ALEXANDER WILSON. 
\v 
seen in ten miles. Every six or eight miles you come to a meeting- 
house, painted white, with a spire. I could perceive little difference 
in the form or elevation of their steeples. 
“ The people here make no distinction between town and town- 
ship ; and travellers frequently asked the driver of the stage-coach, 
4 What town are we now in ? ’ 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 recollect 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. Isay nothing of the jargon which prevails in the country. 
Their book schools, if I may judge by the state of their school- 
houses, 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. 
44 As you approach Boston, the country improves in its 
appearance ; the stone fences give place to those of posts and 
rails ; the road becomes wide and spacious ; and every thing 
announces a better degree of refinement and civilization. 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 grass-grown intrenchments of this hallowed 
spot, made immortal by the bravery of those heroes who defended 
