“I forgot to ask you, dear William, where we shall begin in our round of visits to the public institutions. I want to make a beginning, as, probably, one a day and once a week will be enough for my time and strength.
“Now is the time for me to see and write about these things, as my European stock will not be here till spring.
“Should you like to begin with Blackwell’s Island, Monday or Tuesday of next week?”[1]
She was at this time living in full sight of that celebrated penitentiary of which she writes. At the suggestion of Mrs. Greeley, who had known Margaret Fuller in Boston, she was not only invited to become a writer in the “Tribune” but a member of the editor’s family; Mr. Greeley expressly stating that he regarded her rather as his wife’s friend than his own.[2] He had lately taken up his residence in a large old wooden house, built as a country residence by a New York banker, on what New Yorkers call the East River, at Turtle Bay, nearly opposite the southernmost point of Blackwell’s Island. The house had ample shrubbery and gardens, with abundant shade trees and fruit trees; and though the whole region is long since laid out in streets and covered with buildings, it was then accessible, as Mr. Greeley tells us, only by a long winding private lane, wholly dark at night and meeting the old “Boston Road” at Forty-Ninth Street. The only
