Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume 1 (of 2)

For some time I was daily baffled in my purpose of writing by the observation of persons who seemed not only entirely ignorant of the process of composition, but very anxious to...

The man was in an agony of shame and grief. All he asked was to be trusted again when he should have recovered. He was freely trusted, and gave his generous friend no more anxie...

Your hostess, meantime, has given her orders, and is now engaged in a back room, or out in the piazza behind the house, cutting out clothes for her slaves; very laborious work i...

There are many families of Scotch extraction at Canandaigua, and to this the village owes its superiority in gardens to almost any place in the country. We spent the greater par...

The passengers were all invited to listen to and to question a missionary from China who was of the party. The gentleman did not seem to have profited much by his travels, howev...

It is astonishing that, in the face of facts of daily occurrence like that of the escape of these men, it can be pleaded in behalf of slavery that negroes cannot take care of th...

The first point of my travels fixed in my intentions was the retreat of Priestley, and my pilgrimage thither was accomplished within a few weeks after I landed. From Pittsburg w...

On the 2d of February I visited Mount Vernon, in company with a large party of gentlemen and ladies. Of all places in America, the family seat and burial-place of Washington is...

We crossed the ferry in the afternoon. Our boat was tossed like a cork in the writhing waves. We soon found that, though driven hither and thither by the currents, the ferryman...

The following passage in the same letter renders strangers curious to learn the politics of the university. "In the selection of our Law Professor, we must be rigorously attenti...

At Mobile I met some relatives, who kindly urged my taking possession of their house at New-Orleans during my stay of ten days. I was thankful for the arrangement, as the weathe...

It was impossible to remain longer than noon, unless we meant to be drowned. When two or three gentlemen had been almost washed off, and the ship had been once nearly half her l...

The church that we went to was the Unitarian church in Chamber-street. Its regular pastor was absent, and a professional brother from Philadelphia preached. We were most deeply...

Charleston is the place in which to see those contrasting scenes of human life brought under the eye which moralists gather together for the purpose of impressing the imaginatio...

Mr. Clay is the son of a respectable clergyman in Virginia, and was born in April, 1777. His father died when he was quite young; and he was, in consequence, left to the common...

The mountain laurel conveyed by association the first impression of coolness. Sheep were browsing among the shrubs, apparently enjoying the shelter of the covert. We scrambled t...

Soon after this a lady, living in a house which joined the premises of Madame Lalaurie, was going up stairs, when she heard a piercing shriek from the next courtyard. She looked...

A circumstance happened this day which, as being illustrative of manners, may be worth relating. The day before I left Richmond, Virginia, two companions and myself had employed...

Every one is aware that the wigs and gowns of counsel are not to be seen in the United States. There was no knowing, when Webster sauntered in, threw himself down, and leaned ba...

We dawdled hours away in Goat Island; now lying on the grassy bank with our feet almost into the rapids; now fanning ourselves in the translucent green shades of the wood, among...

Our pleasantest evenings were some spent at home in a society of the highest order. Ladies, literary, fashionable, or domestic, would spend an hour with us on their way from a d...

As the system of solitary imprisonment gains ground, I trust that the practice of prison-visiting will gain ground too. It is most desirable that it should not be left wholly in...

Such a storm I had beheld the evening before from the piazza of the hotel. I stayed from the parade to watch it. As the thick veil of rain came down, the mountains seemed to ret...

I will not repeat his luminous history of the nullification struggle; nor yet his exposition, simple and full, of the intricate questions involved in the anomalous institution o...

The numerous children of the family connexion were in wild spirits all that Tuesday. In the morning we went a strong party to the Ice Hole; a defile between two hills, so perple...

Neither Mr. Clay nor any of his family ever spoke a word to me of Kendall except in his public capacity; but I heard elsewhere and repeatedly the well-known story of the connexi...

A Journal of Travels on the Continent of Europe: viz., in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Switzerland, some Parts of Germany, and the Netherlands, during the Years 18...

We were taken to the Battle-ground, the native soil of General Jackson's political growth. Seeing the Battle-ground was all very well; but my delight was in the drive to it, wit...