Chapter 1. OVING COLONIAL DAYS by N. HOFFER This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox .org. How's Masquerade? One afternoon, last summer, while walking along Washington Street, my eye was attracted by a signboard protruding over a narrow archway nearly opposite the old South Church. The sign represented the front of a stately edifice, which was designated as the Old Province House kept by Thomas Waite. I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose long entertained of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old royal governors of Massachusetts and entering the arched passage which penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops. A few steps transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small and secluded courtyard. One side of this space was occupied by the square front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted by a cupola on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible with his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure was kept this attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drown, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's watch over the city. The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to have been overlaid with a coat of light coloured paint. A flight of red free stone steps pence in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron, ascends from the courtyard to the spacious porch, over which is a balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to that beneath. These letters and figures, 16PS79, are wrought into the ironwork of the balcony and probably express the date of the edifice or the initials of its founder's name. A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on the right of which is the entrance to the bar room. It was in this apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levies, with vice regal pomp surrounded by the military men, the councillors, the judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do the manor. But the room in its present condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a dusky ahue from the deep shadow into which the province house is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine ever visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches which have been extinguished from the era of the revolution. The most venerable and ornamental object is a chimney piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue -figured china, representing scenes from scripture. And for the last time, Bernard may have sat beside the fireplace and