CUSTOMS. 89 



tiiougli lb' recognizetl by his fultliful wife, or do- 

 mestics, yet his old dog Argus immediately knew 

 liis master, and expired in a paroxysm of joy. 

 What a striking eulogium on the sagacity and 

 fidelity of tlie dog! how true to nature, and how 

 worthy of the Prince of Poets : it is the most pa- 

 'hetic scene in the Odyssey. 



LETTER XX. 



Canandaigua, June, 1820," 

 My deae. Sir, 



A LATE English traveller, who published s 

 book of travels, and who calls himself John Cam 

 Hobhouse, has declared in the true John Bull 

 style, when smarting under the privations and 

 sufferings of a barbarian country, that " properly 

 speaking, the word comfort cannot be ap- 

 plied to any thing he ever saw out of England." 

 1 have travelled much, both in the United States 

 and in Great Britain, and 1 can truly say, that 

 making allowance for the difference in price, and 

 the newness of settlement, the accommodations 

 are not superior in the latter. The unhappines^ 

 of life frequently proceeds more from a series and 

 repetition of petty vexations, than great and over- 

 whelming calamities, and these miseries in minia" 



