376 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES-I 



we traveled mainly upon the canal, though at times over 

 wretchedly muddy roads. Niagara made a great im 

 pression upon me, and Buffalo, with its steamers, seemed 

 as great then as London seems now. 



Four years later, in 1842, I was taken to the hills of 

 middle Massachusetts to visit my great-grandfather and 

 great-grandmother, and thence to Boston, where Faneuil 

 Hall, the Bunker Hill Monument, Harvard College, and 

 Mount Auburn greatly impressed me. Eeturning home, 

 we came by steamer through the Sound to the city of New 

 York, and stayed at a hotel near Trinity Church, which 

 was then a little south of the central part of the city. 

 On another visit, somewhat later, we were lodged at the 

 Astor House, near the City Hall, which was then at the 

 very center of everything, and thence took excursions 

 far northward into the uttermost parts of the city, and 

 even beyond it, to see the newly erected Grace Church 

 and the reservoir at Forty-second Street, which were 

 among the wonders of the town. Most of all was I im 

 pressed by the service in the newly erected Trinity 

 Church. The idea uppermost in my mind was that here 

 was a building which was to last for hundreds of years, 

 and that the figures in the storied windows above the altar 

 would look down upon new generations of worshipers, 

 centuries after I, with all those living, should have passed 

 away. My feeling for religious music was then, as since, 

 very deep ; and the organ of Trinity gave satisfaction to 

 this feeling ; the tremulous ground-tone of the great pedal 

 diapasons thrilling me through and through. 



At this period, about 1843, began my visits with the 

 family to Saratoga. My grandfather, years before, had 

 derived benefit from its waters, and the tradition of this, 

 as well as the fact that my father there met socially his 

 business correspondents from different parts of the State, 

 led to our going year after year. Drinking the waters, 

 taking life easily upon the piazzas of the great hotels 

 festooned with Virginia creepers, and driving to the lake, 

 formed then, as now, the main occupations of the day. 



