We are off this afternoon for Newport on our way to New York, and so south and west. The express man will be here directly for my luggage, which will be a little curtailed, as these dear kind people insist on our returning, and leaving all we don’t want in our rooms. So I shall drop my beaver, leaving it with the most serious admonitions in the charge of Rose, the Irish girl, who is a character. I will now take up the thread of my story, merely remarking that what you seem to think a dull catalogue of small doings at a small watering-place is quite unspeakably delightful to me away here. On the wharf at Nashont Island we found the two young F———s, the elder a colonel in the war, and five months a prisoner in the South, the younger, Malcolm, just left college. I never saw two finer young men, both of them models of strength. They had come down to meet us and bathe, so we stopped and had a splendid header off the wharf and a swim in the bay, after careful inquiries by R——— as to sharks, to which young F——— replied with a twinkle in his eye, that they didn’t lose many friends that way. We walked up to the house after our dip, a large wooden building, with deep verandahs and sun-blinds, furnished quite plainly, even roughly, but capable of holding nearly any number of people. We were about eighteen at breakfast: Mrs. F——— a handsome, clever, elderly lady, born a Quaker, and with their charm of manner, who made tea for the party, and on whose right I sat. Opposite her was her husband with Mrs. L———, the young widow of Lowell’s nephew Charles, the famous soldier, on his left, and therefore opposite me. On my right, a young woman, a cousin of the F———s, a Mrs. P———, whose husband sat down towards the end of the table, the manager of a Western railway, who has given us free passes over his line. Colonel F———, the eldest son, was Lowell’s major, and served with distinction in the war, in which he was taken prisoner, and spent five months in Southern prisons; his wife, a buxom young woman with very good eyes, is Emerson’s daughter, and her brother, a bright boy of twenty-two or twenty-three, was near me. There were two daughters of the family, and two other girls and several boys, all pleasant and easy in hand; but the gem of the party was the young widow. She is not actually pretty, but with a face full of the nobleness of sorrow, which has done its work. I have seldom been more touched than in watching her gentle, cheerful ways, and her sympathy with all the bright life around her. Since the war, in which her husband and only brother R. S———(who commanded the first coloured regiment from Massachusetts, and was buried under his negroes at Fort Wagner) were killed, she has devoted herself to the Freedmen, and is Honorary Secretary to the Society for educating them. After breakfast we started in the yacht for the neighbouring island, on which the great Methodist camp-meeting was going on. This Sunday was the great day. They have occupied this island for some years, and have built there a whole town of pretty little wooden houses like big Chinese toys, dotted about amongst the trees. Most of them consist of only one long room, divided by curtains in the middle. The front half opens to the street, but raised one step above it is the sitting-room, and the inmates sleep in the back, behind the curtains. A few houses have a story above; but F——— bought a lot of photographs for us, which will show you the style of house better than a page of description. There were literally thousands of people on the island, upwards of two thousand collected in a huge circular tent in the middle of the houses, where a preacher was shouting to them. We sat on the skirts of the congregation and listened for some time, but as he was only talking wildly about Nebuddah, Positivism, Theodore Parker, and other heresies and heretics, I was not edified, and got no worship till he had done, when we all stood up and sang the doxology, which was very impressive. I was much disappointed at the gathering in a religious point of view. It was a rare chance for a man with a living word in him, those thousands of decent, sober, attentive New England men and women. They told me that in the evening it would be much more interesting, when there would be great singing of hymns, and many persons would tell how they came to experience religion as they call it; but we could not stay for this. The meeting lasts for weeks, and is in fact an excuse for the gathering at a pretty sea-place in the early autumn of a number of good folk who would think the ordinary watering-places ungodly, but have a longing for a break in their ordinary colourless lives. We sailed back in time for early dinner, meeting on the way huge steamers packed with passengers for the campmeeting, till they were top heavy. Next day we spent in, fishing off the rocks for blue-fish, and in a beautiful little lake of three-quarters of a mile long (one of several in the island) for bass. I caught a blue fish of nine lbs., the biggest and strongest I have ever caught, also the only bass which was taken; so I naturally crowed loudly. The island hours are: breakfast, eight o’clock or half past eight; dinner, two or three; tea, with cold meat, half-past six or seven. After tea on both evenings we got into full swing on the war. I found Mr. F——— and his wife deeply grieved and prejudiced as to our conduct, our feeling to them as a nation, etc., and set myself to work hard to remove all this as far as I could. As he is a very energetic and influential man it is worth taking any amount of trouble about, and I think I succeeded. In the evenings the young folk sang a number of the war songs, several composed by or for the negro soldiers, going to famous airs, and full of humour and pathos. The March through Georgia is very spirited, and a version of the “John Brown” March, which seems to have superseded “We’ll hang Jef Davies,” etc., exceedingly touching—at least I know it was so to me, as all the young folk sang—

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,

He is sifting out the souls of men before His judgment seat:

Be swift, my soul, to welcome Him! be jubilant, my feet.

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make them free.

Our God is marching on.

To think of what that sweet young woman had gone through (the news of her husband’s death at the head of his brigade, was read by her in a newspaper), and to see her sitting there calmly and trying to join in the chorus, was quite too much for me. However, nobody noticed my emotion. Our last morning, Tuesday, was spent in a famous wild ride over the island. After breakfast we found seven very excellent riding horses (three with sidesaddles) at the door. At home there would have been three grooms, here each horse has a leathern strap fixed to the bit, which you just buckle round his neck till you want to stop, and then fasten it to the nearest tree or lamp-post. The whole turn-out is of course rough, but I don’t wish to see nicer ladies’ hacks than the three which the two Miss F———s and Mrs. P——— rode. We sailed back in the yacht to another little port, a few miles north of New Bedford, F——— having provided us as a parting present with free passes over almost all the Western railways, which will save me at least £20 I should think. He is Chairman of several, and so can do it without any trouble. We found the dear Lowells expecting us, and my second letter also waiting, so you may think that I had a joyful evening. Next day, Wednesday, we drove to Concord to dine with Judge Hoar, the late Attorney-General of the United States, a very able, fine fellow. We passed over classic ground, the very road along which the English troops marched in April 1776 to destroy the stores, when the first collision of the War of Independence took place at Concord Bridge and in the village of Lexington. You may perhaps remember in the second series of the Biglow Papers “Sumthin’ in the Pastoral Line,” in which old Concord Bridge and the monument which has been put up to commemorate the fight, talk together over the Trent affair. The Judge’s two sons, very nice young fellows, pulled us up Concord River, which runs at the bottom of their garden, to the spot, and on the way (which is very pretty) we saw lots of tortoises sitting and basking on the stones, and popping in when we approached, and heard a lot of capital Yankee stories from the Judge. Dinner at three; Emerson came, and there were two Miss H———s, and a Miss S———, a handsome girl, sister of the best oar in the Harvard boat of last year. I enjoyed the dinner and smoke afterwards immensely, and am at last quite sure that I am doing some good with some of these men, all of whom are influential, and most of them sadly prejudiced against us still as a nation. For myself it is quite impossible to express their kindness. They seem as if they can never do enough for me. When we got back to Cambridge, we found Miss M——— and Dr. Lowell, brother to James, an English clergyman, and quite charming too in his way.