Leaves of Knowledge/Chapter 23
BOSTON, THE EASTERN HUB
CHAPTER XXIII.
Boston, the Eastern Hub.
I passed on the way through the State of Connecticut, with a short stop at the "Elm City" and metropolis, New Haven, an important commercial and manufacturing center. I also stopped at Providence, the capital and largest city of Rhode Island, where there are important shipping interests.
I arrived at Boston, the capital and largest city in the State of Massachusetts, and fifth city of the nation. Boston is one of the chief commercial and literary cities of America; has an extensive foreign and coasting trade, with numerous steamship lines and is the terminus of many railroads. While here I visited all the important and interesting parts of original Boston, Charleston, Somerville, Back Bay, Cambridge and Brookline. Also State street, famous in history, and the state capitol, where hundreds of flags of the Indian, Revolutionary and Civil Wars are kept for public inspection, showing, all tattered and torn and with many blood stains, what the early settlers of this patriotic city had to undergo.
I also visited the site of Bunker Hill, Bunker Hill monument, Harvard university, Boston public gardens, Faneuil hall, public library, art galleries and many monuments and statues.
One day, as I was viewing the statue of a long since departed hero, a Bostonian eastern friend, who was showing me the sights of the city, said: "You have nothing like this in the west." I appeared to be sad, and said "No." He looked at me with pity, which caused me to smile, remarking that I had noticed that here and elsewhere in the east, the heroes had monuments or statues erected to their memory, whilst our heroes in the west were alive and above ground, and did not need statues or monuments. And as I had found practically an entire city from Washington to Boston, I decided that some of the people should go beyond the Missouri, to the Rockies or the Pacific Coast, and get their ideas enlarged and advance with that bright and enterprising class of people, that are pushing ahead and building up the most prosperous section of our nation.
The State of Massachusetts has numerous important manufacturing towns, the principal ones being Lowell, Fall River, Holyoke and Lawrence, having extensive cotton factories; Worcester, Springfield and Taunton, with iron and steel industries; Lynn, boot, shoe and harness factories. Also the important fishing towns of Gloucester, Yarmouth and Provincetown.
It has over three hundred miles of coast line, bordering on the Atlantic ocean, with the principal harbors at Boston, Salem, Beverly, New Bedford and Marblehead.
Shipbuilding is largely carried on at Boston, Newburyport and Essex. The largest arsenal and armory in the United States is at Springfield. The State has numerous universities, colleges and normal schools, in addition to its excellent public schools. Boston is well supplied with depots. Besides numerous smaller ones, it has the beautiful New South Terminal station of the Michigan Central, Boston and Albany, and New York Central Railways, which is one of the finest and largest railway depots in the world, and is conveniently located to the center of the city; and the large union depot of the Boston and Maine Railroad, from where I left, one warm June evening, wending my way along the coast of New Hampshire, through the State of Maine, and across the Canadian border, to Fredericton, New Brunswick.