250 THE REV. J. G. WOOD. 



Only one lecture now remained to be given <* 

 private one, at the house of a friend in Charles Street, 

 Boston. This was duly delivered on the afternoon of 

 Thursday, the 5th, and met with great appreciation ; 

 and two days later my father transferred his belongings 

 to the Cephalonia, and left the American shores for 

 the second- and last time. 



The tour, as a whole, had been a complete failure, 

 the arrangements having been hopelessly mismanaged 

 from beginning to end. It ought not, in the first place, 

 to have been undertaken at all until several years at least 

 after the first visit. It ought not, under any circumstances, 

 to have taken place at a time when electioneering ex- 

 citement, always so fierce in America, was in its fullest 

 force, and when, in consequence, men's minds were certain 

 to be in a state of more or less turbulent disquietude. 

 Neither should the business arrangements have been 

 postponed until almost the time of my father's arrival 

 in America; nor yet should they have been entrusted 

 to an agent so wanting in energy as the man upon 

 whom his choice unfortunately happened to falL 

 Mistake, in fact, followed mistake, and as a necessary 

 result, when the tour was brought to its sudden and 

 premature conclusion, expenses had barely been covered, 

 valuable time had been uselessly wasted, and profit 

 there was little or none. Nor was my father alone in 

 his disappointing experiences, for two others of our best 

 known English lecturers were in precisely the same 

 predicament. And all three returned to England 

 almost together, and long before the time originally 

 fixed upon for their departure. 



