Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: .ough, next to Bos- lomes Boston Pre- he term can very 11 referring to Bea- edges and over- taon and is still the : section of the city, [on Preferred, this (till stands for the the permanence, the society; it stands y. Pusiderable altitude, ivered, by vigorous ftked height that it oston its first and h. The triple-peak top remained. The sent summit of the flome is at the same ill itself originally, places there are tio and against thebuildings for the aid of pedestrians in icy weather, and there are notices at the foot of some of the hills to warn vehicles not to attempt them when the slopes are icy but to take some roundabout course instead —with Bostonian attention to detail, the particular course being suggested. And at teas or receptions the waiting motor-cars are likely to be standing with their wheels turned rakishly against the curb for safety. And on the most slippery days the motors and carriages that have dared to venture upon the actual slopes go dangerously, for the horses slip in nervous helplessness, and now and then some motor skids and slides and whirls and either dashes against the curb or slides swift and uncontrolled to the foot of the hill. And as to the name of the hill, no one need think that beacons are but a picturesque figure of speech in regard to long-past American days, for beacons were a very real and at the same time an extremely romantic feature of early life in this country. Baroness Riedesel, the wife of the Brunswick general captured with Burgoyne, tells that when she was with her captive husband in Cambridge there was an alarm which caused a rising of the entire countryside, that barrels of pitch blazed on the hilltops, and that for some days armed Americans came hurrying in, some of them even without shoes and stockings, but all eage...