walk a great way to be at home on that day. You must remem ber me when you carve the roast turkey, and cut the pumpkin pies. I am exceeding anxious to hear from you, having had but one letter since I left home. Remember me, as usua., to iny friends and the neighbors. My love to you all. Your affectionate brother, S. S. PRENTISS. то MRS. EVELINA PIERCE, GORHAM, ME. NATCHEZ, MISS., December 6, 1827. MY DEAR MADAM: It is with the greatest pleasure that I comply with your request that I should write you some account of my fortune after I left New England. It is a task too agreeable to omit, though, alas! my adventures have been of so ordinary a nature that I am afraid they are hardly worth relating. I have met no giants-seen no damsels in distress-and, upon my honor, have been neither robbed, drowned nor murdered,— although I have travelled about three thousand miles since I left home. I beg leave to correct myself-I did see one damsel in distress, and it was a case in which my knight-errantry was of some avail. It was on board one of the packet-boats between Albany and Utica, and thus it was:-A young lady, one of the passengers, looking over a newspaper, saw the article about a Frenchman's mounting in a balloon from the vessel which was to go over the Falls of Niagara. "Good heavens!" said she to the gentleman next to her; "Is it a fact, or is it only a quiz?" He could not inform her; she applied to the next one-he was as ignorant as the former. The poor girl was in an agony of curiosity; to one and to all the question was put, "Was it a fact?" "Was a Frenchman to rise in a balloon ?"-one and all were profoundly ignorant. At last she applied to me--but it was with a kind of desperation, and a look which told that she did not expect much from so insignificant a looking animal as myself. I pitied her sad condition, and, thinking it would be uncharitable to suffer so fair a maiden to die of curiosity, told ber that it was absolutely a fact that I had seen the French. man in New York, and conversed with him. The gentlemen stared at me, as much as to say, in plain English, I lied. But the damsel-thinking she had learned a wonderful piece of information-repaid me with a smile that was richly worth forty-lies. But I beg your pardon for talking such nonsense, and would advise you to skip the preceding page. I travelled very rapidly from Portland to Cincinnati, stopping only at Boston, New York and Niagara Falls. At Boston I stayed a week—part of which I spent at Mr. F.'s, and very pleasantly, too. At New York I stayed but three days, nor had I any desire to stay longer-two or three hours were entirely sufficient to gratify all my curiosity for seeing. I have somewhat the feeling of the trapper in the Prairie in that respect; and the Highlands of the Hudson afforded me far more gratification than all I saw in the city of New York. I stayed at Niagara but two days, though I should have been glad to tarry there a week, could I have done it conveniently. I was disappointed in this stupendous cataract; as, indeed, I could hardly fail to have been. I had heard and read of it so often that I had formed a vague idea of something vast and grand beyond what it is possible for nature to produce. Of course when I saw the real cataract, though far the most sublime and magnificent sight I had ever beheld, still it did not equal my expectation. In fact, I have been disappointed in almost everything I have seen, and begin to suspect that there is not so much difference between one part of the country and another as I had imagined. Indeed, I have a vastly better opinion even of the good town of Gorham, than I had before I left it. The imagination is very prone to clothe remote objects with a thousand charms which, in reality, they do not possess; and whatever knowledge of fact is wanting, is amply made up by the illusions of fancy. For this reason we prefer visiting remote places, to those which are near us; and a person will often go a thousand miles to see an object, which a man who lives within twenty of it, has never taken the trouble to examine. "Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, At Cincinnati I stayed about two months; during which time I pursued my studies in the office of Mr. Wright. My funds beginning then to wax low, I was obliged to bestir myself, and concluded to try my fortune further south. * * * * I have now written you a letter, which, I am afraid, will exhaust your patience in reading. I hope, however, you as well as Mr. Pierce, will consider it worth an answer; not so much on account of itself, as the feeling which dictated it. The pleasant days I spent at your house will not soon be forgotten-for they were among the pleasantest of my life; and I shall always gratefully remember the kind interest which Mr. Pierce and yourself were pleased to express in my welfare. Accept my sincere and respectful wishes for your happiness. Your obedient servant, S. S. PRENTISS. Nota Bene. The lasses are not so handsome here as they are in Maine. TO HIS MOTHER. NATCHEZ, MISS., December 22, 1827. MY DEAR MOTHER: I am afraid you will think I write almost too often. At any rate you can hardly complain that I do not write often enough, since I have sent you, I believe, some nine or ten letters within the short time I have been from home. I wrote to William about four weeks ago, informing you that I had, at length, become stationary, which, doubtless, you were very glad to hear, as you might begin to think I had become a wandering sort of a character. I have been now three weeks in my new situation, and am very much pleased with it indeed. It is an extremely pleasant family, and my labor is slight, in comparison with what it would be in a common school, and the only objection I have is its great distance from home; a circumstance which I presume I think of fully as often as you can yourself. If I could run over a couple of thousand miles in the course of an evening, you would be likely to see me amongst you two or three times a week, at least. However, as that is impossible, at least for such a slow traveller as I am, I Lust even make the best of it, and visit you in imagination, if I cannot in reality. I shall probably continue here a year, at any rate till a better situation offers. I mean in point of salary, for in other respects I should not wish a. better. I have, as I told you in my last, three hundred dollars a year and board. I have also the privilege of taking in two or three of the neighbors' children. which will probably bring me in another hundred. I am confined about three or four hours a day, and the rest of the time I have entirely to myself. I spend it in studying law, reading and gunning. I have a horse whenever I wish to ride, and gun and ammunition, when I wish to go a hunting, which I do an hour or two almost every day. Indeed, I have everything found me I can possibly wish, and the only expense I can be at, will be for my clothing, of which I have a sufficient quantity for long time to come, thanks to the care of a mother. They have no snow in this part of the country; of course no sleigh-riding, a thing I shall miss very much. It is already their winter here, yet a fire is seldom needed, and the roses are blooming every day in the garden. They sow green peas at Christmas, and in February the spring opens, and they go to work in the fields. For myself, however, I prefer the cold weather of the North; it is so delightful to sit by a good fire and hear the storm whistling without and beating against the windows, while all is comfortable and pleasant within. Still this is a very beautiful climate in the winter, and perhaps I shall like it even better than my own, when I become a little more accustomed to it. Cotton is the production of this part of the Union, and here they raise nothing else upon their plantations. I have seen thousands of acres of it since I came here. It is picked from the stalks by negroes, and being cleaned of the seed by machines called gins, is then packed up in bales. nearly as it comes to you. The cotton plant is about the size of your currant bushes, or perhaps a little larger, and the cotton grows in pods as large as hen's eggs. When it is ripe the pods burst open, so that a field of ripe cotton looks somewhat as if it were covered with snow. The plantations yield from fifty to three or four hundred bales each. I wrote to Mr. Boyd, at Cin. cinnati, a month since, to forward me any letters there might be for me there. In a few days, I presume, I shall receive them, which I am very anxious to do, as I have had but one letter from any of you since I left home. I wish you to write me at least once in three weeks, and tell me all the news of your part of the world how the children do, how they come on with their studies, how much you have raised on the farm, who among my acquaintances are getting married, how the neighbors all do; the most trifling things will all be interesting to me, now I am so far from home. I believe I told you in my last to direct your letters to Natchez, Miss. I also date mine there, though I live ten miles from the city. My love to William. and Samuel, and all the children. Remember me, also, to all the neighbors. Receive for yourself the best wishes of you: truly affectionate воп, S S. PRENTISS. |