The children appeared at once. That tall John, who looked little enough like a child, was lifting his sister Caroline from the carriage. Molly followed, and it was explained that the elder John, Isabella’s husband, had undertaken to bring Dick up from the train on foot and by the horse cars, that he might explain to him something of the geography of Boston, so that he might be a guide to the rest. Proper fears were expressed that they might be lost. But of course they were not lost, and, in due time, they also joined the jolly breakfast table, where they found the first comers seated.
The reader, if he be bright, already understands what if he be dull shall be now explained to him. Kate and Isabella are two mothers of families, tenderly attached in early life, who have been parted now in many years. Kate’s husband is a prosperous wool merchant in Boston, and she and her six children live in Roxbury, one of the pretty suburbs of that old town. Isabella and her husband are among the spirited and wise founders of Greeley, in Colorado. And, though they have not lived in that town now for some years, so that their names will not be found on its enlarging directory, all their four children were born there, and until this summer no one of the four has ever left Colorado. This summer all of them have come eastward, that boys and girls may practice their mountain swimming in the bath, well nigh matchless, of the beach well nigh perfect, at Narragansett Pier. And it has been arranged by great correspondence that, for a week before the hotels at the Pier are open, namely, for the second week of June, the whole family shall make a visit in Roxbury, so that they may come to know “Aunt Kate,” as Mrs. Dudley has always called herself, and Aunt Kate’s six children, who are to them all every whit as good as cousins.
All this, as has been said, the thoroughly intelligent reader understood as the different characters came forward. It has now been explained to readers less intelligent, so that we all start fairly together.
“George is so sorry to be away. But he had to take an early train to Providence, to be sure to be with you at dinner. He has left no end of love, and you are to do nothing but rest yourselves to-day.”
The young people of both clans looked amused at the idea of resting on a fine morning in June. And, in truth, the plans were soon made for a series of expeditions—which the reader will follow or not, just as he chooses—in which John Crehere, the father, with the practical assistance of Nathan Dudley, the oldest of Kate’s six children, laid out the seven days of their visit, so that all parties should, with due regard to the demands of pleasure, see in that time, all too narrow, the chief
LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
First Day.
“You see,” said Nathan, who was rather the historical member of the home crowd, and was at home somewhat distinguished for “poking about” in one and another corner—“you see, the absolute original landmarks of Boston are gone, or as much altered as they could be.”
“When the first people came here, old John Blackstone, and even Winthrop and Dudley, our Tom. Dudley, our ancestor, of course it was not called Boston. It was called Trimountain, or Tremont, I suppose by people in the fishing ships, because at the top of Beacon Hill there were three hummocks, like this,” and the boy cut a bit of bread into the shape he meant, two protuberances in the side of a hill a little higher.