LIFE OF WILSON. Ixxix 
with its soil, and of whom a mean, beggarly pillar of bricks 
is all the memento.” 
TO MR. D. H. MILLER. 
Windsor, Vermont, October 26 , 1808 . 
“ Dear Sir, 
“ I wrote you two or three weeks ago from Boston, where I 
spent about a week. A Mr. S., formerly private secretary to 
John Adams, introduced me to many of the first rank in the 
place, whose influence procured me an acquaintance with others; 
and I journied through the streets of Boston with my book, as 
I did at New York and other places, visiting all the literary 
characters I could find access to. 
“I spent one morning examining Bunker’s Hill, accompa- 
nied by lieutenant Miller and sergeant Carter, two old soldiers 
of the revolution, who were both in that celebrated battle, and 
who pointed out to me a great number of interesting places. 
The brother of general Warren, who is a respectable physician 
of Boston, became very much my friend, and related to me 
many other matters respecting the engagement. 
‘‘ I visited the University at Cambridge, where there is a fine 
library, but the most tumidtuous set of students I ever saw. 
“ F rom the top of Bunker’s Hill, Boston, Charlestown, the 
ocean, islands and adjacent country, form the most beautifully 
varied prospect I ever beheld. 
“ The streets of Boston are a perfect labyrinth. The markets 
are dirty; the fish market is so filthy that I will not disgust you 
by a description of it. Wherever you walk you hear the most 
hideous howling, as if some miserable wretch were expiring on 
the wheel at every corner; this, however, is nothing but the 
draymen shouting to their horses. Their drays are twenty-eight 
feet long, drawn by two horses, and carry ten barrels of flour. 
From Boston I set out for Salem, the country between swampy, 
and in some places the most barren, rocky, and desolate in na- 
ture. Salem is a neat little town. The wharves were crowded 
with vessels. One wharf here is twenty hundred and twenty- 
