LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 395 



remarked on the prevailing sentiment in favour of a 

 rotation of office. The same changes take place in 

 Massachusetts ; but I could see in this State an advan 

 tage in the system, when a friend of mine remarked to 

 me &quot; that the country farmers look upon it as a kind of 

 going to college,&quot; they have so many opportunities of 

 obtaining information during their stay in Boston. I 

 could see, in the general desire after this advantage, also 

 a reason why there should be a jealousy about giving 

 office to a rich man to whom such opportunities were 

 not so valuable, and another meaning, besides the most 

 obvious and vulgar one, in the objection sometimes 

 urged against a candidate for office, &quot; that he does not 

 require it.&quot; There can be no doubt that, whatever 

 faults they may possess, the inhabitants of New England, 

 and of Massachusetts especially, are a knowledge-loving 

 people, and that a recollection of their desire for this 

 knowledge might induce the traveller to put a more 

 favourable construction upon some of their peculiarities, 

 social and political, than he would at first be inclined 

 to do. 



I spent the first week in the Kevere House, a large, 

 well-provided, well-conducted, most excellent, and, con 

 sidering the fare and accommodation, most economical 

 hotel which leaves nothing to be desired by those who 

 like to be constantly in public, and where noises unavoid 

 ably prevail. I preferred, at the end of a week, how 

 ever, to remove to a boarding-house, where I could live 

 in greater quiet, avoid the constant recurrence of new 

 faces, and not be condemned to witness the daily flight 

 from table of nearly all around me before my own 

 dinner was half consumed. 



It is customary for persons in business to dine by con 

 tract at the public tables in these hotels, and hence one 

 reason for the haste at meals so often commented on by 

 travellers in the United States. They are not, as in our 



