Explore "The Land of the Large and Charitable Air" by Samuel M. Crothers on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Are you not constrayned (my fellow Academicks) to subscribe to this my opinion that the knowledge of no nation is so necessary as the searching out of a man's own Country and the manners thereof and the right understanding of that Commonweale whereof each one of us is a part and member. The Lamie that are a certaine kind of monsters are laughed at in the Poeticall Fables in that they were so blinde at home that they could not see their own affaires, could foresee nothing; but when they were once gone from home they were accounted the most sharpe-sighted and curious searchers of all others.... [Are not they] very ridiculous when as by taking long voyages unto farre remote people, after they have curiously sought out all matters amongst them are ignorant of the principall things at home and know not what is contayned within the precincts of their country, and are reckoned altogether strangers on their native soile? -- CORYAT'S _Crudities_.
The remark that Boston is not so much a place as a state of mind is one of the highest compliments ever paid to that city. Places are common enough, the maps are dotted with them, but a state of mind is a mark of distinction. The Bostonian enjoys his state of mind none the less because he is aware that outsiders are not always able to enter into it.