Boston is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So

By E. B. White

When  I am out of funds and sorts

And life is all in snarls,

I quit New York and travel east

To Boston on the Charles.

In Boston, life is smoother far,

It’s easier and freer,

Where every boy’s a Harvard man

And every man’s a skier.

There’s something in the Boston scene

So innocent, so tranquil,

It takes and holds my interest

The same as any bank will.

For Boston’s not a capital,

And Boston’s not a place;

Rather I think that Boston is

A sort of state of grace.

The people’s lives in Boston

Are flowers blown in glass;

On Commonwealth, on Beacon,

They bow and speak and pass.

No man grows old in Boston,

No lady ever dies;

No youth is ever wicked,

No infant ever cries.

No orthodox Bostonian

Is lonely or dejected,

For everyone in Boston

With everyone’s connected.

So intricate the pattern,

The barroom of the Ritz

Becomes a jigsaw puzzle

Each life a piece that fits.

Each Boston girl is swept along

Down the predestined channel

To where she meets a Boston boy

Alert in Brooksian flannel,

Magnificent in fallen socks,

His hair like stubble weeds,

His elbow patch an earnest of

The fellowship of tweeds.

When Muzak plays in Boston,

It wakes celestial stings,

And I can sit in Boston

And think of many things.

For Boston’s not a capital,

And Boston’s not a place;

Rather I feel that Boston is

The perfect state of grace.

After a week of Boston

I rise and take the train

And I am always very glad

To see New York again.

New York seems doubly beautiful,

Its air as clear as Heaven’s;

New York – where life is always

At sixes and at sevens,

Where no one ever marries right,

And girls go off their trolley,

And young men go to NYU,

To Fordham, and to Poly,

Where hackmen have peculiar names

And relatives afar,

And one can watch the Chrysler spire

Bisect the morning star.