You ask whether I read our papers and the news from Europe. No, except just so far as to keep abreast of the bare facts. You know how I hate details of battlefields, and that I have never got over my intense dislike to the glowing and semi-scientific descriptions of “our own correspondents,” sitting down in the midst of dying and agonised men to do their penny or guinea a line. The dry report of a general or staff officer, whose sad duty it is to be there, I follow with the deepest interest, and recognise a battlefield as one of the very noblest places from which a true man may make a “bee-line track” to heaven. The noblest death in our times was Robert Shaw’s at the attack on Fort Wagner, at the head of his niggers, under whom he was buried; but, for all that, war and its details are a ghastly and horrible evil, which the faith of our Master is going yet to root out of this silly old world, and which none of His servants should touch unless it is the clear path of supreme duty.

I pity the poor French, utterly unmanned as they seem to be by this nineteen years of the rule of Mammon, and heartily wish they could find their manhood again, though I see no glimmer of it yet. Trochu seems a fine fellow, and I can’t help believing that many of my acquaintance and the members of the Paris associations, will be found ready to die like men on the walls of the city if they get a chance. By the way, where is N———? I wonder if he has gone back? If so, there is another brave and true man in Paris, and perhaps ten may save it. But I must be getting back to my journal or I shall be dropping stitches. If I don’t forget, my last brought you with us to Willard’s Hotel, Washington, a great three-hundred-roomed hotel, mixed, if not of Southern proclivities during the war, before the door of which more than one duel was fought in those searching times. At breakfast we found ourselves next the Wards, father and son, G. B———‘s friends, to whom I had given some letters. I found they had been even farther west than we; in fact, up to Denver City, in the bosom of the Rocky Mountains, and had also managed to get into four or five Southern states; but they had done it at the sacrifice not only of comfort but of the chance of seeing the home-life of the Americans, and I value the latter infinitely higher than mere sight-seeing, so do not regret the least that we didn’t get through the extra 1500 miles, which at the cost of five days’ more travel would have let us see the Rocky Mountains and shoot at buffaloes.

We went after breakfast to leave some of my letters, and over the White House, a fine residence of white marble splendidly situated some one and a half miles from the Capitol, with which it is connected by Pennsylvania avenue, wider than Portland Place. I shall keep the details till we meet; the house is as big as the Mansion House I should say, and not very unlike it. Luckily, soon after we got outside we were recognised (at least I was) in the street by Blackie, who was over in England with the Harvard crew. He is in the attorney-general’s office, and consequently has the run of all the public apartments, and he took us in hand and lionised us splendidly. The Capitol Patent Office and Treasury I shall bring you photographs of, and describe at leisure in our winter evenings. The view from the top, over the city and Maryland to the north, and across the Potomac over Virginia to the south, is as fine as any I ever saw, General Lee’s house at Arlington Heights, now a national cemetery, being the most conspicuous point in the southern view. The thing that struck one most was the staff of women, mostly young and many pretty, serving in the Treasury. They say there are upwards of two thousand, and that for counting, sorting, and repairing the paper currency, they are far superior to men. They earn one thousand dollars (or £200) a year on an average. Fancy the boon to the orphan girls of soldiers and sailors. One of the first we saw was the daughter of a very distinguished Colonel of Marines, who had left her quite destitute, as ladylike, pretty-looking a girl as you ever saw, and she was running over bundles of dollar notes with her fingers as fast as if she were playing the overture to Semiramide with you on the piano. It nearly took my breath away, and yet I was assured she never made an error in counting. I wish we could get off a lot of our poor girls in some such way in Somerset House, and send a lot of our Government clerks to till the ground or hammer or do some hard, productive work.

Perhaps, however, the pleasantest part of the day was the end, when he took us off on the street-cars down to the Potomac, where we found a boating club, with their boat-house, etc., just like an Oxford or Cambridge College. There were eight or ten of them down there who received us with open arms, and in a few minutes manned a heavy eight-oared boat with room enough for me and R——— to sit in the stern, and away we went up under the long bridge, over which the armies used to cross in the war time, and saw a glorious sunset on the river, with the stars and stripes floating proudly over our stern. I enjoyed the row vastly and liked the men, who are just training for a race with the Potomac club. Boating flourishes all over the states I have been in, and they have learnt a lesson from their defeat two years ago and pull now in just as good style as our boys. Oxford and Cambridge must mind their hits, for they will have a tough job of it the next time they have to meet a crew from this side.

Next morning I called on our minister after breakfast, having heard by chance that he was in town. I am very glad I did, as I had the pleasure of hearing him praise C———, his ability, willingness, and capacity for work, in a strain which would have rejoiced the heart of poor, dear R. F——— and of the F——— family. He seems to think C——— will come back here, and desires it most earnestly. I got from him Lord Clarendon’s last despatch on the Alabama claims, which will be most useful to me in my stump in the Boston Music Hall on the 11th. It is the room and the course in which Wendell Phillips, Emerson, and all the orators and philosophers figure. I have taken for my subject, “John to Jonathan,” suggested by Lowell’s famous “Jonathan to John.” They won’t get any eloquence or oratory out of me, as you know; but I am sure I can say some things in a plain, straightforward way which will do good and help to heal wounded pride and other sorely irritating places in the over-sensitive, but simple and gallant Yankee mind. They have treated me so like a spoilt child from Boston to Omaha and back, that I know they will let me say anything and will listen to it affectionately. I really love them too well to say anything that will really hurt them, and when they see that this kind of feeling and appreciation is genuine, the more thorough John Bull you are the better they like it; that is, all the best of them, who rule the nation in the long run though not directly. When I got back from our embassy, it was just time to be starting for the train to Philadelphia, and lo! there were a dozen folk, from secretaries of state downwards, waiting to offer lodgings, dinners, excursions, lecturings, every sort of kindness in creation. It was hard work to get off, but I managed somehow to make tracks, suppressing, I fear, the fact that I was not likely to get to Washington again. The journey to Philadelphia is very interesting along the coast, though seldom within sight of the sea, but crossing huge inlets and rivers (the abode of canvas-backs) on spider bridges. We didn’t change cars at Baltimore, but were dropped by our engine in the outskirts of the town. Six fine horses in a string were then hitched on to each long car, and away we went through the crowded streets along the tramway rails, our driver, or rather, conductor, for he had no reins, blowing his horn loudly to warn all good people, and shouting to the train of horses who trotted along by instinct between the rails. How we missed fifty collisions I can’t conceive; at last we had one—crash into a confusion of carts and drays, driven by shouting negroes who had got them all into a hopeless jam as we bore down on them. Bang we went into the nearest; I saw the comical, scared look of the grisly old Sambo who was driving, as he was shot from his seat, but no harm was done except knocking off our own step, and as we shot past I saw his face light up into a broad grin as he sat on the bottom of his cart. We had cleared him right away from his dead-lock with two other vehicles, and he went on his way delighted. At Philadelphia we found our kindest of hosts, Field, waiting supper for us in his delightful house, where he is living for a few days’ business as a bachelor. Quiet evening, with talk till eleven o’clock on all manner of places, people, and things, mostly English. Lippincott, the great American publisher, and Rosengarten to breakfast, then a visit from Morrison’s friend Welsh, reproachful that we had not occupied his house, and full of interesting stories of the Indian commission, of which he is the moving spirit. Then more schools, workmen’s houses, etc., with Rosengarten, and a drive in the park, five miles long on both sides of the river Schuylkill (as broad as the Thames at Putney), and with views combining Richmond Hill and Oxford. The Central Park is nothing to it, or any other I ever saw on heard of. The Quaker city of white marble and red brick fascinated me more and more. A most interesting dinner at Dr. Mitchell’s, a scientific man—talk of the war, prairie stories, Yankee stories, wonderful old Madeira and excellent cigars. This morning, after seeing Lippincott’s store, and a most interesting talk with Sheridan’s adjutant-general on the last campaigns (he came to breakfast), we literally tore ourselves away from Philadelphia and came on here to this splendid, great, empty house, to be received most hospitably by Maria, the big, handsome, good-natured Irishwoman in charge.

Everything is getting so crowded with me that I have hardly time to turn round. All sorts of kind friends urging me to stop just for one day here or there, a few hundred miles making no difference with them, hundreds (almost) of applications for lectures or addresses, and the engagements already made driving me nearly wild to know how I am to get through with them. I shall never get my journal straight. Where was I? With dear old Peter Cooper, the simplest, most utterly guileless of old men who ever made a big fortune in this world or any other, I should think. That I remember, but can’t the least get further. Nothing, however, very particular happened, except that I was again caught and had to speak a few words to the Normal Training School of New York, consisting of nine hundred girls. I managed to get out of going with the beautiful Miss P——— to her school, but thought I should be safe in going with the dear old gentleman to the Normal School to be present at the morning service. We were of course on the dais, and Mr. Cooper, after the singing of a hymn, read a chapter of the Bible, then another hymn, and then, instead of the adjournment to their classes at once, as I had expected, I was called upon. You must imagine what I said, for I really don’t remember. Then I was photographed alone, and with Mr. Cooper. I enclose a proof of the latter which, I hope, will not quite fade on the way. They tell me the prints will be very good, and I hope to have several to bring home. We left on Wednesday by the afternoon boat to Fall River, the finest boat in the States, the great cabin of which I shall bring you a photograph, all the family grouped round the door breaking one down with their kindness. I slept as usual famously on board the Bristol, and waked at Fall River about three, and so on by rail to Boston, and by car up here, where I feel quite at home. Miss Mabel appeared at breakfast, and produced her photographs made at the time of our last visit with great triumph. They are excellent, and I shall bring you lots of them. At eleven was the Harvard memorial ceremony on the laying of the corner-stone of the hall they are building in honour of the members who died in the war. I walked in with Mr A——— and heard a good account of his wife and family. They want me to go out there for a quiet day or two, but, I fear, it is quite impossible. Two of his sons, the Colonel, and our friend Henry, who is just named as one of the lecturers, were there also, and Emerson, Dana, and a number of old and new friends. The ceremony was very simple, Luther’s hymn, a short extempore prayer, a report, and two addresses, and the benediction, and then we just broke up and left the great tent as we pleased. The point of greatest interest was, of course, the gathering of some seventy or eighty of those who had been in the army, almost all in their old uniforms, and many of them carrying the marks of war about them too plainly. Colonel Holmes amongst them as nice as ever, and young F——— and General M———, with half a dozen other generals.

Lunch afterwards at a very quaint and attractive little club founded in 1792, and recruited by a few of the best fellows in each year, like the Apostles at our Cambridge. Longfellow and our friend Field came to dine here, and the poet was fascinating, full of his English doings, and genial and modest as a big man should be. To-day I have been preparing for my lecture, “John to Jonathan,” which comes off next Tuesday, as to which I am considerably anxious, as it is exceedingly difficult to get a line which will have the healing effect I intend. Let us hope for the best. I go for Sunday to Lowell’s brother’s school, twenty miles away. On Monday evening I meet the Harvard undergraduates, and on Wednesday spend the day with Emerson at Concord. On Thursday I hope to get away, but where? All our plans are changing. We now propose, if it can be so arranged, to go first to Montreal for two or three days to pick up our things, returning to Ithaca to Goldwin Smith for a long day about the 18th, and so to New York, from which we should sail about the 22nd. You will, I daresay, be glad that we don’t go from Quebec; but I don’t believe there is the least more danger at this time of year by this route than any other. All I have resolved on is, that nothing shall keep me beyond my time.