(IV)

It was three or four days before he could again form any coherent
picture to himself of what this new life would mean when once it
was really under way.

He was lodged in the Government buildings, adapted a few years
before from the old temple of the Christian Scientists; and each
day in the rotunda he sat hour after hour with keen-faced
Americans, and the few Europeans who had accompanied the
emigration boats that now streamed in continually.

He flung himself into the dreary work, such as it was, with all
his power; for though he had little responsibility, he was there
as the accredited agent of the English ecclesiastical
authorities, and his business was to show as much alacrity and
sympathy as possible.

The city was, indeed, a scene of incredible confusion; and a
very strong force of police was needed to prevent open friction
between the belated and aggrieved Catholics for whom Boston
would in future be impossible as a home, and who had not yet
faced the need of migrating, and the new, very dogmatic
inhabitants who already regarded the city as their own. All
legal arrangements had, of course, been made before the first
emigrants set foot on the continent; but the redistribution of
the city, the sale of farms, the settling of interminable
disputes between various nationalities--all these things, sifted
although they were through agents and officials, yet came up to
the central board in sufficient numbers to occupy the members