Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-04-08
AT THE EAST.
BOSTON, THE INTERESTINGLY NEW
FACE-TaE NECK.
The Helps and Irfaences of Boston,
Story-Her Streets and Historic
Places-Taueun Fall.
BosroN, March 81, 1882.

II the writer, who has wandered east,
and wandered west, and soiourned IN
widely sundered places, and is consequent
ly by no means of opinion that this is the
only white mans country, were required
TO name the city where, in these United
States, life for personal comfort is best
worth living, Philadelphia would come
trippingly off the tongue; but If it were
asked which OF New World cities is most
interesting, of most characteristic flavor,
surely it is Boston Boston, not forgetting
either Quehec or New Orleans. a city that
in spite of circumscribad area of swamp
and sharp hill, OF perilous water ap-
proach, an abominable climate, no errors
on the side Of humility and suavity, and
little love from its neighbors. could grow
and make itself materially and morally as
Boston has done, must have had from the
start tremendous vitality.
THE MOST ENGLISH
OF all American cities, say our British
cousins. That means that the city is very
largely built of red brick. which in the
older parts has taken on a genuine English
diDginess of hue; that there are miles Of
swell front houses, such as one meets no.
where else in America, but sees everywhere
in England; that the streets of old Boston,
| what Is now the business district, are 40.
| surdly crooked, narrow, with endless cul-
de sac lanes, dark closes, and alleys the
width of pocket handkerchief that the
men are the most Eoglish.looking of Amer.
leans, and tie women have a solidity of
character which is English, and crops
cut into undismayed originalities of
garb, manner and speech decidedly
an inheritance from the "Old Home.
And the bumptiousness is John Bulls
| own. The Journal the other day gave a
deliciously naive, youthful specimen of
this BOSTON quality. A young gentleman
born here was graduated last summer from
one of the leading colleges in the State.
In the course of his commencement Grafton,
the reverend gray headed President and
professors about him, he sweetly said {:
Although we may not agree with all that
has been taught us in the recitation room,
we accept its aim and acknowledge its
| sug zestiveness - Could a college faculty
desire more touching recognition d? Bos-
ton has almost gotten itself
NEW FACE
In the last decade. "The Neck" us there
schoolboy on this continent who doesn't
know all about Boston Neck as it was in
revolutionary days ?-is gone. The tidal
fats have been robbed from the sea the
house where this is written stands where
salt water ebbed and flowed but a few
years ago /; and British army now de-
! ployed in battle here might march IN
| through stately avenues lined with superb
residences, and that great feature of Bos-
ton to-day, the apartment hotels, where
| once was the narrow isthmus not fifty
| yards across, and On either side marshes
and sad sea waves.
But the change that stirs one most is the
"burnt district" Boston always seems
the most intensely busy of all cities, prob
ably because of the great variety of its in
dustries and their condensation into too
scant space. But the condensation is at
| it's greatest in the burnt district, where
| land is almost fabulous in value, and where
city and United States buildings, bankers
and brokers, most of the great wholesale
| houses, the transportation companies, the
| printers and newspapers are crowded. The
streets sre declared to be less devious than
before the fire, but they are still laby-
rinthine, barely wide enough for the turning
of carriage, and with the skimpiest OF
sidewalks. But what a tide of life surges
and jostles through these narrow. blind
ways real canyons, for the buildings have
climbed dizzy story after story skyward
after the expansion denied laterally, and
| heavens vault, to the strugglers through
these canyons, dwindles to faint threads Of
mist or blue. One thinks in the
HIGH PRESSURE ATMOSPHERE
Of this region, of William Blacks descrip-
ton of the turbulent waters of the Winch
the Atlantic forced through the neck of
| bottle. 1t must be the influence of these
narrow streets upon Bostonians that makes
| them seem SO intolerably rude to women
who como here from other cities. A
| woman must be born here not to feel fury
in her heart when men drive wagons over
her, splash her, jostle her, hustle her
| bodily aside, grip her shoulder to steady
themselves in hazardous vault past her,
let doors that weigh ton bang in her face,
or, when she has just dragged or pushed
| one open with the expenditure of all
her force, and the ruin of perfect pair
| of gloves, insolently dodge past her through
the opening she has painfully made for
herself. There is really the sincerest
kindness and obligingness manifested to
strangers here, but what Californian
| woman newly come to st. Botolph's town
would say OF these masculine "manners of
the road is screening to imagine, for Cali
fornian women, of all women what and
where soever, are the most petted, exact
ing, pouting-dare one add spoiled
Spoiled or not, it would be in the interests
of civilization if these beadlong scramblers
could be handed over to be dealt with by
their sense of the fit and decent
The tight fit that Boston is in its space
has some compensations its head, heart
and hands can't be far aloof from each
other. As Heaven lies about us in our
infancy" so do
THE HELPS AND INFLUENCES
Of Boston's story classic places, art,
science, philanthropy and culture lie close
alongside its toughest labor, its keenest de-
votion to Mammon. Here, for instance, is
the prosiest of busy streets, the boot and
shoe kingdom, wherein there's nothing
like leather" but in two or three minutes
we escape into the stirring memories of
Faneuil Hall or of State street, or stand
On the sunny side of the old South Church
and gaze, and if we be book lovers, with
tender eyes across at that quaint corner
book store that for years and years was
our portal into so much that was best of
our own literature and that of other lands.
The procession of famous people that has
gone in and out of that low. browed door
And to the wiser generation, will any
American publishers imprint ever promise
and fulfill quite SO much as did that of
"Ticknor & Fields p
Turning out of Washington street at this
old corner bookstore, climb through
narrow street for two minutes brings us to
IA IL. nL..nnl a.,I or, hn ar,A