The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
A home in the newer St. Louis 232
Steamboat at the New Orleans levee 244
The big cathedral, San Antonio 256
San Juan Mission, San Antonio 262
The arch at 17th Street, Denver 270
Seattle, Puget Sound and the Olympics 282
Where the Pacific rolls up to San Francisco 294
The Mission Dolores, San Francisco 302
A Church parade in Montreal 320
Looking from the Terrace into Lower Quebec 334
Four Brethren upon the Terrace 340
THE PERSONALITY OF AMERICAN CITIES
1
OUR ANCIENT HUB
There are more things forbidden in Boston than in Berlin--and that is
saying much. You may be a citizen of a republic, but when you come to
the old Bay State town you suddenly realize that you are being ruled. At
each park entrance is posted a code of rules and regulations that would
take a quarter of an hour to read and digest; in the elevated and
trolley cars, in public institutions and churches, even in shops and
hotels, the canons laid down for your conduct are sharp in detail and
unvarying in command. You may not whistle in a public park, nor loiter
within a subway station, nor pray aloud upon the Charlesbank. And for
some reason, which seems delightfully unreasonable to a man without the
pale, you may not take an elevated ticket from an elevated railroad
station. It is to be immediately deposited within the chopping-box
before you board your train. As to what might happen to a hapless human
who emerged from a station with a ticket still in his possession, the
Boston code does not distinctly state.
And yet--like most tightly ruled principalities--Boston's attractiveness
is keen even to the unregulated mind. The effect of many rules and
sundry regulations seems to be law and order--to an extent hardly
reached in any other city within the United States. The Bostonian is
occasionally rude; these occasions are almost invariably upon his
overcrowded streets and in the public places--until the stranger may
begin to wonder if, after all, the street railroad employés have a
monopoly of good manners--but he is always just. His mind is judicial.
He treats you fairly. And if he knows you, knows your forbears as well,
he is courtesy of the highest sort. And there is no hospitality in the
land to be compared with Boston hospitality--once you have been admitted
to its portals.
[Illustration: Boston's _Via Sacre_--Tremont Street--and Park Street
church]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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