Excerpt from Tercentenary of the Founding of Boston: An Account of the Celebration Marking the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Site of the City of Boston, Massachusetts It has been said that Boston is a state of mind rather than a place, but this is only partly true. It is a state of mind engendered in a place. The Puritan founders brought over its name from their homeland, but the city as we know it has grown out of the site it occupies. Its harbor, its trading ships, its three hills, its broken-country surroundings and the whole hinterland which it serves have moulded its history and entered into the fibre of its people. The first settlers would hardly recognize their descendants of today, even those who are of unmixed pioneer lineage. Of their stern religious faith and the gradual modifications, and even transformation in this particular, I need not speak. I may, how ever, mention other conspicuous traits which distinguished them, some of which have been influenced and modified by their removal to a different environment. Among these were the love of order, enterprise, the Spirit of liberty and a zeal for education. Respect for public order, little changed or impaired, persists among us to the present day. We have had our outbreaks of violence, our Tea Party, our Anthony Burns riot, the burning of the Ursuline Con vent, but only in great crises, when the passions of conflict for a moment escaped control. Year in and year out, as large cities go, we have not been a turbulent community. If we have differences we have learned, for the most part, to settle them through the courts or at the polls. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.