This is the memory palace.

I'm Nate Tameo.

If the memories of old men looking back on their boyhoods are to be believed, there

were days back in the days before the Civil War, days during and some after, depending on

which old man, writing his memoirs, looking at words warbling with the shifting focus

of aged vision, at memories warbling in their way as they do.

There were days when the skies over Boston were filled with snowballs.

These men had spent their boyhoods on Beacon Hill, with a winter sun glinted off the

dome of the state house, copper back then, laid down by Paul Revere himself.

And the hill wasn't just where you'd find the seat of governmental power, it was where

you'd find the brick mansions of the bankers and the judges, the endowers of buildings

and ballfields at Harvard, the stately homes looking down upon the rest of the city, set

like a jewel above the emerald parkland of Boston common in the public gardens, the

home of the Boston Brahmins, the enlightened aristocracy whose forebears, not long before,

had helped establish a nation free of titles and royals, or who had at least been around

to get on the ground floor of the financial opportunities that arise during the founding

of such a nation.

People whose sons would grow up to be bankers and judges, endowers of buildings at Harvard,

and inherit those mansions, and write their memoirs of their boyhoods on Beacon Hill.

When they would be dressed like gentlemen in training, eaten collars, wool jackets and kneepants,

jaunty caps with little flaps to warm cold ears, wool and mittens that would have made boot time

problematic, where they're not governesses waiting in sun-warmed entryways to do it for them,

...