as we are told in the town-records, "ordered his house to be cut and framed there."

Then sickness came upon them, the Lady Arbella and her husband being among the first to pass away in the land from which they had hoped so much. Of the lady Cotton Mather has said quaintly that "she took New England in her way to Heaven." She was only one of the many who died. Johnson in his "WonderWorking Providence" records that " in almost every family lamentation, mourning and woe were heard, and no fresh food to be had to cherish them. It would assuredly have moved the most lockt up affections to tears, had they past from one hut to another, and beheld the piteous case these people were in; and that which added to their present distress was the want of fresh water. For, although the place did afford plenty, yet for present they could find but one spring, and that not to be come at, but when the tide was down."

Enter, thereupon, Mr. William Blackstone, as the saviour of the enterprise! Blackstone was one of those who had come over with Sir Robert Gorges and had remained in spite of untoward conditions. On Shawmut (afterwards Boston) he possessed large holdings by virtue of a title Winthrop and his men later

acquired by purchase. Now, therefore, "he came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent Spring there; withal inviting him and soliciting him thither. Whereupon after the death of Mr. Johnson and divers others, the Governor, with Mr. Wilson, and the greatest part of the church removed thither; whither also the frame of the Governor's house, in preparation at this town, was also (to the discontent of some) carried; where people began to build there houses against winter; and this place was called Boston." Thus does the record incorporated in Frothingham's "History of Charlestown" tell the tale of Boston's actual birth. There are those who maintain that the story of our city's growth could very effectively be told by a series of historical tableaux; for the initial number on the program they name with excellent judgment the picture of Blackstone, the gentle recluse, exhibiting to John Winthrop the "excellent spring" of his own domain.

This act of Blackstone's was the more praiseworthy because he was a "solitary" by nature and frankly disliked men even remotely of Puritan stripe. He was at this time about thirty-five and had dwelt in his lonely hut on the west slope of what is now Beacon Hill, not

far from Beacon and Spruce streets, for about five years, spending his quiet days in trade with the savages and in the cultivation of his garden. Just why he had left England is not more clear than just why he later left Boston. But when he died in Rhode Island (May 26, 1675) he left behind him" 10 paper books" in which it is believed he may have told the story of his mysterious life. These were unfortunately destroyed by the Indians when they burned his house, however, and all that we further know of him is that he returned to Boston, after he had ceased to be an inhabitant of the place, and married the widow of John Stephenson, who lived on Milk street, on the site of the building in which Franklin was born.

In regard to a name for the new settlement there seems to have been absolute unanimity. By common consent it was called after the old-world city, St. Botolph's town, or Boston, of Lincolnshire, England, from which the Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband had come and and in whose noble parish church John Cotton was still preaching. The order of the Court of Assistants, -Governor Winthrop presiding," That Trimontaine shall be called Boston" was passed on the 17th of September, 1630, thus giving the death blow