A stroller wandering on Boston's waterfront will find in one of the better known wharving districts a pier that is a prolongation of State Street (known as King Street in Colonial days), the financial avenue of the City. There will be a penetrating tang of fish in the vicinity, and well might this be so for practically the only vessels that put into this wharf are fishermen's schooners and smacks. There is certainly nothing pretentious about this quay, and yet if some of its rotting timbers only had the powers of speech, what a story they might tell. It is, indeed, Long Wharf, the center of Boston's expanding shipping interests from early Colonial days up to the middle of the nineteenth century. However, we do not have to wait for the old timbers to acquire speech in order to ferret out the romance of Long Wharf; for there are references to it in most Boston histories, and in addition there are numerous business papers of the pier's proprietors now deposited in the Baker Library.

Sometime within the next six months it is believed that the new Government Archives Building at Washington, D. C., will be completed; and at this time the Federal Government will finally have a central depository for all of its old and valuable documents. Work began on the massive vault building, located halfway between the White House and the Capitol Building, about a year and a half ago, and the earliest possible completion date is now set for July 1.

“Good morning, Madame! I am working my way through college and have called on you today in order to obtain your help. For the paltry sum of seven cents a week you can assist me in my project, and what is more you can provide yourself with the world's best magazine.” What modern woman has not on a hundred occasions heard these or similar words poured from the mouth of an effervescent young man confidently poised on the front door step. Turn back time one hundred years and we find another American housewife, living in an unfrequented hamlet, who has been greeted by an assuming young fellow with words to this effect, “Madame, are you in need of any pocket sawmills? Horn gunflints? Wooden nutmegs? White oak cheeses? Tin bungholes? Or calico hogtroughs?” Having gained the attention and smile of this housewife, the peddler would then have launched into a laudation of his wares.

Some time ago we published an article on the laying of the Atlantic cable suggested by a copy of the Diary of the expedition, one of the few copies actually printed on board the cable-laying ship, the “Great Eastern,” found in the Baker Library. Another slant on the eventful career of the “Great Eastern” was brought to light in a newspaper clipping from the New York Times.