Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/61

This page needs to be proofread.

bravely fought for liberty, and preferred it to English tea, sweetened with taxation, and the milk of maternal monarchy. I feel much nearer home than I am, and find good fare, good wine, and good company at my boarding-house, the cost of which is one dollar per day. My fellow boarders are moderately social. I accompanied one gentleman to church, an edifice inwardly and outwardly splendid, and the congregation fashionable; but I thought the service and the sermon very dull and insipid, and the worship altogether inanimate. As Sunday here vanishes with the daylight, I went in the evening to the Town-hall, to Caucus, a grand political meeting of thousands of the Mobocracy, met to deliberate upon the choice of a state governor, &c. The orators, on the present occasion, being principally {29} well educated federalists, seemed, some of them, eloquent and ingenious abusers of the democrats, who angrily retorted on their opponents. Thus I found two strong parties, which I am at present unable to define, except as mutual haters of each other, like Whigs and Tories in England.

5th.—The people here seem thankful for nothing, or rather, they do not shew it. Mr. Smith, my landlord, a pleasant Scotsman, advises his and my countrymen to keep at home, if they cannot bring from 500l. to 1,000l. The poor, he says, are not wanted here, nor any where in the state of Massachusetts, where many are unemployed, and nobody is satisfied. According to promise, I met Mr. Lyman again, at his large commercial office, who renewed his kind offer of any needful services while in Boston. He then accompanied me to the exchange, and there introduced me to the richest merchant, save one, in America, the Honourable Wm. Gray, a gentleman of kind manners, but of an eccentric look; with long withered