thrown me into the artificial brook. Another great Bostonian expert,
after leading me on to admit that I had come in order to try to learn
the real Boston, turned upon me with ferocious gaiety, thus: "You will
not learn the real Boston. You cannot. The real Boston is the old Back
Bay folk, who gravitate eternally between Beacon Street and State Street
and the Somerset Club, and never go beyond. They confuse New England
with the created universe, and it is impossible that you should learn
them. Nobody could learn them in less than twenty years' intense study
and research."

Cautioned, and even intimidated, I thought it would be safest just to
take Boston as Boston came, respectfully but casually. And as the
hospitality of Boston was prodigious, splendid, unintermittent, and most
delightfully unaffected, I had no difficulty whatever in taking Boston
as she came. And my impressions began to emerge, one after another, from
the rich and cloudy confusion of novel sensations.

What primarily differentiates Boston from all the other cities I saw is
this: It is finished; I mean complete. Of the other cities, while
admitting their actual achievement, one would say, and their own
citizens invariably do say, "They will be ..." Boston is.

Another leading impression, which remains with me, is that Boston is not
so English as it perhaps imagines itself to be. An interviewer (among
many) came to see me about Boston, and he came with the fixed and sole
notion in his head that Boston was English. He would have it that Boston
was English. Worn down by his persistency, I did, as a fact, admit in
one obscure corner of the interview that Boston had certain English
characteristics. The scare-head editor of the interviewing paper,
looking through his man's copy for suitable prey, came across my