The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-07-10

DAONh " W.
We we're three-a visiting Englishmen, the
Artist, and Antiquary, says Mr.. Bacon. The Artist
and Antiquary were the gossiping guides; the
E~nglishment the guided. The Englishman would
do Old Boston exclusively. He had Zone the
blend of the Old and New, and now would bark
back to the Old and review it in leisurely strolls
among its landmarks. He had asked the Artist
and Antiquary to pilot him companionably, and
they would meet his wishes, and gladly. for the
personal conducting of a stranger so saturated
with Old Boston lore as he appeared to be
could not be other than agreeable.
Beyond the few measured historic memorials.
the landmarks he especially would seek we're
many OF them long ago annihilated in those re-
peated marches of progress or of improvement
common to all growing cities, or effaced in the
manifold markings over of the topography of the
Old Town. than which none other in Christendom
has undergone more. Still, if not the identical
things, the sites of a select number of them could
be Identified for him, and their story or legend
rehearsed, while the Artists pencil would repro
duce yet remaining bits of the Old jumbled with
the New.
Properly our initial ramble was within the mar.
row bounds of the beginnings of the Puritan can.
ital, the metropolis of the Wilderness" hanging
on the harbors edge of the little "pear-shaped,'
behilled peninsula, for which the founders. those
"wen-educated, polite persons of good estate"
took Old Boston in England for it's name and
London for it's model. The Lincolnshire borough
'NS " W Us BAONOlJ pS I'LL III
name. The founders would have their capital
town be to New England in its humble way what
London was to Old England. So Boston was
builded. a likeness in miniature to London.
This London look and Old England aspect. we
remarked, remained to and through the Revolu-
ton; and in a shadowy way remains today, as our
guest would see. 1t was indeed a natural family
likeness, for, as the record shows, Boston from
the beginning was the central point of the most
thoroughly English community in the New World.
There was no infusion of a foreign element of
consequence until the end of the colony period
and the close of the seventeenth century. Then
the French Huguenots had begun to appear and
mingle with the native Puritans. But while early
in the province period this element became sufi-
cient in numbers to set up a church of its own
and to bring about some softening of the old
austerities of the Puritan town life. it did not
impair the English stamp. These French Hugue-
nots easily assimilated in the community, which
welcomed them, and in time these competent
artisans and merchants, the Bowdoins, the
Faneuils, Chardons, Sigourneys, Reveres, Moli-
neuxes. Greenleafs, became almost as English, or
American English, as the rest. Nor was the
stamp impaired by the infusion of Scotch and
Irish into the colony in increasing numbers dur
ing the latter half of the seventeenth and the
early eighteenth centuries; nor by the floating
population of various nationalities naturally
drawn to a port of consequence, as Boston was,
the chief in the colonies from the outset. These
~foaters coming and going merely lent variety
and picturesqueness-or brought temporary trou-
ble-to the sober streets. Up to the Revolution
the population remained homogeneous, with the
dominating influences distinctively of English
lineage. When with the Revolution the English
yoke was thrown off and the Customers tore
down every emblem of royalty and every sign of
a Tory and burned them in a huge bonfire In
front of the old statehouse and afterward re-
named King street State and Queen street
Court" they could not blot out its English mark.
And we'll into the nineteenth century, when In
1922 Boston emerged from a town to a city, the
population was still "singularly homogeneous"
it came to cityhood slowly and somewhat re-
luctantly after repeated attempts, the first early
in the colony period. Edmund Quincy in his
fascinating life of his distinguished father, Josiah
Quincy, writing of the municipality in 1928 dur
ing Josiah Quincy's first administration as mayor
he was the city's second mayor-observes THE
great Irish and German emigration had not then
set in. The city was eminently English in its
character and appearance, and probably no town
of its size in England had a population of such
unmixed English descent as the Boston of that
day. 1t was Anglis ipsis Anglior-more English
than the English themselves. The inhabitants of
New England at that time were descended, with
scarcely any admixture of foreign blood, from the
Puritan emigration of the seventeenth century"
As the founders and settlers brought with them
all their beloved old home characteristics and
would transplant them. as was possible, in their
new home, so we find their earliest crooked
little streets" with old London names. So the
earlier social life, grim though It was with Its
Puritanical tinge, is seen to have peen old English
in a smaller and narrower way.