Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/21

Rh opinion on such improvements, may consult the study I have made on similar subjects in my book called "Sybaris." I am, however, an optimist, and after a thing has been done I accept it. I dictate these words as I lie on my back on a comfortable sofa in a comfortable room in the vestry of the church which stands where, in boyhood, I could have skated, or could have caught smelts for the next day's breakfast. For the temperature outside, at this moment, is ten degrees above zero, a temperature which was very favorable for the catching of smelts in those days.

Politically or socially, the period between 1820 and 1835 belongs to the period when Boston was turning to internal commerce and the development of manufacture, and was relinquishing that maritime commerce which had created her. The Southern and Western leaders of the country, not disinclined to thwart the maritime industries of New England, had attempted to build up what Mr. Clay called "the American system" of home manufacture. So soon as this system established itself, the New Englanders adapted themselves