The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1915-07-10

We were three-a visiting Englishmen, the
Artist, and AntiqUary says Mr.. Bacon. The Artist
and Antiquary were the gossiping guides; the
Englishment the guided. The Englishman would
do" Old Boston exclusively. He had "done" the
blend of the Old and New. and would bark
back to the Old and review it in lesurely strolis
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 stranger saturated
with Old Boston lore he appeared to be
could not be other than agreeable
Beyond the few measured historic memorials
the landmarks he especially would seek were
many of them long ago annihilated in those re-
peated marches of progress of improvement
common to all growing cities, or effaced in the
manifold markings over of the topography of the
Old Town than which other in Christendom
has undergone Still, if not the identical
things, the sites of 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 jdmbIed with
the New
Properly initial ramble was within the mar
row bounds of the beginnings Of the Puritan can
1tal, the metropolis of the Wilderness" hanging
on the harbOr's edge of the little "pear-shaped
behilled peninsula, for which the founders those
welleducated, polite persons of good estate"
took Old Boston in England for it's name and
London for its model The Lincolnshire borough
on the Fftham to be it's prototype only in
name. The founders would have their capital
town be to New England in its humble way what
builded likeness in miniature to London
This London look and Old England aspect we
remarked, remained to and through the Revolu-
ton; and in shadowy way remains today, as our
guest would see. 1t indeed natural family
likeness, for, as the record shows Boston from
the beginning the central point of the most
thoroughly English community in the New World
There was no infusion of 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 church of its own
and to bring about 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
FaneuiIs, Chardons, Sigourneys, Reveres Moli-
neuxes Greenleafs, became almost English,
American English, the rest. Nor 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 port of consequence, 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 distnctively of English
lineage. When with the Revolution the English
yoke was thrown of and the "BOstOneers tore
down every emblem of royalty and every sign Of
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 well into the nineteenth century, when in
1922 Boston emerged from town to 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
q
Quincy writing of the municipality in 1923 dur
ing Josiah Quincy's first administration mayor
he was the city's second mayor-observes: THE
great Irish and German emigration had not then
set in. The city 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 admxture 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, possible, in their
new home so we find their earliest crooked
little streets with old London names. So the
earlier social life, grim though 1t was with Its
Puritanical tinge is to have Deen old English
in smaller and narrower way.