The Old Coast Road | Page 2

of their starting-place.
And perhaps the best spot from which to begin is the Common.
This pleasantly rolling expanse, which was set aside as long ago as
1640, with the decree that "there shall be no land granted either for
houseplott or garden out of y^e open land or common field," has been
unbrokenly maintained ever since, and as far as acreage goes (it
approximates fifty acres) could still fulfill its original use of pasturing
cows, a practice which was continued until 1830. It was here that John
Hancock's cattle grazed--he who lived in such magnificence on the hill,
and in whose side yard the State House was built--and once, when
preparations for an official banquet were halted by shortage of milk,
tradition has it that he ordered his servants to hasten out on the
Common and milk every cow there, regardless of ownership. Tradition
also tells us that the little boy Ralph Waldo Emerson tended his
mother's cow here; and finally both traditions and existing law declare
that yonder one-story building opening upon Mount Vernon Street, and
possessing an oddly wide door, must forever keep that door of
sufficient width to let the cows pass through to the Common.
Let us stand upon the steps of the State House and look out over the
Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont
Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying
Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American
painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not
for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its charming

beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first
address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the first time.
It was the windiness of this corner which was responsible for Tom
Appleton's suggestion (he was the brother-in-law of Longfellow) that a
shorn lamb be tethered here.
The graceful spire of Park Street Church serves not only as a landmark,
but is also a most fitting terminal to a street of many associations. It is
on Park Street that the publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
(now Houghton Mifflin Company) has had its offices for forty years,
and the bookstores and the antique shops tucked quaintly down a few
steps below the level of the sidewalk have much of the flavor of a bit of
London.
Still standing on the State House steps, facing the Common, you are
also facing what has been called the noblest monument in Boston and
the most successfully placed one in America. It is Saint-Gaudens's
bronze relief of Colonel Robert G. Shaw commanding his colored
regiment, and if you see no other sculpture in a city which has its full
quota you must see this memorial, spirited in execution, spiritual in its
conception of a mighty moment.
If we had time to linger we could not do better than to follow Beacon
Street to the left, pausing at the Athenæum, a library of such dignity
and beauty that one instinctively, and properly, thinks of it as an
institution rather than a mere building. To enjoy the Athenæum one
must be a "proprietor" and own a "share," which entitles one not only to
the use of the scholarly volumes in scholarly seclusion, but also in the
afternoon to entrance to an alcove where tea is served for three pennies.
Perhaps here, as well as any other place, you may see a characteristic
assortment of what are fondly called "Boston types." There is the
professor from Cambridge, a gentleman with a pointed beard and a
noticeably cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley--this, a
lady--with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which
marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily,
dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very
well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the

Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man
whose hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along
with your cup of tea for three cents, if--and here is the crux--you can
only be admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail
to look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying
Ground, where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel
Adams, Otis, Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant
for graveyards, this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than
worthy of further study.
This is one of the many things we could enjoyably do if we had time,
but whether we have time or not we must pay our respects to the State
House (one does not call it the Capitol in Boston, as in other cities), the
prominence of whose