liv LIFE OF 



ship ; and travellers frequently asked the driver of the stage-coach, 

 ' What town are we now in 1 ' when, perhaps, we were upon the top 

 of a miserable barren mountain, several miles from a house. It is 

 in vain to reason with the people on the impropriety of this — custom 

 makes every absurdity proper. There is scarcely any currency in 

 this country but paper, and I solemnly declare, that I do not recol- 

 lect having seen one hard dollar since I left New York. Bills even 

 of twenty-five cents, of a hundred different banks, whose very names 

 one has never heard of before, are continually in circulation, I say 

 nothing of the jargon which prevails in the country. Their book 

 schools, if I may judge by the state of their schoolhouses, are no 

 better than our own. 



" Lawyers swarm in every town like locusts ; almost every door 

 has the word Office painted over it, which, like the web of a spider, 

 points out the place where the spoiler lurks for his prey. There is 

 little or no improvement in agriculture ; in fifty miles I did not 

 observe a single grain or stubble field, though the country has been 

 cleared and settled these one hundred and fifty years. In short, the 

 steady habits of a great portion of the inhabitants of those parts of 

 New England through which I passed, seem to be laziness, low 



bickerings, and . A man here is as much ashamed of being 



seen walking the streets on a Sunday, unless in going and returning 

 from church, as many would be of being seen going to a house. 



"As you approach Boston, the country improves in its appearance; 

 the stone fences give place to those of posts and rails ; the road be- 

 comes wide and spacious; and everything announces a better degree 

 of refinement and civilisation. It was dark when I entered Boston, 

 of which I shall give you some account in my next. I have visited 

 the celebrated Bunker's Hill, and no devout pilgrim ever approached 

 the sacred tomb of his holy prophet with more awful enthusiasm, 

 and profound veneration, than I felt in tracing the grassgrown en- 

 trenchments of this hallowed spot, made immortal by the bravery of 

 those heroes who defended it — whose ashes are now mingled with 

 its soil — and of whom a mean, beggarly pillar of bricks is all the 

 memento." 



His next letter, to the same gentleman, is dated " Windsor, Ver- 

 mont, October 26." He remained nearly a week at Boston, journey- 



