egg-shell in a single night to obtain a supply of the plant.

Another old woman of this part of the town had nine cats which she was in the habit of consulting to enable her to give information as to where stolen goods were secreted.

Bunker Hill Monument

Charlestown is now a part of Boston, and is connected by bridges with the peninsula. On one of its heights rises the granite shaft of Bunker Hill Monument, which commemorates the famous battle fought there. The corner-stone was laid by Lafayette in 1825, and Daniel Webster was the orator of the occasion, as

he was also when the completion of the monument was celebrated in 1843. Inside of the shaft is a spiral stairway of two hundred and ninety-five stone steps, up which one can climb to the top. The material used in constructing the monument is granite from Quincy, and the cost was met by popular subscription. Roundabout are city streets solidly lined with buildings.

Aside from Bunker Hill, one of Charlestown's most notable claims to distinction is the fact that Samuel

Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was born there in 1791. He became a leading American painter, but was interested in chemistry, and in 1832 began devising apparatus to send electric messages. Three years later he exhibited the telegraph, operating with half a mile of wire. After struggling along under serious privations for eight years more, he succeeded in getting an appropriation from Congress to build an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. The number and character of the honors heaped on him in recognition of the value of his invention have probably never been equalled in the case of any other American.

Within a ten-mile circle drawn around Boston dwell half the inhabitants of the "Old Bay State," and they constitute one-fourth of the entire population of New England. Boston is an important manufacturing city. It is the greatest American market for leather and leather goods. As a wool market it is unsurpassed except by London, and wool is brought there in immense quantities from all over the world.

The older business part of the city is a maze of narrow crooked streets in which the stranger easily loses his way. These streets are said to follow the routes of the old lanes and cow paths that were made when the place was a country village.

In the adjacent region are many beautiful suburban towns. The finest of these is Brookline, which is a paradise of splendid estates. In the early days its

name was Muddy River, and the Boston merchants pastured their swine and cows there in the summer.

The city has suffered from various serious fires. In its first century it had a "great fire" about once in ten years on an average. But its most notable fire disaster occurred in November, 1872. The fire was

started in the early morning by a spark snapped from a furnace in the business section. The horses of the fire department were sick with a distemper, which was a great handicap to the department's efficiency. Sixtyfive acres were burned over, nearly eight hundred buildings were destroyed, there were thirteen deaths, and the property loss was seventy million dollars.

It lies well

The city is an almost ideal seaport. back in a bay that is protected from the ocean storms by two long slender arms of the land, one reaching southward and the other northward, with a deep channel between. On the outer side of the northwardreaching peninsula is Nantasket Beach, the most popular of Boston's seashore resorts. When the white men came it was the playground of the savages. The Indians would erect a pole on the beach, and hang it with beaver skins; and the swarthy braves ran races and played football to win these trophies. Their wild shouts could be heard above the roar of the breakers.

Boston Light. Here was erected in 1716 the first American lighthouse. The present tower was built in 1783

The harbor is dotted with islands. One little island near the entrance is known as Nix's Mate, and on it

there used to be a gibbet especially for pirates. Most of them, after they had been hung, were buried on the island in the sand, but whenever a ringleader paid the penalty of his villainy here, he was left hanging in irons from the gibbet, so that sailors coming into port would see the skeleton and take warning.

The best-known episode in the harbor's history is that of the Boston Tea Party. The British government was trying to force the Americans to pay taxes on the tea that was imported. But the Americans insisted that they could not be taxed without their consent. Many of them stopped drinking the foreign tea, and they would not use any kind of goods manufactured in Britain on which a tax was collected. They dressed in American homespun, and drank only tea that was smuggled in from Holland, or that which was made of sage, sassafras roots, and other things from their own gardens and woodlands.

On December 16, 1773, seven thousand people gathered in and around the Old South Meeting-house to protest against the landing of the cargoes of three tea-laden ships which had recently arrived in the harbor and lay beside what is now the Liverpool Wharf. The meeting was still in session at five o'clock in the afternoon, and candles had been lighted. A last appeal was sent to the governor, and he refused to act.

Meanwhile one hundred men had smeared their faces with soot in a neighboring tavern, and befeathered themselves like savage warriors. Now they appeared