THE FOREIGN TIDE. 53 



Upon It in 1824, and how the high water that 

 day washed upon both sides of the street. 

 Since then Boston has outgrown herself, and 

 has overflowed, because of the foreign tide 

 that has poured in upon her. One can 

 scarcely take up a Boston newspaper without 

 reading columns of reminiscences, in which 

 there is always a touch of sadness, a mourning 

 for departed days. Wealth and splendor, 

 population and even culture, afford no conso- 

 lation to these desponding antiquarians. The 

 Boston of their fathers, the American Boston, 

 has gone, and a new Boston, a Boston of 

 foreigners, has taken its place. When Dor- 

 chester twenty years ago was annexed, it 

 seemed very hard for the people of that 

 ancient borough to give up its name. They 

 thought that Boston should have been an- 

 nexed to Dorchester, but they were obliged to 

 succumb to numbers, and the alien tide has 

 swept over them too, and has nearly washed 

 out their Puritan Sabbath, to which they held 

 on longer with traditional reverence than 

 almost any other town in Massachusetts. 



I ride slowly and reverently by the old 

 meeting-house and by the old homestead 

 where I was born. The latter is sacred to my 



