It is not to be denied that provisions have been scarce in Boston, at times, since the days of the Puritans, hardly now to be realized. Long before the Revolutionary period, in 1711, during one of the wars between France and England, Admiral Sir Hovender Walker, with a fleet of fifteen men-of-war, and forty transports with upwards of five thousand men, arrived in the harbor on his way to the St. Lawrence River, for the protection of Canada. He wanted to victual his ships, and applied to Capt. Belcher (father of Gov. Jonathan Belcher), a rich and leading man, as being the only person who could undertake the service, and he declined it. Next to Mr. Andrew Faneuil, and he undertook it. Provisions were scarce and the price put up, so that a supply could not be had, and the governor was compelled to issue an "order for searching for provisions." The men, during the stay of the fleet, were in camp at Noddle's Island, and it is said that a formidable number of them deserted. CONCLUSION. We have thus travelled over some of the old avenues, ways, customs, and things, peaceful and warlike, more or less in connection with the early settlement, the mature town, and the gorgeous city, from 1630 to 1880; from the period of scarcity and deprivation to that of prosperity and abundance. The task has been delightful, and whatever may be thought of the ways and doings, and we may almost say the undoings, of the Puritans, the town which they planted and the principles they promulgated, rather than the intolerance they practised, have become permanent and sure. Now, indeed, there is neither intolerance nor scarcity; and however much our predecessors may have suffered we are now able to supply bread and beef to millions of people less favorably circumstanced. Perhaps nothing more distinctly or emphatically marks the character and quality of a people than their "ways and means" of living. It has been said that Americans are disposed to revel in big dinners; and, in fact, undertake to accomplish every thing with a big dinner, or at least celebrate the accomplishment of it in that way. One writer has said, if we welcome a guest it is done with a dinner; if we inaugurate a stock company or start a charity, it is pretty sure to have its relations with the market and the stomach. This may be partly so. A good dinner, social and liberal, is the reconciler, the inspiration, the motive power of good works generally; and what it cannot do, or at least help to do, is pretty sure not to be accomplished. Of course, all this is understood, and almost sure to be practised, so that, when any thing comes up, instead of going to bed to sleep on it, we hurry off to Parker's or Young's, or it may be, if the matter is very staid and respectable, to the old Tremont, and eat on it. The custom is in us--in the blood; it is Saxon, and comes naturally enough from the mother country. In England, the great diner-out, Douglas Jerrold, who