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I maintain that Boston, as one approaches it and passingly takes in the line of Bunker Hill Monument, soaring preeminent among the emulous foundry-chimneys of the sister city, is fine enough to need no comparison with other fine sights. Thanks to the mansard curves and dormer-windows of the newer houses, there is a singularly picturesque variety among the roofs that stretch along the bay, and rise one above another on the city’s three hills, grouping themselves about the State House, and surmounted by its India-rubber dome. But, after all, does human weakness crave some legendary charm, some grace of uncertain antiquity, in the picturesqueness it sees? I own that the future, to which we are often referred for the “stuff that dreams are made of,” is more difficult for the fancy than the past, that the airy amplitude of its possibilities is somewhat chilly, and that we naturally long for the snug quarters of old, made warm by many generations of life. Besides, Europe spoils us ingenuous Americans, and flatters our sentimentality into ruinous extravagances. Looking at her many-storied former times, we forget our own past, neat, compact, and convenient for the poorest memory to dwell in. Yet an American not infected with the discontent of travel could hardly approach this superb city without feeling something of the coveted pleasure in her, without a reverie of her Puritan and Revolutionary times, and the great names and deeds of her heroic annals. I think, however, we were well to be rid of this yearning for a native American antiquity; for in its indulgence one cannot but regard himself and his contemporaries as cumberers of the ground, delaying the consummation of that hoary past which will be so fascinating to a semi-Chinese posterity, and will be, ages hence, the inspiration of Pigeon-English poetry and romance. Let us make much of our two hundred and fifty years, and cherish the present as our golden age. We healthy-minded people in the horse-cars are loath to lose a moment of it, and are aggrieved that the draw of the bridge should be up, naturally looking on what is constantly liable to happen as an especial malice of the fates. All the drivers of the vehicles that clog the draw on either side have a like sense of personal injury; and apparently it would go hard with the captain of that leisurely vessel below if he were delivered into our hands. But this impatience and anger are entirely illusive.

We are really the most patient people in the world, especially as regards any incorporated, non-political oppressions. A lively Gaul, who travelled among us some thirty years ago, found that, in the absence of political control, we gratified the human instinct of obedience by submitting to small tyrannies unknown abroad, and were subject to the steamboat-captain, the hotel-clerk, the stage-driver, and the waiter, who all bullied us fearlessly; but though some vestiges of this bondage remain, it is probably passing away. The abusive Frenchman’s assertion would not at least hold good concerning the horse-car conductors, who, in spite of a lingering preference for touching or punching passengers for their fare instead of asking for it, are commonly mild-mannered and good-tempered, and disposed to molest us as little as possible. I have even received from one of them a mark of such kindly familiarity as the offer of a check which he held between his lips, and thrust out his face to give me, both his hands being otherwise occupied; and their lives are in nowise such luxurious careers as we should expect in public despots. The oppression of the horse-car passenger is not from them, and the passenger himself is finally to blame for it. When the draw closes at last, and we rumble forward into the city street, a certain stir of expectation is felt among us. The long and eventful journey is nearly ended, and now we who are to get out of the cars can philosophically amuse ourselves with the passions and sufferings of those who are to return in our places. You must choose the time between five and six o’clock in the afternoon, if you would make this grand study of the national character in its perfection. Then the spectacle offered in any arriving horse-car will serve your purpose. At nearly every corner of the street up which it climbs stands an experienced suburban, who darts out upon the car, and seizes a vacant place in it. Presently all the places are taken, and before we reach Temple Street, where helpless groups of women are gathered to avail themselves of the first seats vacated, an alert citizen is stationed before each passenger who is to retire at the summons, “Please pass out forrad.” When this is heard in Bowdoin Square, we rise and push forward, knuckling one another’s backs in our eagerness, and perhaps glancing behind us at the tumult within. Not only are all our places occupied, but the aisle is left full of passengers precariously supporting themselves by the straps in the roof. The rear platform is stormed and carried by a party with bundles; the driver is instantly surrounded by another detachment; and as the car moves away from the office, the platform steps are filled.