and what not. He ordered three pictures of Boston artists,--two autumnal
scenes, and an interior, a negro cabin, with an hilarious sable group
variously employed, called "Christmas in the Quarters." Then the
questions of fisheries, maritime traffic, coast and harbor defences,
light-houses, the ship-building interests, life-saving associations, and
railway systems, pressed for investigation, to say nothing of the mills
and manufactories, wages of operatives, trades-unions, trade problems,
and all the pros and cons of free trade _versus_ protective tariff. Over
these he pondered and pored until all hours every night; and the diary
had now to be girt about with two stout rubber bands to keep it from
scattering instructive leaflets about promiscuously and prematurely. And
by day there were sites literary, historical, or generally interesting
to be visited, engagements with many friends to keep, endless
occupations apparently.

There was so much to see and do that the place was delightful to him,
and he certainly made himself vastly agreeable in return to such of its
inhabitants as came in his way.

"I have added to my circle some very valuable acquaintances, whom I
shall hope to retain as friends," he wrote to England, "notably a
medical man who confirms my germ-propagation theory of the 'vomito,'
which is now raging in the Southern part of the States (I had it, you
remember, on the west coast of Africa, and studied it in the
Barbadoes),--an exceptionally clever man, and, like all such men,
inclined to be eccentric. I think I was never more surprised than to
come upon him the other day in a side-street, where he was positively
having his boots polished _in public_ by a ragged gamin who offered to
'shine' me for a 'dime.' He behaved sensibly about it,--betrayed no
embarrassment, though he must have felt excessively annoyed, made no