arm-chair which would have suited Falstaff, and whose tabular arms would
have held all Falstaff's tankards, and gazed through a magnified
port-hole at a six-masted schooner as it crossed the field of vision!
And I had never even dreamed that a six-masted schooner existed! It was
with difficulty that I left the Boston Yacht Club. Indeed, I would only
leave it in order to go and see the frigate _Constitution_, the ship
which was never defeated, and which assuredly, after over a hundred and
ten years of buoyant life, remains the most truly English thing in
Boston. The afternoon teas of Boston are far less English than that grim
and majestic craft.

[Illustration: THE PROMENADE--CITY POINT, BOSTON]

We passed into the romantic part of Boston, skirting vast
wool-warehouses and other enormous establishments bearing such Oriental
signs as "Coffee and Spices." And so into a bewildering congeries of
crowded streets, where every name on the walls seemed to be Italian, and
where every corner was dangerous with vegetable-barrows, tram-cars, and
perambulators; through this quarter the legend of Paul Revere seemed to
float like a long wisp of vapor. And then I saw the Christopher Wren
spire of Paul Revere's signal-church, closed now--but whether because
the congregation had dwindled to six or for some more recondite reason I
am not clear. And then I beheld the delightful, elegant fabric of the
old State House, with the memories of massacre round about it, and the
singular spectacle of the Lion and the Unicorn on its roof. Too proudly
negligent had Boston been to remove those symbols!

And finally we rolled into the central and most circular shopping
quarter, as different from the Italian quarter as the Italian quarter
was different from Copley Square; and its heart was occupied by a