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ts, or floats with sweetest melody above the quiet fields. It gives a tongue to time, which would otherwise pass over our heads as silently as the clouds, and lends a warning to its perpetual flight. It is the voice of rejoicing at festivals, at christenings, at marriages, and of mourning at the departure of the soul. From every church-tower it summons the faithful of distant valleys to the house of God; and when life is ended they sleep within the bell's deep sound. Its tone, therefore, comes to be fraught with memorial associations, and we know what a throng of mental images of the past can be aroused by the music of a peal of bells. 'O, what a preacher is the time-worn tower, Reading great sermons with its iron tongues.'" * * * * * [Illustration] CHELSEA. By William E. McClintock, C.E. [City Engineer of Chelsea.] Sheltered from the winds of the Atlantic by the outlying towns of Revere and Winthrop, and that section of the metropolis known as East Boston, Chelsea occupies a peninsula, once called Winnisimmet, fronting on the Mystic River and its two tributaries, the Island End and Chelsea Rivers. Its area of fourteen hundred acres presents an undulating surface, rising from the level of the salt marshes to four considerable elevations, known as Hospital Hill, Mount Bellingham, Powderhom Hill, and Mount Washington. [Illustration: OLD FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. Corner of Broadway and Third Street.] Originally it was included within the township of Boston, and was settled as early as 1630; and a few years later was connected with Boston by the Winnisimmet Ferry, whose charter, granted in 1639, makes it the oldest chartered ferry company in the United States. In those early days the Winnisimmet Ferry connected the foot of Hanover Street, in Boston, with the old road leading to Salem and the eastward, which followed the course of Washington Avenue. Samuel Maverick, of Noddle's Island, an early settler, was the first claimant of the land. Richard Bellingham, "the unbending, faithful old man, skilled from his youth in English law, perhaps the draughtsman of the charter [of the Massachusetts Colony], certainly familiar with it from its beginning, was chosen to succeed Endicott," as governor. About 1634, he came into possession of most of Winnisimmet, but his title was rather obscure; it was confirmed to him, however, by the town of Boston, in 1640. He is not know
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