up, and, hastily dressing, opened the door of my room and went
down-stairs. The hour was very early, it being not yet fairly light,
and I found no one in the lower part of the house. There was a
hat in the hall, and, opening the front door, which was fastened
with a slightness indicating that burglary was not among the
perils of the modern Boston, I found myself on the street. For
two hours I walked or ran through the streets of the city, visiting
most quarters of the peninsular part of the town. None but an
antiquarian who knows something of the contrast which the
Boston of today offers to the Boston of the nineteenth century
can begin to appreciate what a series of bewildering surprises I
underwent during that time. Viewed from the house-top the day
before, the city had indeed appeared strange to me, but that was
only in its general aspect. How complete the change had been I
first realized now that I walked the streets. The few old
landmarks which still remained only intensified this effect, for
without them I might have imagined myself in a foreign town.
A man may leave his native city in childhood, and return fifty
years later, perhaps, to find it transformed in many features. He
is astonished, but he is not bewildered. He is aware of a great
lapse of time, and of changes likewise occurring in himself
meanwhile. He but dimly recalls the city as he knew it when a
child. But remember that there was no sense of any lapse of time
with me. So far as my consciousness was concerned, it was but
yesterday, but a few hours, since I had walked these streets in
which scarcely a feature had escaped a complete metamorphosis.
The mental image of the old city was so fresh and strong that it
did not yield to the impression of the actual city, but contended
with it, so that it was first one and then the other which seemed
the more unreal. There was nothing I saw which was not blurred