The novelist has gone, as the merchant and sailor went, as the Puritan magistrate and minister went. Another set of priceless [Illustration] associations is added to the old town which now must confess to factories and a foreign population like many another New England seaport. The resident of Salem lives in a modern, progressive, handsome city, made the more attractive by eccentric roofs, “Mackintire” doorways, carved wooden mantels and wainscoting, ever suggestive of the venerable and impressive past, a past that may well serve as a challenge to the children of Viking and Puritan, inviting them to a fine self-control and a broad public spirit. [Illustration] [Illustration] BOSTON THE TRIMOUNTAIN CITY BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON [Illustration: SUCCORY OR “BOSTON WEED.”] The summer traveller who approaches Boston from the landward side is apt to notice a tall and abundant wayside plant, having a rather stiff and ungainly stem, surmounted by a flower with soft and delicate petals and of a lovely shade of blue. This is the succory (_Cichorium Intybus_ of the botanists), described by Emerson as “succory to match the sky.” But it is not commonly known in rural New England by this brief name, being oftener called “Boston weed,” simply because it grows more and more abundant as one comes nearer to that city. When the experienced Boston traveller, returning to his home in late summer, sees this fair blossom on an ungainly stem assembled profusely by the roadside, he begins to collect his parcels and hand-bags, knowing that he approaches his journey’s end. The original Boston, as founded by Governor John Winthrop in 1639, was established on a rocky, three-hilled peninsula, in whose thickets wolves and bears were yet harbored, and which was known variously as Shawmut and Trimountain. The settlement itself was a sort of afterthought, being taken as a substitute for Charlestown, where a temporary abode had been founded by Winthrop’s party. There had been much illness there, and so Mr. Blackstone, or Blaxtone, who had for seven years been settled on the peninsula, urged the transfer of the little colony. The whole tongue of land then comprised but 783 acres--an area a little less than that originally allotted to Central Park in New York. Boston now includes 23,661 acres--about thirty times the original extent of the peninsula. It has a population of about 500,000--the State Census of 1895 showing 496,920 inhabitants. By the United States Census of 1890 [Illustration: Copyright by Daniel W. Colbath & Co., Boston, 1898. TRINITY CHURCH.]