File:Boston, the place and the people (1903) (14761916544).jpg

Identifier: bostonplacepeopl00howem (find matches)
Title: Boston, the place and the people
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Howe, M. A. De Wolfe (Mark Antony De Wolfe), 1864-1960
Subjects: Boston -- History. (from old catalog)
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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way as to create citizens insteadof paupers. The municipality itself assumes its sharein the great undertaking by such means, beyond thepublic schools, as the highly developed system ofpublic baths, where the individual, observing simplerules for the good of all, may learn the alphabet ofresponsibility and its good results. At every turn this principle of responsibility presentsitself. Yet the best of qualities have their grave de-fects, and in Boston it is no rare phenomenon to seethe sense of responsibility so overplied as to becomeeither futile or morbid. The tendency has its pleasingmanifestation in the fulfilled desire of men and womenof every common interest to meet for weekly ormonthly dinners followed by the talking of shop.The same tendency is expressed less happily in theneedless multiplication of agencies for doing nearlythe same thing. Not only in the field of benevolenceand reform may this be seen, but in the more practicaldomain of trade and commerce, where boards i:r.J
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THE MODERN INHERITANCE 385 chambers and associations proceed with scattered shotsand consequently impaired authority. The root of the-matter Hes in a widespread impulse amongst individ-uals to do something about it, which frequentlymeans no more than to talk it over. To the critical attitude and the sense of responsi-bility, as characteristics of Boston, must finally be addedthat good principle of rebellion which we havefound Emerson noting in the people of the place from the planting until now. Here we have seenrebellion against many accepted things, — royal author-ity, the national policy of 1812, the established religionof New England, and the constitutional order of sla-very. The rebels have never represented the wholecommunity, nor always those elements of it whichseemed surest to prevail. They are still to be seenand heard. The Sunday orators on Boston Commonvent their grievances against an unequal world, gathertheir audiences under the very windows of the clubsand dweUing-hou

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