is 



To-day at Chicago nothing wins more praise and ad- 

 miration than the John Hancock house and it is said 

 that the Colonial exhibit in the Massachusetts depart- 

 ment exceeds in interest anything of the kind in the fair, 

 and that the old bureaus, the old bedsteads, and the 

 models of the old houses to be found there have a grace 

 and beaut}- in point of size, and model, and execution 

 that is not reached in the greater part of our modern 

 furniture or our modern dwellings. 



These houses are to be found along the New England 

 coast from Portsmouth, Rhode Island, to Wells, in 

 Maine. But there are more of them in Essex County 

 than any where else, more even than in Plymouth or 

 Middlesex. They are historic houses of America, and, as 

 a well-known writer says, they express both the English 

 freedom of the seventeenth century and the regard for 

 comfort and security and strength which our New Eng- 

 land fathers were obliged to consider when they built 

 homes of their own. 



They were wisely built by men who knew the climate 

 and by men who were founding families. They over- 

 looked the broad acres which their builders had redeemed 

 from the wilderness. Square, prim and strong, admirably 

 adapted to the age in which they were built, time has 

 mellowed their surroundings and made them one and all 

 pictliresque and important adjuncts in every hamlet in 

 the County. Every one is full of the traditions and his- 

 tor}- of its long departed occupants and of the people. 



From the windows of that house a child saw the gray 

 stockinged young farmers from Danvers tarry for a drink 



