Then I linger'd a week in Boston--felt pretty well
(the mood propitious, my paralysis lull'd)--went around everywhere,
and saw all that was to be seen, especially human beings. Boston's
immense material growth--commerce, finance, commission stores, the
plethora of goods, the crowded streets and sidewalks--made of course
the first surprising show. In my trip out West, last year, I thought
the wand of future prosperity, future empire, must soon surely
be wielded by St. Louis, Chicago, beautiful Denver, perhaps San
Francisco; but I see the said wand stretch'd out just as decidedly in
Boston, with just as much certainty of staying; evidences of copious
capital--indeed no centre of the New World ahead of it, (half the big
railroads in the West are built with Yankees' money, and they take
the dividends.) Old Boston with its zigzag streets and multitudinous
angles, (crush up a sheet of letter-paper in your hand, throw it down,
stamp it flat, and that is a map of old Boston)--new Boston with
its miles upon miles of large and costly houses--Beacon street,
Commonwealth avenue, and a hundred others. But the best new departures
and expansions of Boston, and of all the cities of New England, are in
another direction.
THE BOSTON OF TO-DAY
In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting but fishy)
about his excavations there in the far-off Homeric area, I notice
cities, ruins, &c., as he digs them out of their graves, are certain
to be in layers--that is to say, upon the foundation of an old
concern, very far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins,
and upon that another superadded--and sometimes upon that still
another--each representing either a long or rapid stage of growth and
development, different from its predecessor, but unerringly growing
out of and resting on it.
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