Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/38

2 Heaven comes. To people in this neighbor hood to-day, I may say that the upper part of the main street in Charlestown gives a very good idea of what the whole of Washington Street south of Winter Street was then. And, by the way, Washington Street was much more often called Main Street than by its longer name.

The reader must imagine, therefore, a large, pretty country town, where stage-coaches still clattered in from the country, and brought all the strangers who did not ride in their own chaises. Large stables, always of wood, I think, provided for the horses thus needed. I remember, as I write, Niles's stable in School Street, a large stable in Bromfield Street, afterward Streeter's, the stables of the Marlborough Hotel in Washington Street, and what seemed to us very large stables in Hawley Street—all in the very heart of the town, and on a tract which cannot be more than twelve acres. When, in 1829, it was reported that the new Tremont House was to have no special stables for its guests, the announcement excited surprise almost universal; and to us