Seeing America, including the Panama expositions; a descriptive and picturesque journey through romantic and historic cities and places, natural wonders, scenic marvels of national pride and interest

Introduction

THERE IS magic in the word ''travel": it kindles something deep and primordial within us and makes us rise to welcome the man who has been afar as we would to greet a royal guest. We will travel if we can, and if not, then at least we will hsten to the strange and splendid experiences of those who do.

Throughout the ages it has been so. The men who went down to the sea in ships were the most honored and the most envied among all early peoples, and the wandering singer was received with joy, not so much for his music as because he brought news from afar, fascinating stories of distant, unknown countries to which few of those who listened could ever hope to go.

Travehng has become less and less difficult, of course, and in this twentieth century of steam and steel is quite within the Umits of the possible even for the average man; and the tourist is known throughout the length and breadth of the land, looked upon with something akin to awe in the small towns of the East, and regarded with mild amusement in the West where one sometimes journeys several hundred miles to spend the day with a friend.

Yet, though we Americans are a nation of travelers, few of us, except through necessity, spend much time or effort in seeing America. That is ''home" and accordingly discounted. England, France, Italy, Japan, China, lure us with the charm of the far-away, bhnd us to the

INTRODUCTION truth that it is not the distant that is always most enchanting, but the picturesque or the magnificent, wherever it may be. Americans travel all over the world and find no city so wonderful as New York with its canyon streets and seething masses gathered together from every nation; they visit Asia to study forgotten civilizations when Redskins still live on the Western plains and cliff dwellings reveal strange stories of the past; they take long pilgrimages to the Alps and the Himalayas while the most stupendous sculpture of Nature is unveiled in the valley of the Colorado. Perhaps some day, when Europe like America shall have become a nation of travelers and sung for us the praises of American cities and resorts and great scenic playgrounds, we as a nation shall begin to realize their importance.

Here and there, it is true, we find men and women who have journeyed from Land's End to Golden Gate and found America good. They are enthusiastic people always, with a fine flavor of patriotism about them and a quiet inner satisfaction at having discovered within their own country such abundant resources for their refreshment and inspiration. It is to these especially that this book will appeal, recalling by word and picture many hours of never-to-be-forgotten pleasure.

It will appeal also to those — and they are an ever-increasing number — who would travel if they could, and who long to know more about the places of which they have heard. The author, who has been in the position both of those who long to go and of those who have been, has endeavored to clear up the hazy mental pictures of the former, making their day-dreams more real and abiding, and to revivify the memories of the

INTRODUCTION latter. After all, ''home-keeping youths "need not have ''homely wits," for one may read of the Great Plains and breathe their spirit even while one stays quietly at home going the daily round of office and shop.

The author has been fortunate enough to have lived in both East and West and to have caught something of the viewpoint of both. In the final analysis, it is the whole of America that we love, North and South, East and West.

"Lo! body and soul! — this land!

Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land, — the South

And the North in the light — Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn."

CHAPTER I Modern Towers of Babel PAGB

New York the City of Cities — The Mecca of Americans — MaTximoth Skyscrapers — Commerce Encircling the Seven Seas — The Gathering Ground of Many Peoples — Historic Places — Fifth Avenue— The Great White Way— Wall Street— Riverside Drive — A People's University — The American Rhine — West Point 13

Chapter II

Boston, the Ancient Hub — Our Decorous New England Sister — Fundamental Ideals — Sacred American Relics — The Cradle of Liberty — Boston Common — The Public Library — Art and Music— "The Mother Church "—Brave Old Harvard- Boston Harbor 26

CHAPTER III The Birthplace of American Liberty

Philadelphia, City of Origins — Remnants of Colonial Days — Independence Hall — Where the First Flag Was Made — The City of Homes— The Quaker City— A Park of Three Thousand Acres — Locomotives to the Whole World — A Pioneer Shipyard — A Place of Vast Industry 38

CHAPTER X The Queen of the Great Lakes

PAGE

Chicago, a City of Endless Enterprise — Realizing Ideals — Lake Michigan and Its Moods— "The Loop"— The Stockyards — The Great Central Market — Chicago as a Summer Resort — A City at Play — A Twentieth-Century University — The Civic Center 100

CHAPTER XI In the Land of Sunshine

Florida of Orange Groves and Flowers — The Oldest City in America — The American Riviera — Mysterious Region of The Everglades 108

Chapter XII

The New-Old City of New Orleans — Latin Gayety — Mardi Gras — Relics of French Days — The Ancient Cabildo — The St. Louis Cathedral — The French Market — Hotel Royal — The French Opera House — The Place Prepared for Napoleon — The Twentieth-Century City 112

CHAPTER XX In the Rocky Mountain Region — Denver, the Gateway

The Surrounding Wonderland — Fabulous Riches — Colorado

Springs — The Lordly Pike's Peak — Manitou and the Garden of

the Gods — In the Cripple Creek District — Through the Royal

Gorge — Around the Circle — A Happy Hunting Ground 166

Chapter XXI Page

Lake Bonneville — Daring Founders of Salt Lake City — Nature's Contribution — Seeing the City — Saltair Beach — Rivaling Panama , 179

CHAPTER XXII The Fantastic Playground of Nature

Nature's Gigantic Exposition in Yellowstone Park — The Boiling River — The Norris Geyser Basia — Landmarks of the Rockies — In the Firehole Region — The Real Home of the Geyser — A Jewel in a Deep Setting — Wild Animals — The Crowning Glory 185

Chapter XXIII

Glacier National Park in the Rockies — Following the Rocky Mountain Trail — The Going-to-the-Sun Region — By Skyland Trails — The Mammoth Park Hotels — ^The Mountain Chalet-Villages 193

Chapter XXIV

A Region of Endless Charm — Fabulous Orchards — Romance of the Wheat Fields — The Inland Empire — Mighty Forests — The Great Salmon Fisheries — The Majestic River of the Northwest—The Rose City at the Foot of Mt. Hood— A Lake in the Crater of a Volcano — Tacoma and Seattle — The Lordly Mt. Rainier 200

CHAPTER XXV The Land of the Midnight Sun

Alaska, Strange Country of the North — Nature's Gorgeous Pageantry — The Old Russian Capital — Cordova and the Copper River Country — A Good Investment 209

CHAPTER XXVI "Our Lady, Queen of the Angels" PAGE

Religious Origia of the Name Los Angeles — The Sierra Madre — A Cosmopolitan City — A Garden City — The Longest Aqueduct in the World — The Mission Play — The Enchanted Isle — To Redlands and the Orange Groves 216

CHAPTER XXVII The Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees^

Among Giant Walls of Rock — Yosemite Falls — The Tributary Canyons — Trees Eight Thousand Years Old 222

CHAPTER XXVIII The Guardian of the Golden Gate

San Francisco, the Phoenix City — ^A Great Seaport — Beautiful Berkeley — Cosmopolitan Gay ety 226

CHAPTER XXIX Within the Portals of Inspiration

Gorgeous Setting of the Panama-Pacific Exposition — The General Plan — Wonderful Courts — Court of Abundance — Court of the Four Seasons — The Exhibit Palaces — Sculpture — An Exposition of Color — "The Zone" — Toyland Grown Up — ■ The Aeroscope — Exposition Grounds Railway — Contests and Athletics 229

CHAPTER XXX A Magic City in the Land of Heart's Desire

Romantic Staging of a Modem Industrial Drama — Portola and His Men — Fray Serra's Miracle — The Spanish Traditions — ^A New City of Old Spain — The Old and New in Expositions — The Intensive Farm — "The Painted Desert" — The Climate as Contributor 245

Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.

The Gateway to America. The famous statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The grassy space in the foreground is Battery Park, so calkd because it was fortified in the leventeenth century for the protection of tht; town, and the round buikling is the Aquarium. Here in the early days stood a rude ."fastle'' or fort, kiter sujjplantf d by an opera house. Washington often walked in the old garden around the building, as did other great Americans.

Phuto by Brown Bros.

"The Great White Way." Times Square, New York, at night, with Broadway on the left, a ourvinji ribbon of white light. Here every night in winter thousands upon thousands of ix'ojjh- throng to theaters and cafes.

Chapter I Modern Towers Of Babel New York, The City Of Cities The Mecca Of Ameri

• CANS MAMMOTH SKYSCRAPERS COMMERCE ENCIR- CLING THE SEVEN SEAS THE GATHERING GROUND OF

MANY PEOPLES HISTORIC PLACES THE GREAT WHITE

WAY ^WALL STREET RIVERSIDE DRIVE A PEOPLE's

UNIVERSITY THE AMERICAN RHINE WEST POINT

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to think of New York without superlatives. It is the largest city on the globe; it is the greatest industrial city; it contains the loftiest buildings; its towers and bridges and tunnels are the wonder of the world. And with every chance of becoming the most sordid city, it is still a place of miracled enchantment, its towers resplendent, its commercialism transmuted into glory by the very might of the imagination which can conceive and build its Babel not through fear but through audacity and a certain longing that is truly American to do things in big ways — bigger than they have ever been done before.

"For the builders builded in blindness; Little they thought of the ultimate Uses of beauty!

Little they kenned and nothing they recked of the raptures Of conscious and masterful art; They builded blinder than they who raised The naively blasphemous challenge of Babel; For they wrought in the sordid humor

Of greed, and the lust for power;

They wrought in the heat of the bitter

Battle for gold;

And some of them ground men's lives to mortar,

Taking the conqueror's toll

From the veins of the driven millions;

Of curses and tears they builded,

And behold! by a baffling magic

The work of their hands transmuted

To temples and towers that are crowned

With a glamor transcendent

That lifts up the heart like the smile of a god!"*

THE MECCA OF AMERICANS

Hither Americans from far and near delight to come, as the Englishman delights to journey to London or the Frenchman to Paris, to bathe for a time in the great rushing stream of human life, and return with fresh vigor, new ideas, larger vision. To the average American a trip to Manhattan is a sort of mental and spiritual Turkish bath: he can scarcely escape becoming a little less provincial, a little more alive. The artist translates New York in terms of beauty; the practical man, in terms of efficiency. New York is indeed all things to all men, and the New York of the artist is as different from the New York of the efficiency expert as the New York of the immigrant is from the New York of the millionaires who build their palaces on Fifth Avenue. Everywhere, however, it is spectacular, the big setting of a big drama, a place of endless experiment and achievement, the city of the skyscraper, whose elevators convey one with the

* Don Marquis in Scribner's Magazine. 14 speed of an eagle to dizzy summits from which those who walk the narrow street below seem like so many ants, following their daily toil.

MAMMOTH SKYSCRAPERS

For the present at least the tallest office building in the world will be found on the western side of City Hall Park, where the towering Woolworth Building lifts its glittering steel-and-terra-cotta structure through a sheer height of 785 feet above the sidewalk. Like a majestic cathedral it rises out of the old and ugly buildings that have gathered around the water front. This is not only the loftiest office building, but, if we except the Eiffel tower, it is the tallest structure of any kind as yet erected by man.

As the eye ranges up through the multitudinous stories to the pyramidal structure at the top, the question arises as to v/hat is the limit of height to which a habitable building can be carried. The answer is to be found in a certain restriction laid down by the Building Code of New York City, which states that on a rock foundation the load may reach but not exceed fifteen tons to the square foot. On this basis, it would be possible on a plot of ground 200 feet square to erect an office building 2,000 feet in height, and to build it, moreover, so that it would be perfectly secure against the fiercest hurricane, and, because of its elasticity, even against the altogether improbable event of an earthquake shock. This is, indeed, the age of miracles.

The Woolworth Building is taUer than it looks. To reach its lowest foundation, we must go down in one place a depth of 120 feet beneath the sidewalk — for that was the depth to which it was necessary to sink the pneumatic caisson in that particular spot before the solid rock of Manhattan Island was reached. This would make the total height from lowest foundation to summit 905 feet. The building contains 23,000 tons of structural steel, 17,000,000 common brick, 7,500 tons of terra cotta, 1,800,000 square feet of floor tiles, 1,800,000 square feet of partition tiles, and 2,500 square feet of cut stone. From these figures we gain some idea of what the erection of this $12,000,000 structure meant.

We have said that the Woolworth Building was the loftiest in the world; it was once also the largest, but such statements do not long remain true in a city that moves as New York moves, and the great Equitable Building soon eclipsed the Woolworth in size if not in height. The Singer Building, which once stood out the glorious sentinel of lower New York, is now only one of many that make the skyline so daringly picturesque.

COMMERCE ENCIRCLING THE SEVEN SEAS

It was to New York's splendid position as a seaport that the early growth of the city w^as due, and it is that same position which makes it the peer of American cities today. New York's share of the total foreign commerce of the United States was 46 per cent in 1914, the domestic exports amounting to no less than $845,000,- 000. The shrewd Dutch settlers of the little old town of New Amsterdam could never have imagined such wealth.

Ships of a hundred different lines ply to and from the great piers that line the rivers, carrying their cargoes and millions of passengers to and from ports all over the 16 "*

Photo by lirown Br

Wall Street, Known Around the World. This narrow canyon street in the lower part of the borough of Manhattan is the fintuicial center of the United States. Trinity Church (founded in 1696 and rebuilt in 1839) with its quaint old churchyard lies at the head of the street on Broadway, its spire insignificant amid the giant skyscrapers that surround it.

Photo by Brown Bros.

Grant's Tomb on the Hudson. It was Grant's own wish that his body should rest in New York, where his last years were spent, and the memorial on Riverside Drive is a fitting burial place. His own immortal phrase, "Let us have peace," is carved above the portico.

globe, for New York is indeed a great cosmopolis, to which products and peoples inevitably are directed.

THE GATHERING GROUND OF MANY PEOPLES

Here all countries are represented, and the East Side especially is a vast melting pot where Italians, Lithuanians, Russians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Greeks, Poles and Hungarians — Americans-in-the-making — congregate. Many-storied tenements stand in unabashed disorder, clothes and bedding ornamenting the front fire-escapes, and pushcarts Hning the streets where children throng to play and women in kerchiefs and shawls chatter and buy. Chinatown, also, must not be forgotten, with its fascinating shops and inhabitants of a nation which possessed both culture and religion many thousand years before America was born. In other quarters are found other Orientals — ^Arabs, Armenians, Turks and Syrians — ^weaving their gorgeous fabrics and selling them to him who wiU buy. Japanese stores there are also, German gardens, and a quaint French quarter — aU within this most American of American cities. It is said that there are in New York City more Germans than in any German city and more Irish than in Dublin.

HISTORIC PLACES

Places of historic interest there are, too — Battery Park, once the famous Castle Garden; Fraunces' Tavern, Broad and Pearl streets, where Washington took leave of his officers in 1783; Jumel Mansion, 160th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, the headquarters of Washington and also of Sir Henry Clinton; St. Paul's Chapel, Broadway and Vesey Street, built in 1766 and still

2 17 preserved with Washington's and Governor Clinton's pews, monuments and relics intact — a constant reminder amid all the bustle of the downtown district of the early days, now long since gone by. Near by is also Trinity Church (established in 1697), just at the head of Wall Street, a curious anomaly^ though united to that money center by its wealthy church society, the wealthiest in America, and by the names of some of the distinguished dead whose remains lie in the sleepy old churchyard of worn gravestones and naive inscriptions; and in Wall Street at the corner of Nassau is the United States Sub- Treasury, on the site of Federal Hall in which assembled the first American Congress and where Washington took the first oath of office. A statue of the great chief stands in front of the building.

WALL STREET

Here in Wall Street is the financial center not only of New York but of the whole nation. The New York Stock Exchange at Broad Street is the world's greatest market of stocks, bonds and securities; and in the Sub- Treasury deposits sometimes reach a total of $225,000,000. At the Produce Exchange in Whitehall Street three thousand members transact annually business amounting to over a billion dollars.

THE GREAT WHITE WAY

Wall Street is plainly ''down town." The retail business of the city has moved steadily north, following Broadway, until the center of the shopping district is now, roughly, Thirty-fourth Street. The theaters are pretty well scattered throughout the city, but tend to 18 concentrate at Forty-second Street and Broadway and it is in this neighborhood perhaps that the ''Great White Way" is most resplendent. To walk Broadway after the theaters have disgorged on Saturday evening is to enter a romantic land where night is not and gayety is unceasing. Electric signs dazzle on every hand and men and women good-naturedly jostle each other in the stream that washes the sidewalks. Overhead, in a blaze of light, a huge eagle with a fluttering ribbon caught in his beak flaps his nightly journey toward a five-foot bottle of beer, a kitten tangles and untangles herself in a spool of well-known silk, and a huge name of cigarette fame lends its luster to the dazzHng highway. From a tall building, Broadway seems a long curving ribbon of white light.

RIVERSIDE DRIVE

If Broadway is the people's street, Fifth Avenue is the parade ground of the wealthy. Here are the fashionable shops and here in the afternoon smartly dressed men and women love to saunter as well as shop. Up and down the sidewalks they surge while the street is black with automobiles and omnibuses wriggling in and out between one another and dodging the crowds. Most New Yorkers enjoy these busses and few visitors miss riding in them, viewing from a comfortable seat on the open top the great stores of lower Fifth Avenue and the homes of the Astors and other millionaires farther up. From Fortieth to Forty-second Street, one passes on the left the Public Library, a splendid classic building containing over a million volumes, and on the right at Fifty-second Street St. Patrick's Cathedral, the largest and most beautiful

Gothic church in America. At Fifty-ninth Street one strikes Central Park, 879 acres of diversified woodland, meadow, lawns and ponds, containing the MetropoHtan Museum of Art, the finest of its kind in America, with many works of modern artists as well as of the old masters.

RIVEKSIDE DRIVE"^

Some of the omnibuses follow Riverside Drive all the way to Grant's Tomb at 123d Street, and a beautiful ride it is, with stately houses fronting on the Hudson and a fitting monument to one of the nation's great men at the end. Stately and beautiful the mausoleum stands upon a grassy terrace where its white marble can be seen far up and down the river. Over the entrance are inscribed the immortal words of the beloved soldier; ''Let us have peace."

A people's university

Not far away, on Morningside Heights, is the campus of Columbia, once the University of the City of New York in name and still that in fact, offering the students of the city courses such as may be found in no other imiversity this side the sea. Perhaps the most interesting of the buildings here is the Library, built in 1900. Around a portion of this extends an open colonnade, known as the HaU of Fame. Here the names of great Americans (chosen at intervals by the baUot of a hundred prominent persons) are inscribed on memorial tablets.

Columbia offers many different courses, including Medicine, Law, Mines and Engineering. The School of Journalism, endowed by Joseph Pulitzer, that strange 20

Photo by Brown B

Columbia University on Morningside Heights.

A bird's-eye view of the campus showing the Universitj' Library with its dome and pillars, one of the most beautiful buildings in America. Situated in New York City, Columbia has become the Mecca of students from all parts of the country.

Copyri(jht by Underwood and Underwood, N.

In the Land of Hendrick Hudson. At the upper end of the parade ground of the United States Mihtary Academy at West Point, New York, looking north up the Hudson River toward Newburg. Tliis stream has played a large part in American history, offering in colonial times through Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River a comparatively easy route to Canada.

and interesting dean of American newspapers, was opened here in 1912. Those who cannot attend the regular courses are offered opportunities in the Summer School and in the system of extension teaching, w^hereby courses of lectures are given throughout the city.

THE AMERICAN RHINE

But the caU of the water is in our blood, for we have caught fascinating gUmpses of the upper Hudson River and long to follow its course. To be sure it does not possess the ruined castles and quaint old towns that lend charm to the Rhine, but the scenery is at all times lovely and sometimes impressively grand. ''The Danube has in part ghmpses of such grandeur," said George William Curtis, ''the Elbe sometimes has such delicatety penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea." And if the Rhine has its legendary w^ealth, the Hudson has its Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, immortalized by Washington Irving whose "Sunny side" home is still one of the lovely landmarks of this fascinating stream, and is associated too with the undying romances of James Fenimore Cooper.

In ascending the Hudson from New York, there are passed on either hand the heights which were covered in early Revolutionary days with the defenses of New York, Fort Washington and Fort Lee, but beyond the names no trace of either fort remains. The British captured both in the latter part of 1776, and afterwards held them. Fort Lee is now a favorite picnic ground. Above it rises the great wall of the Pahsades, the wonderful formation built up of columned trap rock that extends along the western river bank for twenty miles up to Piermont, this rocky buttress making the northern limit of New Jersey on the Hudson River. To the eastward, the opposite shore of the Hudson is a succession of villas and fashionable summer resorts, whither the New York people come out, seeking rest.

WEST POINT

The most famous locality in the Highlands is West Point. ''In this beautiful place," wrote Charles Dickens, "the fairest among the fair and lovely Highlands of the North River; shut in by deep green heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of Newburg, along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here and there a skiff, whose white sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her from the gullies in the hills, hemmed in besides, all around, with memories of Washington and events of the Revolutionary War, is the military school of America." Opposite Anthony's Nose, Montgomerj^ Creek flows in, its mouth broadened into a little bay. Upon the high rocks at the entrance, on either side, stood the great defenders of the lower Highlands during the early Revolution, Forts Clinton and Montgomery, considered impregnable then, and to bar the river passage a ponderous iron chain on timber floats was stretched across the channel to Anthony's Nose.

The Hudson River, some distance above, bends sharply around the little lighthouse on the end of West Point, its extremity being a moderately sloping rock covered with cedars, the reef going deep down into the water, while on its highest part is a monument to General 22

Kosciusko, who had much to do with constructing the original mihtary works. The flat and elevated surface, some distance inland, plainly visible both from up and down the river, is the Parade Groimd, the Academic buildings being constructed around it, while behind them on higher ground is the dome-crowned library. The surface of West Point is not so high as the surrounding mountains, but its advanced position completely commands the river approach both ways, and hence its military importance. Along the water's edge at the Point the rocks are worn smooth, it is said, by so many cadets sitting there in the sunamer time. Just above is the cove, where they swim and practice, at pontoonbridge building, and back of this cover is the artillery groimd, the guns being fired at the huge side of Old Cro' Nest Mountain to the northward.

THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS

Still farther north one comes into the fascinating region where the Catskill Mountains rise in all their glory, spreading across the western horizon at a distance of eight to ten miles from the Hudson River. They stretch for about fifteen miles, and the range covers some five hundred square miles. The most prominent peaks in the view are Round Top and the High Peak, rising thirty-four hundred and thirty-six hundred feet. The Indians knew these grand peaks as the Onti Ora, or '^Mountains of the Sky," thus named because in some conditions of the atmosphere they appear like a heavy cumulus cloud hanging above the horizon. The weird Indian tradition was that among these mountains w^as held the treasury of storms and sunshine for the Hudson, presided over by the spirit of an old Indian squaw who dwelt within the range.

It was among these wonderful mountains that Washington Irving was thus enabled to discover Rip Van Winkle. Down on the mountain side, upon the margin of a deep dark glen leading up from Catskill ViUage, stands Rip Van Winkle's ancient little cabin. It is within the vast amphitheater where Hendrick Hudson's ghostly crew held their revels and beguiled him to drink from the flagon which put him into his sleep of twenty years.

Among these mountains one would like to linger long enough at least to hear the Dutch ship's company from the "Half Moon" playing their game of nine-pins, but sightseeing days are short when there's the whole of America to be visited, and one must return to the vast city where Irving in his busy years found a home, and where Cooper, too, wrote many of his Leatherstocking tales.

The New York of their day has long since passed away, as the present city whose towers spell arrogance will perhaps some day also pass.

"And we who builded this citadel in fabric of brick and brass Shall build again for the city's Soul and the things that will not pass. In Babel the tongues were all confused; but that ancient curse is done. And here have the scattered tribes of earth fore-gathered again as

one.

Out of all lands we lift our hands to build with steam and fire; And towering vast we shall raise at last the City of Man's Desire."*

For the present New York satisfies many of our twentieth-century desires, and if the New York of Fifth

* C. L. Edson in the Evening Mail, 24

Avenue and the towering skyscrapers is also the New York of pohce graft and Tammany and righteous industrial unrest, it is still a city not without ideals, a city that in many ways has demonstrated the value both of efficiency and of imagination.

CHAPTER 11 IDEAS AND IDEALS

BOSTON, THE ANCIENT HUB OUR DECOROUS NEW

ENGLAND SISTER FUNDAMENTAL IDEALS SACRED

AMERICAN RELICS THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY BOSTON

COMMON THE PUBLIC LIBRARY ^ART AND MUSIC —

"the MOTHER CHURCH " BRAVE OLD HARVARD

BOSTON HARBOR.

NEW ENGLAND is a place of historic memories and it is around Boston, ''the hub of the universe," that they center. Prior to the Revolution, indeed, Boston was the largest and most important American city, reaching a population of 25,000 inhabitants — no small number as cities went at that time. As early as 1663 an English visitor, describing the place, wrote that ''the buildings are handsome, joining one to the other, as in London, with many large streets, most of them paved with pebblestones. In the high street toward the Common there are fine houses, some of stone"; and indeed, as one historian truly says, "Philadelphia was a forest and New York was an insignificant village long after its rival, Boston, had become a great commercial town."