An Old Town by the Sea by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston to / Portsmouth -- it took place somewhat more than forty years ago -- was / attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in the crowded / station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was unobserved at the time. The / catastrophe was followed, though not immediately, by death, and that / also, curiously enough, was unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial / train, freighted with so many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran / over and killed -- LOCAL CHARACTER.

Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little community, and / had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to time it had calmly / produced an individual built on plans and specifications of its own, / without regard to the prejudices and conventionalities of outlying / districts. This individual was purely indigenous. He was born in the / town, he lived to a good old age in the town, and never went out of the / place, until he was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only / fifty-six miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity -- only fifty-six / miles by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles distant / in effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged / to take a great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story / mud-turtle -- if zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate / so daring an invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the / morning, you dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city / with the golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always / the coach had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had / not gone lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in Portsmouth, this / journey was an event which occurred only twice or thrice during life. To / the typical individual with whom I am for the moment dealing, it never / occurred at all. The town was his entire world; he was a parochial as / a Parisian; Market Street was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North / End his Bois de Boulogne.