ent days, is only about sixteen
miles from Boston as the automobile flies, but you pass a good many
sweet things first. We went through Somerville, got lost there, and were
guided in every direction but the right one by a plague of boys not much
bigger than the "dimes" they didn't earn. Jack simply won't look at maps
when in the car, or inquire; expects to find his way by instinct, and
somehow generally _does_. (Are _all_ men like that?) Crossed the Mystic
River, and got on to the velvet surface of the Revere Beach Parkway. But
Chelsea came before the Beach: charming old Chelsea, which probably, in
its heart, thinks Boston its suburb, and prides itself on almost a
century and a half of aristocratic peace since the old fighting days
when Israel Putnam won his commission as Major-General there.

There couldn't be a greater contrast than between Chelsea and Revere
Beach. It's a good thing that miles of parklike road--fought over once
by Independents and British--lie between, or they could never stand each
other, those two! Jack and I ought to have come to Revere Beach when we
were little boy and girl, for, oh, the joy of it for children! What
price the Dragon Gorge, the mountain railway more like the Alps than the
Alps are like themselves, the theatres, the shops of every kind, the
cottages which are nests for birds rather than commonplace, human
habitations?

Opposite, Nahant sat looking delightful and alluring, but we went on to
Lynn--Lynn, unattractive at first, and pretty when we got better
acquainted, like some of the nicest women I know. It's a great place now
for shoes, and was once a great place for pilgrims. What a pity the
former are too late for the latter! The Pilgrims must have needed the
shoes badly. They could have walked along the Old Pilgrim Road to
Swampscott if their feet were equal to it. And perhaps they forgot their
feet, as I forgot Aunt Mary, for it is--and must then have been--a
lovely road.

Hawthorne used to walk to Swampscott, too, as well as to Marblehead, but
he came the other way, from Salem. Do you remember Swampscott was where
he found pink and white Susan, who gave him the sugar heart? That was
pink, too, with a touch of white perhaps. She sounds so delightful as
the "Mermaid!" I'm glad Hawthorne kept the heart for years, and then
instead of throwing it away ate it--gave it honourable burial, so to
speak--which shows that you _can_ have your heart and eat it, too! (I
must, by the by, ma