But Boston is different. I found Boston hard to learn,
although it was a pleasant task to acquire knowledge, for I was led into
some of the quietest little Georgian streets I have ever been in, steep
though some of them were, and along one of the fairest of green walks--
that between the back of Beacon Street and the placid Charles.
Against Boston I have a certain grudge, for I could find no one to
direct me to the place where the tea was thrown overboard. But that it
was subjected to this indignity we may be certain--partly from the
testimony of subsequent events not too soothing to English feelings, and
partly from the unpopularity which that honest herb still suffers on
American soil. Coffee, yes; coffee at all times; but no one will take
any but the most perfunctory interest in the preparation of tea. I found
the harbour; I traversed wharf after wharf; but found no visible record
of the most momentous act of jettison since Jonah. In the top room,
however, of Faneuil Hall, in the Honourable Artillery Company's
headquarters, the more salient incidents of the struggle which followed
are all depicted by enthusiastic, if not too talented, painters; and I
saw in the distance the monument on Bunker's Hill.
My cicerone must be excused, for he was a Boston man, born and bred, and
I ought never to have put him to the humiliation of confessing his
natural ignorance.
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