ALEXANDER WILSON. 
Ii 
delphia, I have laboured with the zeal of a knight errant, 
in exhibiting this book of mine, wherever I went, travel- 
ling with it, like a beggar with his bantling, from town to 
town, and from one country to another. I have been 
loaded with praises, with compliments, and kindnesses, — 
shaken almost to pieces in stage coaches ; I have wandered 
among strangers, hearing the same Oh’s and Ah’s, and 
telling the same story, a thousand times over : and for 
what ? Ay, that ’s it ! You are very anxious to know, 
and you shall know the whole when I reach Philadelphia.” 
“ While in New York, I had the curiosity to call on 
the celebrated author of the Rights of Man. He lives 
in Greenwich, a short way from the city. In the only 
decent apartment of a small, indifferent looking frame 
house, I found this extraordinary man, sitting wrapt in a 
night gown, the table before him covered with newspapers, 
with pen and ink beside him. Paine’s face would have 
excellently suited the character of Bardolph ; but the 
penetration and intelligence of his eye bespeak the man 
of genius and of the world. He complained ro me of his 
inability to walk, an exercise he was formerly fond of ; 
he examined my book, leaf by leaf, with great attention — 
desired me to put down his name as a subscriber ; and, 
after inquiring particularly for Mr P. and Mr B. wished 
to be remembered to both. 
“ My journey through almost the whole of New 
England has rather lowered the Yankees in my esteem. 
Except a few neat academies, I found their schoolhouses 
equally ruinous and deserted with ours ; fields covered 
with stones ; stone fences ; scrubby oaks, and pine trees ; 
wretched orchards ; scarcely one grain field in twenty 
miles ; the taverns along the road, dirty, and filled with 
loungers, brawling about lawsuits and politics ; the people 
snappish and extortioners, lazy, and two hundred years 
behind the Pennsylvanians in agricultural improvements.” 
“ In Annapolis I passed my book through both houses 
