BOSTON AND ITS ENVIRONS. 37 



to a more disastrous agency — that of tlie conflagra- 

 tions whicli have visited lier with strange frequency. 

 A fire in 1811, which swept away the little house on 

 Milk street where Franklin was born — and which is 

 now occupied by the Boston Post — another in 1874, in 

 which more than one hundred buildings were de- 

 stroyed ; and the ''Great Boston Fire^^ of 1872, fol- 

 lowed by conflagrations in 1873,1874, 1877 and 1878, 

 seemed to indicate that the fire fiend had selected 

 Boston as his especial prey. To the terrible fire of 

 1872 many precious lives, property valued at eighty 

 millions of dollars, and the entire section of the citv 

 enclosed by Summer, Washington, Milk and Broad 

 streets were sacrificed. The scene was one a witness 

 never could forget. Mingled with the alarum of the 

 fire-bells and the screams and shouts of a fear-stricken 

 people came the sound of terriffic explosions, those of 

 the buildings which were blown up in the hope of 

 thus "starving out '^ the fire by making gaps which 

 it could not overstep, and to still further complete the 

 desolation, the gas was shut off", leaving the city in 

 a horror of darkness; but the flames swept on like a 

 pursuing Fury, wrapping the doomed city still closer 

 in her embrace of death, and who was not satisfied un- 

 til she had left the business centre of Boston a charred 

 and blackened ruin. 



This same district is to-day, however,- the most pros- 

 perous and architecturally preposessing of the business 

 sections of the city, practically illustrating another 

 phase of that same spirit of improvement and civic 

 pride which has overturned so many ancient idols and 

 to-day threatens others. Indeed, it would be a churl- 

 ish disposition which would lament the disappearance 



