I sprang up, and, hastily dressing, opened the door of my room and went down-stairs.

The hour was very early, it being not yet fairly light, and I found no one in the lower part of the house.

There was a hat in the hall, and, opening the front door, which was fastened with a slightness indicating that burglary was not among the perils of the modern Boston, I found myself on the street.

For two hours I walked or ran through the streets of the city, visiting most quarters of the peninsular part of the town.

None but an antiquarian who knows something of the contrast which the Boston of today offers to the Boston of the nineteenth century can begin to appreciate what a series of bewildering surprises I underwent during that time.