-that is do not resemble,
"a great many other things, to which they bear
a generic affinity, but no Likeness.
The Boston truck is constructed of two long
parallel shafts, hewn from the best of oak, winter
felled, we'll seasoned, and free from faults.
These shafts are twenty-five feet long, ten inches
wide, and Eve inches thick strengthened under
meath, in the middle portion, with shorter pieces
of the same width. The upper ends of the shafts
are cut curving and shaped round, to fit the sides
of the wheel-horse- They are then framed to-
gether by two transverse pieces the well COM
pacted structure is placed upon a low axle, sup
ported by wheels, which are three feet in dame
ter; and thus the truck is complete. 1t has no
carriage-body Of amy kind If there is a thing in
the universe which a trucknan disdains, it is the
whole range of enclosed or covered vehicles from