I had been familiarized by Bostonians with a whole
series of apparently stock jokes concerning and against Boston, such as
that one hinging on the phrase "cold roast Boston," and that other one
about the best thing in Boston being the five o'clock train to New York
(I do not vouch for the hour of departure). Even in Cambridge, a less
jocular place, a joke seemed to be immanent, to the effect that though
you could always tell a Harvard man, you could not tell him much.

[Illustration: UNDER THE GREAT DOME OF THE CAPITOL]

Matters more serious awaited me. An old resident of Boston took me
out for privacy onto the Common and whispered in my ear: "This is the
most snobbish city in the whole world. There is no real democracy here.
The first thing people do when they get to know you is to show you their
family tree and prove that they came over in the _Mayflower_." And so he
ran on, cursing Boston up hill and down dale. Nevertheless, he was very
proud of his Boston. Had I agreed with the condemnation, he might have
thrown me into the artificial brook. Another great Bostonian expert,
after leading me on to admit that I had come in order to try to learn
the real Boston, turned upon me with ferocious gaiety, thus: "You will
not learn the real Boston. You cannot. The real Boston is the old Back
Bay folk, who gravitate eternally between Beacon Street and State Street
and the Somerset Club, and never go beyond. They confuse New England
with the created universe, and it is impossible that you should learn
them. Nobody could learn them in less than twenty years' intense study
and research."

Cautioned, and even intimidated, I thought it would be safest just to
take Boston as Boston came, respectfully but casually. And as the
hospitality of Boston was prodigious, splendid, unintermittent, and most
delightfully unaffected, I had no difficulty whatever in taking Boston
as she came. And my impressions began to emerge, one after another, from
the rich and cloudy confusion of novel sensations.

What primarily differentiates Boston from all the other cities I saw is
this: It is finished; I mean complete. Of the other cities, while
admitting their actual achievement, one would say, and their own
citizens invariably do say, "They will be ..." Boston is.

Another leading impression, which remains with me, is that Boston is not
so English as it perhaps imagines itself to be. An interviewer (among
many) came to see me about Boston, and he c