An Old Town by the Sea by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass "up town," the streets / grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious -- streets fringed / with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private dwellings, / mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through the / centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on / houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of / the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have / pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and / sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the / authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree / within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the / beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when / the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in / fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the / fair town -- her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem / more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain / streets in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm. / You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the / overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery / even more graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous / elms and maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the / result of chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken / to preserve the trees.

There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to / arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies / to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees along some / favorite walk. Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading / from Middle Street to the South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of / a citizen who gave the labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that / windswept and barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees / seems to be a matter of heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen / instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or any / other wood from off the town common, excepting under special conditions.