[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

It is too much the practice of our miscellaneous writers to seek a plot for their
tales either in distant climes and countries with whose peculiarities and belongings
they know little, and oftentimes even less than the readers themselves, or in such
places as are but partially known to the class for whom they write, thus giving
themselves a scope and latitude they would not otherwise possess in matters of description
and romance.

Now we humbly believe that one need not go out of the boundary of the city we
live in, to find matter enough, and truthful matter too, which if related so as to
bring it in its proper light before the public, would create a greater degree of interest
in the perusal as well as the instruction it would afford, than all the romances of
the present writing, laid in unknown regions, and in time of which history itself dare
not speak too confidently.

Who will doubt for a moment that a picture of every day life, of the times we
live in, and of a plot that is ready wrought to our hands by the occurrences of the
very hour we write in, is not of more interest and practical worth than a love story
of some Eastern Seraglio, or a `Tale with a Moral' laid in the Emerald Valley of
Cashmere?

We have a heart full of love for this Tri-Mountain city, and could write a volume
in its praise; of its commercial advantages, its truly hospitable and peculiarly New
England customs, of its liberal institutions and advantages, and in short of its fitness
in every respect to stand a model in our republic. Its early history is of itself a
romance of truth, so to speak, and affords an inexhaustible treasure to the novelist
and historian. We should have commenced by saying that we were born in Boston—
the reader would then have excused this digression at the outset.

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]