In The Hub: Boston Past and Present, historian Thomas O???Connor writes that as early as the 1830s, the city???s civic culture was being shaped by groups with a mission of self-betterment and a penchant for hosting talks by the luminaries of the day, as organizations such as the Boston Lyceum, the Ford Hall Forum, and the Lowell Institute invited the likes of Emerson and Thoreau to drop in on thei