“And these were Fort Hill, and Copp’s Hill, and Beacon Hill,” said his Aunt Isabella, as usual willing to show that she also knew something.
“Not quite yet, Aunt Isabella,” said the boy, modestly enough. “Most people think so. And I think most Boston people would tell you so, but they would be wrong. The three hummocks were all on Beacon Hill—that’s where the State House is now. Oddly enough they are all gone. They dug down the highest, where the Beacon was, part of it when they built the State House, and the rest afterward, to fill up the old mill pond. And the others were so steep that they had to be dug down for streets. But when I take you to the State House, and over Mt. Vernon and Somerset streets you will have tramped over them all.”
“I really think, mamma,” the boy added, “that at least the boys had better go to the top of the State House with me, first of all. You know Dean Stanley did.”
It is true that when Dr. Stanley came to Boston, true to the principles of Arnold’s school of history, he was eager first of all, to understand the precise topography of all he was to see. His first visit, therefore, was to the top of the State House, and his last, after his short stay, was to the same observatory, that he might be sure he had rightly placed all that he had seen.
In our case it need not be said that all the children ridiculed any doubts of their ability to climb two hundred and twenty stairs, more or less, and also ridiculed that other idea, that they were tired. Accordingly, though the two mothers took the morning to talk over the events of twenty years by themselves in Mrs. Dudley’s room, and while Mr. Crehere went down town to look up some business correspondents, Nathan was permitted, to his solid satisfaction, to take the young people to the top of the State House, to the Common, and anywhere else he chose. “And we will get our lunch where we do our work, mamma,” he said.
“Cousin Nathan,” said his new friend Caroline, who was no more his cousin than you are, “be sure that I see a ship, a real three-master, before we go away. Steamships I don’t care for.” And he promised.
This article is written in some hope that it may serve as a handy guide for visitors to Boston this summer, who may have time to make any of the excursions which these young people made during the week of their visit. We shall not, therefore, try so much to tell what they saw, as how they saw it, in the hope and wish that others may see the same. A street car brought the party to the head of Winter Street, and here Nathan brought them out of it upon what he called the Lower Mall, on the eastern side of Boston Common. Here he put all the girls upon a seat, while the boys grouped around him, and with his stick he drew a rough map on the ground.
“We may get parted from each other. But if any one is lost while you are in Boston, the streets are just as easy to understand as those of Philadelphia or Chicago, after you once know the law of the instrument.
“This hill we are on is the east slope of Beacon Hill. If we had followed in the car we could have ridden round it to Cambridge, in this open horse shoe which I draw.
“North of us, quite at the north of the town, is Copp’s Hill. We will see that another day. The streets around that are in curves also.