NEW SERIES.

VOL. XIX. No. 5.

D

URING the first third of the

present century, for long or short journeys on land the stage coach was the regular public conveyance. In 1825 it cost twenty-five cents to ride in one of these stages from Boston to Roxbury. When the roads were good, on the most enterprising lines, the aim was to travel at the rate of ten miles an hour. In winter and spring it was considered peculiarly creditable if the coach was on time; and it was not unusual for trips to be altogether omitted. A person intending to take a trip down East, for instance to Portsmouth, to which the fare by mail coach was $4, would go to the Eastern Stage House in Ann Street and be booked in advance. On the appointed day,

coach started. In those days it took a day and a half, traveling night and day, to go by coach from Boston to New York. In 1829 a favorite route to New York was the following:-the stage left Boston at half-past five in the morning; the passengers breakfasted at Dedham at half past six; the stage was due at eleven in Providence, where a steamboat was taken for Newport and New York, arriving at the latter place, if the weather permitted, some time during the following day. By this route the fare was $8.

The work of the stage coach is to-day done by the steam railroad train and the electric street railway

car.

On the 7th of October, 1826, the granite railway, built to carry granite for Bunker Hill monument from the quarries in Quincy to tide water, was put into operation. The builder was Gridley Bryant, and the man who

very early in the morning, he would be called for at his residence and carried to the stage house from which the