Amory, Cleveland. The Proper Bostonians.

New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1947. In it, the author quotes Walter Lippman as saying, “[Boston is the most homogenous, self-centered, and self-complacent community in the United States.” Amory writes of Boston’s first families, “somewhere along the line – there must be the merchant prince, the real Family-founder. . . Whether in shipping, in railroading, in textiles, in mining, or in banking, he is the stout trunk of almost every First Family tree.” The book also contains such stories as the one about “the Beacon Hill lady, who, chided for her lack of travel, asked simply, “Why should I travel when I’m already here?” He also declares, “The Proper Bostonian did not just happen; he was planned. Since he was from the start, in that charming Boston phrase “well-connected,” he was planned to fit into a social world so small that he could not help being well-defined. He is a charter member of a society which more than one historian has called the most exclusive of that of any city in America, and which has charter members only.”