I think I have told you already the sort of royal progress I am making. Some principal citizen always comes to the station to meet us in his carriage, books our luggage by the express (an admirable institution which saves you all the trouble with luggage), drives us up to his house, lodges us in the best rooms, has all the best folks in the neighbourhood to meet us at breakfast, dinner, tea, takes us to the sights of the neighbourhood, keeps all his servants out of sight when we are going, so that we can’t give any one a penny or even pay our washing bills, and finally sends us and our luggage down to the next boat or steamer, when we are booked already probably by a new friend. Certainly I never saw, heard of, or could imagine anything like the hospitality. It is no doubt in some degree, and in individual cases, owing to the part I took during the war in England, but Democrats as well as Republicans have been amongst our warmest hosts; in fact, I am fairly puzzled, and allow the tide at last to carry me along, floating down it and enjoying everything as well as I can. I think in my last I got to our start from Boston. No! was it? At any rate, I wrote about our day at Concord, I know, as to which I shall have to tell you more when we meet. After we got home Miss Mabel rushed upstairs, got into her photographing dress, the quaintest turn-out you can conceive, and commenced a series of groups, etc., which you shall have specimens of when I get back. She is endless fun; has the most arch way of talking to her father as “sir” every now and then; is charming with her stepmother; and altogether as bright a bit of life about a house as you would meet on a summer’s day. I parted from Lowell and his home feeling that the meeting had been more than successful. For these eighteen or nineteen years I have revelled in his books—indeed, have got so much from them and learned to love the parent of them so well, as I imagined him, that I almost feared the meeting, lest pleasant illusions should be broken. I found him much better than his books. We had a pleasant three hours’ rail to Newport, finding Mr. Field, a Philadelphian banker, at the station with his carriage. We were friends at once, for he is a famous, frank, goodlooking, John Bullish man of the world, who has travelled all over Europe and retained his new world simplicity and heartiness. He drove us all round the fashionable watering-place, the description of which I must postpone or I never shall get through (as we say here). His cottage, as he calls it, in accordance with the fashion here, is a charming villa, on the most southern point of Newport, close to the rocks on which the grand Atlantic roll was beating magnificently as we drove up.

Saturday morning a lot of men came to breakfast, including Colonel H———, the officer who had been the first to volunteer to take command of negroes in Virginia, before the New England States even began mustering them. I was delighted to make his acquaintance, as I knew his name in my anti-slavery standard as a real, advanced Radical, and I was anxious to realise that type of Yankee of which I had only seen Lloyd Garrison in England. He was very fascinating to my mind, and the most refined man in manners and look I have yet met, but I should say decidedly a cracked fellow in the good sense. We adjourned to the spouting rock, just at the point where the surf was beating gloriously, and as I continued talking with H———, of course I got a ducking by getting too near this rock, which is hollow underneath, so that it sends a spout of water up like a huge whale some second or two after the breaker hits it. The sight was superb, and well worth the payment of an unstarched waistcoat and shirt. We got home, and I changed at 11.30 or thereabouts, and when I came in to dress for dinner there was my waistcoat, washed and starched, on the bed. Mrs. Field had heard me say in joke that I should be out of white waistcoats. We went to the Episcopal Church on Sunday morning and had a good sermon of a quarter of an hour, sitting in the pew of an acquaintance of the previous day, a Mrs. H——— of New York, who drove us about in her handsome carriage, and insisted on giving me two books—one being extracts from Lincoln’s Speeches and Letters, which I am very glad to have. In the evening we were sent down to the pier, where we were picked up by the most magnificent steamer ever seen in the world, I should think, and by six next morning were running along the north river, one of the many entrances by sea to New York harbour. The approaches to the city are superb, but the first view of it disappointed me, the buildings along the water-side being for the most part poor and almost mean. We found Hewitt’s carriage waiting, he being out of town for his Sunday, and drove up through Broadway and Fourth Avenue to his house, which is a splendid roomy one, belonging to his father-inlaw, Mr. Cooper. The dear old gentleman, a hearty veteran of seventy-nine, is the founder of the Cooper’s Institute, a working-man’s college on a large scale. He has spent nearly a million dollars upon it, and it is certainly the best institution of the kind I have ever seen. He is one of the most guileless and sweetest of old men, and I shall have much to tell you of him. Mr. Hewitt, my friend, who is in partnership with him, and his wife and family live with the old gentleman. Here I found free admission to the four best clubs in New York—the Union League, the Century, and even the Manhattan, a democrat club of which Hewitt is a distinguished member. The nice brisk woman in the house gave us an excellent breakfast, and we started for the town about eleven. One of the first places I went to was Roebuck’s store, where I found him very flourishing. But I can’t go on to catalogue our doings or shan’t get this off. As very few folk are in New York, we are off to-day to West Point up the Hudson, where we stay for a military ball to-morrow night; on Friday we get to Niagara, and then away west, certainly as far as Omaha, to see prairies, etc., and possibly to San Francisco. We must be back here or in New England on the 1st of October, on the 6th is the Harvard Memorial ceremony, laying the first stone of their memorial building, on the 11th I am in for an address, and after that shall set my face homewards. I have looked at myself in the glass at your request and believe I look fabulous.