Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1907-07-31

This is Old Home Week in Boston,
and unless the newspapers of the Hub
have entered into a conspiracy to mis-
represent things, the city has made
great preparations for the occasion and
| it is proving an unqualified success.
| Old Home Week reunions have in the
nature of things been much more sue
cessful in country towns and Villages
than in the cities where they have Deen
undertaken, and it required no sinai
degree of courage for the largest city
in New England to undertake such a
celebration with all its attendant dah-
| gers of proving a farce and a hzzie.
| Certainly if there is any city in New
England. or anywhere in the country
| for that matter, where Old Home, Week
ought to be a success, it is in the city
of Boston. although the soothing editors
in some of our other great cities, nota-
bIv New York and Chicago, have taken
| Eostons Old Home Week celebration
as a text for dissertations, which, while
not written in any unkind spirit. have
still been of decidedly frivolous
character.
Boston is one of the few cities in the
country or in the world which really
inspire affection. Some years ago
William Dean Howells asked the ques-
ton, Did any one ever really love
New York." and nobody has ever yet
come forward to answer in the aftirma-
| tive. Certainly the same question with
similar results might be asked of many
other great cities. Cities that really
| touch the sentiment are few, and BOs-
| ton is one of them. If ever a city had
soul that city is Boston. SO rich is it
| in the possession of precious things
| which the assessor does not include in
his lists and the enumerator does not
reckon.
1t was founded as a city of homes.
not as trading center like New York
or frontier outpost like Chicago. The
site was selected because John Win
throp and his associates found there a
spring of pure water. The founders
of Boston burned all bridges behind
them when they came to this country.
They did not speak of England as
"home" as the Virginians did for gen.
erations. They became Americans
from the first and it was natural that
the movement for American indie
pendence had it's origin there.
The affection in which Boston has
from the first been held by those living
there and by their children wherever
in the world they have wandered, has
been shared by all dwellers in New
England. Boston is by no means con-
fined to it's municipal boundaries.
Some cities raise up hatred around
them, but it is not so with the New
England metropolis; in fact there is no
small degree of truth in the joke that
when New England people are away
from home. no matter what part of
New England they really hail from.
they are quite apt to register from BOs-
ton and this is because every New
Englander feels at home in that city
and is part proprietor of it's name and
fame. Just as the Puritans came to
Boston to build themselves homes there,
SO through all the generations since
1920 the New Englanders have been
home builders wherever they have
gone. Beside their new home they
have never failed to build a church and
q schoolhouse, and they have never
failed to take with them an undying
love of the home left behind in New
England.
Realizing this and remembering
these things. Boston is now celebrating
its first Old Home Week and doubtless
many thousands of its former citi-
zens. as well as the army of strangers
in the city, find much in the occasion
that is of great interest and value to
them. Neither New York nor Chicago
which are so ready with good natured
ilingS at Boston, would dare to at
tempt such a celebration They have
not the history nor the traditions be-
4, i,t,
celebration a possibility. There is
only one Boston. and as near as the Old
Home Week spirit can possibly be ex-.
emplified in the life of a great city, it
is being shown this week in our beloved
New England metropolis.