T 



SEPARA TION FR OM HINGHAM. 259 



For three years this agitation had been rife in the pre- 

 cinct, and nothing had come of it but disappointments. 

 Now for three years the matter was given up. It was not 

 wholly given up, however, for the demand was too deeply 

 justified in the nature of things to be relinquished very 

 long. 



The harbor of this community was separated from the 

 other harbor at Hingham by a long fifteen miles — nearly 

 as much as from Boston ; and it was much easier on 

 account of the winds and tides to go to Boston than to 

 the other harbor of our own town. 



Add to this absurdity of keeping two such distant har- 

 1 bors under one town government, the other great difficulty 

 of a connection overland. 



The distance was five miles only, but such a five miles 

 as wearied both soul and body. The joltings of their two- 

 wheeled ox carts were simply terrible. And even if men 

 should ride horseback the journey was a tedious one, with 

 very few stretches of road where the horse could gallop 

 safely. And the Beechwood people had still farther, even 

 as many as nine miles to travel, if they went by the old 

 cartway to the Hingham town meetings. It is true that 

 the Beechwood people had a short cut of four miles to 

 the Hingham meeting-house, where the town meetings 

 were held ; but that short cut was only a footpath, so that 

 all who rode must go the long " nine-mile " way through 

 Cohasset. 



Another difficulty was the frequency of their town 

 meetings. Nowadays our town meetings occur usually but 

 once a year at a time when hours are not so precious to 

 laboring men ; but in those days there were sometimes four 

 in one year, part of them coming during the busy summer 

 or at any other inconvenient time. 



Who could wonder at the grumbling of dwellers in this 

 precinct who were unwilling to lose so much time attend- 

 ing to the town's business .-^ And attend they must, for 



