6 HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



Not SO badly off are the lobsters ; for these crawling 

 insects of the sea are still in large companies upon the 

 sandy plateaus under water between the ledges outside the 

 harbor. They find scores of little cages with food inside 

 left there by the fishermen, and so they crawl in to dine. 

 Fatal is their temerity ; for they are soon drawn up to be 

 cooked in boiling caldrons for many dainty dishes in dis- 

 tant towns. So the epicure loves us for our red crusta- 

 ceans. But whether for beauty of landscape, or for small 

 taxes, or for coots, or for anything else, it is good to be 

 loved. 



This little town, with a population of 2,474, and an 

 assessed value of $5,293,371, with its third-class post office 

 and its second-class lighthouse, has undergone many 

 changes since the axe of the pioneers first resounded 

 among its wooded hills. 



Some of the most rapid of these changes are occurring 

 now, for within the last decade or more this community 

 has been caught in the spreading environs of its neighbor- 

 ing metropolis, Boston, and is being steadily transformed 

 from an ancient New England sea town into a modern 

 suburb. 



It will be perhaps of a broader than local interest to 

 trace the movement of life in its evolution at this locality. 

 From the first crude methods of coaxing a livelihood out 

 of wild nature to the present complex employments, 

 there is a series of significant changes. Life was at first 

 a hunt for game and a labor for crops. It afterwards be- 

 came a community of farmers who gained more than a 

 living, so that a surplus was bestowed upon social life. 

 Still later the products of the community became great 

 enough to overflow into the world's markets, when cargoes 

 of fish were salted and shipped for consumers upon oppo- 

 site sides of the globe. 



The life of this community thus became functional to 

 the world's commerce. But later this stream of produce 



