72 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



their side. The countenances of the people here, too, exhib 

 ited much less, either of virtuous or vicious character, than 

 you would discern among an equally poor multitude in 

 America, yet among the most miserable of them (they 

 were Irish), I was struck with some singularly intelligent, and 

 even beautiful faces, so strangely out of place, that if they had 

 been cleaned and put in frames, so the surroundings would 

 not appear, you would have taken them for those of delicate, 

 refined, and intellectual ladies. 



TJiursday morning, May 8Qth. 



We packed all our travelling matter, except a few necessa 

 ries, in two trunks and a carpet-bag, and I took them in a 

 public carriage to the freight station, to be sent to London. 

 The trunks were received, but the bag the clerks refused, and 

 said it must be sent from the passenger station. I had en 

 gaged to meet my friends in a few minutes at the opposite 

 side of the town from the passenger station, and the delay 

 of going there would vexatiously disarrange our plans. I 

 therefore urged them to take it, offering to pay the passenger 

 luggage extra, freight, &c. They would be happy to accom 

 modate me, but their rules did not admit of it. A carpet-bag 

 could not be sent from that station at any price. I jumped 

 on to the box, and drove quickly to the nearest street of shops, 

 where, at a grocer s, I bought for twopence a coffee-sack, and 

 enclosing the bag, brought it in a few minutes back to the 

 station. There was a good laugh, and they gave me a receipt 

 at once for a sack to be kept in London until called for. 



On the quay, I noticed a bareheaded man drawing with 

 coloured crayons on a broad, smooth flagstone. He had rep 

 resented, in a very skilful and beautiful manner, a salmon laid 

 on a china platter, opposite a broken plate of coarse crockery ; 

 between these were some lines about a &quot; rich man s dish&quot; and 



