Gaily broke the morning, and with its coming the boat landed at Foster’s wharf, in Boston. Maria had already risen. She went out, and up the stairway to the promenade deck, to look at Boston. The world seemed new to her. It was not that abode of honor, nor of love, nor of joy, which the years of her fancy had painted it. Boston! to her, a great and wonderful city. How much she had heard of Boston. It was before her, but she did not dream about it now as she had done so many, many times before, when her imagination played upon its hundred spires or traced it through and through. Her eye now drank the great reality, and the confused roar which she heard, and the still greater confusion of human beings and animal, which she saw, with the uneven, smutty-looking buildings, and the narrow avenues which threaded its pulsating heart, made her tremble. Oh! for a friend or a beggar to guide her footsteps. While in this state of uncertainty, a cab driver approached her, and very politely inquired if she wished to be taken to any part of the city? His pleasant and obliging demeanor gave her encouragement, and she frankly explained to him that she was here a stranger; that she must find a boarding house and secure a frugal sustenance by labor. At this he smiled and said “Certainly, step into my cab, and I will find you a good place without difficulty.” She assented; and the cab driver, sure of his prize, drove rapidly from the wharf, as a low and heartless laugh burst from the throats of a gang of starched loafers standing near, who knew both the purposes of the driver and the circumstances of the previous night.
Through winding streets and cross lanes, by sudden turns and jumbles, they drifted along. Now, cabby was in Washington street, amid a sea of trucks and horses, huge omnibusses and small fry, groping as in the dark; now he dashed through another street, on the west side of which spread out, like a moss carpet, the Common; the broad, the beautiful, the world-famed Boston Common. Then a turn was made, and Maria thought that they were going back to the very wharf they had left. But he soon bore off to the right, over by a large brick edifice, standing on an eminence and commanding one of the loveliest prospects which creation affords. As she saw it, through a pane in the cab door, she almost forgot her destitute situation and her sorrows. Passing this, they descended a hill, and at length cabby halted before a house in Lowell street. It was a house of ill-fame. The character of its inmates were of course unknown to her; her heart was even gladdened by the light of a bevy of gay faces at the window. As she alighted on the pavement, a raven, so unusual in that place, darted by so close to her that its pinions brushed the ribbons of her bonnet. She entered the house and was familiarly but respectfully welcomed, saying all the while in her bosom, “Thank God, it is well at last.”