Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-14
ly close to the spirit of the real Hawthorne
where were the cradling of his true self and
the nurturing of his actual genius.
ALCoTT AND EMERSON.


The first is the famous Wright's Tavern,
at Concord. The little, low, bleak, tumble
down structure though in existence half
century before monarchy went out and the
Republic came in, is still the only public
house of the city which gave the world the
PHILOSOPHERS of Alcott and Emerson. Their
early homes, as well as that OF Hawthorne,
can be seen from the windows.
The second one of these inns no one seems
to know. 1t is the old Smith Tavern at
Raymond Village, Maine. Quaint and
sweet and prim, il is a wayside inn to-day
just as it was long before the Revolution,
and just as it stood, when for eight years,
while MAT Hathorn" lived at lovely, idyl-
lie Dingley's, the human youth that he was
daily prowled about the old tavern awaiting
the arrival of the Portland stage, and then,
on the box with gaunt old Eliakim Max
field, the driver, with stage horn awoke the
echoes through the murmuring pines over
the quiet and shadowy road all the way to
Radaux's Mill.
Innumerable poems, comedies, tragedies
and romances could be written of the ancient
hostelries of Boston. In these and all other
New England inns of the pre-Republic era
the habitues were no less than gentlemen
who moved about in their bag-wigs. cooked
hats and small swords, such as we OCCASION
ally get glimpse of nowadays in good old
English comedy.
THE GREEN DRAGON.
The most noted of them all was the Green
Dragon, in Union street. Probably the an
cient Marlboro was the most famous coach
ing station and staging headquarters. It was
a vast house with lofty and spacious rooms,
with wondrous balusters, wainscotting and
French oval mirrors, and huge yard with
vastly depths of stables behind. Then there
was Cromwell's Head Tavern, on School
street, near Washington, dating back to 1751,
where Lieutenant Colonel George Washing
ton lodged in 1756 when on a mission to
Governor Shirley. Of q later time was the
old ''Ben Franklin" in Morton Place, with |
its famous English Boniface, Thomas Nor
gan, where COuldock, Junius Brutus Booth, |
the younger, John Brougham and Daven-
port lived, and where various legal and lit
erary lights knew their happiest hours in |
Boston. There is still standing, believe, |
in Corn court, another noted old-time hos |
telry, on whose site it is said the first house |
OF entertainment ever built in Boston once |
stood. In its later delapidated DAYS it has |
been called the Hancock House. But little |
over 100 years ago it was known as the |
Brasier Inn. In 1898 it housed for quite |
period the most brilliant and unscrupulous |
Intellectual rake Europe ever produced. |
That one was Talleyrand. It was in the |
Brasier Inn that he conjured those epistles
Of diplomatic hattery which finally gave |
him privilege to return to France and to his |
slimily dark career of intrigue and Mephis-
tophelian triumph.
CHANCE FOR A NOVELIST,
Delicious indeed would be that well-told
'ale which would construct a vigorous
novel around any one of those
extinct old Boston hostelries of the colonial
md Revolutionary periods, THE Blue
Ark, !" 'The Lion," the "Lamb Tavern"
which was the original of the old Adams
House of the present day, "The White
Horse" ''The Golden Candlestiek," "The
Elephant Tavern" ''The Star Tavern"
The Key" "The Bunch of Grapes" or
wen at the "Restorator, opened in 1893 by
he famous French cook, Jean Baptiste
Julien, who originated the now universally
loted Julienne soup. Then there were the
qually famous provincial inns, like the
Id Wolfe Tavern of Newburyport, whose
lden sign now creaks in front of its
modern successor, the Merrimac House;
he ancient hostelry at lovely Ridge
eld, Connecticut, in whose worm-eaten
ides the celebrated cannon ball is still i'm
edded, a savage relic of the fight with the
British troops that day in the Revolutionary
Var when General Wooster fell; on the
pad from Springfield to Boston the Five
file House, the Ten Mile House, the old
edgwick at Shearer's corner, and that nest
rest, the old Frink Tavern at Palmertown
till standing, where the redoubtable cook
Betty" Hatch became as famous for her
,mpting and inimitable food as ever did
ulien in Boston; the old Eagle Coffee
louise, OF Concord, N. H., where the annual
tage drivers balls were the events of
Torthern New England, and the still more
ncient Columbian Hotel of the same place,
here was born United States Senator
William E. Chandler, whose father was
nee the Columbian's landlord.
WHERE HISTORY WAS MADE.
But there was a host of them. There
ere hundreds upon hundreds of city hostel
es and vayside inns in which much OF the
istory of our country was formulated, and
hose olden guests and activities nursed
le later grand development of halt conti-
ent.
Looking much backward is not good; and
1r later-day strifes and lives present in
mite excellence above those of the dim old
ays. But what old England was in mother
bod to New England, the latter has been /
all our fair land; and it is a sweet and
indy thing to hold with prizing to the !
emory MOSES of these quaint old enter
inment manses of the New England city
rect and leafy country road.