room. In many hotels this book would have been the Bible. But here it
was the catalogue of the hotel library; it ran to a hundred and
eighty-two pages. On the other hand, there was no bar in the hotel, and
no smoking-room. I make no comments; I draw no conclusions; I state the
facts.

The warnings continued after my arrival. I was informed by I don't know
how many persons that Boston was "a circular city," with a topography
calculated to puzzle the simple. This was true. I usually go about in
strange places with a map, but I found the map of Boston even more
complex than the city it sought to explain. If I did not lose myself, it
was because I never trusted myself alone; other people lost me.

Within an hour or so I had been familiarized by Bostonians with a whole
series of apparently stock jokes concerning and against Boston, such as
that one hinging on the phrase "cold roast Boston," and that other one
about the best thing in Boston being the five o'clock train to New York
(I do not vouch for the hour of departure). Even in Cambridge, a less
jocular place, a joke seemed to be immanent, to the effect that though
you could always tell a Harvard man, you could not tell him much.

[Illustration: UNDER THE GREAT DOME OF THE CAPITOL]

Matters more serious awaited me. An old resident of Boston took me
out for privacy onto the Common and whispered in my ear: "This is the
most snobbish city in the whole world. There is no real democracy here.
The first thing people do when they get to know you is to show you their
family tree and prove that they came over in the _Mayflower_." And so he
ran on, cursing Boston up hill and down dale. Nevertheless, he was very
proud of his Boston. Had I agreed with the condemnation, he might have