One Boy's Boston 1887-1901
By Samuel Eliot Morison. With a Foreword by Edward Weeks. First published in 1962, by Houghton Mifflin. Northeastern University Press, 1983, 81 pp.
This charming book about a charmed boyhood provides an occasion for time travel. In 81 pages filled with historical detail, anecdotes, even limericks, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison takes us back to a Boston where horses, not cars, rode the streets, where houses were lighted by gas, not electricity, and where—hard to imagine in our own time—telephones were rare.
Morison, the author of more than 25 books—including The Maritime History of Massachusetts and Admiral of the Ocean Sea, a recreation of Columbus’s voyages—paints a portrait of the city as well as one of his own childhood, and he finds delight in both. As a boy, he loved the horses, the colorful trolleys, the winter sledding, and his rambles downtown with friends. He also takes great pleasure in depicting the eccentricities of the adults who surrounded him. Read More
