Some of our fashionable people, as the rich are
vulgarly called, will leave their airy, cool, well-appointed
establishments in Boston, with every luxury the market affords, in the
vain hope of finding comfort in such houses. They will leave their city
palaces, the large and convenient rooms, comfortable bedsteads and
mattresses, and all the delicacies of the season, and submit to being
stowed away on straw-beds or cots, even upon the floor, half-a-dozen in
a small chamber, or four deep in an entry, to be half-starved into the
bargain upon badly cooked fish and other equally cheap commodities, for
the mere sake of being able to think that they are enjoying the
sea-breeze." Had the writer of this satire lived to lodge for a night in
one of the palace hotels which now adorn Nantasket Beach he would have
sung another song.
The peninsula of Hull is graced by three gentle elevations,--Atlantic
Hill, a rocky eminence marking the southern limit of the beach; Sagamore
Hill, a little farther to the north; and Strawberry Hill, about midway
to Point Allerton. The last of these elevations is the most noted of
the three. On its summit is an old barn, which is not only a well-known
landmark for sea-voyagers, but a point of the triangulations of the
official harbor surveys. In 1775 a large barn, containing eighty tons
of hay, was burned on this spot by the Americans, that it might not be
secured by the British.
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