plicity and ease of a phase of New England
life, which has now wholly passed away. I do
not flatter myself that I have succeeded in
presenting to the reader the simplicity and the
dignity of that life, so curiously combined as
simplicity and dignity were. Those people,
in the little seaport of Boston, lived and moved
as if they were people of the most important
city of the world. What is more, they meant
to make Boston the purest, noblest, and best
city in the world. And they lived there in
some forms of social life which would have be
come princes of sixty-four quarterings, with
some which were identical with those of the
log-cabin. Every man of them was an American, and believed to the sole of his feet that there was no fit government for men but that of a republic. All the same, their leaders, men and women, were dignified, elegant, and gracious in their bearing and manner; and there was no prince in the world who better understood the bearing and the customs of gentlemen and gentlewomen.
It was a good place in which to be born, and a good place in which to grow to manhood.
