American notes for general circulation

AMERICAN NOTES

FOR

GENERAL CIRCULATION.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND.

MDCCCXLII.

10NBOX :
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

I DEDICATE

THIS BOOK

TO THOSE FRIENDS OF MINE

IN AMERICA,

WHO,

GIVING ME A WELCOME

I MUST EVER GRATEFULLY

AND PROUDLY REMEMBER,

LEFT MY JUDGMENT

FREE;

AND WHO,

LOVING THEIR COUNTRY,
CAN BEAR THE TRUTH,

WHEN IT IS TOLD

GOOD HUMOUREDLY,

AND IN A KIND SPIRIT.

CONTENTS TO VOLUME L

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

PAG 8

GOING AWAY 1

CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE PASSAGE OUT .... . • « .20

CHAPTER THE THIRD.
BOSTON 57

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS

FACTORY SYSTEM 145

XVI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

MM

WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HART
FORD. NEW HAVEN. NEW HAVEN TO NEW
YORK 170

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
NEW YORK . 191

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON . . 233

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE

PRESIDENT'S HOUSE .... . . .271

GOING AWAY,
AND THE PASSAGE OUT.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

GOING AWAY.

I SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and
three-fourths comical astonishment, with which,
on the morning of the third of January eighteen-
hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and
put my head into, a " state-room " on board the
Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred tons bur
den per register, bound for Halifax and Boston,
and carrying Her Majesty's mails.

That this state-room had been specially engaged
for " Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady," was
rendered sufficiently clear even to my scared
intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing
the fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt,
covering a very thin mattress, spread like a

VOL. I. B

GOING AWAY.

surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf.
But that this was the state-room concerning which
Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held
daily and nightly conferences for at least four
months preceding : that this could by any pos
sibility be that small snug chamber of the imagin
ation, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the
spirit of prophecy strong upon him, had always
foretold would contain at least one little sofa,
and which his lady, with a modest yet most mag
nificent sense of its limited dimensions, had from
the first opined would not hold more than two
enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of
sight (portmanteaus which could now no more be
got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a
giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower
pot) : that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly
hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, had
the remotest reference to, or connection with,
those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little
bowers, sketched by a masterly hand, in the highly
varnished lithographic plan hanging up in the

GOING AWAY. &

agent's counting-house in the city of, London:
that this room of state, in short, could be anything
but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the
captain's, invented and put in practice for the
oetter relish and enjoyment of the real state-room
presently to be disclosed : — these were truths which
I really could not, for the moment, bring my mind
at all to bear upon or comprehend. And I sat
down upon a kind of horsehair slab, or perch, of
which there were two within ; and looked, without
any expression of countenance whatever, at some
friends who had come on board with us, and who
were crushing their faces into all manner of shapes
by endeavouring to squeeze them through the
small doorway.

We had experienced a pretty smart shock before
coming below, which, but that we were the most
sanguine people living, might have prepared us for
the worst. The imaginative artist to whom I have
already made allusion, has depicted in the same
gr,eat work, a chamber of almost interminable
perspective, furnished, as Mr. Robins would say,

B 2

4) GOING AWAY.

in a style of more than Eastern splendour, and
filled (but not inconveniently so) with groups of
ladies and gentlemen, in the very highest state of
enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending into
the bowels of the ship, we had passed from the
deck into a long narrow apartment, not unlike a
gigantic hearse with windows in the sides ; having
at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which
three or four chilly stewards were warming their
hands ; while on either side, extending down its
whole dreary length, was a long, long, table, over
each of which a rack, fixed to the low roof, and
stuck full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands,
hinted dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather.
I had not at that time seen the ideal presentment
of this chamber which has since gratified me so
much, but I observed that one of our friends
who had made the arrangements for our voyage,
turned pale on entering, retreated on the friend
behind him, smote his forehead involuntarily, and
said, below his breath, "Impossible! it cannot
be ! " or words to that effect. He recovered him-

GOING AWAY.

5

self however by a great effort, and after a pre
paratory cough or two, cried, with a ghastly smile
which is still before me, looking at the same time
round the walls, " Ha ! the breakfast-room,
steward— eh 2 " We all foresaw what the answer
must be : we knew the agony he suffered. He had
often spoken of the saloon; had taken in and lived
upon the pictorial idea ; had usually given us to
understand, at home, that to form a just conception
of it, it would be necessary to multiply the size and
furniture of an ordinary drawing-room by seven,
and then fall short of the reality. When the
man in reply avowed the truth ; the blunt,
remorseless, naked truth ; 6< This is the saloon,
sir " — he actually reeled beneath the blow.

In persons who were so soon to part, and inter
pose between their else daily communication the
formidable barrier of many thousand miles of
stormy space, and who were for that reason anxious
to cast no other cloud, not even the passing
shadow of a moment's disappointment or discomfi
ture, upon the short interval of happy companion-

6 GOING AWAY.

ship that yet remained to -them — in persons so
situated, the natural transition from these first
surprises was obviously into peals of hearty laugh
ter ; and I can report that I, for one, being still
seated upon the slab or perch before-mentioned,
roared outright until the vessel rang again. Thus,
in less than two minutes after coming upon it for
the first time, we all by common consent agreed
that this state-room was the pleasantest and most
facetious and capital contrivance possible ; and
that to have had it one inch larger, would have
been quite a disagreeable and deplorable state of
things. And with this ; and with showing how,—
by very nearly closing the door, and twining in and
out like serpents, and by counting the little
washing-slab as standing-room, — we could manage
to insinuate four people into it, all at one time ;
and entreating each other to observe how very
airy it was (in dock), and how there was a beauti
ful port-hole which could be kept open all day
(weather permitting), and how there was quite a
large bull's-eye just over the looking-glass which

GOING AWAY. 7

would render shaving a perfectly easy and delight
ful process (when the ship didn't roll too much) ;
we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion
that it was rather spacious than otherwise : though
I do verily believe that, deducting the two
berths, one above the other, than which nothing
smaller for sleeping in was ever made except cof
fins, it was no bigger than one of those hackney
cabriolets which have the door behind, and shoot
their fares out, like sacks of coals, upon the pave
ment.

Having settled this point to the perfect satisfac
tion of all parties, concerned and unconcerned, we
sat down round the fire in the ladies' cabin — just
to try the effect. It was rather dark, certainly ;
but somebody said, " of course it would be light,
at sea," a proposition to which we all assented ;
echoing " of course, of course ;" though it would
be exceedingly difficult to say why we thought so.
I remember, too, when we had discovered and
exhausted another topic of consolation in the cir
cumstance of this ladies1 cabin adjoining our state-

8 GOING AWAY.

room, and the consequently immense feasibility of
sitting there at all times and seasons, and had
fallen into a momentary silence, leaning our faces
on our hands and looking at the fire, one of our
party said, with the solemn air of a man who
had made a discovery, " What a relish mulled
claret will have down here !" which appeared to
strike us all most forcibly; as though there were
something spicy and high-flavoured in cabins,
which essentially improved that composition, and
rendered it quite incapable of perfection anywhere
else.

There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged
in producing clean sheets and tablecloths from the
very entrails of the sofas, and from unexpected
lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made one's
head ache to see them opened one after another,
and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to
follow her proceedings, and to find that every
nook and corner and individual piece of furni
ture was something else besides what it pre
tended to be, and was a mere trap and decep-

GOING AWAY.

tion and place of secret stowage, whose osten
sible purpose was its least useful one.

God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudu
lent account of January voyages ! God bless her
for her clear recollection of the companion passage
of last year, when nobody was ill, and everybody
danced from morning to night, and it was " a run "
of twelve days, and a piece of the purest frolic, and
delight, and jollity ! All happiness be with her for
her bright face and her pleasant Scotch tongue,
which had sounds of old Home in it for my fellow
traveller; and for her predictions of fair winds and
fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn't be half so
fond of her) ; and for the ten thousand small frag
ments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without
piecing them elaborately together, and patching
them up into shape and form and case and pointed
application, she nevertheless did plainly show that
all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were
near and close at hand to their little children left
upon the other ; and that what seemed to the un
initiated a serious journey, was, to those who were

10 GOING AWAY.

in the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and
whistled at! Light be her heart, and gay her
merry eyes, for years !

The state-room had grown pretty fast ; but by
this time it had expanded into something quite
bulky, and almost boasted a bay-window to view
the sea from. So we went upon deck again in
high spirits ; and there, everything was in such a
state of bustle and active preparation, that the
blood quickened its pace, and whirled through
one's veins on that clear frosty morning with in
voluntary mirthfulness. For every gallant ship
was riding slowly up and down, and every little
boat was plashing noisily in the water ; and knots
of people stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind
of " dread delight" on the far-famed fast Ameri
can steamer ; and one party of men were " taking
in the milk," or, in other words, getting the cow
on board ; and another were filling the icehouses
to the very throat with fresh provisions ; with
butchers'meat and gardenstuff, pale sucking-pigs,
calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and

GOING AWAY. 11

poultry out of all proportion ; and others were
coiling ropes, and busy with oakum yarns ; and
others were lowering heavy packages into the
hold ; and the purser's head was barely visible as
it loomed in a state of exquisite perplexity from the
midst of a vast pile of passengers1 luggage ; and
there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or
uppermost in the mind of anybody, but prepara
tions for this mighty voyage. This, with the
bright cold sun, the bracing air, the crisply-curl
ing water, the thin white crust of morning ice
upon the decks which crackled with a sharp and
cheerful sound beneath the lightest tread, was
irresistible. And when, again upon the shore, we
turned and saw from the vessel's mast her name
signalled in flags of joyous colours, and fluttering
by their side the beautiful American banner with
its stars and stripes, — the long three thousand
miles and more, and, longer still, the six whole
months of absence, so dwindled and faded, that
the ship had gone out and come home again, and
it was broad spring already in the Coburg Dock
at Liverpool.

12 GOING AWAY.

I have not inquired among my medical ac
quaintance, whether Turtle, and cold Punch, with
Hock, Champagne, and Claret, and all the slight et
cetera usually included in an unlimited order for a
good dinner — especially when it is left to the liberal
construction of my faultless friend, Mr. Radley,
of the Adelphi Hotel — are peculiarly calculated
to suffer a sea-change ; or whether a plain mutton-
chop, and a glass or two of sherry, would be less
likely of conversion into foreign and disconcerting
material. My own opinion is, that whether one
is discreet or indiscreet in these particulars, on
the eve of a sea-voyage, is a matter of little conse
quence ; and that, to use a common phrase, " it
comes to very much the same thing in the end."
Be this as it may, I know that the dinner of that
day was undeniably perfect ; that it comprehended
all these items, and a great many more ; and that
we all did ample justice to it. And I know too,
that, bating a certain tacit avoidance of any allu
sion to to-morrow ; such as may be supposed to
prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys, and a

GOING AWAY. 13

sensitive prisoner who is to be hanged next morn
ing ; we got on very well, and, all things considered,
were merry enough.

When the morning — the morning — came, and
we met at breakfast, it was curious to see how
eager we all were to prevent a moment's pause in
the conversation, and how astoundingly gay every
body was : the forced spirits of each member of the
little party having as much likeness to his natural
mirth, as hot-house peas at five guineas the quart,
resemble in flavour the growth of the dews, and
air, and rain of Heaven. But as one o'clock, the
hour for going aboard, drew near, this volubility
dwindled away by little and little, despite the
most persevering efforts to the contrary, until at
last, the matter being now quite desperate, we
threw off all disguise ; openly speculated upon
where we should be this time to-morrow, this time
next day, and so forth; and entrusted a vast
number of messages to those who intended re
turning to town that night, which were to be
delivered at home and elsewhere without fail,

GOING AWAY.

within the very shortest possible space of time
after the arrival of the railway train at Euston
Square. And commissions and remembrances do
so crowd upon one at such a time, that we were
still busied with this employment when we found
ourselves fused, as it were, into a dense conglo
meration of passengers and passengers' friends
and passengers1 luggage, all jumbled together on
the deck of a small steamboat, and panting and
snorting off to the packet, which had worked out
of dock yesterday afternoon and was now lying at
her moorings in the river.

And there she is ! all eyes are turned to where
she lies, dimly discernible through the gathering
fog of the early winter afternoon ; every finger is
pointed in the same direction ; and murmurs of
interest and admiration— as " How beautiful she
looks!" "How trim she is!" — are heard on
every side. Even the lazy gentleman with his hat
on one side and his hands in his pockets, who has
dispensed so much consolation by inquiring with a
yawn of another gentleman whether he is " going

GOIXG AWAY. 15

across" — as if it were a ferry — even he condescends
to look that way, and nod his head, as who should
say u No mistake about that : " and not even the
sage Lord Burleigh in his nod, included half so
much as this lazy gentleman of might who has made
the passage (as everybody on board has found out
already ; it's impossible to say how) thirteen times
without a single accident ! There is another passen
ger very much wrapped-up, who has been frowned
down by the rest, and morally trampled upon and
crushed, for presuming to inquire with a timid
interest how long it is since the poor President
went down. He is standing close to the lazy gen
tleman, and says with a faint smile that he believes
She is a very strong Ship ; to which the lazy gen
tleman, looking first in his questioner's eye and
then very hard in the wind's, answers unexpectedly
and ominously, that She need be. Upon this the
lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the popular
estimation, and the passengers, with looks of de
fiance, whisper to each other that he is an ass, and
an impostor, and clearly don't know anything at all
about it.

16 GOING AWAY.

But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose
huge red funnel is smoking bravely, giving rich
promise of serious intentions. Packing-cases, port
manteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes, are already passed
from hand to hand, and hauled on board with breath
less rapidity. The officers, smartly dressed, are at
the gangway handing the passengers up the side,
and hurrying the men. In five minutes' time, the
little steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is
beset and over-run by its late freight, who instantly
pervade the whole ship, and are to be met with by
the dozen in every nook and corner : swarming down
below with their own baggage, and stumbling over
other people's ; disposing themselves comfortably
in wrong cabins, and creating a most horrible con
fusion by having to turn out again ; madly bent
upon opening locked doors, and on forcing a pas
sage into all kinds of out-of-the-way places where
there is no thoroughfare ; sending wild stewards,
with elfin hair, to and fro upon the breezy decks
on unintelligible errands, impossible of execution :
and in short, creating the most extraordinary and

GOING AWAY. 17

bewildering tumult. In the midst of all this,
the lazy gentleman, who seems to have no luggage
of any kind — not so much as a friend, even —
lounges up and down the hurricane-deck, coolly
puffing a cigar ; and, as this unconcerned demea
nour again exalts him in the opinion of those who
have leisure to observe his proceedings, every time
he looks up at the masts, or down at the decks, or
over the side, they look there too, as wondering
whether he sees anything wrong anywhere, and
hoping that, in case he should, he will have the
goodness to mention it.

What have we here ? The captain's boat !
and yonder the captain himself. Now, by all our
hopes and wishes, the very man he ought to be !
A well-made, tight-built, dapper little fellow ; with
a ruddy face, which is a letter of invitation to
shake him by both hands at once; and with a
clear blue honest eye, that it does one good to see
one^s sparkling image in. " Ring the bell ! "
" Ding, ding, ding ! " the very bell is in a hurry.
44 Now for the shore— who's for the shore?" —
VOL. i. c

18 GOING AWAY.

" These gentlemen, I am sorry to say." They
are away, and never said, Good b'ye. Ah ! now
they wave it from the little boat. 4< Good b'ye !
Good b'ye ! " Three cheers from them ; three
more from us ; three more from them : and they
are gone.

To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a
hundred times ! This waiting for the latest mail-
bags is worse than all. If we could have gone off
in the midst of that last burst, we should have
started triumphantly : but to lie here, two hours
and more, in the damp fog, neither staying at
home nor going abroad, is letting one gradually
down into the very depths of dulness and low
spirits. A speck in the mist, at last ! That 's
something. It is the boat we wait for ! That 's
more to the purpose. The captain appears on the
paddle-box with his speaking-trumpet; the officers
take their stations ; all hands are on the alert ;
the flagging hopes of the passengers revive ; the
cooks pause in their savoury work, and look out
with faces full of interest. The boat comes alonjr-

GOING AWAY. 19

side ; the bags are dragged in anyhow, and flung
down for the moment anywhere. Three cheers
more : and as the first one rings upon our ears,
the vessel throbs like a strong giant that has just
received the breath of life ; the two great wheels
turn fiercely round for the first time ; and the
noble ship, with wind and tide astern, breaks
proudly through the lashed and foaming water.

c2

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

THE PASSAGE OUT.

WE all dined together that day; and a rather
formidable party we were : no fewer than eighty-
six strong. The vessel being pretty deep in the
-water, with all her coals on board and so many
passengers, and the weather being calm and quiet,
there was but little motion ; so that before the
dinner was half over, even those passengers who
were most distrustful of themselves plucked up
amazingly ; and those who in the morning had
returned to the universal question, "Are you
a good sailor?" a very decided negative, now
either parried the inquiry with the evasive reply,
<c Oh ! I suppose I'm no worse than anybody else ; "
or, reckless of all moral obligations, answered

THE PASSAGE OUT. 21

boldly, " Yes : " and with some irritation too, as
though they would add, " I should like to know
what you see in me, sir, particularly, to justify
suspicion ! "

Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and
confidence, I could not but observe that very few
remained long over their wine ; and that everybody
had an unusual love of the open air ; and that the
favourite and most coveted seats were invariably
those nearest to the door. The tea-table, too,
was by no means as well attended as the dinner-
table ; and there was less whist-playing than
might have been expected. Still, with the excep
tion of one lady, who had retired with some
precipitation at dinner-time, immediately after
being assisted to the finest cut of a very yellow
boiled leg of mutton with very green capers, there
were no invalids as yet ; and walking, and smoking,
and drinking of brandy-and-water (but always in
the open air), went on with unabated spirit, until
eleven o'clock or thereabouts, when " turning in "
—no sailor of seven hours' experience talks of

22 THE PASSAGE OUT.

going to bed — became the order of the night. The
perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the decks gave
place to a heavy silence, and the whole human
freight was stowed away below, excepting a very
few stragglers, like myself, who were probably,
like me, afraid to go there.

To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a
very striking time on shipboard. Afterwards, and
when its novelty had long worn off, it never ceased
to have a peculiar interest and charm for me.
The gloom through which the great black mass
holds its direct and certain course ; the rushing
water, plainly heard, but dimly seen ; the broad,
white, glistening track, that follows in the vessel's
wake ; the men on the look-out forward, who
would be scarcely visible against the dark sky, but
for their blotting out some score of glistening
stars ; the helmsman at the wheel, with the illu
minated card before him, shining, a speck of light
amidst the darkness, like something sentient and
of Divine intelligence ; the melancholy sighing of
the wind through block, and rope, and chain ; the

THE PASSAGE OUT. 23

gleaming forth of .light from every crevice, nook,
and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though
the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to burst
through any outlet, wild with its resistless power of
death and ruin. At first, too, and even when the
hour, and all the objects it exalts, have come to be
familiar, it is difficult, alone and thoughtful, to
hold them to their proper shapes and forms.
They change with the wandering fancy ; assume
the semblance of things left far away ; put on the
well-remembered aspect of favourite places dearly
loved ; and even people them with shadows. Streets,
houses, rooms; figures so like their usual occu
pants, that they have startled me by their reality,
which far exceeded, as it seemed to me, all power
of mine to conjure up the absent ; have, many and
many a time, at such an hour, grown suddenly out
of objects with whose real look, and use, and
purpose, I was as well acquainted as with my own
two hands.

My own two hands, and feet likewise, being very
cold, however, on this particular occasion, I crept

24 THE PASSAGE OUT.

below at midnight. It was not exactly comfortable
below. It was decidedly close ; and it was impos
sible to be unconscious of the presence of that
extraordinary compound of strange smells, which
is to be found nowhere but on board ship, and
which is such a subtle perfume that it seems to
enter at every pore of the skin, and whisper of
the hold. Two passengers1 wives (one of them my
own) lay already in silent agonies on the sofa ; and
one lady's maid (my lady's) was a mere bundle on
the floor, execrating her destiny, and pounding
her curl-papers among the stray boxes. Everything
sloped the wrong way : which in itself was an
aggravation scarcely to be borne. I had left the
door open, a moment before, in the bosom of a
gentle declivity, and, when I turned to shut it, it
was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now
every plank and timber creaked, as if the ship
were made of wicker-work ; and now crackled, like
an enormous fire of the driest possible twigs.
There was nothing for it but bed; so I went
to bed.

THE PASSAGE OUT. 25

It was pretty much the same for the next two
days, with a tolerably fair wind and dry weather.
I read in bed (but to this hour I don't know what)
a good deal ; and reeled on deck a little ; drank
cold brandy-and-water with an unspeakable dis
gust, and ate hard biscuit perseveringly : not ill,
but going to be.

It is the third morning. I am awakened out of
my sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife, who
demands to know whether there 's any danger.
I rouse myself, and look out of bed. The water-
jug is plunging and leaping like a lively dolphin ;
all the smaller articles are afloat, except my shoes,
which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry,
like a couple of coal- barges. Suddenly I see them
spring into the air, and behold the looking-glass,
which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon the
ceiling. At the same time the door entirely dis
appears, and a new one is opened in the floor.
Then I begin to comprehend that the state-room
is standing on its head.

Before it is possible to make any arrangement

26 • THE PASSAGE OUT.

at all compatible with this novel state of things,
the ship rights. Before one can say, " Thank
Heaven ! " she wrongs again. Before one can cry
she is wrong, she seems to have started forward, and
to be a creature actively running of its own accord,
with broken knees and failing legs, through every
variety of hole and pitfall, and stumbling con
stantly. Before one can so much as wonder, she
takes a high leap into the air. Before she has
well done that, she takes a deep dive into the
water. Before she has gained the surface, she
throws a summerset. The instant she is on her
legs, she rushes backward. And so she goes on
staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving,
jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rock
ing: and going through all these movements,
sometimes by turns, and sometimes all together :
until one feels disposed to roar for mercy.

A steward passes. "Steward!" "Sir!" "What
is the matter 2 what do you call this 2 " " Rather
a heavy sea on, sir, and a head-wind."

A head-wind ! Imagine a human face upon the

THE PASSAGE OUT. 27

vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Sampsons in
one bent upon driving her back, and hitting her
exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts
to advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself,
with every pulse and artery of her huge body
svvoln and bursting under this mal-treatment,
sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howling,
the sea roaring, the rain beating : all in furious
array against her. Picture the sky both dark
and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy with
the waves, making another ocean in the air. Add
to all this, the clattering on deck and down below ;
the tread of hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts of
seamen ; the gurgling in and out of water through
the scuppers; with, every now and then, the striking
of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the
deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within
a vault ; — and there is the head- wind of that
January morning.

I say nothing of what may be called the domestic
noises of the ship: such as the breaking of glass
and crockery, the tumbling down of stewards, the

28 THE PASSAGE OUT.

gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens
of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far
from exhilarating sounds raised in their various
state-rooms by the seventy passengers who were too
ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them :
for although I lay listening to this concert for three
or four days, I don't think I heard it for more than
a quarter of a minute, at the expiration of which
term, I lay down again, excessively sea-sick.

Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term : I wish I had been : but in
a form which I have never seen or heard described,
though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay
there, all the day long, quite coolly and con
tentedly ; with no sense of weariness, with no
desire to get up, or get better, or take the air ;
with no curiosity, or care, or regret, of any sort or
degree, saving that I think I can remember, in
this universal indifference, having a kind of lazy
joy — of fiendish delight, if anything so lethargic
can be dignified with the title — in the fact of my
wife being too ill to talk to me. If I may be

THE PASSAGE OUT. 29

allowed to illustrate my state of mind by such an
example, I should say that I was exactly in the
condition of the elder Mr. Willet, after the incur
sion of the rioters into his bar at Chigwell.
Nothing would have surprised me. If, in the mo
mentary illumination of any ray of intelligence that
may have come upon me in the way of thoughts of
Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and
bell, had come into that little kennel before me,
broad awake in broad day, and, apologising for
being damp through walking in the sea, had handed
me a letter, directed to myself in familiar char
acters, I am certain I should not have felt one atom
of astonishment : I should have been perfectly
satisfied. If Neptune himself had walked in, with
a toasted shark on his trident, I should have looked
upon the event as one of the very commonest
everyday occurrences.

Once — once — I found myself on deck. I don't
know how I got there, or what possessed me to go
there, but there I was ; and completely dressed
too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of boots

30 THE PASSAGE OUT.

such as no weak man in his senses could ever have
got into. I found myself standing, when a gloam of
consciousness came upon me, holding on to some
thing. I don't know what. I think it was the
boatswain : or it may have been the pump : or
possibly the cow. I can't say how long I had
been there ; whether a day or a minute. I recol
lect trying to think about something (about any
thing in the whole wide world, I was not parti
cular) without the smallest effect. I could not
even make out which was the sea, and which the
sky ; for the horizon seemed drunk, and was flying
wildly about, in all directions. Even in that inca
pable state, however, I recognised the lazy gentle
man standing before me : nautically clad in a suit
of shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat. But I was
too imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to
separate him from his dress ; and tried to call
him, I remember, Pilot. After another interval
of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and
recognised another figure in its place. It seemed
to wave and fluctuate before me as though I saw

THE PASSAGE OUT. SI

it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass; but I
knew it for the captain ; and such was the cheerful
influence of his face, that I tried to smile : yes,
even then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures
that he addressed me; but it was a long time before
I could make out that he remonstrated against
my standing up to my knees in water— as I was ;
of course I don't know why. I tried to thank
him, but couldn't. I could only point to my
boots — or wherever I supposed my boots to be —
and say in a plaintive voice, " Cork soles :" at the
same time endeavouring, I am told, to sit down in
the pool. Finding that I was quite insensible, and
for the time a maniac, he humanely conducted me
below.

There I remained until I got better : suffering,
whenever I was recommended to eat anything, an
amount of anguish only second to that which is
said to be endured by the apparently drowned, in
the process of restoration to life. One gentleman
on board had a letter of introduction to me from
a mutual friend in London. He sent it below

32 THE PASSAGE OUT.

with his card, on the morning of the head-wind ;
and I was long troubled with the idea that he
might be up, and well, and a hundred times a
day expecting me to call upon him in the saloon.
I imagined him one of those cast-iron images — I
will not call them men— who ask, with red faces
and lusty voices, what sea-sickness means, and
whether it really is as bad as it is represented to
be. This was very torturing indeed ; and I don't
think I ever felt such perfect gratification and
gratitude of heart, as I did when I heard from the
ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a
large mustard poultice on this very gentleman's
stomach. I date my recovery from the receipt of
that intelligence.

It was materially assisted though, I have no
doubt, by a heavy gale of wind, which came slowly
up at sunset, when we were about ten days out,
and raged with gradually increasing fury until
morning, saving that it lulled for an hour a little
before midnight. There was something in the
unnatural repose of that hour, and in the after

THE PASSAGE OUT. 33

gathering of the storm, so inconceivably awful and
tremendous, that its bursting into full violence
was almost a relief.

The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on
this night I shall never forget. " Will it ever be
worse than this 2" was a question I had often
heard asked, when everything was sliding and
bumping about, and when it certainly did seem
difficult to comprehend the possibility of anything
afloat being more disturbed, without toppling over
and going down. But what the agitation of a
steam-vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the wild
Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagi
nation to conceive. To say that she is flung down
on her side in the waves, with her masts dipping
into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls
over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her
with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls
her back— that she stops, and staggers, and shivers,
as though stunned, and then, with a violent throb
bing at her heart, darts onward like a monster
goaded into madness, to be beaten down, and

VOL. I. D

34 THE PASSAGE OUT.

battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry
sea— that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and
wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery —
that every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek,
and every drop of water in the great ocean its
howling voice—is nothing. To say that all is
grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last
degree, is nothing. Words cannot express it.
Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can
call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and passion.

And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was
placed in a situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that
even then I had as strong a sense of its absurdity
as I have now : and could no more help laughing
than I can at any other comical incident, happen
ing under circumstances the most favourable to its

O

enjoyment. About midnight we shipped a sea,
which forced its way through the skylights, burst
open the doors above, and came raging and roar
ing down into the ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable
consternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady
—who, by the way, had previously sent a message

THE PASSAGE OUT. 35

to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him,
with her compliments, to have a steel conductor
immediately attached to the top of every mast,
and to the chimney, in order that the ship might
not be struck by lightning. They, and the hand
maid before mentioned, being in such ecstacies of
fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them,
I naturally bethought myself of some restorative
or comfortable cordial ; and nothing better occur
ring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-
water, I procured a tumbler-full without delay.
It being impossible to stand or sit without holding
on, they were all heaped together in one corner of
a long sofa— a fixture extending entirely across the
cabin — where they clung to each other in mo
mentary expectation of being drowned. When
I approached this place with my specific, and
was about to administer it, with many consolatory
expressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my
dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the
other end ! And when I staggered to that end,
and held out the glass once more, how immensely

D 2

36 THE PASSAGE OUT.

baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving
another lurch, and their all rolling back again !
I suppose I dodged them up and down this sofa,
for at least a quarter of an hour, without reach
ing them once ; and by the time I did catch them,
the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant
spilling, to a tea- spoonful. To complete the group,
it is necessary to recognise in this disconcerted
dodger, a very pale individual, who had shaved his
beard and brushed his hair, last, at Liverpool :
and whose only articles of dress (linen not included)
were a pair of dreadnought trousers ; a blue jacket,
formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond ;
no stockings ; and one slipper.

Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship
next morning ; which made bed a practical joke,
and getting up, by any process short of falling out,
an impossibility ; I say nothing. But anything
like the utter dreariness and desolation that met
my eyes when I, literally, " tumbled up " on deck
at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky were all of
one dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was

THE PASSAGE OUT. 37

no extent of prospect even over the dreary waste
that lay around us, for the sea ran high, and the
horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop.
Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore,
it would have been imposing and stupendous no
doubt ; but seen from the wet and rolling decks,
it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the
gale of last night the life-boat had been crushed
by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell ; and
there it hung dangling in the air : a mere faggot
of crazy boards. The planking of the paddle-boxes
had been torn sheer away. The wheels were
exposed and bare ; and they whirled and dashed
their spray about the decks at random. Chimney,
white with crusted salt ; topmasts struck ; storm-
sails set; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and
drooping : a gloomier picture it would be hard to
look upon.

I was now comfortably established by courtesy
in the ladies' cabin, where, besides ourselves, there
were only four other passengers. First, the little
Scotch lady before-mentioned, on her way to join

38 THE PASSAGE OUT.

her husband at New York, who had settled there
three years before. Secondly and thirdly, an
honest young Yorkshireman, connected with some
American house ; domiciled in that same city, and
carrying thither his beautiful young wife to whom
he had been married but a fortnight, and who was
the fairest specimen of a comely English country
girl I have ever seen. Fourthly, fifthly, and lastly,
another couple : newly-married too, if one might
judge from the endearments they frequently inter
changed : of whom I know no more than that
they were rather a mysterious, run-away kind of
couple ; that the lady had great personal attrac
tions also ; and that the gentleman carried more
guns with him than Robinson Crusoe, wore a
shooting-coat, and had two great dogs on board.
On further consideration, I remember that he tried
hot roast pig and bottled ale as a cure for sea
sickness ; and that he took these remedies (usually
in bed) day after day, with astonishing persever
ance. I may add, for the information of the
curious, that they decidedly failed.

THE PASSAGE OUT. 39

The weather continuing obstinately and almost
unprecedentedly bad, we usually straggled into this
cabin, more or less faint and miserable, about an
hour before noon, and lay down on the sofas to
recover ; during which interval, the captain would
look in to communicate the state of the wind, the
moral certainty of its changing to-morrow (the
weather is always going to improve to-morrow, at
sea), the Vessel's rate of sailing, and so forth. Ob
servations there were none to tell us of, for there
was no sun to take them by. But a description
of one day will serve for all the rest. Here it is.

The captain being gone, we compose ourselves
to read, if the place be light enough ; and if not,
we doze and talk alternately. At one, a bell rings,
and the stewardess comes down with a steaming
dish of baked potatoes, and another of roasted
apples; and plates of pig's face, cold ham, salt
beef ; or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot col-
lops. We fall to upon these dainties ; eat as much
as we can (we have great appetites now) ; and are
as long as possible about it. If the fire will burn

40 THE PASSAGE OUT.

(it will sometimes) we are pretty cheerful. If it
won't, we all remark to each other that it 's very
cold, rub our hands, cover ourselves with coats and
cloaks, and lie down again to doze, talk, and read
(provided as aforesaid), until dinner-time. At five,
another bell rings, and the stewardess reappears
with another dish of potatoes — boiled, this time —
and store of hot meat of various kinds : not for
getting the roast pig, to be taken medicinally.
We sit down at table again (rather more cheer
fully than before) ; prolong the meal with a rather
mouldy dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges ; and
drink our wine and brandy-and-water. The bottles
and glasses are still upon the table, and the
oranges and so forth are rolling about according
to their fancy and the ship^s way, when the doctor
comes down, by special nightly invitation, to join
our evening rubber : immediately on whose arrival
we make a party at whist, and as it is a rough
night and the cards will not lie on the cloth, we
put the tricks in our pockets as we take them. At
whist we remain with exemplary gravity (deduct-

THE PASSAGE OUT. 41

ing a short time for tea and .toast) until eleven
o^clock, or thereabouts ; when the captain comes
down again, in a sou'-wester hat tied under his
chin, andapilot-coat: making the ground wet where
he stands. By this time the card-playing is over,
and the bottles and glasses are again upon the
table ; and after an hour's pleasant conversa
tion about the ship, the passengers, and things in
general, the captain (who never goes to bed, and
is never out of humour) turns up his coat collar for
the deck again ; shakes hands all round ; and goes
laughing out into the weather as merrily as to a
birth-day party.

As to daily news, there is no dearth of that
commodity. This passenger is reported to have
lost fourteen pounds at Vingt-et-un in the saloon
yesterday ; and that passenger drinks his bottle of
champagne every day, and how he does it (being
only a clerk), nobody knows. The head engineer
has distinctly said that there never was such times —
meaning weather — and four good hands are ill, and
have given in, dead beat. Several berths are full

42 THE PASSAGE OUT.

of water, and all the cabins are leaky. The ship's
cook, secretly swigging damaged whiskey, has been
found drunk ; and has been played upon by the
fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards
have fallen down stairs at various dinner-times,
and go about with plasters in various places. The
baker is ill, and so is the pastry-cook. A new
man, horribly indisposed, has been required to fill
the place of the latter officer; and has been propped
and jammed up with empty casks in a little house
upon deck, and commanded to roll out pie-crust,
which he protests (being highly bilious) it is death
to him to look at. News ! A dozen murders on
shore would lack the interest of these slight inci
dents at sea.

Divided between our rubber and such topics as
these, we were running (as we thought) into Hali
fax Harbour, on the fifteenth night, with little
wind and a bright moon — indeed, we had made the
Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in
charge — when suddenly the ship struck upon a
bank of mud. An immediate rush on deck took

THE PASSAGE OUT. 43

place of course ; the sides were crowded in an
instant ; and for a few minutes we were in as lively
a state of confusion as the greatest lover of disorder
would desire to see. The passengers, and guns,
and water- casks, and other heavy matters, being
all huddled together aft, however, to lighten her
in the head, she was soon got off; and after some
driving on towards an uncomfortable line of objects
(whose vicinity had been announced very early in
the disaster by a loud cry of " Breakers a-head !")
and much backing of paddles, and heaving of
the lead into a constantly decreasing depth of
water, we dropped anchor in a strange outlandish-
looking nook which nobody on board could recog
nise, although there was land all about us, and so
close that we could plainly see the waving branches
of the trees.

It was strange enough, in the silence -of midnight,
and the dead stillness that seemed to be created
by the sudden and unexpected stoppage of the
engine which had been clanking and blasting in
our ears incessantly for so many days, to watch

44 THE PASSAGE OUT.

the look of blank astonishment expressed in every
face : beginning with the officers, tracing it through
all the passengers, and descending to the very
stokers and furnace-men, who emerged from below,
one by one, and clustered together in a smoky
group about the hatchway of the engine-room,
comparing notes in whispers. After throwing up
a few rockets and firing signal-guns in the hope of
being hailed from the land, or at least of seeing
a light — but without any other sight or sound pre
senting itself— it was determined to send a boat on
shore. It was amusing to observe how very kind
some of the passengers were, in volunteering to go
ashore in this same boat : for the general good, of
course : not by any means because they thought
the ship in an unsafe position, or contemplated the
possibility of her heeling over in case the tide were
running out. Nor was it less amusing to remark
how desperately unpopular the poor pilot became
in one short minute. He had had his passage out
from Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had
been quite a notorious character, as a teller of

THE PASSAGE OUT. 45

anecdotes and cracker of jokes. Yet here were
the very men who had laughed the loudest at his
jests, now flourishing their fists in his face, loading
him with imprecations, and defying him to his
teeth as a villain ! %

The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and
sundry blue lights on board ; and in less than an
hour returned; the officer in command bringing
with him a tolerably tall young tree, which he had
plucked up by the roots, to satisfy certain distrust
ful passengers whose minds misgave them that
they were to be imposed upon and shipwrecked,
and who would on no other terms believe that he
had been ashore, or had done anything but frau
dulently row a little way into the mist, specially to
deceive them, and compass their deaths. Our
captain had foreseen from the first that we must
be in a place called the Eastern Passage ; and so
we were. It was about the last place in the world
in which we had any business or reason to be, but
a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot's part,
were the cause. We were surrounded by banks,

46 THE PASSAGE OUT.

and rocks, and shoals of all kinds, but had happily
drifted, it seemed, upon the only safe speck that
was to be found thereabouts. Eased by this
report, and by the assurance that the tide was past
the ebb, we turned in at three o'clock in the
morning.

I was dressing about half-past nine next day,
when the noise above hurried me on deck. When
I had left it over-night, it was dark, foggy, and
damp, and there were bleak hills all round us.
Now, we were gliding down a smooth, broad
stream, at the rate of eleven miles an hour : our
colors flying gaily; our crew rigged out in their
smartest clothes ; our officers in uniform again ;
the sun shining as on a brilliant April day in
England; the land stretched out on either side,
streaked with light patches of snow ; white wooden
houses ; people at their doors ; telegraphs work
ing ; flags hoisted ; wharfs appearing ; ships ;
quays crowded with people ; distant noises ; shouts ;
men and boys running down steep places towards
the pier : all more bright and gay and fresh to our

THE PASSAGE OCT. 47

unused eyes than words can paint them. We
came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces ; got
alongside, and were made fast, after some shouting
and straining of cables; darted, a score of us,
along the gangway, almost as soon as it was thrust
out to meet us, and before it had reached the ship
— and leaped upon the firm glad earth again !

I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an
Elysium, though it had been a curiosity of ugly
dulness. But I carried away with me a most
pleasant impression of the town and its inhabit
ants, and have preserved it to this hour. Nor was
it without regret that I came home, without hav
ing found an opportunity of returning thither, and
once more shaking hands with the friends I made
that day.

It happened to be the opening of the Legislative

Council and General Assembly, at which cere-

•

monial the forms observed on the commencement
of a new Session of Parliament in England were
so closely copied, and so gravely presented on a
small scale, that it was like looking at West-

48 THE PASSAGE OUT.

minster through the wrong end of a telescope.
The governor, as her Majesty's representative,
delivered what may be called the Speech from
the Throne. He said what he had to say man
fully and well. The military band outside the
building struck up " God Save the Queen" with
great vigour before his Excellency had quite
finished; the people shouted; the in's rubbed
their hands ; the out's shook their heads ; the
Government party said there never was such a
good speech ; the opposition declared there never
was such a bad one ; the Speaker and members of
the House of Assembly withdrew from the bar to
say a great deal among themselves and do a little :
and, in short, everything went on, and promised
to go on, just as it does at home upon the like
occasions.

The town is built on the side of a hill, the

•

highest point being commanded by a strong
fortress, not yet quite finished. Several streets of
good breadth and appearance extend from its
summit to the water-side, and are intersected by

THE PASSAGE OUT. 49

cross streets running parallel with the river. The
houses are chiefly of wood. The market is abun
dantly supplied ; and provisions are exceedingly
cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that
time for the season of the year, there was no
sleighing ; but there were plenty of those vehicles
in yards and bye-places, and some of them, from
the gorgeous quality of their decorations, might
have " gone on" without alteration as triumphal
cars in a melo-drama at Astley's. The day was
uncommonly fine ; the air bracing and healthful ;
the whole aspect of the town cheerful, thriving,
and industrious.

We lay there seven hours, to deliver and ex
change the mails. At length, having collected all
our bags and all our passengers (including two or
three choice spirits, who, having indulged too freely
in oysters and champagne, were found lying insen
sible on their backs in unfrequented streets), the
engines were again put in motion, and we stood
off for Boston.

Encountering squally weather again in the Bay
VOL. i. E

50 THE PASSAGE OUT.

of Fundy, we tumbled and rolled about as usual all
that night and all next day. On the next after
noon, that is to say, on Saturday* the twenty-second
of January, an American pilot-boat came alongside,
and soon afterwards the Britannia steam-packet,
from Liverpool, eighteen days out, was telegraphed
at Boston. "

The indescribable interest with which I strained
my eyes, as the first patches of American soil
peeped like molehills from the green sea, and fol
lowed them, as they swelled, by slow and almost
imperceptible degrees, into a continuous line of
coast, can hardly be exaggerated. A sharp keen
wind blew dead against us ; a hard frost prevailed
on shore ; and the cold was most severe. Yet the
air was so intensely clear, and dry, and bright,
that the temperature was not only endurable, but
delicious.

How I remained on deck, staring about me
until we came alongside the dock, and how, though
I had had as many eyes as Argus, I should have
had them all wide open, and all employed on new

THE PASSAGE OUT. 51

objects — are topics which I will not prolong this
chapter to discuss. Neither will I more than hint at
my foreigner-like mistake, in supposing that a party
of most active persons, who scrambled on board at
the peril of their lives as we approached the
wharf, were newsmen, answering to that indus
trious class at home ; whereas, despite the leathern
wallets of news slung about the necks of some, and
the broad sheets in the hands of all, they were-
Editors, who boarded ships in person (as one
gentleman in a worsted comforter informed me),,
c; because they liked the excitement of it." Suffice
it in this place to say, that one of these invaders,
with a ready courtesy for which I thank him here
most gratefully, went on before to order rooms at
the hotel ; and that when I followed, as I soon
did, I found myself rolling through the long
passages with an involuntary imitation of the gait
of Mr. T. P. Cooke, in a new nautical melo
drama.

" Dinner, if you please," said I to the waiter.

E 2

52 THE PASSAGE OUT.

" When ? " said the waiter.

"As quick as possible," said I.

" Right away I " said the waiter.

After a moment's hesitation, I answered, " No,"
at hazard.

" Not right away \ " cried the waiter, with an
amount of surprise that made me start.

I looked at him doubtfully, and returned, " No;
I would rather have it in this private room. I
like it very much."

At this, I really thought the waiter must have
gone out of his mind : as I believe he would have
done, but for the interposition of another man,
who whispered in his ear, " Directly/'

" Well ! and that's a fact ! " said the waiter,
looking helplessly at me : " Right away."

I saw now that " Right away " and c< Directly "
were one and the same thing. So I reversed
my previous answer, and sat down to dinner
in ten minutes afterwards; and a capital dinner
it was.

THE PASSAGE OUT. 53

The hotel (a very excellent one), is called the
Tremont House. It has more galleries, colon
nades, piazzas, and passages than I can remember,
or the reader would believe ; and is some trifle
smaller than Bedford Square.

BOSTON.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

BOSTON.

IN all the public establishments of America, the
utmost courtesy prevails. Most of our Depart
ments are susceptible of considerable improvement
in this respect, but the Custom-house above all
others would do well to take example from the
United States and render itself somewhat less
odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile
rapacity of the French officials is sufficiently con
temptible ; but there is a surly boorish incivility
about our men, alike disgusting to all persons who
fall into their hands, and discreditable to the
nation that keeps such ill-conditioned curs snarling
about its gates.

58 BOSTON.

When I landed in America, I could not help
being strongly impressed with the contrast their
Custom-house presented, and the attention, polite
ness, and good humour with which its officers dis
charged their duty.

As we did not land at Boston, in consequence
of some detention at the wharf, until after dark,
I received my first impressions of the city in walk
ing down to the Custom-house on the morning
after our arrival, which was Sunday. I am afraid
to say, by the way, how many offers of pews and
seats in church for that morning were made to us,
by formal note of invitation, before we had half
finished our first dinner in- America, but if I may
be allowed to make a moderate guess, without
going into nicer calculation, I should say that at
loast as many sittings were proffered us, as would
have accommodated a score or two of grown-up
families. The number of creeds and forms of
religion to which the pleasure of our company was
requested, was in very fair proportion.

Not being able, in the absence of any change of

BOSTON. 59

clothes, to go to church that day, we were com
pelled to decline these kindnesses, one and all;
and 1 was reluctantly obliged to forego the delight
of hearing Dr. Channing, who happened to preach
that morning for the first time in a very long
interval. I mention the name of this distinguished
and accomplished man (with whom I soon after
wards had the pleasure of becoming personally
acquainted), that I may have the gratification of
recording my humble tribute of admiration and
respect for his high abilities and character ; and
for the bold philanthropy with which he has ever
opposed himself to that most hideous blot and foul
disgrace — Slavery.

To return to Boston. When I got into the
streets upon this Sunday morning, the air was so
clear, the houses were so bright and gay; the
signboards were painted in such gaudy colours ; the
gilded letters were so very golden ; the bricks were
so very red, the stone was so very white, the blinds
and area railings were so very green, the knobs and
plates upon the street doors so marvellously bright

60 BOSTON.

and twinkling ; and all so slight and unsubstantial
in appearance — that every thoroughfare in the city
looked exactly like a scene in a pantomime. It
rarely happens in the business streets that a trades
man, if I may venture to call anybody a trades
man, where everybody is a merchant, resides above
his store ; so that many occupations are often
carried on in one house, and the whole front is
covered with boards and inscriptions. As I walked
along, I kept glancing up at these boards, confi
dently expecting to see a few of them change into
something ; and I never turned a corner suddenly
without looking out for the clown and pantaloon,
who, I had no doubt, were hiding in a doorway or
behind some pillar close at hand. As to Harlequin
and Columbine, I discovered immediately that
they lodged (they are always looking after lodg
ings in a pantomime) at a very small clock-maker's,
one story high, near the hotel ; which, in addition
to various symbols and devices, almost covering
the whole front, had a great dial hanging out — to
be jumped through, of course.

BOSTON. 61

The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsub
stantial-looking than the city. The white wooden
houses (so white that it makes one wink to look
at them), with their green jalousie blinds, are so
sprinkled and dropped about in all directions,
without seeming to have any root at all in the
ground ; and the small churches and chapels are
so prim, and bright, and highly varnished ; that I
almost believed the whole affair could be taken up
piecemeal like a child's toy, and crammed into a
little box.

The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail,
I should imagine, to impress all strangers very
favourably. The private dwelling-houses are, for
the most part, large and elegant ; the shops ex
tremely good ; and the public buildings handsome.
The State House is built upon the summit of a
hill, which rises gradually at first, and afterwards
by a steep ascent, almost from the water's edge.
In front is a green inclosure, called the Common.
The site is beautiful : and from the top there is a
charming panoramic view of the whole town and

62 BOSTOX.

neighbourhood. In addition to a variety of
commodious offices, it contains two handsome
chambers : in one the House of Representatives
of the State hold their meetings ; in the other, the
Senate. Such proceedings as I saw here, were
conducted with perfect gravity and decorum ; and
were certainly calculated to inspire attention and
respect.

There is no doubt that much of the intellectual
refinement and superiority of Boston, is referable
to the quiet influence of the University of Cam
bridge, which is within three or four miles of the
city. The resident professors at that university
are gentlemen of learning and varied attainments ;
and are, without one exception that I can call to
mind, men who would shed a grace upon, and do
honour to, any society in the civilised world.
Many of the resident gentry in Boston and its
neighbourhood, and I think I am not mistaken in
adding, a large majority of those who are attached
to the liberal professions there, have been educated
at this same school. Whatever the defects of

BOSTON. 63

American universities may be, they disseminate no
prejudices ; rear no bigots ; dig up the buried
ashes of no old superstitions ; never interpose
between the people and their improvement; ex
clude no man because of his religious opinions ;
above all, in their whole course of study and in
struction, recognise a world, and a broad one too,
lying beyond the college walls.

It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me
to observe the almost imperceptible, but not less
certain effect, wrought by this institution among
the small community of Boston ; and to note at
every turn the humanising tastes and desires it
has engendered; the affectionate friendships to
which it has given rise ; the amount of vanity and
prejudice it has dispelled. The golden calf they
worship at Boston is a pigmy compared with the
giant effigies set up in other parts of that vast
counting-house which lies beyond the Atlantic ; and
the almighty dollar sinks into something compara
tively insignificant, amidst a whole Pantheon of
better gods.

64? BOSTON.

Above all, I sincerely believe that the public
institutions and charities of this capital of Massa
chusetts are as nearly perfect, as the most con
siderate wisdom, benevolence, and humanity, can
make them. I never in my life was more affected
by the contemplation of happiness, under circum
stances of privation and bereavement, than in my
visits to these establishments.

It is a great and pleasant feature of all such
institutions in America, that they are either sup
ported by the State or assisted by the State ; or
(in the event of their not needing its helping hand)
that they act in concert with it, and are emphati
cally the people's. I cannot but think, with a view
to the principle and its tendency to elevate or
depress the character of the industrious classes,
that a Public Charity is immeasurably better than
a Private Foundation, no matter how munificently
the latter may be endowed. In our own country,
where it has not, until within these later days, been
a very popular fashion with governments to dis
play any extraordinary regard for the great mass

BOSTON. 65

•

of the people or to recognise their existence as
improveable creatures, private charities, unex
ampled in the history of the earth, have arisen,
to do an incalculable amount of good among the
destitute and afflicted. But the government of
the country, having neither act nor part in them,
is not in the receipt of any portion of the gratitude
they inspire ; and, offering very little shelter or
relief beyond that which is to be found in the
workhouse and the jail, has come, not unnaturally,
to be looked upon by the poor rather as a stern
master, quick to correct and punish, than a kind
protector, merciful and vigilant in their hour of
need.

The maxim that out of evil cometh good, is
strongly illustrated by these establishments at
home ; as the records of the Prerogative Office in
Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. Some
immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded
by needy relatives, makes, upon a low average, a
will a-week. The old gentleman or lady, never
very remarkable in the best of times for good

VOL. I. F

66 BOSTON.

temper, is full of aches and pains from head to
foot ; full of fancies and caprices ; full of spleen,
distrust, suspicion, and dislike. To cancel old wills,
and invent new ones, is at last the sole business of
such a testator's existence ; and relations and
friends (some of whom have been bred up dis
tinctly to inherit a large share of the property,
and have been, from their cradles, specially dis
qualified from devoting themselves to any useful
pursuit, on that account) are so often and so un
expectedly and summarily cut off, and re-instated,
and cut off again, that the whole family, down to
the remotest cousin, is kept in a perpetual fever.
At length it becomes plain that the old lady or
gentleman has not long to live ; and the plainer this
becomes, the more clearly the old lady or gentle
man perceives that everybody is in a conspiracy
against their poor old dying relative; wherefore
the old lady or gentleman makes another last
will — positively the last this time — conceals the
same in a china tea-pot, and expires next day.
Then it turns out, that the whole of the real and

BOSTON. 67

personal estate is divided between half-a-dozen
charities ; and that the dead and gone testator
has in pure spite helped to do a great deal of
good, at the cost of an immense amount of evil
passion and misery.

The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asy
lum for the Blind, at Boston, is superintended
by a body of trustees who make an annual report
to the corporation. The indigent blind of that
state are admitted gratuitously. Those from the
adjoining state of Connecticut, or from the states
of Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire, are
admitted by a warrant from the state to which
they respectively belong ; or, failing that, must find
security among their friends, for the payment of
about twenty pounds English for their first year's
board and instruction, and ten for the second.
" After the first year," say the trustees, " an
account current will be opened with each pupil ;
he will be charged with the actual cost of his
board, which will not exceed two dollars per
week ; " a trifle more than eight shillings English ;

F2

68 BOSTON.

" and he will be credited with the amount paid for
him by the state, or by his friends ; also with his
earnings over and above the cost of the stock
which he uses ; so that all his earnings over one
dollar per week will be his own. By the third
year it will be known whether his earnings will
more than pay the actual cost of his board ; if
they should, he will have it at his option to remain
and receive his earnings, or not. Those who prove
unable to earn their own livelihood will not be
retained ; as it is not desirable to convert the
establishment into an almshouse, or to retain any
but working bees in the hive. Those who by
physical or mental imbecility are disqualified for
work, are thereby disqualified from being members
of an industrious community; and they can be
better provided for in establishments fitted for the
infirm.1"

I went to see this place one very fine winter
morning: an Italian sky above, and the air so
clear and bright on every side, that even my eyes,
which are none of the best, could follow the minute

BOSTON. 69

lines and scraps of tracery in distant buildings.
Like most other public institutions in America, of
the same class, it stands a mile or two without the
town, in a cheerful healthy spot ; and is an airy,
spacious, handsome edifice. It is built upon a
height, commanding the harbour. When I paused
for a moment at the door, and marked how fresh
and free the whole scene was — what sparkling
bubbles glanced upon the waves, and welled up
every moment to the surface, as though the world
below, like that above, were radiant with the
bright day, and gushing over in its fulness of
light : when I gazed from sail to sail away upon a
ship at sea, a tiny speck of shining white, the only
cloud upon the still, deep, distant blue — and,
turning, saw a blind boy with his sightless face
addressed that way, as though he too had some
sense within him of the glorious distance : I felt a
kind of sorrow that the place should be so very
light, and a strange wish that for his sake it were
darker. It was but momentary, of course, and a
mere fancy, but I felt it keenly for all that.

70 BOSTON.

The children were at their daily tasks in different
rooms, except a few who were already dismissed,
and were at play. Here, as in many institutions,
no uniform, is worn ; and I was very glad of it, for
two reasons. Firstly, because I am sure that
nothing but senseless custom and want of thought
would reconcile us to the liveries and badges we
are so fond of at home. Secondly, because the
absence of these things presents each child to the
visitor in his or her own proper character, with its
individuality unimpaired ; not lost in a dull, ugly,
monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning
garb : which is really an important consideration.
The wisdom of encouraging a little harmless pride
in personal appearance even among the blind,
or the whimsical absurdity of considering charity
and leather breeches inseparable companions, as
we do, requires no comment.

Good order, cleanliness, and comfort, pervaded
every corner of the building. The various classes,
who were gathered round their teachers, answered
the questions put to them with readiness and

BOSTON. 71

intelligence, and in a spirit of cheerful contest for
precedence which pleased me very much. Those
who were at play, were gleesome and noisy as other
children. More spiritual and affectionate friend
ships appeared to exist among them, than would
be found among other young persons suffering
under no deprivation ; but this I expected and
was prepared to find. It is a part of the great
scheme of Heaven's merciful consideration for the
afflicted.

In a portion of the building, set apart for that
purpose, are workshops for blind persons whose
education is finished, and who have acquired a
trade, but who cannot pursue it in an ordinary
manufactory because of their deprivation. Several
people were at work here; making brushes, mat
tresses, and so forth; and the cheerfulness, in
dustry, and good order discernible in every other
part of the building, extended to this department
also.

On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired,
without any guide or leader, to a spacious music-

72 BOSTON.

hall, where they took their seats in an orchestra
erected for that purpose, and listened with manifest
delight to a voluntary on the organ, played by one
of themselves. At its conclusion, the performer,
a boy of nineteen or twenty, gave place to a girl ;
and to her accompaniment they all sang a hymn,
and afterwards a sort of chorus. It was very sad
to look upon and hear them, happy though their
condition unquestionably was ; and I saw that one
blind girl, who (being for the time deprived of
the use of her limbs, by illness) sat close beside
me with her face towards them, wept silently the
while she listened.

It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and
see how free they are from all concealment of
what is passing in their thoughts ; observing
which, a man with eyes may blush to contemplate
the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade of
anxious expression which is never absent from their
countenances, and the like of which we may readily
detect in our own faces if we try to feel our way in
the dark, every idea, as it rises within them, is

BOSTON. 73

expressed with the lightning's speed, and nature's
truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing-
room at court, could only for one time be as un
conscious of the eyes upon them as blind men
and women are, what secrets would come out,
and what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the
loss of which we so much pity, would appear
to be!

The thought occurred to me as I sat down in
another room, before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb ;
destitute of smell ; and nearly so, of taste : before a
fair young creature with every human faculty, and
hope, and power of goodness and affection, inclosed
within her delicate frame, and but one outward
sense — the sense of touch. There she was, before me;
built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to
any ray of light, or particle of sound ; with her
poor white hand peeping through a chink in the
wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that
an Immortal soul might be awakened.

Long before I looked upon her, the help had
come. Her face was radiant with intelligence and

74< BOSTON.

pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own hands,
was bound about a head, whose intellectual
capacity and development were beautifully ex
pressed in its graceful outline, and its broad open
brow ; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern
of neatness and simplicity; the work she had
knitted, lay beside her ; her writing-book was on
the desk she leaned upon. — From the mournful
ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen
up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful hearted
being.

Like other inmates of that house, she had a
green ribbon bound round her eyelids. A doll she
had dressed lay near upon the ground. I took it
up, and saw that she had made a green fillet such
as she wore herself, and fastened it about its
mimic eyes.

She was seated in a little enclosure, made by
school-desks and forms, writing her daily journal.
But soon finishing this pursuit, she engaged in an
animated communication with a teacher who sat
beside her. This was a favourite mistress with

BOSTON. 75

the poor pupil. If she could see the face of
her fair instructress, she would not love her less,
I am sure.

I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of
her history, from an account, written by that one
man who has made her what she is. It is a very
beautiful and touching narrative; and I wish I
could present it entire.

Her name is Laura Bridgman. " She was born
in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the twenty- first of
December, 1829. She is described as having been
a very sprightly and pretty infant, with bright
blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble
until she was a year and a half old, that her
parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was sub
ject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame
almost beyond her power of endurance ; and life
was held by the feeblest tenure : but when a year
and a half old, she seemed to rally; the dangerous
symptoms subsided ; and at twenty months old,
she was perfectly well.

" Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in

76 BOSTON.

their growth, rapidly developed themselves ; and
during the four months of health which she enjoyed,
she appears (making due allowance for a fond
mother's account) to have displayed a considerable
degree of intelligence.

" But suddenly she sickened again ; her disease
raged with great violence during five weeks, when
her eyes and ears were inflamed, suppurated, and
their contents were discharged. But though sight
and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child's
sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during
seven weeks; for five months she was kept in
bed in a darkened room ; it was a year before she
could walk unsupported, and two years before she
could sit up all day. It was now observed that
her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed ;
and, consequently, that her taste was much
blunted.

" It was not until four years of age that the
poor child's bodily health seemed restored, and she
was able to enter upon her apprenticeship of life
and the world.

BOSTON. 77

" But what a situation was hers ! The darkness
and the silence of the tomb were around her : no
mother's smile called forth her answering smile,
no father's voice taught her to imitate his sounds :
— they, brothers and sisters, were but forms of
matter which resisted her touch, but which dif
fered not from the furniture of the house, save
in warmth, and in the power of locomotion ; and
not even in these respects from the dog and
the cat.

" But the immortal spirit which had been im
planted within her could not die, nor be maimed
nor mutilated ; and though most of its avenues of
communication with the world were cut off, it
began to manifest itself through the others. As
soon as she could walk, she began to explore the
room, and then the house ; she became familiar
with the form, density, weight, and heat, of every
article she could lay her hands upon. She followed
her mother, and felt her hands and arms, as she
was occupied about the house ; and her disposi
tion to imitate, led her to repeat everything

78 BOSTON.

herself. She even learned to sew a little, and to
knit."

The reader will scarcely need to be told, how
ever, that the opportunities of communicating with
her, were very, very limited ; and that the moral
effects of her wretched state soon began to appear.
Those who cannot be enlightened by reason, can
only be controlled by force; and this, coupled
with her great privations, must soon have re
duced her to a worse condition than that of the
beasts that perish, but for timely and unhoped
for aid.

" At this time, I was so fortunate as to hear of
the child, and immediately hastened to Hanover
to see her. I found her with a well-formed figure;
a strongly-marked, nervous-sanguine temperament;
a large and beautifully-shaped head ; and the whole
system in healthy action. The parents were easily
induced to consent to her coming to Boston, and
on the 4th of October, 1837, they brought her to
the Institution.

" For a while, she was much bewildered ; and

BOSTON. 79

after waiting about two weeks, until she became
acquainted with her new locality, and somewhat
familiar with the inmates, the attempt was
made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs,
by which she could interchange thoughts with
others.

"There was one of two ways to be adopted:
either to go on to build up a language of signs on
the basis of the natural language which she had
already commenced herself, or to teach her the
purely arbitrary language in common use : that is,
to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to
give her a knowledge of letters by combination of
which she might express her idea of the existence,
and the mode and condition of existence, of any
thing. The former would have been easy, but very
ineffectual ; the latter seemed very difficult, but, if
accomplished, very effectual. I determined there
fore to try the latter.

4; The first experiments were made by taking
articles in common use, such as knives, forks,
spoons, keys, &c. and pasting upon them labels

80 BOSTON.

with their names printed in raised letters. These
she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, dis
tinguished that the crooked lines spoon, differed
as much from the crooked lines k ey, as the spoon
differed from the key in form.

"Then small detached labels, with the same
words printed upon them, were put into her hands ;
and she soon observed that they were similar to the
ones pasted on the articles. She showed her per
ception of this similarity by laying the label key
upon the key, and the label spoon upon the spoon.
She was encouraged here by the natural sign of
approbation, patting on the head.

" The same process was then repeated with all
the articles which she could handle ; and she very
easily learned to place the proper labels upon them.
It was evident, however, that the only intellectual
exercise was that of imitation and memory. She
recollected that the label book was placed upon
a book, and she repeated the process first from
imitation, next from memory, with only the motive
of love of approbation, but apparently without the

BOSTON. 81

intellectual perception of any relation between the
things.

4 'After a while, instead of labels, the individual
letters were given to her on detached bits of paper:
they were arranged side by side so as to spell book,
key, &c. ; then they were mixed up in a heap
and a sign was made for her to arrange them her
self, so as to express the words book, key, &c. ;
and she did so.

"Hitherto, the process had been mechanical,
and the success about as great as teaching a very
knowing dog a variety of tricks. The poor child
had sat in mute amazement, and patiently imitated
every thing her teacher did ; but now the truth
began to flash upon her: her intellect began to
work : she perceived that here was a way by which
she could herself make up a sign of any thing that
was in her own mind, and show it to another mind ;
and at once her countenance lighted up with a
human expression: it was no longer a dog, or
parrot : it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing
upon a new link of union with other spirits ! I

VOL. I. G

82 BOSTON.

could almost fix upon the moment when this truth
dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her
countenance; I saw that the great obstacle was
overcome ; and that henceforward nothing but
patient and persevering, but plain and straightfor
ward, efforts were to be used.

"The result thus far, is quickly related, and
easily conceived ; but not so was the process ; for
many weeks of apparently unprofitable labour were
passed before it was effected.

" When it was said above, that a sign was made,
it was intended to say, that the action was per
formed by her teacher, she feeling his hands, and
then imitating the motion.

" The next step was to procure a set of metal
types, with the different letters of the alphabet
cast upon their ends ; also a board, in which were
square holes, into which holes she could set the
types ; so that the letters on their ends could alone
be felt above the surface.

" Then, on any article being handed to her, for
instance, a pencil, or a watch, she would select the

BOSTON. 83

component letters, and arrange them on her board,
and read them with apparent pleasure.

" She was exercised for several weeks in this
way, until her vocabulary became extensive ; and
then the important step was taken of teaching her
how to represent the different letters by the posi
tion of her fingers, instead of the cumbrous appa
ratus of the board and types. She accomplished
this speedily and easily, for her intellect had begun
to work in aid of her teacher, and her progress
was rapid.

" This was the period, about three months after
she had commenced, that the first report of her
case was made, in which it is stated that c she
has just learned the manual alphabet, as used by
the deaf mutes, and it is a subject of delight and
wonder to see how rapidly, correctly, and eagerly,
she goes on with her labours. Her teacher gives
her a new object, for instance, a pencil, first lets
her examine it, and get an idea of its use, then
teaches her how to spell it by making the signs
for the letters with her own fingers : the child

G 2

84 BOSTON.

grasps her hand, and feels her fingers, as the
different letters are formed ; she turns her head
a little on one side, like a person listening closely ;
her lips are apart ; she seems scarcely to breathe ;
and her countenance, at first anxious, gradually
changes to a smile, as she comprehends the lesson.
She then holds up her tiny fingers, and spells the
word in the manual alphabet ; next, she takes
her types and arranges her letters ; and last, to
make sure that she is right, she takes the whole of
the types composing the word, and places them
upon or in contact with the pencil, or whatever
the object may be.'

" The whole of the succeeding year was passed
in gratifying her eager inquiries for the names of
every object which she could possibly handle ; in
exercising her in the use of the manual alphabet ;
in extending in every possible way her knowledge
of the physical relations of things ; and in proper
<jare of her health.

" At the end of the year a report of her case
was made, from which the following is an extract.

BOSTON. 85

" ' It has been ascertained beyond the possibi
lity of doubt, that she cannot see a ray of light,
cannot hear the least sound, and never exercises
her sense of smell, if she have any. Thus her
mind dwells in darkness and stillness, as profound
as that of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beauti
ful sights, and sweet sounds, and pleasant odours,
she has no conception ; nevertheless, she seems
as happy and playful as a bird or a lamb ; and
the employment of her intellectual faculties, or the
acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid plea
sure, which is plainly marked in her expressive
features. She never seems to repine, but has all
the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. She is fond
of fun and frolic, and when playing with the rest
of the children, her shrill laugh sounds loudest
of the group.

" 4 When left alone, she seems very happy if she
have her knitting or sewing, and will busy herself
for hours : if she have no occupation, she evidently
amuses herself by imaginary dialogues, or by recall
ing past impressions ; she counts with her fingers,

86 BOSTON.

or spells out names of things which she has recently
learned, in the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes.
In this lonely self-communion she seems to reason,
reflect, and argue : if she spell a word wrong with
the fingers of her right hand, she instantly strikes
it with her left, as her teacher does, in sign of
disapprobation ; if right, then she pats herself
upon the head, and looks pleased. She sometimes
purposely spells a word wrong with the left hand,
looks roguish for a moment and laughs, and then
with the right hand strikes the left, as if to
correct it.

" ' During the year she has attained great dex
terity in the use of the manual alphabet of the deaf
mutes ; and she spells out the words and sentences
which she knows, so fast and so deftly, that only
those accustomed to this language can follow with
the eye the rapid motions of her fingers.

" c But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she
writes her thoughts upon the air, still more so is the
ease and accuracy with which she reads the words
thus written by another ; grasping their hands in

BOSTON. 87

hers, and following every movement of their fingers,
as letter after letter conveys their meaning to her
mind. It is in this way that she converses with
her blind playmates, and nothing can more forcibly
show the power of mind in forcing matter to its
purpose, than a meeting between them. For if
great talent and skill are necessary for two panto
mimes to paint their thoughts and feelings by the
movements of the body, and the expression of the
countenance, how much greater the difficulty when
darkness shrouds them both, and the one can hear
no sound !

" ' When Laura is walking through a passage way,
with her hands spread before her, she knows in
stantly every one she meets, and passes them with
a sign of recognition : but if it be a girl of her own
age, and especially if it be one of her favourites,
there is instantly a bright smile of recognition,
and a twining of arms, a grasping of hands, and
a swift telegraphing upon the tiny fingers ; whose
rapid evolutions convey the thoughts and feelings
from the outposts of one mind to those of the other.

BOSTOX.

There are questions and answers, exchanges of
joy or sorrow, there are kissings and partings,
just as between little children with all their senses.'
" During this year, and six months after
she had left home, her mother came to visit
her, and the scene of their meeting was an inte
resting one.

"The mother stood some time, gazing with
overflowing eyes upon her unfortunate child, who,
all unconscious of her presence, was playing about
the room. Presently Laura ran against her, and
at once began feeling her hands, examining her
dress, and trying to find out if she knew her ; but
not succeeding in this, she turned away as from
a stranger, and the poor woman could not con
ceal the pang she felt, at finding that her beloved
child did not know her.

" She then gave Laura a string of beads which
she used to wear at home, which were recognized
by the child at once, who, with much joy, put them
around her neck, and sought me eagerly to say
she understood the string was from her home.

BOSTON. 89

" The mother now tried to caress her, but poor
Laura repelled her, preferring to be with her
acquaintances.

" Another article from home was now given
her, and she began to look much interested ; she
examined the stranger much closer, and gave me
to understand that she knew she came from
Hanover; she even endured her caresses, but
would leave her with indifference at the slightest
signal. The distress of the mother was now pain
ful to behold ; for, although she had feared that
she should not be recognized, the painful reality of
being treated with cold indifference by a darling
child, was too much for woman's nature to bear.

" After a while, on the mother taking hold of her
again, a vague idea seemed to flit across Laura's
mind, that this could not be a stranger; she
therefore felt her hands very eagerly, while her
countenance assumed an expression of intense
interest; she became very pale, and then sud
denly red; hope seemed struggling with doubt
and anxiety, and never were contending emotions

90 BOSTON.

more strongly painted upon the human face : at
this moment of painful uncertainty, the mother
drew her close to her side, and kissed her fondly,
when at once the truth flashed upon the child,
and all mistrust and anxiety disappeared from her
face, as with an expression of exceeding joy she
eagerly nestled to the bosom of her parent, and
yielded herself to her fond embraces.

" After this, the beads were all unheeded ; the
playthings which were offered to her were utterly
disregarded; her playmates, for whom but a
moment before she gladly left the stranger, now
vainly strove to pull her from her mother ; and
though she yielded her usual instantaneous obe
dience to my signal to follow me, it was evidently
with painful reluctance. She clung close to me, as
if bewildered and fearful ; and when, after a mo
ment, I took her to her mother, she sprang to her
arms, and clung to her with eager joy.

u The subsequent parting between them, showed
alike the affection, the intelligence, and the resolu
tion of the child.

BOSTON. 9 1

" Laura accompanied her mother to the door,
clinging close to her all the way, until they arrived
at the threshold, where she paused, and felt around,
to ascertain who was near her. Perceiving the
matron, of whom she is very fond, she grasped
her with one hand, holding on convulsively to her
mother with the other ; and thus she stood for a
moment: then she dropped her mothers hand;
put her handkerchief to her eyes ; and turning
round, clung sobbing to the matron ; while her
mother departed, with emotions as deep as those
of her child.

******

" It has been remarked in former reports, that
she can distinguish different degrees of intellect in
others, and that she soon regarded almost with
contempt, a newcomer, when, after a few days,
she discovered her weakness of mind. This una-
miable part of her character has been more strongly
developed during the past year.

" She chooses for her friends and companions,
those children who are intelligent, and can talk

92 BOSTON.

best with her; and she evidently dislikes to be
with those who are deficient in intellect, unless,
indeed, she can make them serve her purposes,
which she is evidently inclined to do. She takes
advantage of them, and makes them wait upon
her, in a manner that she knows she could not
exact of others ; and in various ways she shows her
Saxon blood.

" She is fond of having other children noticed
and caressed by the teachers, and those whom she
respects ; but this must not be carried too far, or
she becomes jealous. She wants to have her share,
which, if not the lion's, is the greater part ; and if
she does not get it, she says, ' My mother will
love me?

" Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it
leads her to actions which must be entirely incom
prehensible to her, and which can give her no other
pleasure than the gratification of an internal faculty.
She has been known to sit for half an hour, holding
a book before her sightless eyes, and moving her
lips, as she has observed seeing people do when
reading.

BOSTON. 93

" She one day pretended that her doll was sick ;
and went through all the motions of tending it,
and giving it medicine ; she then put it carefully
to bed, and placed a bottle of hot water to its feet,
laughing all the time most heartily. When I came
home, she insisted upon my going to see it, and feel
its pulse ; and when I told her to put a blister on
its back, she seemed to enjoy it amazingly, and
almost screamed with delight.

" Her social feelings, and her affections, are very
strong ; and when she is sitting at work, or at her
studies, by the side of one of her little friends, she
will break off from her task every few moments, to
hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth
that is touching to behold.

*' When left alone, she occupies and apparently
amuses herself, and seems quite contented ; and so
strong seems to be the natural tendency of thought
to put on the garb of language, that she often soli
loquizes in thejinger language, slow and tedious as
it is. But it is only when alone, that she is quiet :
for if she become sensible of the presence of any

94 BOSTON.

one near her, she is restless until she can sit close
beside them, hold their hand, and converse with
them by signs.

<c In her intellectual character it is pleasing to
observe an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a
quick perception of the relations of things. In her
moral character, it is beautiful to behold her con
tinual gladness, her keen enjoyment of existence,
her expansive love, her unhesitating confidence,
her sympathy with suffering, her conscientious
ness, truthfulness, and hopefulness.'"

Such are a few fragments from the simple but
most interesting and instructive history of Laura
Bridgman. The name of her great benefactor and
friend, who writes it, is Doctor Howe. There are
not many persons, I hope and believe, who, after
reading these passages, can ever hear that name
with indifference.

A further account has been published by Dr.
Howe, since the report from which I have just
quoted. It describes her rapid mental growth
and improvement during twelve months more, and

BOSTOX. 95

brings her little history down to the end of last
year. It is very remarkable, that as we dream in
words, and carry on imaginary conversations, in
which we speak both for ourselves and for the
shadows who appear to us in those visions of the
night, so she, having no words, uses her finger
alphabet in her sleep. And it has been ascertained
that when her slumber is broken, and is much dis
turbed by dreams, she expresses her thoughts in
an irregular and confused manner on her fingers :
just as we should murmur and mutter them indis
tinctly, in the like circumstances.

I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found
it written in a fair legible square hand, and ex
pressed in terms which were quite intelligible with
out any explanation. On my saying that I should
like to see her write again, the teacher who sat
beside her, bade her, in their language, sign her
name upon a slip of paper, twice or thrice. In
doing so, I observed that she kept her left hand
always touching, and following up, her right, in
which, of course, she held the pen. No line was

96 BOSTON.

indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote straight
and freely.

She had, until now, been quite unconscious of
the presence of visitors; but, having her hand
placed in that of the gentleman who accompanied
me, she immediately expressed his name upon her
teachers palm. Indeed her sense of touch is now
so exquisite, that having been acquainted with a
person once, she can recognise him or her after
almost any interval. This gentleman had been in
her company, I believe, but very seldom, and cer
tainly had not seen her for many months. My
hand she rejected at once, as she does that of any
man who is a stranger to her. But she retained
my wife's with evident pleasure, kissed her, and
examined her dress with a girl's curiosity and
interest.

She was merry and cheerful, and showed much
innocent playfulness in her intercourse with her
teacher. Her delight on recognising a favourite
playfellow and companion— herself a blind girl —
who silently, and with an equal enjoyment of the

BOSTON. 97

coming surprise, took a seat beside her, was beau
tiful to witness. It elicited from her at first, as
other slight circumstances did twice or thrice during
my visit, an uncouth noise which was rather painful
to hear. But on her teacher touching her lips,
she immediately desisted, and embraced her laugh
ingly and affectionately.

I had previously been into another chamber,
where a number of blind boys were swinging, and
climbing, and engaged in various sports. They all
clamoured, as we entered, to the assistant-master,
who accompanied us, " Look at me, Mr. Hart !
Please, Mr. Hart, look at me ! " evincing, I thought,
even in this, an anxiety peculiar to their condition,
that their little feats of agility should be seen.
Among them was a small laughing fellow, who
stood aloof, entertaining himself with a gymnastic
exercise for bringing the arms and chest into play ;
which he enjoyed mightily; especially when, in
thrusting out his right arm, he brought it tatu
contact with another boy. Like Laura Bridgman,
this young child was deaf, and dumb, and blind.

VOL. I. H

98 BOSTON.

Dr. Howe^s account of this pupil's first instruc
tion is so very striking, and so intimately connected
with Laura herself, that I cannot refrain from a
short extract. I may premise that the poor boy's*
name is Oliver Caswell ; that he is thirteen years
of age ; and that he was in full possession of all his
faculties, until three years and four months old.
He was then attacked by scarlet fever: in four
weeks became deaf ; in a few weeks more, blind ;
in six months, dumb. He showed his anxious sense
of this last deprivation, by often feeling the lips
of other persons when they were talking, and
then putting his hand upon his own, as if to
assure himself that he had them in the right
position.

" His thirst for knowledge," says Dr. Howe,
" proclaimed itself as soon as he entered the house,
by his eager examination of every thing he could
feel or smell in his new location. For instance,
treading upon the register of a furnace, he instantly
stooped down, and began to feel it, and soon
discovered the way in which the upper plate

BOSTON. 99

moved upon the lower one ; but this was not
enough for him, so lying down upon his face, he
applied his tongue first to one then to the other,
and seemed to discover that they were of different
kinds of metal.

" His signs were expressive : and the strictly
natural language, laughing, crying, sighing, kissing,
embracing, &c., was perfect.

" Some of the analogical signs which (guided
by his faculty of imitation) he had contrived, were
comprehensible ; such as the waving motion of his
hand for the motion of a boat, the circular one for
a wheel, &c.

" The first object was to break up the use of
these signs, and to substitute for them the use of
purely arbitrary ones.

" Profiting by the experience I had gained in
the other cases, I omitted several steps of the
process before employed, and commenced at once
with the finger language. Taking therefore, several
articles having short names, such as key, cup,
mug, &c., and with Laura for an auxiliary, I sat

H 2

100 BOSTON.

down, and taking his hand, placed it upon one of
them, and then with my own, made the letters
k e y. He felt my hands eagerly with both of
his, and on my repeating the process, he evidently
tried to imitate the motions of my fingers. In a
few minutes he contrived to feel the motions of
my fingers with one hand, and holding out the
other he tried to imitate them, laughing most
heartily when he succeeded. Laura was by, in
terested even to agitation ; and the two presented
a singular sight : her face was flushed and anxious,
and her fingers twined in among ours so closely as
to follow every motion, but so lightly as not to
embarrass them ; while Oliver stood attentive,
his head a little aside, his face turned up, his left
hand grasping mine, and his right held out : at
every motion of my fingers his countenance be
tokened keen attention ; there was an expression
of anxiety as he tried to imitate the motions ;
then a smile came stealing out as he thought he
could do so, and spread into a joyous laugh the
moment he succeeded, and felt me pat his head,

BOSTON. 101

and Laura clap him heartily upon the back, and
jump up and down in her joy.

" He learned more than a half dozen letters in
half an hour, and seemed delighted with his suc
cess, at least in gaining approbation. His attention
then began to flag, and I commenced playing with
him. It was evident that in all this he had merely
been imitating the motions of my fingers, and
placing his hand upon the key, cup, &c., as part
of the process, without any perception of the
relation between the sign and the object.

" When he was tired with play I took him back
to the table, and he was quite ready to begin
again his process of imitation. He soon learned
to make the letters for key, pen, pin ; and by having
the object repeatedly placed in his hand, he at
last perceived the relation I wished to establish
between them. This was evident, because, when I
made the letters pin, or pen, or cup, he would
select the article.

" The perception of this relation was not accom
panied by that radiant flash of intelligence, and

102 BOSTON.

that glow of joy, which marked the delightful
moment when Laura first perceived it. I then
placed all the articles on the table, and going
away a little distance with the children, placed
Oliver's fingers in the positions to spell key, on
which Laura went and brought the article : the
little fellow seemed to be much amused by this,
and looked very attentive and smiling. I then
caused him to make the letters b r e a d, and in
an instant Laura went and brought him a piece:
he smelled at it ; put it to his lips ; cocked up his
head with a most knowing look ; seemed to reflect
a moment ; and 'then laughed outright, as much
as to say, ' Aha ! I understand now how something
may be made out of this.1

<; It was now clear that he had the capacity and
inclination to learn, that he was a proper subject
for instruction, and needed only persevering at
tention I therefore put him in the hands of an
intelligent teacher, nothing doubting of his rapid
progress."

Well may this gentleman call that a delightful

BOSTON. 103

moment, in which some distant promise of her
present state first gleamed upon the darkened
mind of Laura Bridgman. Throughout his life,
the recollection of that moment will be to him a
source of pure, unfading happiness; nor will it
shine least brightly on the evening of his days of
Noble Usefulness.

The affection that exists between these two — the
master and the pupil — is as far removed from all
ordinary care and regard, as the circumstances in
which it has had its growth, are apart from the
common occurrences of life. He is occupied now,
in devising means of imparting to her, higher
knowledge ; and of conveying to her some adequate
idea of the Great Creator of that universe in
which, dark and silent and scentless though it be
to her, she has such deep delight and glad enjoy
ment.

Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears
and hear not ; ye who are as the hypocrites of
sad countenances, and disfigure your faces that
ye may seem unto men to fast ; learn healthy

104 BOSTON".

cheerfulness, and mild contentment, from the deaf,
and dumb, and blind ! Self-elected saints with
gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child
may teach you lessons you will do well to follow.
Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your
hearts ; for there may be something in its healing
touch akin to that of the Great Master whose
precepts you misconstrue, whose lessons you
pervert, of whose charity and sympathy with
all the world, not one among you in his daily
practice knows as much as many of the worst
among those fallen sinners, to whom you are
liberal in nothing but the preachment of per
dition !

As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child
of one of the attendants came running in to greet
its father. For the moment, a child with eyes,
among the sightless crowd, impressed me almost
as painfully as the blind boy in the porch had done,
two hours ago. Ah ! how much brighter and
more deeply blue, glowing and rich though it had
been before, was the scene without, contrasting

BOSTON. 105

with the darkness of so many youthful lives
within !

At SOUTH BOSTON, as it is called, in a situation,
excellently adapted for the purpose, several cha
ritable institutions are clustered together. One
of these, is the State Hospital for the insane;
admirably conducted on those enlightened prin
ciples of conciliation and kindness, which twenty
years ago would have been worse than heretical,
and which have been acted upon with so much
success in our own pauper asylum at Han well.
" Evince a desire to show some confidence, and
repose some trust, even in mad people," — said the
resident physician, as we walked along the galleries,
his patients flocking round us unrestrained. Of
those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim
after witnessing its, effects, if there be such people
still alive, I can only say that I hope I may never
be summoned as a Juryman on a Commission of
Lunacy whereof they are the subjects ; for I

106 BOSTON.

should certainly find them out of their senses, on
such evidence alone.

Each ward in this institution is shaped like a
long gallery or hall, with the dormitories of the
patients opening from it on either hand. Here
they work, read, play at skittles, and other games ;
and when the weather does not admit of their
taking exercise out of doors, pass the day to
gether. In one of these rooms, seated, calmly,
and quite as a matter of course, among a throng of
madwomen, black and white, were the physician's
wife and another lady, with a couple of children.
These ladies were graceful and handsome ; and it
was not difficult to perceive at a glance that even
theirpresence there, had a highly beneficial influence
on the patients who were grouped about them.

Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with
a great assumption of dignity and refinement of
manner, sat an elderly female, in as many scraps
of finery as Madge Wildfire herself. Her head in
particular was so strewn with scraps of gauze and
cotton and bits of paper, and had so many queer

BOSTON. 107

odds and ends stuck all about it, that it looked
like a bird's-nest. She was radiant with imaginary
jewels ; wore a rich pair of undoubted gold spec
tacles ; and gracefully dropped upon her lap, as
we approached, a very old greasy newspaper,
in which I dare say she had been reading an
account of her own presentation at some Foreign
Court.

I have been thus particular in describing her,
because she will serve to exemplify the physician's
manner of acquiring and retaining the confidence
of his patients.

" This," he said aloud, taking me by the hand,
and advancing to the fantastic figure with great
politeness — not raising her suspicions by the
slightest look or whisper, or any kind of aside, to
me : " This lady is the hostess of this mansion, sir.
It belongs to her. Nobody else has anything
whatever to do with it. It is a large establishment,
as you see, and requires a great number of atten
dants. She lives, you observe, in the very first
style. She is kind enough to receive my visits,

108 BOSTON.

and to permit my wife and family to reside here ;
for which, it is hardly necessary to say, we are
much indebted to her. She is exceedingly
courteous, you perceive," on this hint she bowed,
condescendingly, " and will permit me to have the
pleasure of introducing you : a gentleman from
England, Ma'am : newly arrived from England,
after a very tempestuous passage : Mr. Dickens,
— the lady of the house ! "

We exchanged the most dignified salutations
with profound gravity and respect, and so went on.
The rest of the madwomen seemed to understand
the joke perfectly (not only in this case, but in all the
others, except their own), and to be highly amused
by it. The nature of their several kinds of insanity
was made known to me in the same way, and we
left each of them in high good humour. Not only
is a thorough confidence established, by these means,
between physician and patient, in respect of the
nature and extent of their hallucinations, but it is
easy to understand that opportunities are afforded
for seizing any moment of reason, to startle them

BOSTON. 109

by placing their own delusion before them in its
most incongruous and ridiculous light.

Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner
every day with a knife and fork ; and in the midst
of them sits the gentleman, whose manner of deal
ing with his charges, I have just described. At
every meal, moral influence alone restrains the
more violent among them from cutting the throats
of the rest; but the effect of that influence is
reduced to an absolute certainty, and is found,
even as a means of restraint, to say nothing of it
as a means of cure, a hundred times more efficacious
than all the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and hand
cuffs, that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have
manufactured since the creation of the world.

In the labour department, every patient is as
freely trusted with the tools of his trade as if he
were a sane man. In the garden, and on the farm,
they work with spades, rakes, and hoes. For
amusement, they walk, run, fish, paint, read, and
ride out to take the air in carriages provided for
the purpose. They have among themselves a sew-

110 BOSTON.

ing society to make clothes for the poor, which
holds meetings, passes resolutions, never comes to
fisty cuffs or bowie-knives as sane assemblies have
been known to do elsewhere ; and conducts all its
proceedings with the greatest decorum. The irri
tability, which would otherwise be expended on
their own flesh, clothes, and furniture, is dissipated
in these pursuits. They are cheerful, tranquil,
and healthy.

Once a week, they have a ball, in which the
Doctor and his family, with all the nurses and
attendants, take an active part. Dances and
marches are performed alternately, to the enliven
ing strains of a piano ; and now and then some
gentleman or lady (whose proficiency has been pre
viously ascertained) obliges the company with a
song: nor does it ever degenerate, at a tender
crisis, into a screech or howl ; wherein, I must
confess, I should have thought the danger lay.
At an early hour they all meet together for these
festive purposes ; at eight o'clock refreshments are
served ; and at nine they separate.

BOSTON. Ill

Immense politeness and good-breeding are
observed throughout. They all take their tone
from the Doctor ; and he moves a very Chesterfield
among the company. Like other assemblies, these
entertainments afford a fruitful topic of conversa
tion among the ladies for some days; and the gen
tlemen are so anxious to shine on these occasions,
that they have been sometimes found "practising
their steps " in private, to cut a more distinguished
figure in the dance.

It is obvious that one great feature of this sys
tem, is the inculcation and encouragement, even
among such unhappy persons, of a decent self-
respect. Something of the same spirit pervades
all the Institutions at South Boston.

There is the House of Industry. In that branch
of it, which is devoted to the reception of old or other
wise helpless paupers, these words are painted on the
walls : u WORTHY OF NOTICE. SELF-GOVERNMENT,
QUIETUDE, AND PEACE, ARE BLESSINGS." It is not
assumed and taken for granted that being there
they must be evil-disposed and wicked people, before

] ] 2 BOSTON.

whose vicious eyes it is necessary to flourish threats
and harsh restraints. They are met at the very
threshold with this mild appeal. All within-doors
is very plain and simple, as it ought to be, but
arranged with a view to peace and comfort. It
costs no more than any other plan of arrangement,
but it bespeaks an amount of consideration for
those who are reduced to seek a shelter there,
which puts them at once upon their gratitude
and good behaviour. Instead of being parcelled
out in great, long, rambling wards, where a
certain amount of weazen life may mope, and
pine, and shiver, all day long, the building
is divided into separate rooms, each with its
share of light and air. In these, the better
kind of paupers live. They have a motive for
exertion and becoming pride, in the desire to make
these little chambers comfortable and decent.
I do not remember one but it was clean and
neat, and had its plant or two upon the window-
sill, or row of crockery upon the shelf, or small
display of coloured prints upon the white- washed

BOSTON. 113

wall, or, perhaps, its wooden clock behind the
door.

The orphans and young children are in an
adjoining building ; separate from this, but a part
of the same Institution. Some are such little
creatures, that the stairs are of lilliputian measure
ment, fitted to their tiny strides. The same con
sideration for their years and weakness is expressed
in their very seats, which are perfect curiosities,
and look like articles of furniture for a pauper
dolPs-hoiise. I can imagine the glee of our<Poor
Law Commissioners at the notion of these seats
having arms and backs ; but small spines being of
older date than their occupation of the Board
room at Somerset House, I thought even this
provision very merciful and kind.

Here again, I was greatly pleased with the in
scriptions on the wall, which were scraps of plain
morality, easily remembered and understood: such
as " Love one another" — " God remembers the
smallest creature in his creation : " and straight
forward advice of that nature. The books and

VOL. I. I

114 BOSTON.

tasks of these smallest of scholars, were adapted,
in the same judicious manner, to their childish
powers. When we had examined these lessons,
four morsels of girls (of whom one was blind)
sang a little song, about the merry month of
May, which I thought (being extremely dismal)
would have suited an English November better.
That done, we went to see their sleeping-rooms
on the floor above, in which the arrangements
were no less excellent and gentle than those
we had seen below. And after observing that the
teachers were of a class and character well suited
to the spirit of the place, I took leave of the
infants with a lighter heart than ever I have taken
leave of pauper infants yet.

Connected with^the House of Industry, there is
also a Hospital, which was in the best order, and
had, I am glad to say, many beds unoccupied.
It had one fault, however, which is common to all
American interiors : the presence of the eternal,
accursed, suffocating, red-hot demon of a stove,
whose breath would blight the purest air under
Heaven.

BOSTON. 115

There are two establishments for boys in this
same neighbourhood. One is called the Boylston
school, and is an asylum for neglected and indi
gent boys who have committed no crime, but who
in the ordinary course of things would very soon
be purged of that distinction if they were not
taken from the hungry streets and sent here.
The other is a House of Reformation for Juvenile
Offenders. They are both under the same roof,
but the two classes of boys never come in
contact.

The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed,
have very much the advantage of the others in
point of personal appearance. They were in their
school- room when I came upon them, and an
swered correctly, without book, such questions as
where was England ; how far was it ; what was
its population ; its capital city; its form of govern
ment ; and so forth. They sang a song too,
about a farmer sowing his seed : with correspond
ing action at such parts as " 'tis thus he sows,1'
" he turns him round," " he claps his hands ;"
i2

116

BOSTON.

which gave it greater interest for them, and ac
customed them to act together, in an orderly
manner. They appeared exceedingly well taught,
and not better taught than fed ; for a more
chubby-looking, full-waistcoated set of boys, I
never saw.

The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant
faces by a great deal, and in this establishment
there were many boys of colour. I saw them first
at their work (basket-making, and the manufac
ture of palm-leaf hats), afterwards in their school,
where they sang a chorus in praise of Liberty: an
odd, and, one would think, rather aggravating,
theme for prisoners. These boys are divided into
four classes, each denoted by a numeral, worn on
a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a new
comer, he is put into the fourth or lowest class,
and left, by good behaviour, to work his way up
into the first. The design and object of this Insti
tution is to reclaim the youthful criminal by firm
but kind and judicious treatment; to make his
prison a place of purification and improvement,

BOSTON. 117

not of demoralisation and corruption ; to impress
upon him that there is but one path, and that one
sober industry, which can ever lead him to happi
ness ; to teach him how it may be trodden, if his
footsteps have never yet been led that way ; and to
lure him back to it if they have strayed : in a
word, to snatch him from destruction, and restore
him to society a penitent and useful member. The
importance of such an establishment, in every
point of view, and with reference to every con
sideration of humanity and social policy, requires
no comment.

One other establishment closes the catalogue,
It is the House of Correction for the State, in
which silence is strictly maintained, but where the
prisoners have the comfort and mental relief of
seeing each other, and of working together. This
is the improved system of Prison Discipline which
we have imported into England, and which has
been in successful operation among us for some
years past.

America, as a new and not over-populated coun-

118 BOSTON.

try, has, in all her prisons, the one great advantage,
of being enabled to find useful and profitable work
for the inmates ; whereas, with us, the prejudice
against prison labour is naturally very strong, and
almost insurmountable, when honest men, who
have not offended against the laws, are frequently
doomed to seek employment in vain. Even in the
United States, the principle of bringing convict
labour and free labour into a competition which
must obviously be to the disadvantage of the
latter, has already found many opponents, whose
number is not likely to diminish with access of
years.

For this very reason though, our best prisons
would seem at the first glance to be better con
ducted than those of America. The treadmill is
accompanied with little or no noise ; five hundred
men may pick oakum in the same room, without a
sound ; and both kinds of labour admit of such
keen and vigilant superintendence, as will render
even a word of personal communication among the
prisoners almost impossible. On the other hand,

BOSTON. 119

the noise of the loom, the forge, the carpenters
hammer, or the stone-mason's saw, greatly favour
those opportunities of intercourse — hurried and
brief no doubt, but opportunities still — which these
several kinds of work, by rendering it necessary
for men to be employed very near to each other,
and often side by side, without any barrier or
partition between them, in their very nature pre
sent. A visitor, too, requires to reason and reflect
a little, before the sight of a number of men
engaged ^in ordinary labour, such as he is accus
tomed to out of doors, will impress him half as
strongly as the contemplation of the same persons
in the same place and garb would, if they were
occupied in some task, marked and degraded
everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails.
In an American state prison or house of correc
tion, I found it difficult at first to persuade
myself that I was really in a jail : a place of
ignominious punishment and endurance. And to
this hour I very much question whether the
humane boast that it is not like one, has its

120 BOSTON.

root in the true wisdom or philosophy of the
matter.

I hope I may not be misunderstood on this sub
ject, for it is one in which I take a strong and
deep interest. I incline as little to the sickly
feeling which makes every canting lie or maudlin
speech of a notorious criminal a subject of news
paper report and general sympathy, as I do to
those good old customs of the good old times
which made England, even so recently as in the
reign of the Third King George, in respect of her
criminal code and her prison regulations, one of
the most bloody-minded and barbarous countries
on the earth. If I thought it would do any good
to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give
my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any
genteel highwayman (the more genteel, the more
cheerfully), and to their exposure, piece-meal, on
any sign-post, gate, or gibbet, that might be
deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My
reason is as well convinced that these gentry
were utterly worthless and debauched villains,

BOSTON. 121

as it is that the laws and jails hardened them
in their evil courses, or that their wonderful
escapes were effected by the prison-turnkeys who,
in those admirable days, had always been felons
themselves, and were, to the last, their bosom-
friends and pot-companions. At the same time
I know, as all men do or should, that the sub
ject of Prison Discipline is one of the highest
importance to any community; and that in her
sweeping reform and bright example to other
countries on this head, America has shown great
wisdom, great benevolence, and exalted policy.
In contrasting her system with that which we
have modelled upon it, I merely seek to show that
with all its drawbacks, ours has some advantages
of its own *.

* Apart from profit made by the useful labour of prisoners,
which we can never hope to realize to any great extent, and
which it is perhaps not expedient for us to try to gain, there
are two prisons in London, in all respects equal, and in some
decidedly superior, to any I saw or have ever heard or read of
in America. One is the Tothill Fields Bridewell, conducted by
Lieutenant A. F. Tracey, R.N. ; the other the Middlesex House
of Correction, superintended by Mr. Chesterton. This gentleman
also holds an appointment in the Public Service. Both are enlight-

122 BOSTON.

The House of Correction which has led to these
remarks, is not walled, like other prisons, but is
palisaded round about with tall rough stakes,
something after the manner of an enclosure for
keeping elephants in, as we see it represented in
Eastern prints and pictures. The prisoners wear
a parti-coloured dress ; and those who are sen
tenced to hard labour, work at nail-making or
stone-cutting. When I was there, the latter class
of labourers were employed upon the stone for a
new custom-house in course of erection at Boston.
They appeared to shape it skilfully and with expe
dition, though there were very few among them
(if any) who had not acquired the art within the
prison gates.

The women, all in one large room, were em
ployed in making light clothing, for New Orleans
and the Southern States. They did their work in
silence, like the men ; and like them, were over-

ened and superior men : and it would be as difficult to find persons
better qualified for the functions they discharge with firmness,
zeal, intelligence, and humanity, as it would be to exceed the
perfect order and arrangement of the institutions they govern. ,

BOSTON. 128

looked by the person contracting for their labour,
or by some agent of his appointment. In addition
to this, they are every moment liable to be visited
by the prison officers appointed for that purpose.

The arrangements for cooking, washing of
clothes, and so forth, are much upon the plan of
those I have seen at home. Their mode of
bestowing the prisoners at night (which is of gene
ral adoption) differs from ours, and is both simple
and effective. In the centre of a lofty area, lighted
by windows in the four walls, are five tiers of cells,
one above the other ; each tier having before it a
light iron gallery, attainable by stairs of the same
construction and material : excepting the lower
one, which is on the ground. Behind these, back
to back with them and facing the opposite wall,
are five corresponding rows of cells, accessible by
similar means : so that supposing the prisoners
locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the
ground, with his back to the wall, has half their
number under his eye at once; the remaining
half being equally under the observation of another

124 BOSTON.

officer on the opposite side ; and all in one great
apartment. Unless this watch be corrupted or
sleeping on his post, it is impossible for a man to
escape ; for even in the event of his forcing the
iron door of his cell without noise (which is
exceedingly improbable), the moment he appears
outside, and steps into that one of the five galleries
on which it is situated, he must be plainly and fully
visible to the officer below. Each of these cells
holds a small truckle-bed, in which one prisoner
sleeps ; never more. It is small, of course ; and
the door being not solid, but grated, and without
blind or curtain, the prisoner within is at all times
exposed to the observation and inspection of any
guard who may pass along that tier at any hour or
minute of the night. Every day, the prisoners
receive their dinner, singly, through a trap in the
kitchen wall ; and each man carries his to his sleep
ing cell to eat it, where he is locked up, alone, for
that purpose, one hour. The whole of this arrange
ment struck me as being admirable ; and I hope
that the next new prison we erect in England may
be built on this plan.

BOSTON. 125

I was given to understand that in this prison no
swords or fire-arms, or even cudgels, are kept ; nor
is it probable that, so long as its present excellent
management continues, any weapon, offensive or
defensive, will ever be required within its bounds.

Such are the Institutions at South Boston ! In
all of them, the unfortunate or degenerate citizens
of the State are carefully instructed in their duties
both to God and man ; are surrounded by all rea
sonable means of comfort and happiness that their
condition will admit of ; are appealed to, as mem
bers of the great human family, however afflicted,
indigent, or fallen ; are ruled by the strong Heart,
and not by the strong (though immeasurably
weaker) Hand. I have described them at some
length : firstly, because their worth demanded it ;
and secondly, because I mean to take them for a
model, and to content myself with saying of others
we may come to, whose design and purpose are the
same, that in this or that respect they practically
fail, or differ.

I wish by this account of them, imperfect in its

126 BOSTON.

execution, but in its just intention, honest, I could
hope to convey to my readers one hundredth part
of the gratification, the sights I have described,
afforded me.

To an Englishman, accustomed to the parapher
nalia of Westminster Hall, an American Court of
Law is as odd a sight as, I suppose, an English
Court of Law would be to an American. Except
in the Supreme Court at Washington (where the
judges wear a plain black robe), there is no such
thing as a wig or gown connected with the admi
nistration of justice. The gentlemen of the bar
being barristers and attorneys too (for there is no
division of those functions as in England), are
no more removed from their clients than attorneys
in our Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors
are, from theirs. The jury are quite^at home, and
make themselves as comfortable as circumstances
will permit. The witness is so little elevated above,

BOSTON. 127

or put aloof from, the crowd in the court, that a
stranger entering during a pause in the proceed
ings would find it difficult to pick him out from
the rest. And if it chanced to be a criminal trial,
his eyes, in nine cases out of ten, would wander to
the dock in search of the prisoner, in vain ; for
that gentleman would most likely be lounging
among the most distinguished ornaments of the
legal profession, whispering suggestions in his
counsel's ear, or making a toothpick out of an old
quill with his pen-knife.

I could not but notice these differences, when I
visited the courts at Boston. I was much sur
prised at first, too, to observe that the counsel
who interrogated the witness under examination
at the time, did so sitting. But seeing that he was
also occupied in writing down the answers, and
remembering that he was alone and had no
"junior," I quickly consoled myself with, the
reflection that law was not quite so expensive an
article here, as at home ; and that the absence of
sundry formalities which we regard as indispen-

128 BOSTON.

sable, had doubtless a very favourable influence
upon the bill of costs.

In every Court, ample and commodious provision
is made for the accommodation of the citizens.
This is the case all through America. In every
Public Institution, the right of the people to attend,
and to have an interest in the proceedings, is most
fully and distinctly recognised. There are no grim
door-keepers to dole out their tardy civility by the
sixpenny-worth ; nor is there, I sincerely believe,
any insolence of office of any kind. Nothing
national is exhibited for money ; and no public
officer is a showman. We have begun of late
years to imitate this good example. I hope we
shall continue to do so ; and that in the fulness of
time, even deans and chapters may be converted.

In the civil court an action was trying, for
damages sustained in some accident upon a rail
way. The witnesses had been examined, and
counsel was addressing the jury. The learned
gentleman (like a few of his English brethren) was
desperately long-winded, and had a remarkable

BOSTON. 129

capacity of saying the same thing over and over
again. His great theme was c< Warren the engine
driver," whom he pressed into the service of every
sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about
a quarter of an hour ; and, coming out of court at
the expiration of that time, without the faintest
ray of enlightenment as to the merits of the case,
felt as if I were at home again.

In the prisoners1 cell, waiting to be examined
by the magistrate on a charge of theft, was a boy.
This lad, instead of being committed to a common
jail, would be sent to the asylum at South Boston,
and there taught a trade ; and in the course of
time he would be bound apprentice to some respect
able master. Thus, his detection in this offence,
instead of being the prelude to a life of infamy and
a miserable death, would lead, there was a reason
able hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and
becoming a worthy member of society.

I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our
legal solemnities, many of which impress me as
being exceedingly ludicrous. Strange as it may

ISO BOSTON.

seem too, there is undoubtedly a degree of pro
tection in the wig and gown — a dismissal of indi
vidual responsibility in dressing for the part —
which encourages that insolent bearing and lan
guage, and that gross perversion of the office of a
pleader for The Truth, so frequent in our courts
of law. Still) I cannot help doubting whether
America, in her desire to shake off the absurdities
and abuses of the old system, may not have gone too
far into the opposite extreme ; and whether it is
not desirable, especially in the small community of a
city like this, where each man knows the other, to
surround the administration of justice with some
artificial barriers against the " Hail fellow, well
met " deportment of everyday life. All the aid
it can have in the very high character and ability
of the Bench, not only here but elsewhere, it
has, and well deserves to have ; but it may need
something more : not to impress the thoughtful
and the well-informed, but the ignorant and heed
less ; a class which includes some prisoners and
many witnesses. These institutions were established,

BOSTON. 131

no doubt, upon the principle that those who had so
large a share in making the laws, would certainly
respect them. But experience has proved this
hope to be fallacious; for no men know better
than the Judges of America, that on the occasion
of any great popular excitement the law is power
less, and cannot, for the time, assert its own
supremacy.

The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect
politeness, courtesy, and good breeding. The
ladies are unquestionably very beautiful — in face :
but there I am compelled to stop. Their educa
tion is much as with us ; neither better nor worse.
I had heard some very marvellous stories in this
respect ; but not believing them, was not disap
pointed. Blue ladies there are, in Boston ; but like
philosophers of that colour and sex in most other
latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior
than to be so. Evangelical ladies there are, like
wise, whose attachment to the forms of religion,
and horror of theatrical entertainments, are most
exemplary. Ladies who have a passion for attend-

K 2

132 BOSTON'.

ing lectures are to be found among all classes and
all conditions. In the kind of provincial life which
prevails in cities such as this, the Pulpit has great
influence. The peculiar province of the Pulpit in
New England (always excepting the Unitarian
ministry) would appear to be the denouncement of
all innocent and rational amusements. The church,
the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only
means of excitement excepted ; and to the church,
the chapel, and the lecture-room, the ladies resort
in crowds.

Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong drink,
and as an escape from the dull monotonous round
of home, those of its ministers who pepper the
highest will be the surest to please. They who
strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount
of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down
the flowers and leaves that grow by the way- side,
will be voted the most righteous ; and they who
enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on the diffi
culty of getting into heaven, will be considered by
all true believers certain of going there : though it

BOSTON. 133

would be hard to say by what process of reasoning
this conclusion is arrived at. It is so at home, and
it is so abroad. With regard to the other means
of excitement, the Lecture, it has at least the merit
of being always new. One lecture treads so quickly
on the heels of another, that none are remembered ;
and the course of this month may be safely repeated
next, with its charm of novelty unbroken, and its
interest unabated.

The fruits of the earth have their growth in cor
ruption. Out of the rottenness of these things,
there has sprung up in Boston a sect of philoso
phers known as Transcendentalists. On inquiring
what this appellation might be supposed to signify,
I was given to understand that whatever was un
intelligible would be certainly transcendental. Not
deriving much comfort from this elucidation, I
pursued the inquiry still further, and found that
the Transcendentalists are followers of my friend
Mr. Carlyle, or, I should rather say, of a follower
of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentle
man has written a volume of Essays, in which,

BOSTON.

among much that is dreamy and fanciful (if he
will pardon me for saying so), there is much more
that is true and manly, honest and bold. Trans
cendentalism has its occasional vagaries (what
school has not ?) but it has good healthful qualities
in spite of them ; not least among the number
a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect
her in all the million varieties of her everlasting
wardrobe. And therefore if I were a Bostonian,
I think I would be a Transcendentalist.

The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr.
Taylor, who addresses himself peculiarly to seamen,
and who was once a mariner himself. I found
his chapel down among the shipping, in one of the
narrow, old, water-side streets, with a gay blue
flag waving freely from its roof. In the gallery
opposite to the pulpit were a little choir of male
und female singers, a violoncello, and a violin. The
preacher already sat in the pulpit, which was raised
on pillars, and ornamented behind him with painted
drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical appear
ance. He looked a weather-beaten hard-featured

BOSTON. 135

man, of about six or eight and fifty; with deep
lines graven as it were into his face, dark hair,
and a stern, keen eye. Yet the general character
of his countenance was pleasant and agreeable.

The service commenced with a hymn, to which
succeeded an extemporary prayer. It had the
fault of frequent repetition, incidental to all such
prayers ; but it was plain and comprehensive in its
doctrines, and breathed a tone of general sympathy
and charity, which is not so commonly a charac
teristic of this form of address to the Deity as it
might be. That done he opened his discourse
taking for his text a passage from the Songs of
Solomon, laid upon the desk before the commence
ment of the service by some unknown member of
the congregation : " Who is this coming up from
the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her Beloved !"

He handled this text in all kinds of ways, and
twisted it into all manner of shapes ; but always
ingeniously, and with a rude eloquence, well-adapted
to the comprehension of his hearers. Indeed if I
be not mistaken, he studied their sympathies and

136 BOSTON.

understandings much more than the display of
his own powers. His imagery was all drawn from
the sea, and from the incidents of a seaman's life ;
and was often remarkably good. He spoke to
them of " that glorious man, Lord Nelson," and
of Collingwood ; and drew nothing in, as the saying
is, by the head and shoulders, but brought it to
bear upon his purpose, naturally, and with a sharp
mind to its effect. ' Sometimes, when much excited
with his subject, he had an odd way — compounded
of John Bunyan, and Balfour of Burley — of taking
his great quarto bible under his arm and pacing
up and down the pulpit with it : looking steadily
down, meantime, into the midst of the congrega
tion. Thus, when he applied his text to the first
assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder
of the church at their presumption in forming a
congregation among themselves, he stopped short
with his bible under his arm in the manner I have
described, and pursued his discourse after this
manner :

" Who are these — who are they — who are these

BOSTOX. 137

fellows? where do they come from? where are
they going to ? — Come from ! What's the answer?"
— leaning out of the pulpit, and pointing downward
with his right hand: " From below !"— starting
back again, and looking at the sailors before him :
" From below, my brethren. From under the
hatches of sin, battened down above you by the evil
one. That 's where you came from ! " — a walk up
and down the pulpit : " and where are you going" —
stopping abruptly : " where are you going ? Aloft ! "
— very softly, and pointing upward : " Aloft ! "
—louder: " aloft ! "— louder still: " That's where
you are going — with a fair wind, — all taut and
trim, steering direct for Heaven in its glory, where
there are no storms or foul weather, and where the
wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at
rest." — Another walk : " That's where you're going
to, my friends. That's it. That 's the place. That's
the port. That's the haven. It's a blessed
harbour — still water there, in all changes of the
winds and tides ; no driving ashore upon the rocks,
or slipping your cables and running out to sea,

138 BOSTON.

there: Peace — Peace — Peace — all peace!" — An
other walk, and patting the bible under his left
arm : " What ! These fellows are coming from
the wilderness, are they ? Yes. From the dreary,
blighted wilderness of Iniquity, whose only crop is
Death. But do they lean upon anything — do they
lean upon nothing, these poor seamen !"— ^Three
raps upon the bible : " Oh yes. — Yes. — They lean
upon the arm of their Beloved " — three more raps :
" upon the arm of their Beloved " — three more,
and a walk : " Pilot, guiding-star, and compass,
all in one, to all hands — here it is"— three more :
" Here it is. They can do their seaman^s duty
manfully, and be easy in their minds in the utmost
peril and danger, with this " — two more : " They
can come, even these poor fellows can come, from
the wilderness leaning on the arm of their Beloved,
and go up — up — up !" — raising his hand higher,
and higher, at every repetition of the word, so
that he stood with it at last stretched above his
head, regarding them in a strange, rapt manner,
and pressing the book triumphantly to his breast,

BOSTON. 139

until he gradually subsided into some other por
tion of his discourse.

I have cited this, rather as an instance of the
preacher's eccentricities than his merits, though
taken in connection with his look and manner,
and the character of his audience, even this was
striking. It is possible, however, that my favour
able impression of him may have been greatly
influenced and strengthened, firstly, by his impres
sing upon his hearers that the true observance of
religion was not inconsistent with a cheerful de
portment and an exact discharge of the duties of
their station, which, indeed, it scrupulously re
quired of them ; and secondly, by his cautioning
them not to set up any monopoly in Paradise and
its mercies. I never heard these two points so
wisely touched (if indeed I have ever heard them
touched at all), by any preacher of that kind,
before.

Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in
making myself acquainted with these things, in
settling the course I should take in my future

140 BOSTON.

travels, and in mixing constantly with its society,
I am not aware that I have any occasion to
prolong this chapter. Such of its social customs
as I have not mentioned, however, may be told
in a very few words.

The usual dinner-hour is two o^clock. A din
ner party takes place at five ; and at an evening
party, they seldom sup later than eleven ; so that
it goes hard but one gets home, even from a rout,
by midnight. I never could find out any differ
ence between a party at Boston and a party in
London, saving that at the former place all
assemblies are held at more rational hours ; that
the conversation may possibly be a little louder
and more cheerful; that a guest is usually ex
pected to ascend to the very top of the house to
take his cloak off; that he is certain to see, at
every dinner, an unusual amount of poultry on
the table; and at every supper, at least two
mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one
of which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might
be smothered easily.

BOSTON. 141

There are two theatres in Boston, of good size
and construction, but sadly in want of patronage.
The few ladies who resort to them, sit, as of right,
in the front rows of the boxes.

There is no smoking-room in any hotel, and
there was none consequently in ours ; but the bar
is a large room with a stone floor, and there people
stand and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening :
dropping in and out as the humour takes them.
There too the stranger is initiated into the mys
teries of Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, Mint
Julep, Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other
rare drinks. The House is full of boarders,
both married and single, many of whom sleep
upon the premises, and contract by the week for
their board and lodging : the charge for which
diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost.
A public table is laid in a very handsome hall for
breakfast, and for dinner, and for supper. The
party sitting down together to these meals will
vary in number from one to two hundred : some
times more. The advent of each of these epochs
in the day is proclaimed by an awful gong, which

142 BOSTON.

shakes the very window frames as it reverberates
through the house, and horribly disturbs nervous
foreigners. There is an ordinary for ladies, and
an ordinary for gentlemen.

In our private room the cloth could not, for any
earthly consideration, have been laid for dinner with
out a huge glass dish of cranberries in the middle of
the table ; and breakfast would have been no break
fast unless the principal dish were a deformed beef
steak with a great flat bone in the centre, swim
ming in hot butter, and sprinkled with the very
blackest of all possible pepper. Our bedroom was
spacious and airy, but (like every bedroom on
this side of the Atlantic) very bare of furni
ture, having no curtains to the French bedstead
or to the window. It had one unusual luxury,
however, in the shape of a wardrobe of painted
wood, something smaller than an English watch-
box : or if this comparison should be insufficient
to convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may
be estimated from the fact of my having lived for
fourteen days and nights in the firm belief that it
was a shower-bath.

LOWELL,

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY
SYSTEM.

BEFORE leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an
excursion to Lowell. I assign a separate chapter
to this visit ; not because I am about to describe
it at any great length, but because I remember it
as a" thing by itself, and am desirous that my
readers should do the same.

I made acquaintance with an American railroad,
on this occasion, for the first time. As these
works are pretty much alike all through the States,
their general characteristics are easily described.

There are no first and second class carriages as
with us ; but there is a gentlemen's car and a
ladies' car : the main distinction between which is

VOL. I. L

146 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD,

that in the first, everybody smokes ; and in the
second, nobody does. As a black man never
travels with a white one, there is also a negro
car; which is a great blundering clumsy chest,
such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom
of Brobdignag. There is a great deal of jolting,
a great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not
much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek, and
a bell.

The cars are like shabby omnibusses, but larger :
holding thirty, forty, fifty, people. The seats,
instead of stretching from end to end, are placed
crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. There
is a long row of them on each side of the caravan,
a narrow passage up the middle, and a door at
both ends. In the centre of the carriage there is
usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite
coal ; which is for the most part red-hot. It is
insufferably close ; and you see the hot air flut
tering between yourself and any other object
you may happen to look at, like the ghost of
smoke.

AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. 147

In the ladies' car, there are a great many
gentlemen who have ladies with them. There
are also a great many ladies who have nobody with
them : for any lady may travel alone, from one end
of the United States to the other, and be certain
of the most courteous and considerate treatment
everywhere. The conductor or check-taker, or
guard, or whatever he may be, wears no uniform.
He walks up and down the car, and in and out of
it, as his fancy dictates ; leans against the door
with his hands in his pockets and stares at you, if
you chance to be a stranger ; or enters into con
versation with the passengers about him. A great
many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of
them are read. Everybody talks to you, or to
anybody else who hits his fancy. If you are an
Englishman, he expects that that railroad is pretty
much like an English railroad. If you say " No,"
he says " Yes 2 " (interrogatively), and asks in
what respect they differ. You enumerate the
heads of difference, one by one, and he says
" Yes ? " (still interrogatively) to each. Then he

L 2

148 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD.

guesses that you don't travel faster in England ;
and on your replying that you do, says " Yes ? "
again (still interrogatively), and, it is quite evident,
don't believe it. After a long pause he remarks,
partly to you, and partly to the knob on the top
of his stick, that " Yankees are reckoned to be
considerable of a go- ahead people too;11 upon which
you say " Yes," and then he says " Yes " again
(affirmatively this time) ; and upon your looking
out of window, tells you that behind that hill, and
some three miles from the next station, there is a
clever town in a smart lo-ca-tion, where he expects
you have con-eluded to stop. Your answer in the
negative naturally leads to more questions in
reference to your intended route (always pro
nounced rout) ; and wherever you are going,
you invariably learn that you can't get there
without immense difficulty and danger, and that
all the great sights are somewhere else.

If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger's
seat, the gentleman who accompanies her gives
him notice of the fact, and he immediately vacates

AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. 14j)

it with great politeness. Politics are much dis
cussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people
avoid the question of the Presidency, for there
will be a new election in three years and a half,
and party feeling runs very high : the great con
stitutional feature of this institution being, that
directly the acrimony of the last election is over,
the acrimony of the next one begins ; which is an
unspeakable comfort to all strong politicians and
true lovers of their country : that is to say, to
ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety- nine
and a quarter.

Except when a branch road joins the main one>
there is seldom more than one track of rails ; so
that the road is very narrow, and the view, where
there is a deep cutting, by no means extensive.
When there is not, the character of the scenery
is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted
trees : some hewn down by the axe, some blown
down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on
their neighbours, many mere logs half hidden in
the swamp, others mouldered away to spongy

150 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD.

chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of
minute fragments such as these ; each pool of
stagnant water has its crust of vegetable rotten
ness ; on every side ; there are the boughs, and
trunks, and stumps of trees, in every possible stage
of decay, decomposition, and neglect. Now you
emerge for a few brief minutes on an open country,
glittering with some bright lake or pool, broad as
many an English river, but so small here that
it scarcely has a name ; now catch hasty glimpses
of a distant town, with its clean white houses and
their cool piazzas, its prim New England church
and schoolhouse ; when whir-r-r-r ! almost before
you have seen them, comes the same dark screen :
the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stag
nant water — all so like the last that you seem to
have been transported back again by magic.

The train calls at stations in the woods, where
the wild impossibility of anybody having the
smallest reason to get out, is only to be equalled
by the apparently desperate hopelessnes of there
being anybody to get in. It rushes across the

AX AMERICAN RAILROAD. 151

turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman,
no signal : nothing but a rough wooden arch, on
which is painted " WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT
FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE." On it whirls headlong,
dives through the woods again, emerges in the
light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the
heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge
which intercepts the light for a second like a wink,
suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the
main street of a large town, and dashes on hap
hazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle
of the road. There— with mechanics working at
their trades, and people leaning from their doors
and windows, and boys flying kites and playing
marbles, and men smoking, and women talking,
and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and
unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to
the very rails — there — on, on, on — tears the mad
dragon of an engine with its train of cars ;
scattering in all directions a shower of burning
sparks from its wood fire ; screeching, hissing,
yelling, panting ; until at last the thirsty monster

152 LOWELL, AND ITS

stops beneath a covered way to drink, the people
cluster round, and you have time to breathe again.
I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentle
man intimately connected with the management
of the factories there ; and gladly putting myself
under his guidance, drove off at once to that
quarter of the town in which the works, the object
of my visit, were situated. Although only just of
age — for if my recollection serve me, it has been a
manufacturing town barely one-and-twenty years
— Lowell is a large, populous, thriving place.
Those indications of its youth which first attract
the eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of cha
racter which, to a visitor from the old country, is
amusing enough. It was a very dirty winter's
day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to
me, except the mud, which in some parts was
almost knee-deep, and might have been deposited
there, on the subsiding of the waters after the
Deluge. In one place, there was a new wooden
church, which, having no steeple, and being yet
unpainted, looked like an enormous packing-case

FACTORY SYSTEM. 153

without any direction upon it. In another there
was a large hotel, whose walls and colonnades were
so crisp, and thin, and slight, that it had exactly
the appearance of being built with cards. I was
careful not to draw my breath as we passed, and
trembled when I saw a workman come out upon
the roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp of his
foot he should crush the structure beneath him,
and bring it rattling down. The very river that
moves the machinery in the mills (for they are all
worked by water power), seems to acquire a new
character from the fresh buildings of bright red
brick and painted wood among which it takes its
course ; and to be as light-headed, thoughtless,
and brisk a young river, in its murmurings and
tumblings, as one would desire to see. One would
swear that every " Bakery," " Grocery," and
<c Bookbindery," and other kind of store, took its
shutters down for the first time, and started in
business yesterday. The golden pestles and
mortars fixed as signs upon the sun-blind frames
outside the Druggists, appear to have been just

154 LOWELL, AND ITS

turned out of the United States' Mint ; and when
I saw a baby of some week or ten days old in a
woman's arms at a street corner, I found myself
unconsciously wondering where it came from :
never supposing for an instant that it could have
been born in such a young town as that.

There are several factories in Lowell, each of
which belongs to what we should term a Company
of Proprietors, but what they call in A merica a
Corporation. I went over several of these ; such
as a woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton
factory : examined them in every part ; and saw
them in their ordinary working aspect, with no
preparation of any kind, or departure from their
ordinary every-day proceedings. I may add
that I am well acquainted with our manufac
turing towns in England, and have visited many
mills in Manchester and elsewhere in the same
manner.

I happened to arrive at the first factory just as
the dinner hour was over, and the girls were re
turning to their work; indeed the stairs of the

FACTORY SYSTEM. 155

mill were thronged with them as 1 ascended.
They were all well-dressed, but not to my thinking
above their condition : for I like to see the humbler
classes of society careful of their dress and ap
pearance, and even, if they please, decorated with '
such little trinkets as come within the compass of
their means. Supposing it confined within reason
able limits, I would always encourage this kind of
pride, as a worthy element of self-respect, in any
person I employed ; and should no more be de
terred from doing so, because some wretched
female referred her fall to a love of dress, than I
would allow my construction of the real intent and
meaning of the Sabbath to be influenced by any
warning to the well-disposed, founded on his back-
slidings on that particular day, which might ema
nate from the rather doubtful authority of a
murderer in Newgate.

These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed :
and that phrase necessarily includes extreme
cleanliness. They had serviceable bonnets, good
warm cloaks, and shawls; and were not above

156 LOWELL, AND ITS

clogs and pattens. Moreover, there were places
in the mill in which they could deposit these
things without injury ; and there were conve
niences for washing. They were healthy in ap
pearance, many of them remarkably so, and had
the manners and deportment of young women :
not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in
one of those mills (but I did not, though I looked
for something of this kind with a sharp eye), the
most lisping, mincing, affected, and ridiculous
young creature that my imagination could suggest,
I should have thought of the careless, moping,
slatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I have seen
that), and should have been still well pleased to
look upon her.

The rooms in which they worked, were as well
ordered as themselves. In the windows of some,
there were green plants, which were trained to
shade the glass ; in all, there was as much fresh
air, cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of the
occupation would possibly admit of. Out of so
large a number of females, many of whom were

FACTORY SYSTEM. 157

only then just verging upon womanhood, it may
be reasonably supposed that some were delicate
and fragile in appearance : no doubt there were.
But I solemnly declare, that from all the crowd I
saw in the different factories that day, I cannot
recal or separate one young face that gave me a
painful impression ; not one young girl whom,
assuming it to be matter of necessity that she
should gain her daily bread by the labour of her
hands, I would have removed from those works
if I had had the power.

They reside in various boarding-houses near at
hand. The owners of the mills are particularly
careful to allow no persons to enter upon the
possession of these houses, whose characters have
not undergone the most searching and thorough
inquiry. Any complaint that is made against
them, by the boarders, or by any one else, is fully
investigated ; and if good ground of complaint be
shown to exist against them, they are removed,
and their occupation is handed over to some more
deserving person. There are a few children em-

158 LOWELL, AND ITS

ployed in these factories, but not many. The
laws of the State forbid their working more than
nine months in the year, and require that they be
educated during the other three. For this pur
pose there are schools in Lowell ; and there are
churches and chapels of various persuasions, in
which the young women may observe that form
of Worship in which they have been educated.

At some distance from the factories, and on the
highest and pleasantest ground in the neighbour
hood, stands their hospital, or boarding- house for
the sick : it is the best house in those parts, and
was built by an eminent merchant for his own
residence. Like that institution at Boston which
I have before described, it is not parcelled
out into wards, but is divided into convenient
chambers, each of which has all the comforts of a
very comfortable home. The principal medical
attendant resides under the same roof; and were
the patients, members of his own family, they could
not be better cared for, or attended with greater
gentleness and consideration. The weekly charge

PACTORY SYSTEM. 159

in this establishment for each female patient is
three dollars, or twelve shillings English ; but no
girl employed by any of the corporations is ever
excluded for want of the means of payment. That
they do not very often want the means, may be
gathered from the fact, that in July 1841 no fewer
than nine hundred and seventy-eight of these girls
were depositors in the Lowell Savings Bank : the
amount of whose joint savings was estimated at
one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand
English pounds.

I am now going to state three facts, which will
startle a large class of readers on this side of the
Atlantic, very much.

Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great
many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly
all these young ladies subscribe to circulating
libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among
themselves a periodical called THE LOWELL OF
FERING, "A repository of original articles, written
exclusively by females actively employed in the
mills,"— which is duly printed, published, and sold;

160 LOWELL, AND ITS

and whereof I brought away from Lowell four
hundred good solid pages, which I have read from
beginning to end.

The large class of readers, startled by these
facts, will exclaim, with one voice, " How very
preposterous !" On my deferentially inquiring
why, they will answer, " These things are above
their station." In reply to that objection, I
would beg to ask what their station is.

It is their station to work. And they do
work. They labour in these mills, upon an
average, twelve hours a day, which is unquestion
ably work, and pretty tight work too. Per
haps it is above their station to indulge in such
amusements, on any terms. Are we quite sure
that we in England have not formed our ideas of
the "station" of working people, from accus
toming ourselves to the contemplation of that
class as they are, and not as they might be?
I think that if we examine our own feelings, we
shall find that the pianos, and the circulating
libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, startle us

FACTORY SYSTEM. 1G1

by their novelty, and not by their bearing upon
any abstract question of right or wrong.

For myself, I know no station in which, the
occupation of to-day cheerfully done and the
occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to,
any o'ne of these pursuits is not most humanizing
and laudable. I know no station which is ren
dered more endurable to the person in it, or more
safe to the person out of it, by having ignorance
for its associate. I know no station which has a
right to monopolize the means of mutual instruc
tion, improvement, and rational entertainment ;
or which has ever continued to be a station very
long, after seeking to do so.

Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a
literary production, I will only observe, putting
entirely out of sight the fact of the articles
having been written by these girls after the
arduous labours of the day, that it will com
pare advantageously with a great many English
Annuals. It is pleasant to find that many of its
Tales are of the Mills and of those who work in

VOL. I. M

162 LOWELL, AND ITS

them ; that they inculcate habits of self-denial and
contentment, and teach good doctrines of enlarged
benevolence. A strong feeling for the beauties of
nature, as displayed in the solitudes the writers have
left at home, breathes through its pages like whole
some village air ; and though a circulating library
is a favourable school for the study of such topics,
it has very scant allusion to fine clothes, fine
marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons
might object to the papers being signed occa
sionally with rather fine names, but this is an
American fashion. One of the provinces of the
state legislature of Massachusetts is to alter ugly
names into pretty ones, as the children improve
upon the tastes of their parents. These changes
costing little or nothing, scores of Mary Annes are
solemnly converted into Bevelinas every session.

It is said that on the occasion of a visit from
General Jackson or General Harrison to this
town (I forget which, but it is not to the pur
pose), he walked through three miles and a half
of these young ladies, all dressed out with parasols

FACTORY SYSTEM. 163

and silk stockings. But as I am not aware
that any worse consequence ensued, than a sudden
looking-up of all the parasols and silk stockings
in the market; and perhaps the bankruptcy of
some speculative New Englander who bought them
all up at any price, in expectation of a demand
that never came ; I set no great store by the cir
cumstance.

In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate
expression of the gratification it yielded me, and
cannot fail to afford to any foreigner to whom the
condition of such people at home is a subject of
interest and anxious speculation, I have carefully
abstained from drawing a comparison between
these factories and those of our own land. Many
of the circumstances whose strong influence has
been at work for years in our manufacturing towns
have not arisen here ; and there is no manu
facturing population in Lowell, so to speak : for
these girls (often the daughters of small farmers)
come from other States, remain a few years in the
mills, and then go home for good.

M 2

164 LOWELL, AND ITS

The contrast would be a strong one, for it
would be between the Good and Evil, the living
light and deepest shadow. I abstain from it,
because I deem it just to do so. But I only the
more earnestly adjure all those whose eyes may
rest on these pages, to pause and reflect upon the
difference between this town and those great
haunts of desperate misery : to call to mind, if
they can in the midst of party strife and squabble,
the efforts that must be made to purge them of
their suffering and danger: and last, and fore
most, to remember how the precious Time is
rushing by.

I returned at night by the same railroad and in
the same kind of car. One of the passengers
being exceedingly anxious to expound at great
length to my companion (not to me, of course)
the true principles on which books of travel in
America should be written by Englishmen, I
feigned to fall asleep. But glancing all the way
out at window from the corners of my eyes, I
found abundance of entertainment for the rest of

FACTORY SYSTEM. 165

the ride in watching the effects of the wood fire,
which had been invisible in the morning but were
now brought out in full relief by the darkness :
for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright
sparks, which showered about us like a storm of
fiery snow*

WORCESTER TO NEW YORK.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD.
NEW HAVEN. TO NEW YORK.

LEAVING Boston on the afternoon of Saturday
the fifth of February, we proceeded by another
railroad to Worcester : a pretty New England
town, where we had arranged to remain under the
hospitable roof of the Governor of the State, until
Monday morning.

These towns and cities of New England (many
of which would be villages in Old England), are as
favourable specimens of rural America, as their
people are of rural Americans. The well-trimmed
lawns and green meadows of home are not there ;
and the grass, compared with our ornamental plots
and pastures, is rank, and rough, and wild : but

170 WORCESTER.

delicate slopes of land, gently-swelling hills, wooded
valleys, and slender streams, abound. Every little
colony of houses has its church and school -house
peeping from among the white roofs and shady
trees; every house is the whitest of the white;
every Venetian blind the greenest of the green ;
every fine day's sky the bluest of the blue. A
sharp dry wind and a slight frost had so hardened
the roads when we alighted at Worcester, that
their furrowed tracks were like ridges of granite.
There was the usual aspect of newness on every
object, of course. All the buildings looked as if
they had been built and painted that morning, and
could be taken down on Monday with very little
trouble. In the keen evening air, every sharp out
line looked a hundred times sharper than ever.
The clean cardboard colonnades had no more per
spective than a Chinese bridge on a tea-cup, and
appeared equally well calculated for use. The
razor-like edges of the detached cottages seemed
to cut the very wind as it whistled against them,
and to send it smarting on its way with a shriller

WORCESTER, 171

cry than before. Those slightly-built wooden dwell
ings behind which the sun was setting with a
brilliant lustre, could be so looked through and
through, that the idea of any inhabitant being able
to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have
any secrets from the public eye, was not enter-
tainable for a moment. Even where a blazing fire
shone through the uncurtained windows of some
distant house, it had the air of being newly-lighted,
and of lacking warmth ; and instead of awakening
thoughts of a snug chamber, bright with faces that
first saw the light round that same hearth, and
ruddy with warm hangings, it came upon one
suggestive of the smell of new mortar and damp
walls.

So I thought, at least, that evening. Next
morning when the sun was shining brightly, and
the clear church bells were ringing, and sedate
people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway
near at hand and dotted the distant thread of
road, there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness
on everything, which it was good to feel. It would

172 HARTFORD.

have been the better for an old church; better
still for some old graves ; but as it was, a whole
some repose and tranquillity pervaded the scene,
which after the restless ocean and the hurried city,
had a doubly grateful influence on the spirits.

"We went on next morning, still by railroad,
to Springfield. From that place to Hartford,
whither we were bound, is a distance of only five-
and -twenty miles, but at that time of the year the
roads were so bad that the journey would probably
have occupied ten or twelve hours. Fortunately,
however, the winter having been unusually mild,
the Connecticut River was " open," or, in other
words, not frozen. The captain of a small steam
boat was going to make his first trip for the season
that day (the second February trip, I believe,
within the memory of man), and only waited for
us to go on board. Accordingly, we went on
board, with as little delay as might be. He was
as good as his word, and started directly.

It certainly was not called a small steam-boat
without reason. I omitted to ask the question,

HARTFORD.

but I should think it must have been of about half
a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf,
might have lived and died happily in the cabin,
which was fitted with common sash-windows
like an ordinary dwelling-house. These windows
had bright-red curtains, too, hung on slack strings
across the lower panes ; so that it looked like the
parlour of a Lilliputian public-house, which had got
afloat in a flood or some other water accident, and
was drifting nobody knew where. But even in
this chamber there was a rocking-chair. It
would be impossible to get on anywhere, in
America, without a rocking-chair.

I am afraid to tell how many feet short this
vessel was, or how many feet narrow : to apply
the words length and width to such measurement
would be a contradiction in terms. But I may
state that we all kept the middle of the deck, lest
the boat should unexpectedly tip over ; and that
the machinery, by some surprising process of con
densation, worked between it and the keel: the
whole forming a warm sandwich, about three feet
thick.

174 HARTFORD.

It rained all day as I once thought it never did
rain anywhere, but in the Highlands of Scotland.
The river was full of floating blocks of ice, which
were constantly crunching and cracking under us ;
and the depth of water, in the course we took to
avoid the larger masses, carried down the middle
of the river by the current, did not exceed a few
inches. Nevertheless, we moved onward, dex
terously ; and being well wrapped up, bade de
fiance to the weather, and enjoyed the journey.
The Connecticut River is a fine stream ; and the
banks in summer-time are, I have no doubt,
beautiful : at all events, I was told so by a young
lady in the cabin ; and she should be a judge of
beauty, if the possession of a quality include the
appreciation of it, for a more beautiful creature I
never looked upon.

After two hours and a half of this odd travelling
(including a stoppage at a small town, where we
were saluted by a gun considerably bigger than
our own chimney), we reached Hartford, and
straightway repaired to an extremely comfortable

HARTFORD. 175

hotel : except, as usual, in the article of bed
rooms, which, in almost every place we visited,
were very conducive to early rising.

We tarried here, four days. The town is beau
tifully situated in a basin of green hills ; the soil is
rich, well-wooded, and carefully improved. It is
the seat of the local legislature of Connecticut,
which sage body enacted, in bygone times, the
renowned code of " Blue Laws," in virtue whereof,
among other enlightened provisions, any citizen
who could be proved to have kissed his wife on
Sunday, was punishable, I believe, with the stocks.
Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists in these
parts to the present hour ; but its influence has
not tended, that I know, to make the people less
hard in their bargains, or more equal in their
dealings. As I never heard of its working that
effect anywhere else, I infer that it never will,
here. Indeed, I am accustomed, with reference
to great professions and severe faces, to judge of
the goods of the other world pretty much as I
judge of the goods of this ; and whenever I see a

176 HARTFORD.

dealer in such commodities with too great a display
of them in his window, I doubt the quality of the
article within.

In Hertford stands the famous oak in which the
charter of King Charles was hidden. It is now
inclosed in a gentleman's garden. In the State-
house is the charter itself. I found the courts of
law here, just the same as at Boston ; the public
Institutions almost as good. The Insane Asylum
is admirably conducted, and so is the Institution
for the Deaf and Dumb.

I very much questioned within myself, as I walked
through the Insane Asylum, whether I should
have known the attendants from the patients, but
for the few words which passed between the
former, and the Doctor, in reference to the persons
under their charge. Of course I limit this remark
merely to their looks ; for the conversation of the
mad people was mad enough.

There was one little prim old lady, of very
smiling and good-humoured appearance, who
came sidling up to me from the end of a long

HARTFORD. 177

passage, and with a curtsey of inexpressible con
descension, propounded this unaccountable in
quiry :

" Does Pontefract still flourish, Sir, upon the
soil of England !"

" He does, Ma'am," I rejoined.

" When you last saw him, Sir, he was — "

" Well, Ma'am," said I, " extremely well. He
begged me to present his compliments. I never
saw him looking better."

At this, the old lady was very much delighted.
After glancing at me for a moment, as if to be
quite sure that I was serious in my respectful air,
she sidled back some paces ; sidled forward again ;
made a sudden skip (at which I precipitately
retreated a step or two) ; and said :

" / am an antediluvian, Sir."

I thought the best thing to say was, that I had
suspected as much from the first. Therefore I
said so.

" It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing,
Sir, to be an antediluvian," said the old lady.

VOL. I. N

178 HARTFORD.

" I should think it was, Ma'am," I rejoined.

The old lady kissed her hand, gave another
skip, smirked and sidled down the gallery in a most
extraordinary manner, and ambled gracefully into
her own bed-chamber.

In another part of the building, there was a
male patient in bed ; very much flushed and
heated.

" Well ! " said he, starting up, and pulling off
his night-cap : " It's all settled, at last. I have
arranged it with queen Victoria."

" Arranged what 2 " asked the Doctor.

" Why, that business," passing his hand wearily
across his forehead, " about the siege of New
York/1

" Oh ! " said I, like a man suddenly enlightened.
For he looked at me for an answer.

" Yes. Every house without a signal will be
fired upon by the British troops. No harm will
be done to the others. No harm at all. Those
that want to be safe, must hoist flags. That's all
they'll have to do. They must hoist flags."

HARTFORD. 179

Even while he was speaking, he seemed, I
thought, to have some faint idea that his talk was
incoherent. Directly he had said these words, he
lay down again ; gave a kind of groan ; and covered
his hot head with the blankets.

There was another : a young man, whose mad
ness was love and music. After playing on the
accordion a march he had composed, he was very
anxious that I should walk into his chamber,
•which I immediately did.

By way of being very knowing, and humouring
him to the top of his bent, I went to the win
dow, which commanded a beautiful prospect, and
remarked, with an address upon which I greatly
plumed myself:

" What a delicious country you have about
these lodgings of yours."

"Poh P said he, moving his fingers carelessly
over the notes of his instrument : " Well enough for
such an Institution as this /"

I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all
my life.

if 2

180 HARTFORD.

" I come here just for a whim," he said coolly.
" That's all."

« Oh ! That's all !" said I.

" Yes. That's all. The Doctor *B a smart man.
He quite enters into it. It's a joke of mine. I
like it for a time. You needn't mention it, but I
think I shall go out next Tuesday !"

I assured him that I would consider our inter
view perfectly confidential; and rejoined the
Doctor. As we were passing through a gallery
on our way out, a well-dressed lady, of quiet and
composed manners, came up, and proffering a slip
of paper and a pen, begged that I would oblige
her with an autograph. I complied, and we
parted.

" I think I remember having had a few inter
views like that, with ladies out of doors. I hope
she is not mad ¥'

" Yes."

" On what subject ! Autographs T

" No. She hears voices in the air."

" Well r thought I, " it would be well if we

HARTFORD. 181

could shut up a few false prophets of these later
times, who have professed to do the same ; and I
should like to try the experiment on a Mormonist
or two to begin with."

In this place, there is the best Jail for untried
offenders in the world. There is also a very well-
ordered State prison, arranged upon the same
plan as that at Boston, except that here, there is
always a sentry on the wall with a loaded gun.
It contained at that time about two hundred pri
soners. A spot was shown me in the sleeping ward,
where a watchman was murdered some years since
in the dead of night, in a desperate attempt to
escape, made by a prisoner who had broken from
his cell. A woman, too, was pointed out to me,
who, for the murder of her husband, had been a
close prisoner for sixteen years.

" Do you think," I asked of my conductor,
" that after so very long an imprisonment, she
has any thought or hope of ever regaining her
liberty T

" Oh dear yes," he answered. "To be sure
she has."

182 HARTFORD.

"She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose?"

44 Well, I don't know :" which, by the bye, is a
national answer. u Her friends mistrust her."

" What have they to do with it T I naturally
inquired.

" Well, they won't petition/'

" But if they did, they couldn't get her out, I
suppose f '

" Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the
second, but tiring and wearying for a few years
might do it."

" Does that ever do it I"

" Why yes, that'll do it sometimes. Political
friends '11 do it sometimes. It's pretty often done,
one way or another."

I shall always entertain a very pleasant and
grateful recollection of Hartford. It is a lovely
place, and I had many friends there, whom I can
never remember with indifference. We left it
with no little regret on the evening of Friday
the llth, and travelled that night by railroad to
New Haven. Upon the way, the guard and I

NEW HAVEN. 183

were formally introduced to each other (as we
usually were on such occasions), and exchanged a
variety of small-talk. We reached New Haven
at about eight o'clock, after a journey of three
hours, and put up for the night at the best inn.

New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is
a fine town. Many of its streets (as its alias suf
ficiently imports) are planted with rows of grand
old elm-trees ; and the same natural ornaments
surround Yale College, an establishment of consi
derable eminence and reputation. The various
departments of this Institution are erected in a
kind of park or common in the middle of the town,
where they are dimly visible among the shadowing
trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathe
dral yard in England ; and when their branches
are in full leaf, must be extremely picturesque.
Even in the winter time, these groups of well-
grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and
houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appear
ance : seeming to bring about a kind of compromise
between town and country ; as if each had met the

184 NEW HAVEN TO NEW YOKK.

other half-way, and shaken hands upon it ; which
is at once novel and pleasant.

After a night's rest, we rose early, and in good
time went down to the wharf, and on board the
packet New York^/or New York. This was the first
American steamboat of any size that I had seen ;
and certainly to an English eye it was infinitely less
like a steamboat than a huge floating-bath. I could
hardly persuade myself, indeed, but that the bath
ing establishment off Westminster Bridge, which I
left a baby, had suddenly grown to an enormous
size ; run away from home ; and set up in foreign
parts as a steamer. Being in America too, which
our vagabonds do so particularly favour, it seemed
the more probable.

The great difference in appearance between
these packets and ours, is, that there is so
much of them out of the water : the main- deck
being enclosed on all sides, and filled with casks
and goods, like any second or third floor in a stack
of warehouses ; and the promenade or hurricane-
deck being a-top of that again. A part of the

NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK. 185

machinery is always above this deck ; where the
connecting-rod, in a strong and lofty frame, is seen
working away like an iron top-sawyer. There is
seldom any mast or tackle : nothing aloft but two
tall black chimneys. The man at the helm is shut
up in a little house in the fore part of the boat (the
wheel being connected with the rudder by iron
chains, working the whole length of the deck);
and the passengers, unless the weather be very fine
indeed, usually congregate below. Directly you
have left the wharf, all the life, and stir, and bustle
of a packet cease. You wonder for a long time
how she goes on, for there seems to be nobody in
charge of her ; and when another of these dull
machines comes splashing by, you feel quite indig
nant with it, as a sullen, cumbrous, ungraceful,
unshiplike leviathan : quite forgetting that the
vessel you are on board of, is its very counterpart.
There is always a clerk's office on the lower
deck, where you pay your fare ; a ladies' cabin ;
baggage and stowage rooms ; engineer's room ;
and in short a great variety of perplexities which

186 NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK.

render the discovery of the gentlemen's cabin, a
matter of some difficulty. It often occupies the
whole length of the boat (as it did in this case),
and has three or four tiers of berths on each side.
When I first descended into the cabin of the New
York, it looked, in my unaccustomed eyes, about
as long as the Burlington Arcade.

The Sound which has to be crossed on this
passage, is not always a very safe or pleasant
navigation, and has been the scene of some unfor
tunate accidents. It was a wet morning, and very
misty, and we soon lost sight of land. The day
was calm, however, and brightened towards noon.
After exhausting (with good help from a friend)
the larder, and the stock of bottled beer, I lay
down to sleep : being very much tired with the
fatigues of yesterday. But I awoke from my
nap in time to hurry up, and see Hell Gate, the
Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, and other notorious
localities, attractive to all readers of famous
Diedrich Knickerbocker's History. We were
now in a narrow channel, with sloping banks on

NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK. 187

either side, besprinkled with pleasant villas, and
made refreshing to the sight by turf and trees.
Soon we shot in quick succession, past a lighthouse ;
a madhouse (how the lunatics flung up their caps,
and roared in sympathy with the headlong engine
and the driving tide !) ; a jail ; and other build
ings ; and so emerged into a noble bay, whose
waters sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine like
Nature"^ eyes turned up to Heaven.

Then there lay stretched out before us, to the
right, confused heaps of buildings, with here
and there a spire or steeple, looking down upon
the herd below; and here and there, again,
a cloud of lazy smoke ; and in the foreground a
forest of ships' masts, cheery with flapping sails
and waving flags. Crossing from among them to the
opposite shore, were steam ferry-boats laden with
people, coaches, horses, waggons, baskets, boxes :
crossed and recrossed by other ferry-boats : all
travelling to and fro: and never idle. Stately
among these restless Insects, were two or three
large ships, moving with slow majestic pace, as

188 NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK.

creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful of their
puny journeys, and making for the broad sea.
Beyond, were shining heights, and islands in the
glancing river, and a distance scarcely less blue
and bright than the sky it seemed to meet. The
city's hum and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the
ringing of bells, the barking of dogs, the clatter
ing of wheels, tingled in the listening ear. All of
which life and stir, coming across the stirring water,
caught new life and animation from its free com
panionship ; and, sympathising with its buoyant
spirits, glistened as it seemed in sport upon its
surface, and hemmed the vessel round, and plashed
the water high about her sides, and, floating her
gallantly into the dock, flew off again to welcome
other comers, and speed before them to the busy
Port.

NEW YORK.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

NEW YORK.

THE beautiful metropolis of America is by no
means so clean a city as Boston, but many of its
streets have the same characteristics ; except that
the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, the
sign-boards are not quite so gaudy, the gilded
letters not quite so golden, the bricks not quite so
red, the stone not quite so white, the blinds and
area railings not quite so green, the knobs and
plates upon the street doors, not quite so bright and
twinkling. There are many bye-streets, almost as
neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty
ones, as bye-streets in London ; and there is one
quarter, commonly called the Five Points, which,

192 NEW YORK.

in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be safely
backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of
famed St. Giles's.

The great promenade and thoroughfare, as
most people know, is Broadway ; a wide and
bustling street, which, from the Battery Gar dens to
its opposite termination in a country road, maybe
four miles long. Shall we sit down in an upper
floor of the Carlton House Hotel (situated in the
best part of this main artery of New York), and
when we are tired of looking down upon the life
below, sally forth arm-in-arm, and mingle with
the stream?

Warm weather! The sun strikes upon our
heads at this open window, as though its rays
were concentrated through a burning-glass ; but
the day is in its zenith, antl the season an unusual
one. Was there ever such a sunny street as this
Broadway ! The pavement stones are polished
with the tread of feet until they shine again ; the
red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry,

NEW YORK. 193

hot kilns ; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as
though, if water were poured on them, they would
hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires.
No stint of omnibuses here ! Half a dozen have
gone by within as many minutes. Plenty of hack
ney cabs and coaches too ; gigs, phaetons, large-
wheeled tilburies, and private carriages — rather of
a clumsy make, and not very different from the
public vehicles, but built for the heavy roads
beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen and
white ; in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed
caps, fur caps ; in coats of drab, black, brown,
green, blue, nankeen, striped jean and linen ; and
there, in that one instance (look while it passes,
or it will be too late), in suits of livery. Some
southern republican that, who puts his blacks in
uniform, and swells with Sultan pomp and power.
Yonder, where that phaeton with the well-clipped
pair of grays has stopped— standing at their heads
now — is a Yorkshire groom, who has not been very
long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round for
a companion pair of top-boots, which he may tra-

VOL. I. 0

194 NEW YORK.

verse the city half a year without meeting. Heaven
save the ladies, how they dress ! We have seen
more colours in these ten minutes, than we should
have seen elsewhere, in as many days. What various
parasols ! what rainbow silks and satins ! what
pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin
shoes, and fluttering of ribbons and silk tassels,
and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and
linings ! The young gentlemen are fond, you see,
of turning down their shirt-collars and cultivating
their whiskers, especially under the chin ; but they
cannot approach the ladies in their dress or bear
ing, being, to say the truth, humanity of quite
another sort. Byrons of the desk and counter,
pass on, and let us see what kind of men those
are behind ye : those two labourers in holiday
clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a crum
pled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell
out a hard name, while the other looks about for
it on all the doors and windows.

Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they
were masked, by their long-tailed blue coats and

NEW YORK. 195

bright buttons, and their drab trousers, which they
wear like men well used to working dresses, who
are easy in no others. It would be hard to keep
your model republics going, without the country
men and countrywomen of those two labourers.
For who else would dig, and delve, and drudge,
and do domestic work, and make canals and roads,
and execute great lines of Internal Improvement !
Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled too, to find
out what they seek. Let us go down, and help
them, for the love of home, and that spirit of
liberty which admits of honest service to honest
men, and honest work for honest bread, no matter
what it be.

That's well ! We have got at the right address
at last, though it is written in strange characters
truly, and might have been scrawled with the
blunt handle of the spade the writer better knows
the use of, than a pen. Their way lies yonder,
but what business takes them there ? They carry
savings : to hoard up ? No. They are brothers,
those men. One crossed the sea alone, and work-
02

196 NEW YORK.

ing very hard for one half year, and living harder,
saved funds enough to bring the other out. That
done, they worked together, side by side, content
edly sharing hard labour and hard living for an
other term, and then their sisters came, and then
another brother, and, lastly, their old mother.
And what now? Why, the poor old crone is
restless in a strange land, and yearns to lay her
bones, she says, among her people in the old grave
yard at home : and so they go to pay her passage
back : and God help her and them, and every simple
heart, and all who turn to the Jerusalem of their
younger days, and have an altar-fire upon the cold
hearth of their fathers.

This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blister
ing in the sun, is Wall Street : the Stock Ex
change and Lombard Street of New York. Many
a rapid fortune has been made in this street, and
many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very
merchants whom you see hanging about here now,
have locked up Money in their strong-boxes, like
the man in the Arabian Nights, and opening them

NEW YORK. 197

again, have found but withered leaves. Below, here
by the water side, where the bowsprits of ships
stretch across the footway, and almost thrust
themselves into the windows, lie the noble Ameri
can vessels which have made their Packet Service
the finest in the world. They have brought hither
the foreigners who abound in all the streets : not
perhaps, that there are more here, than in other
commercial cities ; but elsewhere, they have parti
cular haunts, and you must find them out ; here,
they pervade the town.

We must cross Broadway again ; gaining some
refreshment from the heat, in the sight of the
great blocks of clean ice which are being carried
into shops and bar-rooms ; and the pine-apples and
water-melons profusely displayed for sale. Fine
streets of spacious houses here, you see ! — Wall
Street has furnished and dismantled many of them
very often — and here a deep green leafy square.
Be sure that is a hospitable house with inmates
to be affectionately remembered always, where they
have the open door and pretty show of plants

198 NEW YORK.

within, and where the child with laughing eyes is
peeping out of window at the little dog below.
You wonder what may be the use of this tall flag
staff in the bye street, with something like
Liberty's head-dress on its top : so do I. But
there is a passion for tall flagstaffs hereabout, and
you may see its twin brother in five minutes, if
you have a mind.

Again across Broadway, and so— passing from
the many-coloured crowd and glittering shops- —
into another long main street, the Bowery. A
railroad yonder, see, where two stout horses trot
along, drawing a score or two of people and a great
wooden ark, with ease. The stores are poorer
here; the passengers less gay. Clothes ready-
made, and meat ready-cooked, are to be bought in
these parts ; and the lively whirl of carriages is
exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and
waggons. These signs which are so plentiful, in
shape like river buoys, or small balloons, hoisted
by cords to poles, and dangling there, announce,
as you may see by looking up, " OYSTERS IN EVERY

NEW YORK. 199

STYLE." They tempt the hungry most at night,
for then dull candles glimmering inside, illuminate
these dainty words, and make the mouths of idlers
water, as they read and linger.

What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard
Egyptian, like an enchanter's palace in a me lo
drama ! — a famous prison, called The Tombs.
Shall we go in ?

So. A long narrow lofty building, stove-heated
as usual, with four galleries, one above the other,
going round it, and communicating by stairs.
Between the two sides of each gallery, and in its
centre, a bridge, for the greater convenience of
crossing. On each of these bridges sits a man :
dozing or reading, or talking to an idle companion.
On each tier, are two opposite rows of small iron
doors. They look like furnace doors, but are cold
and black, as though the fires within had all
gone out. Some two or three are open, and
women, with drooping heads bent down, are
talking to the inmates. The whole is lighted by
a skylight, but it is fast closed : and from the

200 NEW YORK,

roof there dangle, limp and drooping, two useless
windsails.

A man with keys appears, to show us round.
A good-looking fellow, and, in his way, civil and
obliging.

" Are those black doors the cells I"

" Yes."

" Are they all full !**

" Well, they're pretty nigh full, and that 's a
fact, and no two ways about it."

" Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely?"

" Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em.
That 's the truth."

" When do the prisoners take exercise?"

" Well, they do without it pretty much."

" Do they never walk in the yard ? "

" Considerable seldom."

" Sometimes, I suppose !"

" Well, it's rare they do. They keep pretty
bright without it."

" But suppose a man were here for a twelve
month. I know this is only a prison for criminals

NEW YORK. 201

who are charged with grave offences, while they
are awaiting their trial, or are under remand, but
the law here, affords criminals many means of delay.
What with motions for new trial, and in arrest of
judgment, and what not, a prisoner might be here
for twelve months, I take it, might he not ?"

" Well, I guess he might."

" Do you mean to say that in all that time he
would never come out at that little iron door, for
exerciser'

" He might walk some, perhaps— not much."

" Will you open one of the doors ?"

" All, if you like."

The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of the
doors turns slowly on its hinges. Let us look in.
A small bare cell, into which the light enters
through a high chink in the wall. There is a
rude means of washing, a table, and a bedstead.
Upon the latter, sits a man of sixty ; reading.
He looks up for a moment ; gives an impatient
dogged shake ; and fixes his eyes upon his book
again. As we withdraw our heads, the door

202 NEW YORK.

closes on him, and is fastened as before. This
man has murdered his wife, and will probably be
hanged.

" How long has he been here I "

" A month.11

"When will he be tried?"

" Next term."

" When is that?"

" Next month."

" In England, if a man be under sentence of
death, even, he has air and exercise at certain
periods of the day."

" Possible ?"

With what stupendous and untranslatable cool
ness he says this, and how loungingly he leads on
to the women's side : making, as he goes, a kind
of iron Castanet of the key and the stair-rail!

Each cell door on this side has a square aper
ture in it. Some of the women peep anxiously
through it at the sound of footsteps ; others shrink
away in shame. — For what offence can that lonely
child, of ten or twelve years old, be shut up here ?

NEW YORK. 203

Oh ! that boy ? He is the son of the prisoner we
saw just now ; is a witness against his father ; and
is detained here for safe-keeping, until the trial :
that's all.

But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass
the long days and nights in. This is rather hard
treatment for a young witness, is it not?— What
says our conductor ?

" Well, it an't a very rowdy life, and that 's a
fact!"

Again he clinks his metal Castanet, and leads
us leisurely away. I have a question to ask him
as we go.

" Pray, why do they call this place The Tombs r

" Well, it's the cant name."

" I know it is. Why?"

" Some suicides happened here, when it was
first built. I expect it come about from that."

" I saw just now, that that man's clothes were
scattered about the floor of his cell. Don't you
oblige the prisoners to be orderly, and put such
things away?"

204 NEW YORK.

" Where should they put 'em?"

" Not on the ground surely. What do you say
to hanging them up I"

He stops, and looks round to emphasize his
answer :

" Why, I say that's just it. When they had
hooks they would hang themselves, so they're taken
out of every cell, and there 's only the marks left
where they used to be ! "

The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has
been the scene of terrible performances. Into this
narrow, grave-like place, men are brought out to
die. The wretched creature stands beneath the
gibbet on the ground ; the rope about his neck ;
and when the sign is given, a weight at its other
end comes running down, and swings him up into
the air — a corpse.

The law requires that there be present at this
dismal spectacle, the judge, the jury, and citizens
to the amount of twenty-five. From the commu
nity it is hidden. To the dissolute and bad, the
thing remains a frightful mystery. Between the

NEW YORK. 205

criminal and them, the prison-wall is interposed as
a thick gloomy veil. It is the curtain to his bed
of death, his winding-sheet, and grave. From him
it shuts out life, and all the motives to unrepenting
hardihood in that last hour, which its mere sight
and presence is often all-sufficient to sustain.
There are no bold eyes to make him bold ; no
ruffians to uphold a ruffian's name before. All
beyond the pitiless stone wall, is unknown space.

Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets.

Once more in Broadway ! Here are the same
ladies in bright colours, walking to and fro, in pairs
and singly ; yonder the very same light blue para
sol which passed and repassed the hotel-window
twenty times while we were sitting there. We
are going to cross here. Take care of the pigs.
Two portly sows are trotting up behind this car
riage, and a select party of half-a-dozen gentlemen-
hogs have just now turned the corner.

Here is a solitary swine, lounging homeward by
himself. He has only one ear ; having parted with
the other to vagrant-dogs in the course of his city

206 NEW YORK.

rambles. But he gets on very well without it ; and
leads a roving, gentlemanly, vagabond kind of life,
somewhat answering to that of our club-men at
home. He leaves his lodgings every morning at a
certain hour, throws himself upon the town, gets
through his day in some manner quite satisfactory
to himself, and regularly appears at the door of his
own house again at night, like the mysterious
master of Gil Bias. He is a free-and-easy, careless,
indifferent kind of pig, having a very large
acquaintance among other pigs of the same cha
racter, whom he rather knows by sight than con
versation, as he seldom troubles himself to stop and
exchange civilities, but goes grunting down the
kennel, turning up the news and small-talk of the
city, in the shape of cabbage- stalks and offal, and
bearing no tails but his own : which is a very short
one, for his old enemies, the dogs, have been at that
too, and have left him hardly enough to swear by.
He is in every respect a republican pig, going
wherever he pleases, and mingling with the best
society, on an equal, if not superior footing, for

NEW YORK. 207

every one makes way when he appears, and the
haughtiest give him the wall, if he prefer it. He
is a great philosopher, and seldom moved, unless
by the dogs before-mentioned. Sometimes, indeed,
you may see his small eye twinkling on a slaugh
tered friend, whose carcase garnishes a butcher's
door-post, but he grunts out " Such is life : all
flesh is pork ! " buries his nose in the mire again,
and waddles down the gutter : comforting himself
with the reflection that there is one snout the less
to anticipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any rate.

They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly
brutes they are ; having, for the most part,
scanty, brown backs, like the lids of old horse-hair
trunks : spotted with unwholesome black blotches.
They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked
snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to
sit for his profile, nobody would recognise it for a
pig's likeness. They are never attended upon, or
fed, or driven, or caught, but are thrown upon their
own resources in early life, and become preter-
naturally knowing in consequence. Every pig

208 NEW YORK.

knows where he lives, much better than anybody
could tell him. At this hour, just as evening is
closing in, you will see them roaming towards bed
by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasion
ally, some youth among them who has over-eaten
himself, or has been much worried by dogs, trots
shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son : but
this is a rare case : perfect self-possession and self-
reliance, and immovable composure, being their
foremost attributes.

The streets and shops are lighted now ; and as
the eye travels down the long thoroughfare, dotted
with bright jets of gas, it is reminded of Oxford
Street or Piccadilly. Here and there, a flight of
broad stone cellar-steps appears, and a painted
lamp directs you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin
alley : Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance
and skill, invented when the legislature passed an
act forbidding Nine-Pins. At other downward
flights of steps, are other lamps, marking the
whereabouts of oyster-cellars — pleasant retreats,
say I : not only by reason of their wonderful cook-

NEW YORK. 209

ery of oysters, pretty nigh as large as cheese-
plates, (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek
Professors !) but because of all kinds of eaters of
fish, or flesh, or fowl, in these latitudes, the swal-
lowers of oysters alone are not gregarious; but
subduing themselves, as it were, to the nature of
what they work in, and copying the coyness of
the thing they eat, do sit apart in curtained boxes,
and consort by twos, not by two hundreds.

But how quiet the streets are ! Are there no
itinerant bands ; no wind or stringed instruments ?
No, not one. By day, are there no Punches,
Fantoccinis, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, Conjurors,
Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-organs? No, not
one. Yes, I remember one. One barrel-organ and
a dancing-monkey — sportive by nature, but fast
fading into a dull, lumpish monkey, of the Utilita
rian school. Beyond that, nothing lively ; no, not
so much as a white mouse in a twirling cage.

Are there no amusements 2 Yes. There is a lec
ture-room across the way, from which that glare of
light proceeds, and there may be evening service for

VOL. i p

210 NEW YORK.

the ladies thrice a week, or oftener. For the
young gentlemen, there is the counting-house, the
store, the bar-room : the latter, as you may
see through these windows, pretty full. Hark !
to the clicking sound of hammers breaking lumps
of ice, and to the cool gurgling of the pounded
bits, as, in the process of mixing, they are poured
from glass to glass ! No amusements ? What are
these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong
drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possi
ble variety of twist, doing, but amusing themselves ?
What are the fifty newspapers, which those pre
cocious urchins are bawling down the street, and
which are kept filed within, what are they but
amusements? Not vapid waterish amusements,
but good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and
blackguard names ; pulling off the roofs of private
houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain ; pimping
and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and
gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw ;
imputing to every man in public life the coarsest
and the vilest motives ; scaring away from the

NEW YOKK. 211

stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every Samari
tan of clear conscience and good deeds ; and setting
on, with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul
hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey.
— No amusements !

Let us go on again ; and passing this wilderness
of an hotel with stores about its base, like some
continental theatre, or the London Opera House
shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five Points.
But it is needful, first, that we take as our escort
these two heads of the police, whom you would
know for sharp and well-trained officers if you
met them in the Great Desert. So true it is, that
certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp
men with the same character. These two might
have been begotten, born, and bred, in Bow Street.

We have seen no beggars in the streets by night
or day ; but of other kinds of strollers, plenty.
Poverty, wretchedness, and vice, are rife enough
where we are going now.

This is the place : these narrow ways, diverging
to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with
p 2

212 NEW YORK.

dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear
the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse
and bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts
at home, and all the wide world over. Debauch
ery has made the very houses prematurely old.
See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and
how the patched and broken windows seem to
scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in
drunken frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do
they ever wonder why their masters walk upright
in lieu of going on all-fours ? and why they talk
instead of grunting ?

.So far, nearly every house is a low tavern ; and
on the bar-room walls, are coloured prints of Wash
ington, and Queen Victoria of England, and the
American Eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that
hold the bottles, are pieces of plate-glass and
coloured paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste
for decoration, even here. And as seamen fre
quent these haunts, there are maritime pictures by
the dozen : of partings between sailors and their
lady-loves, portraits of William, of the ballad, and

NEW YORK. 213

his Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will Watch, the Bold
Smuggler; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like :
on which the painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and
of Washington to boot, rest in as strange com
panionship, as on most of the scenes that are
enacted in their wondering presence.

What place is this, to which the squalid street
conducts us ? A kind of square of leprous houses,
some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden
stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering
flight of steps, that creak beneath our tread ? a
miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and
destitute of all comfort, save that which may be
hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man :
his elbows on his knees : his forehead hidden in his
hands. " What ails that man ! '" asks the fore
most officer. " Fever," he sullenly replies, with
out looking up. Conceive the fancies of a fevered
brain, in such a place as this !

Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false
footing on the trembling boards, and grope your
way with me into this wolfish den, where neither

214 NEW YORK.

ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A
negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's
voice — he knows it well — but comforted by his
assurance that he has not come on business, offi
ciously bestirs himself to light a candle. The
match flickers for a moment, and shows great
mounds of dusky rags upon the ground ; then dies
away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if
there can be degrees in such extremes. He stum
bles down the stairs and presently comes back,
shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the
mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly
up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro
women, waking from their sleep : their white teeth
chattering, and their bright eyes glistening and
winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the
countless repetition of .one astonished African face
in some strange mirror.

Mount up these other stairs with no less caution
(there are traps and pitfalls here, for those who
are not so well escorted as ourselves) into the
housetop ; where the bare beams and rafters meet

NEW YORK. 215

over-head, and calm night looks down through the
crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of
these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes.
Pah ! They have a charcoal fire within ; there is
a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they
gather round the brazier ; and vapours issue forth
that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as
you glance about you in these dark retreats, some
figure crawls half-awakened, as if the judgment-
hour were near at hand, and every obscene grave
were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl
to lie, women, and men, and boys slink off to sleep,
forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest
of better lodgings.

Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mud
knee-deep : underground chambers, where they
dance and game ; the walls bedecked with rough
designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and American
Eagles out of number : ruined houses, open to the
street, whence, through wide gaps in the walls,
other ruins loom upon the eye, as though the
world of vice and misery had nothing else to show:

216 NEW YORK.

hideous tenements which take their name from
robbery and murder : all that is loathsome, droop
ing, and decayed is here.

Our leader has his hand upon the latch of
" Almack's," and calls to us from the bottom of
the steps ; for the assembly-room of the Five-
Point fashionables is approached by a descent.
Shall we go in 2 It is but a moment.

Heyday ! the landlady of Almack's thrives ! A
buxom fat mulatto woman, with sparkling eyes,
whose head is daintily ornamented with Ja hand
kerchief of many colours. Nor is the landlord much
behind her in his finery, being attired in a smart
blue jacket, like a ship's steward, with a thick gold
ring upon his little finger, and round his neck a
gleaming golden watch-guard. How glad he is to
see us! What will we please to callsfor? A
dance ? It shall be done directly, sir: " a regular
break-down."

The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend
who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the board
ing of the small raised orchestra in which they

NEW YOEK. 217

sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple
come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively
young negro, who is the wit of the assembly,
and the greatest dancer known. He never leaves
off making queer faces, and is the delight of all
the rest, who grin from ear to ear incessantly.
Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls,
with large, black, drooping eyes, and head-gear
after the fashion of the hostess, who are as shy
or feign to be, as though they never danced before,
and so look down before the visitors, that their
partners can see nothing but the long fringed lashes.
But the dance commences. Every gentleman
sets as long as he likes to the opposite lady,
and the opposite lady to him, and all are so
long about it that the sport begins to languish,
when suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the
rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at
it tooth and nail; there is new energy in the
tambourine ; new laughter in the dancers ; new
smiles in the landlady ; new confidence in the
landlord ; new brightness in the very candles.

218 NEW YORK.

Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut :
snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in
his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in
fronts spinning about on his toes and heels
like nothing but the man's fingers on the tam
bourine ; dancing with two left legs, two right legs,
two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs —
all sorts of legs and no legs — what is this to him ?
And in what walk of life, or dance of life, does
man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders
about him, when, having danced his partner off
her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping
gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for
something to drink, with the chuckle of a million
of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound !
The air, even in these distempered parts, is
fresh after the stifling atmosphere of the houses ;
and now, as we emerge into a broader street, it
blows upon us with a purer breath, and the stars
look bright again. Here are The Tombs once
more. The city watch-house is a part of the
building. It follows naturally on the sights

NEW YORK. 219

we have just left. Let us see that, and then
to bed.

What ! do you thrust your common offenders
against the police discipline of the town, into such
holes as these ? Do men and women, against whom
no crime is proved, lie here all night in perfect
darkness, surrounded by the noisome vapours
which encircle that flagging lamp you light us with,
and breathing this filthy and offensive stench !
Why, such indecent and disgusting dungeons as
these cells, would bring disgrace upon the most
despotic empire in the world ! Look at them,
man— you, who see them every night, and keep
the keys. Do you see what they are 2 Do you
know how drains are made below the streets, and
wherein these human sewers differ, except in being
always stagnant ?

Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-
twenty young women locked up in this very cell at
one time, and you'd hardly realise what handsome
faces there were among 'em.

In God's name ! shut the door upon the wretched

220 NEW YORK.

creature who is in it now, and put its screen before
a place, quite unsurpassed in all the vice, neglect,
and devilry, of the worst old town in Europe.

Are people really left all night, untried, in those
black sties ?— .Every night. The watch is set at
seven in the evening. The magistrate opens his
court at five in the morning. That is the earliest
hour at which the first prisoner can be released ;
and if an officer appear against him, he is not
taken out till nine o'clock or ten. — But if any one
among them die in the interval, as one man did,
not long ago ? Then he is half-eaten by the rats
in an hour's time ; as that man was ; and there
an end.

What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and
crashing of wheels, and shouting in the distance ?
A fire. And what that deep red light in the opposite
direction ? Another fire. And what these charred
and blackened walls we stand before ? A dwelling
where a fire has been. It was more than hinted,
in an official report, not long ago, that some of
these conflagrations were not wholly accidental,

NEW YORK. 221

and that speculation and enterprise found a field
of exertion, even in flames : but be this as it may,
there was a fire last night, there are two to-night,
and you may lay an even wager there will be at
least one, to-morrow. So, carrying that with us
for our comfort, let us say, Good night, and climb
up stairs to bed.

One day, during my stay in New York, I paid
a visit to the different public institutions on Long
Island. One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The
building is handsome; and is remarkable for a
spacious and elegant staircase. The whole struc
ture is not yet finished, but it is already one of
considerable size and extent, and is capable of
accommodating a very large number of patients.

I cannot say that I derived much comfort from
the inspection of this charity. The different wards
might have been cleaner and better ordered; I
saw nothing of that salutary system which had
impressed me so favourably elsewhere ; and every-

222 NEW YOHK.

thing had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which
was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down
with long dishevelled hair ; the gibbering maniac,
with his hideous laugh and pointed finger; the
vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking
of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails :
there they were all, without disguise, in naked
ugliness and horror. In the dining-room, a bare,
dull, dreary place, with nothing for the eye to rest
on but the empty walls, a woman was locked up
alone. She was bent, they told me, on committing
suicide. If anything could have strengthened her
in her resolution, it would certainly have been the
insupportable monotony of such an existence.

The terrible crowd with which these halls and
galleries were filled, so shocked me, that I abridged
my stay within the shortest limits, and declined
to see that portion of the building in which the
refractory and violent were under closer restraint.
I have no doubt that the gentleman who presided
over this establishment at the time I write of, was
competent to manage it, and had done all in his

NEW YORK. 223

power to promote its usefulness: but will it be
believed that the miserable strife of Party feeling
is carried even into this sad refuge of afflicted and
degraded humanity 2 Will it be believed that the
eyes which are to watch over and controul the
wanderings of minds on which the most dreadful
visitation to which our nature is exposed has fallen,
must wear the glasses of some wretched side in
Politics 2 Will it be believed that the governor of
such a house as this, is appointed, and deposed,
and changed perpetually, as Parties fluctuate and
vary, and as their despicable weathercocks are
blown this way or that ? A hundred times in every
week, some new most paltry exhibition of that
narrow-minded and injurious Party Spirit, which is
the Simoom of America, sickening and blighting
everything of wholesome life within its reach, was
forced upon my notice ; but I never turned my
back upon it with feelings of such deep disgust
and measureless contempt, as when I crossed the
threshold of this mad-house on Long Island.
At a short distance from this building is another

224 NEW YORK.

called the Alms House, that is to say, the work
house of New York. This is a large Institution
also : lodging, I believe, when I was there, nearly
a thousand poor. It was badly ventilated, and
badly lighted ; was not too clean ; and impressed
me, on the whole, very uncomfortably. But it
must be remembered that New York, as a great
emporium of commerce, and as a place of general
resort, not only from all parts of the States, but
from most parts of the world, has always a large
pauper population to provide for ; and labours,
therefore, under peculiar difficulties in this respect.
Nor must it be forgotten that New York is a large
town, and that in all large towns a vast amount
of good and evil is intermixed and jumbled up
together.

In the same neighbourhood is the Long Island
Farm, where young orphans are nursed and
bred. I did not see it, but I believe it is well
conducted ; and I can the more easily credit it,
from knowing how mindful they usually are, in
America, of that beautiful passage in the Litany

NEW YORK. 225

which remembers all sick persons and young
children.

I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a
boat belonging to the Long Island Jail, and rowed
by a crew of prisoners, who were dressed in a
striped uniform of black and buff, in which they
looked like faded tigers. They took me, by the
same conveyance, to the Jail itself.

It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer estab
lishment, on the plan I have already described. I
was glad to hear this, for it is unquestionably a
very indifferent one. The most is made, however, of
the means it possesses, and it is as well regulated
as such a place can be.

The women work in covered sheds, erected for
that purpose. If I remember right, there are no
shops for the men, but be that as it may, the
greater part of them labour in certain stone-quar
ries near at hand. The day being very wet indeed,
this labour was suspended, and the prisoners were
in their cells. Imagine these cells, some two or
three hundred in number, and in every one a man,

VOL. I. Q

226 NEW YORK.

locked up : this one at his door for air, with his
hands thrust through the grate ; this one in bed
(in the middle of the day, remember) ; and this
one flung down in a heap upon the ground, with
his head against the bars, like a wild beast. Make
the rain pour down, outside, in torrents. Put the
everlasting stove in the midst : hot, and suffoca
ting, and vaporous, as a witch's cauldron. Add a
collection of gentle odours, such as would arise
from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through,
and a thousand buck -baskets, full of half- washed
linen — and there is the prison, as it was that day.

The prison for the State at Sing Sing, is, on the
other hand, a model jail. That, and Mount
Auburn, are the largest and best examples of the
silent system.

In another part of the city, is the Refuge for
the Destitute : an Institution whose object is to
reclaim youthful offenders, male and female, black
and white, without distinction ; to teach them use
ful trades, apprentice them to respectable masters,
and make them worthy members of society. Its

NEW YORK. 227

design, it will be seen, is similar to that at Boston ;
and it is a no less meritorious and admirable
establishment. A suspicion crossed my mind
during my inspection of this noble charity,
whether the superintendant had quite sufficient
knowledge of the world and worldly characters ;
and whether he did not commit a great mistake
in treating some young girls, who were to all
intents and purposes, by their years and their
past lives, women, as though they were little chil
dren ; which certainly had a ludicrous effect in my
eyes, and, or I am much mistaken, in theirs
also. As the Institution, however, is always under
the vigilant examination of a body of gentlemen of
great intelligence and experience, it cannot fail to
be well conducted ; and whether I am right or
wrong in this slight particular, is unimportant to
its deserts and character, which it would be diffi
cult to estimate too highly.

In addition to these establishments, there are,
in New York, excellent hospitals and schools,
literary institutions and libraries ; an admirable

Q2

228 NEW YORK.

fire department (as indeed it should be, having
constant practice), and charities of every sort and
kind. In the suburbs there is a spacious ceme
tery; unfinished yet, but every day improving.
The saddest tomb I saw there was " The Strangers1
Grave. Dedicated to the different hotels in this
city."

There are three theatres. Two of them, the
Park and the Bowery, are large, elegant, and
handsome buildings, and are, I grieve to write it,
generally deserted. The third, the Olympic, is a
tiny show-box for vaudevilles and burlesques. It
is singularly well-conducted by Mr. Mitchell, a
comic actor of great quiet humour and originality,
who is well remembered and esteemed by London
playgoers. I am happy to report of this deserv
ing gentleman, that his benches are usually well
filled, and that his theatre rings with merriment
every night. I had almost forgotten a small
summer theatre, called Niblo's, with gardens and
open air amusements attached ; but I believe it is
not exempt from the general depression under

NEW YORK. 229

which Theatrical Property, or what is humorously
called by that name, unfortunately labours.

The country round New York, is surpassingly
and exquisitely picturesque. The climate, as I
have already intimated, is somewhat of the warmest.
What it would be, without the sea breezes which
come from its beautiful Bay in the evening time,
I will not throw myself or my readers into a fever
by inquiring.

The tone of the best society in this city, is like
like that of Boston; here and there, it may be, with
a greater infusion of the mercantile spirit, but
generally polished and refined, and always most
hospitable. The houses and tables are elegant ;
the hours later and more rakish; and there is,
perhaps, a greater spirit of contention in refer
ence to appearances, and the display of wealth
and costly living. The ladies are singularly
beautiful.

Before I left New York I made arrangements
for securing a passage home in the George Wash
ington packet ship, which was advertised to sail

230 NEW YORK.

in June : that being the month in which I had
determined, if prevented by no accident in the
course of my ramblings, to leave America.

I never thought that going back to England,
returning to all who are dear to me, and to pur
suits that have insensibly grown to be a part of
my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as
I endured, when I parted at last, on board this
ship, with the friends who had accompanied me
from this city. I never thought the name of
any place, so far away and so lately known, could
ever associate itself in my mind with the crowd of
affectionate remembrances that now cluster about
it. There are those in this city who would brighten,
to me, the darkest winter-day that ever glimmered
and went out in Lapland ; and before whose pre
sence even Home grew dim, when they and I
exchanged that painful word which mingles with
our every thought and deed; which haunts our
cradle-heads in infancy, and closes up the vista of
our lives in age.

PHILADELPHIA.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON.

THE journey from New York to Philadelphia, is
made by railroad, and two ferries ; and usually
occupies between five and six hours. It was a
fine evening when we were passengers in the train :
and, watching the bright sunset from alittle window
near the door by which we sat, my attention was
attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing from
the windows of the gentlemen's car immediately
in front of us, which I supposed for some time was
occasioned by a number of industrious persons in
side, ripping open feather-beds, and giving the
feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to
me that they were only spitting, which was indeed
the case ; though how any number of passengers

234 PHILADELPHIA, AND

which it was possible for that car to contain, could
have maintained such a playful and incessant
shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to under
stand : notwithstanding the experience in all sali-
vatory phenomena which I afterwards acquired.

I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a
mild and modest young quaker, who opened the
discourse by informing me, in a grave whisper, that
his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn
castor oil. I mention the circumstance here,
thinking it probable that this is the first occasion
on which the valuable medicine in question was
ever used as a conversational aperient.

We reached the city, late that night. Looking
out of my chamber window, before going to bed,
I saw, on the opposite side of the way, a handsome
building of white marble, which had a mournful
ghost-like aspect, dreary to behold. I attributed
this to the sombre influence of the night, and on
rising in the morning looked out again, expecting
to see its steps and portico thronged with groups
of people passing in and out. The door was still

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 235

tight shut, however ; the same cold cheerless air
prevailed ; and the building looked as if the marble
statue of Don Guzman could alone have any
business to transact within its gloomy walls. I
hastened to enquire its name and purpose, and
then my surprise vanished. It was the Tomb of
many fortunes ; the Great Catacomb of investment;
the memorable United States Bank.

The stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous
consequences, had cast (as I was told on every side)
a gloom on Philadelphia, under the depressing
effect of which, it yet laboured. It certainly did
seem rather dull and out of spirits.

It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular.
After walking about it for an hour or two, I
felt that I would have given the world for a
crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared
to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand,
beneath its quakerly influence. My hair shrunk
into a sleek short crop, my hands folded them
selves upon my breast of their own calm accord,
and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane

236 PHILADELPHIA, AND

over against the Market Place, and of making a
large fortune by speculations in corn, came over
me involuntarily.

Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with
fresh water, which is showered and jerked about,
and turned on, and poured off, everywhere. The
Waterworks, which are on a height near the city,
are no less ornamental than useful, being tastefully
laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best
and neatest order. The river is dammed at this
point, and forced by its own power into certain
high tanks or reservoirs, whence the whole city, to
the top stories of the houses, is supplied at a very
trifling expense.

There are various public institutions. Among
them a most excellent Hospital — a quaker esta
blishment, but not sectarian in the great benefits
it confers ; a quiet, quaint old Library, named after
Franklin ; a handsome Exchange and Post Office;
and so forth. In connection with the quaker
Hospital, there is a picture by West, which is
exhibited for the benefit of the funds of the insti-

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 237

tution. The subject, is, our Saviour healing the
sick, and it is, perhaps, as favourable a specimen
of the master as can be seen anywhere. Whether
this be high or low praise, depends upon the
reader's taste.

In the same room, there is a very characteristic
and life-like portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished
American artist.

My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but
what I saw of its society, I greatly liked. Treat
ing of its general characteristics, I should be dis
posed to say that it is more provincial than Boston
or New York, and that there is, afloat in the fair
city, an assumption of taste and criticism, savour
ing rather of those genteel discussions upon the
same themes, in connection with Shakspeare and
the Musical Glasses, of which we read in the Vicar
of Wakefield. Near the city, is a most splendid
unfinished marble structure for the Girard College,
founded by a deceased gentleman of that name
and of enormous wealth, which, if completed accord
ing to the original design, will be perhaps the

238 PHILADELPHIA, AND

richest edifice of modern times. But the bequesb
is involved in legal disputes, and pending them
the work has stopped ; so that like many other
great undertakings in America, even this is rather
going to be done one of these days, than doing
now.

In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called
the Eastern Penitentiary : conducted on a plan
peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system
here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confine
ment. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and
wrong.

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is
kind, humane, and meant for reformation ; but I
am persuaded that those who devised this system
of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentle
men who carry it into execution, do not know
what it is that they are doing. I believe that
very few men are capable of estimating the im
mense amount of torture and agony which this
dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts
upon the sufferers ; and in guessing at it myself,

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 239

and in reasoning from what I have seen written
upon their faces, and what to my certain know
ledge they feel within, I am only the more con
vinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance
in it which none but the sufferers themselves can
fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict
upon his fellow creature. I hold this slow and
daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain,
to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the
body : and because its ghastly signs and tokens
are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch
as scars upon the flesh ; because its wounds are
not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that
human ears can hear ; therefore I the more de
nounce it, as a secret punishment which slumber
ing humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated
once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the
power of saying " Yes "or " No," I would allow
it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of
imprisonment were short ; but now, I solemnly de
clare, that with no rewards or honours could I
walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day

240 PHILADELPHIA, AND

or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the
consciousness that one human creature, for any
length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this
unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the
cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree.

I was accompanied to this prison by two gentle
men officially connected with its management,
and passed the day in going from cell to cell, and
talking with the inmates. Every facility was
afforded me, that the utmost courtesy could sug
gest. Nothing was concealed or hidden from my
view, and every piece of information that I sought,
was openly and frankly given. The perfect order
of the building cannot be praised too highly, and
of the excellent motives of all who are immediately
concerned in the administration of the system,
there can be no kind of question.

Between the body of the prison and the outer
wall, there is a spacious garden. Entering it, by a
wicket in the massive gate, we pursued the path
before us to its other termination, and passed into
a large chamber, from which seven long passages

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 241

radiate. On either side of each, is a long, long row
of low cell doors, with a certain number over every
one. Above, a gallery of cells like those below,
except that they have no narrow yard attached
(as those in the ground tier have), and are some
what smaller. The possession of two of these, is
supposed to compensate for the absence of so
much air and exercise as can be had in the dull
strip attached to each of the others, in an hour's
time every day ; and therefore every prisoner in
this upper story has two cells, adjoining and com
municating with, each other.

Standing at the central point, and looking down
these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet
that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a
drowsy sound from some lone weaver's shuttle, or
shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick
walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to
make the general stillness more profound. Over
the head and face of every prisoner who comes
into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn ;
and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain

VOL. I. B

242 .PHILADELPHIA, AND

dropped between him and the living world, he is
led to the cell from which he never again comes
forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has
expired. He never hears of wife or children ;
home or friends; the life or death of any single
creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with
that exception he never looks upon a human coun
tenance, or hears a human voice. He is a man
buried alive ; to be dug out in the slow round of
years ; and in the mean time dead to everything
but torturing anxieties and horrible despair.

His name, and crime, and term of suffering, arc
unknown, even to the officer who delivers him his
daily food. There is a number over his cell-door,
and in a book of which the governor of the prison
has one copy, and the moral instructor another :
this is the index to his history. Beyond these pages
the prison has no record of his existence : and
though he live to be in the same cell ten weary years,
he has no means of knowing, down to the very last
hour, in what part of the building it is situated ;
what kind of men there are about him ; whether

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 243

in the long winter nights there are living people
near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great
jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors
between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary
horrors.

Every cell has double doors : the outer one of
sturdy oak, the other of grated iron, wherein there
is a trap through which his food is handed. He
has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and, under
certain restrictions, has sometimes other books,
provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and
paper. His razor, plate, and can, and basin, hang
upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf.
Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can
draw it at his pleasure. During the day, his bed
stead turns up against the wall, and leaves more
space for him to work in. His loom, or bench,
or wheel, is there ; and there he labours, sleeps
and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change,
and grows old.

The first man I saw, was seated at his loom, at
work. He had been there, six years, and was to

R 2

244 PHILADELPHIA, AND

remain, I think, three more. He had been con
victed as a receiver of stolen goods, but even after
this long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and said
he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second
offence.

He stopped his work when we went in, took off
his spectacles, and answered freely to everything
that was said to him, but always with a strange
kind of pause first, and in a low, thoughtful voice.
He wore a paper hat of his own making, and was
pleased to have it noticed and commended. He
had very ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch
clock from some disregarded odds and ends ; and
his vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing
me interested in this contrivance, he looked up at
it with a great deal of pride, and said that he had
been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped
the hammer and a little piece of broken glass be
side it " would play music before long." He had
extracted some colours from the yarn with which
he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the
wall. One, of a female, over the door, he called
" The Lady of the Lake."

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 245

He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to
wile away the time ; but when I looked from them
to him, I saw that his lip trembled, and could
have counted the beating of his heart. I forget
how it came about, but some allusion was made
to his having a wife. He shook his head at the
word, turned aside, and covered his face with his
hands.

" But you are resigned now ! " said one of
the gentlemen after a short pause, during which
he had resumed his former manner. He an
swered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless
in its hopelessness, " Oh yes, oh yes ! I am re
signed to it." " And are a better man, you
think ? " " Well, I hope so : I'm sure I hope I
may be." " And time goes pretty quickly ! "
" Time is very long, gentlemen, within these four
walls ! "

He gazed about him — Heaven only knows how
wearily ! — as he said these words ; and in the act
of doing so, fell into a strange stare as if he had
forgotten something. A moment afterwards he

246 PHILADELPHIA, AND

sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went
about his work again.

In another cell, there was a German, sentenced
to five years1 imprisonment for larceny, two of
which had just expired. With colours procured
in the same manner, he had painted every inch of
the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had
laid out the few feet of ground, behind, with ex
quisite neatness, and had made a little bed in the
centre, that looked by the bye like a grave. The
taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything
were most extraordinary; and yet a more dejected,
heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be diffi
cult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of
forlorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart
bled for him ; and when the tears ran down his
cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside, to
ask, with his trembling hands nervously clutching
at his coat to detain him, whether there was no
hope of his dismal sentence being commuted, the
spectacle was really too painful to witness. I never
saw or heard of any kind of misery that im-

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 247

pressed me more than the wretchedness of this
man.

In a third cell, was a tali strong black, a burglar,
working at his proper trade of making screws and
the like. His time was nearly out. He was not
only a very dexterous thief, but was notorious for
his boldness and hardihood, and for the number
of his previous convictions. He entertained us
with a long account of his achievements, which he
narrated with such infinite relish, that he actually
seemed to lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of
stolen plate, and of old ladies whom he had watched
as they sat at windows in silver spectacles (he had
plainly had an eye to their metal even from the
other side of the street), and had afterwards
robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encour
agement, would have mingled with his professional
recollections the most detestable cant ; but I am
very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the
unmitigated hypocrisy with which he declared that
he blessed the day on which he came into that

248 PHILADELPHIA, AND

prison, and that he never would commit another
robbery as long as he lived.

There was one man who was allowed, as an
indulgence, to keep rabbits. His room having
rather a close smell in consequence, they called to
him at the door to come out into the passage. He
complied of course, and stood shading his haggard
face in the unwonted sunlight of the great window,
looking as wan and unearthly as if he had been
summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit
in his breast ; and when the little creature, getting
down upon the ground, stole back into the cell,
and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after it, I
thought it would have been very hard to say in
what respect the man was the nobler animal of the
two.

There was an English thief, who had been there
but a few days out of seven years : a villanous,
low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with a white face ;
who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but
for the additional penalty, would have gladly

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 249

stabbed me with his shoemaker's knife. There
was another German who had entered the jail but
yesterday, and who started from his bed when we
looked in, and pleaded, in is broken English, very
hard for work. There was a poet, who after doing
two days' work in every four-and-twenty hours*
one for himself and one for the prison, wrote
verses about ships (he was by trade a mariner),
and <{ the maddening wine-cup," and his friends at
home. There were very many of them. Some
reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned
very pale. Some two or three had prisoner nurses
with them, for they were very sick ; and one, a
fat old negro whose leg had been taken off within
the jail, had for his attendant a classical scholar
and an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner
likewise. Sitting upon the stairs, engaged in some
slight work, was a pretty coloured boy. " Is there
no refuge for young criminals in Philadelphia,
then?" said I. "Yes, but only for white chil
dren." Noble aristocracy in crime !

There was a sailor who had been there upwards

250 PHILADELPHIA, AND

of eleven years, and who in a few months'* time
would be free. Eleven years of solitary confine
ment !

" I am very glad to hear your time is nearly
out." What does he say ? Nothing. Why does
he stare at his hands, and pick the flesh upon his
fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, every
now and then, to those bare walls which have
seen his head turn grey ? It is a way he has
sometimes.

Does he never look men in the face, and does he
always pluck at those hands of his, as though he
were bent on parting skin and bone ? It is his
humour : nothing more.

It is his humour too, to say that he does not look
forward to going out ; that he is not glad the time
is drawing near ; that he did look forward to it
once, but that was very long ago ; that he has lost
all care for everything. It is his humour to be a
helpless, crushed, and broken man. And, Heaven
be his witness that he has his humour thoroughly
gratified !

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 251

There were three young women in adjoining
cells, all convicted at the same time of a conspiracy
to rob their prosecutor. In the silence and soli
tude of their lives, they had grown to be quite
beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and might
have moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not
to that kind of sorrow which the contemplation of
the men, awakens. One was a young girl ; not
twenty, as I recollect ; whose snow-white room
was hung with the work of some former prisoner,
and upon whose downcast face the sun in all its
splendour shone down through the high chink in
the wall, where one narrow strip of bright blue
sky was visible. She was very penitent and quiet ;
had come to be resigned, she said (and I believe
her) ; and had a mind at peace. " In a word, you
are happy here?" said one of my companions.
She struggled — she did struggle very hard — to
answer, Yes: but raising her eyes, and meeting
that glimpse of freedom over-head, she burst into
tears, and said, " She tried to be ; she uttered no
complaint ; but it was natural that she should

252 PHILADELPHIA, AND

sometimes long to go out of that one cell : she could
not help that" she sobbed, poor thing !

I went from cell to cell that day ; and every
face I saw, or word I heard, or incident I noted,
is present to my mind in all its painfulness. But
let me pass them by, for one, more pleasant, glance
of a prison on the same plan which I afterwards
saw at Pittsburgh.

When I had gone over that, in the same man
ner, I asked the governor if he had any person in
his charge who was shortly going out. He had
one, he said, whose time was up next day ; but he
had only been a prisoner two years.

Two years ! I looked back through two years
in my own life — out of jail, prosperous, happy, sur
rounded by blessings, comforts, and good fortune
— and thought how wide a gap it was, and how
long those two years passed in solitary captivity
would have been. I have the face of this man,
who was going to be released next day, before me
now. It is almost more memorable in its happi
ness than the other faces in their misery. How

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 253

easy and how natural it was for him to say that
the system was a good one ; and that the time
went "pretty quick — considering;" and that
when a man once felt he had offended the law,
and must satisfy it, " he got along, somehow :'
and so forth !

" What did he call you back to say to you, in
that strange flutter \ " I asked of my conductor,
when he had locked the door and joined me in the
passage.

" Oh ! That he was afraid the soles of his
boots were not fit for walking, as they were a
good deal worn when he came in; and that
he would thank me very much to have them
mended, ready."

Those boots had been taken off his feet, and
put away with the rest of his clothes, two years
before !

I took that opportunity of inquiring how they
conducted themselves immediately before going
out; adding that I presumed they trembled very
much.

254 PHILADELPHIA, AND

" Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the
answer — " though they do quiver — as a complete
derangement of the nervous system. They can't
sign their names to the book ; sometimes can't even
hold the pen ; look about 'em without appearing
to know why, or where they are ; and sometimes
get up and sit down again, twenty times in a
minute. This is when they're in the office, where
they are taken with the hood on, as they were
brought in. When they get outside the gate, they
stop, and look first one way and then the other :
not knowing which to take. Sometimes they
stagger as if they were drunk, and sometimes are
forced to lean against the fence, they're so bad :
— but they clear off in course of time."

As I walked among these solitary cells, and
looked at the faces of the men within them, I tried
to picture to myself the thoughts and feelings
natural to their condition. I imagined the hood
just taken off, and the scene of their captivity dis
closed to them in all its dismal monotony.

At first, the man is stunned. His confinement

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 255

is a hideous vision ; and his old life a reality. He
throws himself upon his bed, and lies there aban
doned to despair. By degrees the insupportable
solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him
from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated
door is opened, he humbly begs and prays for
work. "Give me some work to do, or I shall go
raving mad ! "

He has it ; and by fits and starts applies him
self to labour ; but every now and then there comes
upon him a burning sense of the years that must
be wasted in that stone coffin, and an agony so
piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden
from his view and knowledge, that he starts from
his seat, and striding up and down the narrow
room with both hands clasped on his uplifted head,
hears spirits tempting him to beat his brains out
on the wall.

Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there,
moaning. Suddenly he starts up, wondering
whether any other man is near ; whether there is
another cell like that on either side of him : and
listens keenly.

256 PHILADELPHIA, AND

There is no sound, but other prisoners may be
near for all that. He remembers to have heard
once, when he little thought of coming here him-

O O

self, that the cells were so constructed that the
prisoners could not hear each other, though the
officers could hear them. Where is the nearest
man — upon the right, or on the left ? or is there
one in both directions I Where is he sitting now
— with his face to the light ? or is he walking to
and fro I How is he dressed I Has he been here
long ? Is he much worn away ? Is he very white
and spectre-like ? Does he think of his neighbour
too?

Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening
while he thinks, he conjures up a figure with its
back towards him, and imagines it moving about
in this next cell. He has no idea of the face, but
he is certain of the dark form of a stooping man.
In the cell upon the other side, he puts another
figure, whose face is hidden from him also. Day
after day, and often when he wakes up in the
middle of the night, he thinks of these two men,

ITS SOLITAKY PRISON. 257

until he is almost distracted. He never changes
them. There they are always as he first imagined
them — an old man on the right ; a younger man
upon the left — whose hidden features torture him
to death, and have a mystery that makes him
tremble.

The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like
mourners at a funeral ; and slowly he begins to
feel that the white walls of the cell have some
thing dreadful in them : that their colour is
horrible : that their smooth surface chills his blood :
that there is one hateful corner which torments
him. Every morning when he wakes, he hides his
head beneath the coverlet, and shudders to see the
ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. The
blessed light of day itself peeps in, an ugly phan
tom face, through the unchangeable crevice which
is his prison window.

By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that
hateful corner swell until they beset him at all
times ; invade his rest, make his dreams hideous,
and his nights dreadful. At first, he took a strange

VOL. I. S

258 PHILADELPHIA, AND

dislike to it : feeling as though it gave birth in his
brain to something of corresponding shape, which
ought not to be there, and racked his head with
pains. Then he began to fear it, then to dream
of it, and of men whispering its name and point
ing to it. Then he could not bear to look at it,
nor yet to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every
night the lurking-place of a ghost : a shadow :
— a silent something, horrible to see, but whether
bird, or beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot
tell.

When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little
yard, without. When he is in the yard, he dreads
to re-enter the cell. When night .comes, there
stands the phantom in the corner. If he have the
courage to stand in its place, and drive it out (he
had once : being desperate), it broods upon his bed.
In the twilight, and always at the same hour, a
voice calls to him by name ; as the darkness thick
ens, his Loom begins to live ; and even that, his
comfort, is a hideous figure, watching him till day
break.

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 259

Again, oy slow degrees, these horrible fancies
depart from him one by one : returning sometimes,
unexpectedly, but at longer intervals, and in less
alarming shapes. He has talked upon religious
matters with the gentleman who visits him, and
has read his Bible, and has written a prayer upon
his slate, and hung it up, as a kind of protection,
and an assurance of Heavenly companionship. He
dreams now, sometimes, of his children or his wife,
but is sure that they are dead or have deserted
him. He is easily moved to tears ; is gentle, sub
missive, and broken-spirited. Occasionally, the old
agony comes back : a very little thing will revive
it ; even a familiar sound, or the scent of summer
flowers in the air ; but it does not last long, now :
for the world without, has come to be the vision,
and this solitary life, the sad reality.

If his term of imprisonment be short — I mean
comparatively, for short it cannot be— the last half
year is almost worse than all ; for then he thinks
the prison will take fire and he be burnt in the
ruins, or that he is doomed to die within the walls,

s2

260 PHILADELPHIA, AND

or that he will be detained on some false charge
and sentenced for another term : or that some
thing, no matter what, must happen to prevent his
going at large. And this is natural, and impossi
ble to be reasoned against, because, after his long
separation from human life, and his great suffer
ing, any event will appear to him more probable
in the contemplation, than the being restored to
liberty and his fellow-creatures.

If his period of confinement have been very long,
the prospect of release, bewilders and confuses him.
His broken heart may nutter for a moment, when
he thinks of the world outside, and what it might
have been to him in all those lonely years, but that
is all. The cell-door has been closed too long on
all its hopes and cares. Better to have hanged
him in the beginning than bring him to this pass,
and send him forth to mingle with his kind, who
are his kind no more.

On the haggard face of every man among these
prisoners, the same expression sat. I know not
what to liken it to. It had something of that

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 261

strained attention which we see upon the faces of
the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror,
as though they had all been secretly terrified.
In every little chamber that I entered, and at
every grate through which I looked, I seemed to
see the same appalling countenance. It lives in
my memory, with the fascination of a remarkable
picture. Parade before my eyes, a hundred men,
with one among them newly released from this
solitary suffering, and I would point him out.

The faces of the women, as I have said, it
humanizes and refines. Whether this be, because
of their better nature, which is elicited in solitude,
or because of their being gentler creatures, of
greater patience and longer suffering, I do not
know ; but so it is. That the punishment is
nevertheless, to my thinking, fully as cruel and as
wrong in their case, as in that of the men, I need
scarcely add.

My firm conviction is, that independent of the
mental anguish it occasions— an anguish so acute
and so tremendous, that all imagination of it must

262 PHILADELPHIA, AND

fall far short of the reality — it wears the mind
into a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the
rough contact and busy action of the world. It is
my fixed opinion that those who have undergone
this punishment, MUST pass into society again
morally unhealthy and diseased. There are many
instances on record, of men who have chosen, or
have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude,
but I scarcely remember one, even among sages of
strong and vigorous intellect, where its effect has
not become apparent, in some disordered train of
thought, or some gloomy hallucination. What
monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency and
doubt, and born and reared in solitude, have
stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, and
darkening the face of Heaven !

Suicides are rare among these prisoners: are
almost, indeed, unknown. But no argument in
favour of the system, can reasonably be deduced
from this circumstance, although it is very often
urged. All men'who have made diseases of the
mind, their study, know perfectly well that such

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 263

extreme depression and despair as will change the
whole character, and beat down all its powers of
elasticity and self-resistance, may be at work within
a man, and yet stop short of self-destruction.
This is a common case.

That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees
impairs the bodily faculties, I am quite sure.
I remarked to those who were with me in this
very establishment at Philadelphia, that the crimi
nals who had been there long, were deaf. They,
who were in the habit of seeing these men con
stantly, were perfectly amazed at the idea, which
they regarded as groundless and fanciful. And
yet the very first prisoner to whom they ap
pealed — one of their own selection — confirmed
my impression (which was unknown to him)
instantly, and said, with a genuine air it was im
possible to doubt, that he couldn't think how
it happened, but he was growing very dull of
hearing.

That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and
affects the worst man least, there is no doubt. In

264 PHILADELPHIA, AND

its superior efficiency as a means of reformation,
compared with that other code of regulations
which allows the prisoners to work in company
without communicating together, I have not the
smallest faith. All the instances of reformation
that were mentioned to me, were of a kind that
might have been — and I have no doubt whatever,
in my own mind, would have been — equally well
brought about by the Silent System. With regard
to such men as the negro burglar and the English
thief, even the most enthusiastic have scarcely
any hope of their conversion.

It seems to me that the objection that nothing
wholesome or good has ever had its growth in such
unnatural solitude, and that even a dog or any of
the more intelligent among beasts, would pine, and
mope, and rust away, beneath its influence, would
be in itself a sufficient argument against this
system. But when we recollect, in addition, how
very cruel and severe it is, and that a solitary life
is always liable to peculiar and distinct objections
of a most deplorable nature, which have arisen here;

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 265

and call to mind, moreover, that the choice is not
between this system, and a bad or ill-considered
one, but between it and another which has worked
well, and is, in its whole design and practice,
excellent; there is surely more than sufficient
reason for abandoning a mode of punishment at
tended by so little hope or promise, and fraught,
beyond dispute, with such a host of evils.

As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this
chapter with a curious story, arising out of the
same theme, which was related to me, on the
occasion of this visit, by some of the gentlemen
concerned.

At one of the periodical meetings of the inspec
tors of this prison, a working man of Philadelphia
presented himself before the Board, and earnestly
requested to be placed in solitary confinement.
On being asked what motive could possibly prompt
him to make this strange demand, he answered
that he had an irresistible propensity to get
drunk ; that he was constantly indulging it, to his
great misery and ruin ; that he had no power of

266 PHILADELPHIA, AND

resistance ; that he wished to be put beyond the
reach of temptation ; and that he could think of
no better way than this. It was pointed out to
him, in reply, that the prison was for criminals
who had been tried and sentenced by the law, and
could not be made available for any such fanciful
purposes ; he was exhorted to abstain from intoxi
cating drinks, as he surely might if he would ; and
received other very good advice, with which he
retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of
his application.

He came again, and again, and again, and was
so very earnest and importunate, that at last they
took counsel together, and said, " He will certainly
qualify himself for admission, if we reject him any
more. Let us shut him up. He will soon be glad
to go away, and then we shall get rid of him.1'
So they made him sign a statement which would
prevent his ever sustaining an action for false im
prisonment, to the effect that his incarceration was
voluntary, and of his own seeking ; they requested
him to take notice that the officer in attendance

ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 267

had orders to release him at any hour of the day
or night, when he might knock upon his door for
that purpose; but desired him to understand,
that once going out, he would not be admitted
any more. These conditions agreed upon, and he
still remaining in the same mind, he was conducted
to the prison, and shut up in one of the cells.

In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness
to leave a glass of liquor standing untasted on a
table before him — in this cell, in solitary confine
ment, and working every day at his trade of shoe-
making, this man remained nearly two years.
His health beginning to fail at the expiration of
that time, the surgeon recommended that he should
work occasionally in the garden ; and as he liked
the notion very much, he went about this new
occupation with great cheerfulness.

He was digging here, one summer day, very in
dustriously, when the wicket in the outer gate
chanced to be left open : showing, beyond, the well-
remembered dusty road and sun-burnt fields. The
way was as free to him as to any man living, but

268 PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON.

he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of
it, all shining in the light, than, with the involun
tary instinct of a prisoner, he cast away his spade,
scampered off as fast as his legs would carry him,
and never once looked back.

•

"

I

WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE
PRESIDENT'S HOUSE.

WE left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six
o'clock one very cold morning, and turned our
faces towards Washington.

In the course of this day's journey, as on
subsequent occasions, we encountered some Eng
lishmen (small farmers perhaps, or country pub
licans at home) who were settled in America,
and were travelling on their own affairs. Of all
grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the
public conveyances of the States, these are often
the most intolerable and the most insufferable
companions. United to every disagreeable cha
racteristic that the worst kind of American tra-

272 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

vellers possess, these countrymen of ours display
an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption
of superiority, quite monstrous to behold. In the
coarse familiarity of their approach, and the
effrontery of their inquisitiveness (which they are
in great haste to assert, as if they panted to revenge
themselves upon the decent old restraints of
home) they surpass any native specimens that came
within my range of observation : and I often grew
so patriotic when I saw and heard them, that I
would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable
fine, if I could have given any other country in the
whole world, the honour of claiming them for its
children.

As Washington may be called the head quar
ters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come
when I must confess, without any disguise, that the
prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing
and expectorating began about this time to be
anything but agreeable, and soon became most
offensive and sickening. In all the public places
of America, this filthy custom is recognised. In

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 273

the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the
crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his ;
while the jurymen and spectators are provided for,
as so many men who in the course of nature must
desire to spit incessantly. In the hospitals, the
students of medicine are requested, by notices
upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the
boxes provided for that purpose, and not to dis
colour the stairs. In public buildings, visitors are
implored, through the same agency, to squirt the
essence of their quids, or " plugs," as I have heard
them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of
sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not
about the bases of the marble columns. But in
some parts, this custom is inseparably mixed up
with every meal and morning call, and with all the
transactions of social life. The stranger, who fol
lows in the track I took myself, will find it in its
full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming
recklessness, at Washington. And let him not
persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame), that
previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The

VOL. I.

274 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which
cannot be outdone.

On board this steamboat, there were two young
gentlemen, with shirt-collars reversed as usual, and
armed with very big walking-sticks ; who planted
two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance
of some four paces apart ; took out their tobacco-
boxes ; and sat down opposite each other, to
chew. In less than a quarter of an hour's time,
these hopeful youths had shed about them on the
clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain ;
clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle,
within whose limits no intruders dared to come,
and which they never failed to refresh and re-
refresh before a spot was dry. This being before
breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea ;
but looking attentively at one of the expectoraters,
I plainly saw that he was young in chewing, and
felt inwardly uneasy, himself. A glow of delight
came over me at this discovery ; and as I marked
his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of
tobacco in his left cheek., quiver with his suppressed

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 275

agony, while yet he spat, and chewed, and spat
again, in emulation of his older friend, I could
have fallen on his neck and implored him to go on
for hours.

We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in
the cabin below, where there was no more hurry
or confusion than at such a meal in England, and
where there was certainly greater politeness exhi
bited than at most of our stage-coach banquets.
At about nine o'clock we arrived at the railroad
station, and went on by the cars. At noon we
turned out again, to cross a wide river in another
steamboat ; landed at a continuation of the rail
road on the opposite shore ; and went on by other
cars ; in which, in the course of the next hour or so,
we crossed, by wooden bridges, each a mile in length,
two creeks, called respectively Great and Little
Gunpowder. The water in both was blackened
with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are
most delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at
that season of the year.

These bridges are of wood, have no parapet,

T2

276 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE

and are only just wide enough for the passage of
the trains ; which, in the event of the smallest
accident, would inevitably be plunged into the river.
They are startling contrivances, and are most
agreeable when passed.

We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being
now in Maryland, were waited on, for the first
time, by slaves. The sensation of exacting any
service from human creatures who are bought and
sold, and being, for the time, a party as it were
to their condition, is not an enviable one. The
institution exists, perhaps, in its least repulsive
and most mitigated form in such a town as this ;
but it is slavery"; and though I was, with respect to
it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with a
sense of shame and self-reproach.

After dinner, we went down to the railroad again,
:and took our seats in the cars for Washington.
Being rather early, those men and boys who hap
pened to have nothing particular to do, and were
curious in foreigners, came (according to custom)
round the carriage in which I sat ; let down all

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 277

the windows ; thrust in their heads and shoulders ;
hooked themselves on conveniently, by their elbows;
and fell to comparing notes on the subject of my
personal appearance, with as much indifference as
if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much
uncompromising information with reference to my
own nose and eyes, the various impressions wrought
by my mouth and chin on different minds, and how
my head looks when it is viewed from behind, a&
on these occasions. Some gentlemen were only
satisfied by exercising their sense of touch ; and
the boys (who are surprisingly precocious in Ame
rica) were seldom satisfied, even by that, but would
return to the charge over and over again. Many
a budding president has walked into my room with
his cap on his head and his hands in his pockets,
and stared at me for two whole hours : occasion
ally refreshing himself with a tweak at his nose, or
a draught from the water- jug ; or by walking to
the windows and inviting other boys in the street
below, to come up and do likewise : crying,
" Here he is ! " {< Come on ! " " Bring all

278 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

your brothers ! " with other hospitable entreaties
of that nature.

We reached Washington at about half-past six
that evening, and had upon the way a beautiful
view of the Capitol, which is a fine building of the
Corinthian order, placed upon a noble and com
manding eminence. Arrived at the hotel, I saw no
more of the place that night ; being very tired, and
glad to get to bed.

Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the
streets for an hour or two, and, coming home,
throw up the window in the front and back, and
look out. Here is Washington, fresh in my mind
and under my eye.

Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pen-
tonville, preserving all their oddities, but especially
the small shops and dwellings, occupied there (but
not in Washington) by furniture-brokers, keepers
of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn
the whole down ; build it up again in wood and
plaster ; widen it a little ; throw in part of
St. John's Wood ; put green blinds outside all the

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 279

private houses, with a red curtain and a white one
in every window ; plough up all the roads ; plant
a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it
ought not to be ; erect three handsome buildings
in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more
entirely out of everybody's way the better; call
one the Post Office, one the Patent Office, and
one the Treasury ; make it scorching hot in the
morning, and freezing cold in the afternoon, with
an occasional tornado of wind and dust ; leave a
brick-field without the bricks, in all central places
where a street may naturally be expected : and
that's Washington.

The hotel in which we live, is a long row of
small houses fronting on the street, and opening
at the back upon a common yard, in which hangs
a great triangle. Whenever a servant is wanted,
somebody beats on this triangle from one stroke up
to seven, according to the number of the house in
which his presence is required : and as all the
servants are always being wanted, and none of
them ever come, this enlivening engine is in full

280 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

performance the whole day through. Clothes are
drying in this same yard; female slaves, with
cotton handkerchiefs twisted round their heads,
are running to and fro on the hotel business;
black waiters cross and recross with dishes in their
hands ; two great dogs are playing upon a mound
of loose bricks in the centre of the little square ; a
pig is turning up his stomach to the sun, and
grunting "that's comfortable !"; and neither the
men, nor the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig,
nor any created creature, takes the smallest notice
of the triangle, which is tingling madly all the
time.

I walk to the front window, and look across the
road upon a long, straggling row of houses, one
story high, terminating, nearly opposite, but a little
to the left, in a melancholy piece of waste ground
with frowzy grass, which looks like a small piece
of country that has taken to drinking, and has
quite lost itself. Standing anyhow and all wrong,
upon this open space, like something meteoric that
has fallen down from the moon, is an odd, lop-

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 281

sided, one-eyed kind of wooden building, that looks
like a church, with a flag-staff as long as itself
sticking out of a steeple something larger than a
tea-chest. Under the window, is a small stand of
coaches, whose slave-drivers are sunning themselves
on the steps of our door, and talking idly together.
The three most obtrusive houses near at hand, are
the three meanest. On one — a shop, which never
has anything in the window, and never has the
door open — is painted in large characters, " THE
CITY LUNCH." At another, which looks like the
backway to somewhere else, but is an independent
building in itself, oysters are procurable in every
style. At the third, which is a very, very little
tailor's shop, pants are fixed to order : or, in other
words, pantaloons are made to measure. And
that is our street in Washington.

It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent
Distances, but it might with greater propriety be
termed the City of Magnificent Intentions ; for it
is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from the
top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend

282 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring
Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in no
thing, and lead nowhere ; streets, mile-long, that
only want houses, roads, and inhabitants ; public
buildings that need but a public to be complete ;
and ornaments of. great thoroughfares, which only
lack great thoroughfares to ornament are its
leading features. One might fancy the season
over, and most of the houses gone out of town for
ever with their masters. To the admirers of cities
it is a Barmecide Feast ; a pleasant field for the
imagination to rove in ; a monument raised to a
deceased project, with not even a legible inscription
to record its departed greatness.

Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was ori
ginally chosen for the seat of Government, as a
means of averting the conflicting jealousies and
interests of the different States ; and very pro
bably, too, as being remote from" mobs : a con
sideration not to be slighted, even in America. It
has no trade or commerce of its own : having little
or no population beyond the President and his

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 283

establishment; the members of the legislature
who reside there during the session ; the Govern
ment clerks and officers employed in the various
departments ; the keepers of the hotels and
boarding-houses; and the tradesmen who supply
their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people
would live in Washington, I take it, who were not
obliged to reside there ; and the tides of emigra
tion and speculation, those rapid and regardless
currents, are little likely to flow at any time to
wards such dull and sluggish water.

The principal features of the Capitol, are, of
course, the two Houses of Assembly. But there
is, besides, in the centre of the building, a fine
rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and ninety-
six high, whose circular wall is divided into com
partments, ornamented by historical pictures.
Four of these have for their subjects prominent
events in the revolutionary struggle. They were
painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a member
of Washington's staff at the time of their occur
rence ; from which circumstance they derive a

284? WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

peculiar interest of their own. In this same hall
Mr. Greenough's large statue of Washington has
been lately placed. It has great merits of course,
but it struck me as being rather • strained and
violent for its subject. I could wish, however, to
have seen it in a better light than it can ever be
viewed in. where it stands.

There is a very pleasant and commodious library
in the Capitol ; and from a balcony in front, the
bird's-eye view, of which I have just spoken, may
be had, together with a beautiful prospect of the
adjacent country. In one of the ornamented por
tions of the building, there is a figure of Justice ;
whereunto the Guide Book says, " the artist at
first contemplated giving more of nudity, but he
was warned that the public sentiment in this
country would not admit of it, and in his caution he
has gone, perhaps, into the opposite extreme." Poor
Justice ! she has been made to wear much stranger
garments in America than those she pines in, in
the Capitol. Let us hope that she has changed
her dress-maker since they were fashioned, and

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 285

that the public sentiment of the country did not
cut out the clothes she hides her lovely figure in,
just now.

The House of Representatives is a beautiful
and spacious hall, of semi -circular shape, sup
ported by handsome pillars. One part of the
gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there
they sit in front rows, and come in, and go out, as
at a play or concert. The chair is canopied, and
raised considerably above the floor of the House ;
and every member has an easy chair and a writ
ing desk to himself: which is denounced by some
people out of doors as a most unfortunate and in
judicious arrangement, tending to long sittings
and prosaic speeches. It is an elegant chamber
to look at, but a singularly bad one for all purposes
of hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free
from this objection, and is exceedingly well adapted
to the uses for which it is designed. The sittings,
I need hardly add, take place in the day ; and the
parliamentary forms are modelled on those of the
old country.

286 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

I was sometimes asked, in my progress through
other places, whether I had not been very much
impressed by the heads of the lawmakers at Wash
ington • meaning not their chiefs and leaders, but
literally their individual and personal heads, whereon
their hair grew, and whereby the phrenological
character of each legislator was expressed: and
I almost as often struck my questioner dumb with
indignant consternation by answering " No, that
I didn't remember being at all overcome." As I
must, at whatever hazard, repeat the avowal here,
I will follow it up by relating my impressions on
this subject in as few words as possible.

In the first place — it may be from some imper
fect development of my organ of veneration — T
do not remember having ever fainted away, or
having even been moved to tears of joyful pride,
at sight of any legislative body. I have borne the
House of Commons like a man, and have yielded
to no weakness, but slumber, in the House of Lords.
I have seen elections for borough and county, and
have never been impelled (no matter which party

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 287

won) to damage my hat by throwing it up into
the air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shout
ing forth any reference to our Glorious Constitu
tion, to the noble purity of our independent voters,
or the unimpeachable integrity of our independent
members. Having withstood such strong attacks
upon my fortitude, it is possible that I may be of
a cold and insensible temperament, amounting to
icyness, in such matters ; and therefore my im
pressions of the live pillars of the Capitol at
Washington must be received with such grains of
allowance as this free confession may seem to
demand.

Did I see in this public body, an assemblage of
men, bound together in the sacred names of
Liberty and Freedom, and so asserting the chaste
dignity of those twin goddesses, in all their discus
sions, as to exalt at once the Eternal Principles
to which their names are given, and their own
character, and the character of their countrymen,
in the admiring eyes of the whole world 2

It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired

288 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

man, a lasting honour to the land that gave him
birth, who has done good service to his country,
as his forefathers did, and who will be remembered
scores upon scores of years after the worms bred
in its corruption, are but so many grains of dust —
it was but a week, since this old man had stood for
days upon his trial before this very body, charged
with having dared to assert the infamy of that
traffic, which has for its accursed merchandize
men and women, and their unborn children. Yes.
And publicly exhibited in the same city all the
while; gilded, framed and glazed; hung up for
general admiration ; shown to strangers not with
shame, but pride ; its face not turned towards the
wall, itself not taken down and burned ; is the
Unanimous Declaration of The Thirteen United
States of America, which solemnly declares that
All Men are created Equal ; and are endowed by
their Creator with the Inalienable Rights of Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness !

It was not a month, since this same body had
sat calmly by, and heard a man, one of themselves,

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 289

with oaths which beggars in their drink reject,
threaten to cut another's throat from ear to ear.
There he sat, among them ; not crushed by the
general feeling of the assembly, but as good a man
as any.

There was but a week to come, and another of
that body, for doing his duty to those who sent
him there ; for claiming in a Republic the Liberty
and Freedom of expressing their sentiments, and
making known their prayer ; would be tried, found
guilty, and have strong censure passed upon him
by the rest. His was a grave offence indeed ; for
years before, he had risen up and said, tc A gang
of male and female slaves for sale, warranted to
breed like cattle, linked to each other by iron
fetters, are passing now along the open street
beneath the windows of your Temple of Equality !
Look!" But there are many kinds of hunters
engaged in the Pursuit of Happiness, and they go
variously armed. It is the Inalienable Right of
some among them, to take the field after their
Happiness, equipped with cat and cartwhip, stocks,

VOL. I. U

290 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

and iron collar, and to shout their view halloa !
(always in praise of Liberty), to the music of
clanking chains and bloody stripes.

Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats;
of words and blows such as coalheavers deal upon
each other, when they forget their breeding ? On
every side. Every session had its anecdotes of
that kind, and the actors were all there.

Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men,
who applying themselves in a new world to correct
some of the falsehoods and vices of the old, puri
fied the avenues to Public Life, paved the dirty
ways to Place and Power, debated and made laws
for the Common Good, and had no party but their
Country ?

I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest
perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the
worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at
elections ; under-handed tamperings with public
officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with
scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for
daggers ; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves,

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 291

whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and
week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal
types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in every
thing but sharpness ; aidings and abettings of every
bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful
suppressions of all its good influences : such things
as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its
most depraved and most unblushing form, stared
out from every corner of the crowded hall.

Did I see among them, the intelligence and
refinement : the true, honest, patriotic heart of
America I Here and there, were drops of its blood
and life, but they scarcely coloured the stream of
desperate adventurers which sets that way for
profit and for pay. It is the game of these men,
and of their profligate organs, to make the strife
of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive
of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive
and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof,
and they, and such as they, be left to battle out
their selfish views, unchecked. And thus this
lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they
u 2

292 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

who in other countries would, from their intelli
gence and station, most aspire to make the laws,
do here recoil the farthest from that degradation.
That there are, among the representatives of the
people in both Houses, and among all parties,
some men of high character and great abilities, I
need not say. The foremost among those politicians
who are known in Europe, have been already de
scribed, and I see no reason to depart from the
rule I have laid down for my guidance, of ab
staining from all mention of individuals. It will
be sufficient to add. that to the most favourable
accounts that have been written of them, I more
than fully and most heartily subscribe ; and that
personal intercourse and free communication have
bred within me, not the result predicted in the
very doubtful proverb, but increased admiration
and respect. They are striking men to look at,
hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy,
Crichtons in varied accomplishment, Indians in
fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong and
generous impulse ; and they as well represent the

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 293

honour and wisdom of their country at home, as
the distinguished gentleman who is now its minister
at the British Court sustains its highest character
abroad.

I visited both houses nearly every day, during
my stay in Washington. On my initiatory visit
to the House of Representatives, they divided
against a decision of the chair ; but the chair won.
The second time I went, the member who was
speaking, being interrupted by a laugh, mimicked
it, as one child would in quarrelling with another,
and added, "that he would make honourable gentle
men opposite, sing out a little more on the other side
of their mouths presently." But interruptions are
rare ; the speaker being usually heard in silence.
There are more quarrels than with us, and more
threatenings than gentlemen are accustomed to
exchange in any civilised society of which we have
record ; but farm-yard imitations have not as yet
been imported from the Parliament of the United
Kingdom. The feature in oratory which appears
to be the most practised, and most relished, is the

294 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

constant repetition of the same idea or shadow of
an idea in fresh words ; and the inquiry out of doors
is not, " What did he say ?" but, <e How long did
he speak ? " These, however, are but enlargements
of a principle which prevails elsewhere.

The Senate is a dignified and decorous body,
and its proceedings are conducted with much
gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely
carpeted ; but the state to which these carpets
are reduced by the universal disregard of the
spittoon with which every honourable member is
accommodated, and the extraordinary improve
ments on the pattern which are squirted and
dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit
of being described. I will merely observe, that I
strongly recommend all strangers not to look at
the floor ; and if they happen to drop anything,
though it be their purse, not to pick it up with
an ungloved hand on any account.

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say
the least, to see so many honourable members
with swelled faces ; and it is scarcely less remark-

AND THE PRESIDENTS HOUSE. 295

able to discover that this appearance is caused by
the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow
within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange
enough too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning
back in his tilted chair with his legs on the desk
before him, shaping a convenient " plug " with his
penknife, and when it is quite ready for use,
shooting the old one from his mouth, as from a
pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place.

I was surprised to observe that even steady old
chewers of great experience, are not always good
marksmen, which has rather inclined me to doubt
that general proficiency with the rifle, of which
we have heard so much in England. Several gen
tlemen called upon me who, in the course of con
versation, frequently missed the spittoon at five
paces ; and one (but he was certainly short
sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open win
dow, at three. On another occasion, when I dined
out, and was sitting with two ladies and some
gentlemen round a fire before dinner, one of the
company fell short of the fire-place, six distinct

296 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

times. I am disposed to think, however, that this
was occasioned by his not aiming at that object ;
as there was a white marble hearth before the
fender, which was more convenient, and may have
suited his purpose better.

The Patent Office at Washington, furnishes an
extraordinary example of American enterprise and
ingenuity ; for the immense number of models it
contains, are the accumulated inventions of only
five years: the whole of the previous collection
having been destroyed by fire. The elegant struc
ture in which they are arranged, is one of design
rather than execution, for there is but one side
erected out of four, though the works are stopped.
The Post Office, is a very compact, and very beau
tiful building. In one of the departments, among
a collection of rare and curious articles, are depo
sited the presents which have been made from time
to time to the American ambassadors at foreign
courts by the various potentates to whom they were
the accredited agents of the Republic : gifts which
by the law they are not permitted to retain. I con-

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 297

fess that I looked upon this as a very painful exhi
bition, and one by no means flattering to the
national standard of honesty and honour. That
can scarcely be a high state of moral feeling which
imagines a gentleman of repute and station, likely
to be corrupted, in the discharge of his duty, by the
present of a snuff-box, or a richly-mounted sword,
or an Eastern shawl ; and surely the Nation who
reposes confidence in her appointed servants, is
likely to be better served, than she who makes
them the subject of such very mean and paltry
suspicions.

At George Town, in the suburbs, there is a
Jesuit College ; delightfully situated, and, so far
as I had an opportunity of seeing, well managed.
Many persons who are not members of the Romish
Church, avail themselves, I believe, of these institu
tions, and of the advantageous opportunities they
afford for the education of their children. The
heights in this neighbourhood, above the Potomac
River, are very picturesque ; and are free, I should
conceive, from some of the insalubrities of Washing-

298 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

ton. The air, at that elevation, was quite cool and
refreshing, when in the city it was burning hot.

The President's mansion is more like an English
club-house, both within and without, than any
other kind of establishment with which I can com
pare it. The ornamental ground about it has
been laid out in garden walks ; they are pretty,
and agreeable to the eye ; though they have that
uncomfortable air of having been made yesterday,
which is far from favourable to the display of such
beauties.

My first visit to this house was on the morning
after my arrival, when I was carried thither by an
official gentleman, who was so kind as to charge
himself with my presentation to the President.

We entered a large hall, and having twice or
thrice rung a bell which nobody answered, walked
without further ceremony through the rooms on
the ground floor, as divers other gentlemen
(mostly with their hats on, and their hands in
their pockets) were doing very leisurely. Some
of these had ladies with them, to whom they were

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 2.99

showing the premises ; others were lounging on
the chairs and sofas ; others, in a perfect state of
exhaustion from listlessness, were yawning drearily.
The greater portion of this assemblage were rather
asserting their supremacy than doing anything
else, as they had no particular business there, that
anybody knew of. A few were closely eyeing the
moveables, as if to make quite sure that the Presi
dent (who was far from popular) had not made
away with any of the furniture, or sold the fixtures
for his private benefit.

After glancing at these loungers ; who were
scattered over a pretty drawing-room, opening upon
a terrace which commanded a beautiful prospect of
the river and the adjacent country ; and who
were sauntering too, about a larger state room
called the Eastern Drawing-room; we went up
stairs into another chamber, where were certain
visitors, waiting for audiences. At sight of my
conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow slip
pers who was gliding noiselessly about, and whis
pering messages in the ears of the more impatient,

300 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

made a sign of recognition, and glided off to
announce him.

We had previously looked into another chamber
fitted all round with a great bare wooden desk or
counter, whereon lay files of newspapers, to which
sundry gentlemen were referring. But there were
no such means of beguiling the time in this apart
ment, which was as unpromising and tiresome as any
waiting room in one of our public establishments,
or any physician's dining-room during his hours of
consultation at home.

There were some fifteen or twenty persons in
the room. One, a tall, wiry, muscular old man,
from the west ; sunburnt and swarthy ; with a
brown-white hat on his knees, and a giant umbrella
resting between his legs ; who sat bolt upright in
his chair, frowning steadily at the carpet, and
twitching the hard lines about his mouth, as if he
had made up his mind " to fix " the President on
what he had to say, and wouldn't bate him a
grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet-six in
height, with his hat on, and his hands under his

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. SOI

coat-tails, who leaned against the wall and kicked
the floor with his heel, as though he had Time's
head under his shoe, and were literally " killing "
him. A third, an oval-faced, bilious-looking man,
with sleek black hair cropped close, and whiskers
and beard shaved down to blue dots, who sucked
the head of a thick stick, and from time to time
took it out of his mouth, to see how it was getting
on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A fifth
did nothing but spit. And indeed all these gen
tlemen were so very persevering and energetic in
this latter particular, and bestowed their favours
so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take it for
granted the Presidential housemaids have high
wages, or, to speak more genteelly, an ample
amount of " compensation : " which is the Ame
rican word for salary, in the case of all public
servants.

We had not waited in this room many minutes,
before the black messenger returned, and con
ducted us into another of smaller dimensions,
where, at a business-like table covered with

302 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

papers, sat the President himself. He looked
somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might :
being at war with everybody — but the expression
of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner
was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, and
agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage
and demeanour, he became his station singu
larly well.

Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the
republican court, admitted of a traveller, like
myself, declining, without any impropriety, an
invitation to dinner, which did not reach me until
I had concluded my arrangements for leaving
Washington some days before that to which it
referred, I only returned to this house once. It
was on the occasion of one of those general
assemblies which are held on certain nights
between the hours of nine and twelve o' clock, and
are called, rather oddly, Levees.

I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was
a pretty dense crowd of carriages and people in the
court-yard, and so far as I could make out, there

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 303

were no very clear regulations for the taking up
or setting down of company. There were certainly
no policemen to soothe startled horses, either by
sawing at their bridles or nourishing truncheons
in their eyes ; and I am ready to make oath
that no inoffensive persons were knocked violently
on the head, or poked acutely in their backs or
stomachs ; or brought to a stand-still by any such
gentle means, and then taken into custody for
not moving on. But there was no confusion or
disorder. Our carriage reached the porch in its
turn, without any blustering, swearing, shouting,
backing, or other disturbance ; and we dismounted
with as much ease and comfort as though we had
been escorted by the whole Metropolitan Force
from A to Z inclusive.

The suite of rooms on the ground-floor, were
lighted up ; and a military band was playing in
the hall. In the smaller drawing-room, the centre
of a circle of company, were the President and his
daughter-in-law, who acted as the lady of the
mansion: and a very interesting, graceful, and

304 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE.

accomplished lady too. One gentleman who stood
among this group, appeared to take upon himself
the functions of a master of the ceremonies. I
saw no other officers or attendants, and none were
needed.

The great drawing-room, which I have already
mentioned, and the other chambers on the ground-
floor, were crowded to excess. The company was
not, in our sense of the term, select, for it compre
hended persons of very many grades and classes ;
nor was there any great display of costly attire :
indeed some of the costumes may have been, for
aught I know, grotesque enough. But the
decorum and propriety of behaviour which pre
vailed, were unbroken by any rude or disagreeable
incident ; and every man, even among the mis
cellaneous crowd in the hall who were admitted
without any orders or tickets to look on, ap
peared to feel that he was a part of the Institu
tion, and was responsible for its preserving a
becoming character, and appearing to the best
advantage.

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 305

That these visitors, too, whatever their station,
were not without some refinement of taste and
appreciation of intellectual gifts, and gratitude to
those men who, by the peaceful exercise of great
abilities shed new charms and associations upon
the homes of their countrymen, and elevate their
character in other lands, was most earnestly testi
fied by their reception of Washington Irving, my
dear friend, who had recently been appointed
Minister at the court of Spain, and who was among
them that night, in his new character, for the first
and last time before going abroad. I sincerely
believe that in all the madness of American politics,
few public men would have been so earnestly, de
votedly, and affectionately caressed, as this most
charming writer : and I have seldom respected a
public assembly more, than I did this eager throng,
when I saw them turning with one mind from noisy
orators and officers of state, and flocking with a
generous and honest impulse round the man of
quiet pursuits : proud in his promotion as reflect
ing back upon their country : and grateful to him

VOL. I.

306 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE,

with their whole hearts for the store of graceful
fancies he had poured out among them. Long
may he dispense such treasures with unsparing

hand ; and long may they remember him as
worthily !

The term we had assigned for the duration of
our stay in Washington, was now at an end, and
we were to begin to travel ; for the railroad dis
tances we had traversed yet, in journeying among
these older towns, are on that great continent
looked upon as nothing.

I had at first intended going South — to
Charleston. But when I came to consider the
length of time which this journey would occupy,
and the premature heat of the season, which even
at Washington had been often very trying ; and
weighed moreover, in my own mind, the pain of
living in the constant contemplation of slavery,
against the more than doubtful chances of my
ever seeing it, in the time I had to spare, stripped

AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 307

of the disguises in which it would certainly be
dressed, and so adding any item to the host of facts
already heaped together on the subject ; I began
to listen to old whisperings which had often been
present to me at home in England, when I little
thought of ever being here ; and to dream again
of cities growing up, like palaces in fairy tales,
among the wilds and forests of the west.

The advice I received in most quarters when I
began to yield to my desire of travelling towards
that point of the compass was, according to custom,
sufficiently cheerless : my companion being threat
ened with more perils, dangers, and discomforts,
than I can remember or would catalogue if I could ;
but of which it will be sufficient to remark that
blowings-up in steam-boats and breakings down in
coaches were among the least. But, having a
western route sketched out for me by the best
and kindest authority to which I could have
resorted, and putting no great faith in these dis
couragements, I soon determined on my plan of
action.

308 WASHINGTON.

This was to travel south, only to Richmond in
Virginia ; and then to turn, and shape our course
for the Far West ; whither I beseech the reader's
company, in a new volume.

END OP VOL. I.

LONDO V :
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, \VHrtEFRIARS.

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