The Coolidge examiner., 1937-04-29

tower of the customhouse. 1t
\ looks down on that cobweb
maze Of narrow, crooked
streets which marks the "city linn
its" of bygone days, when cows
grazed on the Common and clipper
ships traded with China and Bonn
bay.
In the shadow of modern struc-
lures squat many old-style shops
and ''countinghouses," already
Weather-beaten when John Hancock
was governor. To Boston these are
more than obsolete architecture;
they are symbols of her busy, au-
dacious youth when she built and
sailed our first merchant fleet.
Modern Boston sprawls over more
than 1000 square miles and counts
some 2,300,00 people in her metro
politan district. Much of that is in
the pattern of other American cities.
But the old Boston, so like parts of
ancient London, is unique in the
United States.
Come down from the tower now
and see how certain of these streets
| are devoted to a particular enter
prise. This one smells of hides and
leather; along that one you see only
the gilded signs of shoe manufactu-
turers. One section smells of fish,
another of wool, and here is a wharf
fragrant with bananas.
Turn up the hill toward the vener-
able Transcript, with its columns of
genealogy, and you smell newsprint,
fresh ink, roasting coffee, and Sec
ond-hand books stacked in the open
air-any book from Gray's "Elegy"
to Anthony Adverse"
Even the odd wording of sign
boards harks back to earlier days.
'Victualers License" Spa" PRO
lection Department" not fire depart
ment, and street-car signs in quaint,
stilted English.
Old trades cling to old places. The
Old Oyster House, live Holsters wrig-
Cling in it's window tanks, stands
jus: as it was hundred years ago.
Aged Carver of Pipes.
Before a window at 80 Court street
crowds watch a wrinkled artist
carve pipes. At eighty-seven, wear
ing no glasses, he works as skill
fully as when he began, seventy
years ago. Monk, Viking, and In
dian heads, skulls, lions, dogs-he
makes them all.
Give him your picture and he
will cut its likeness on a meer-
schaum bowl. For Kentucky horse
man he carved the image of that
riders favorite mount; he even
carved the Battle of Bunker Hill'
with so brier figures on one big
pipe!
Five workmen in pipe stores here
abouts have a total service of more
than 200 years. "A man is on trial
until he has been here 25 years. is
a favorite joke in one shop.
Quietly another old sculptor
works, making ancient" idols, rel
lies of the Stone Age, even a "petri-
fed man" for a circus in Australia!
Turn back and walk through the
cathedral-like First National bank
and look at its compelling murals,
with their dramatic themes of
merchant adventures by land and
sea or study the fascinating exhibit
of historic ships models in the
State Street Trust company.
Then talk with men whose fam
lies for generations have helped
shape Boston's destiny, and you be-
gin to sense what significant events,
affecting all America, are packed
in her 300 years of history.
Boston cash and engineering skill
built several of the great railway
systems of America. Chicago stock
yards, to a large degree, were built
by men from Boston. She founded
the great copper-mining industry in
OuI WSSLJ ollS Wdo bllC Sd1IJ IOIllS
of many corporations, famous now
in the annals of finance, foreign
trade, construction, and manufac-
turing.
It was Boston brains and money
that started the great telegraph and
telephone systems that now girdle
the globe Miraculously, almost,
she turned the jungles of Central
America and the Caribbean isles
into vast banana plantations, and
built up the greatest fruit industry
the world knows.
BOstOnians Pioneered West.
From Boston went groups of
thrifty, energetic men to share in
the conquest of the West. To Kansas,
especially, many colonists were sent
by the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid
company to circumvent the rise of
another slave state under the Kan
Nebraska act.
Lawrence, Kansas, is named for
an old Boston family, and many a
budding Midwest factory town drew
its first artisans from that national
training school for skilled mechan-
les which is New England.