New England Diary

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'Bostonistis'

Seal of the Boston Athenaeum, one of the centers of the city’s high culture, and, some might say, its intellectual snobbery

"No doubt the Bostonian has always been noted for a certain chronic irritability _ a sort of Bostonistis — which, in its primitive puritan form, seemed due to knowing too much of his neighbors, and thinking too much of himself.''

— Henry Adams (1838-1918), writer, historian and member of the storied Massachusetts dynasty that started with American Founding Father John Adams