[Illustration: SAMUEL ADAMS. FROM COPLEY'S PAINTING.[1]]

Three years ago the old State House in Boston was restored to its
original architectural appearance. After having fallen a prey to the
ruthless hand of commerce, been surmounted with a "Mansard roof,"
disfigured by a legion of business signs, made a hitching place for
scores of telegraph wires, and lastly been threatened with entire
demolition by the ever arrogant spirit of "business enterprise"; the
sentiment of patriotic veneration asserted itself and came to the
rescue. With an appropriation of $35,000 from the city, work was begun
in the fall of 1881, and by the following July the ancient building had
been restored to almost exactly its appearance in the last century. As
the Old State House now stands, it is identical with the Town House
which Boston first used for its town meeting May 13, 1713. This was nine
years before the birth of the man destined to become the foremost
character in the Boston town meeting of the eighteenth century--Samuel
Adams. Probably no other man who ever lived has been so identified with
the history of the Old State House as was he. The town meetings were
held in Faneuil Hall after 1742, but through the stormy years when the
Assembly met in the old building, Samuel Adams was in constant
attendance as clerk. His desk, on which he wrote the first sentences
ever ventured for American independence, and by which he arose, and,
with hands often tremulous with nervous energy, directed the exciting
debates, is to-day in the old Assembly chamber in the western end of the
building. In 1774 he went to Congress, but for a long period afterward
the Old State House was again his field of labor, as senator, as
lieutenant governor and then as governor.

The life of Samuel Adams ought to be more familiar than it is to the