Long may he dispense such treasures with unsparing
hand; and long may they remember him as worthily!
* * * * * *
The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in Washington
was now at an end, and we were to begin to travel; for the railroad
distances we had traversed yet, in journeying among these older
towns, are on that great continent looked upon as nothing.
I had at first intended going South - to Charleston. But when I
came to consider the length of time which this journey would
occupy, and the premature heat of the season, which even at
Washington had been often very trying; and weighed moreover, in my
own mind, the pain of living in the constant contemplation of
slavery, against the more than doubtful chances of my ever seeing
it, in the time I had to spare, stripped of the disguises in which
it would certainly be dressed, and so adding any item to the host
of facts already heaped together on the subject; I began to listen
to old whisperings which had often been present to me at home in
England, when I little thought of ever being here; and to dream
again of cities growing up, like palaces in fairy tales, among the
wilds and forests of the west.
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