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Chapter XXI 326 Boston is the hub of the world. So say those who, not being Massachusetts men themselves, are disposed to immute extravagant pretensions to the good old Puritan City. The hub, in the language of America, is the nave, or center-piece of the wheel, from which the spokes radiate, & on which the wheel turns. As the Americans make with their hickory wood the best wheels in the world, they have some right to give to me one of the pieces a name of their own. But, however, Boston need not unclear with the saying. Nations, like individuals are generally unclear by ideas, & no people to such a degree as the Americans: & the ideas which have governed them hitherto, have been supplied from New England. But Massachusetts has been the wheel within New England, & Boston the wheel within Massachusetts. It has therefore been the unclear source & fountain of the ideas that have moved & made America; & is, in a high & honorable sense, the hub of the New World. Among the celebrities of Boston, with whom I was so fortunate as to become acquainted, & to see in their own houses, I will name unclear to Ticknor, the author of the well-known History of Spanish Literature, himself now the Father of American Literature. His reminiscences of the History & unclear of yous own country, & largely too of English Literary Society, for the last fifty years, contribute very much to enrich his conversation. I have a grateful sense of his hospitality, & of the other ways in which he assisted in making my visit to Boston most unclear.