nter. When the job was finished, I took my little budget of clothes
and started for home. I traveled the first day as far as Elizabethtown,
and stopped there all night, but found no conveyance from there to New
York. I was told that if I would go down to the Point, I might in the
course of the day, get a passage in a sailing vessel to the city. I went
down early in the morning and, after waiting till noon, found a chance
to go with two men in a small sail boat. I was greatly alarmed at the
strange motions of the boat which I thought would upset, and felt
greatly relieved when I was again on terra firma.

I wandered about the streets of New York all that afternoon, bought a
quantity of bread and cheese, and engaged a passage on the Packet Sloop
Eliza, for New Haven, of her Captain Zebulon Bradley. I slept on board
of her that night at the dock, the next day we set sail for New Haven,
about ten o'clock in the forenoon, with a fair wind, and arrived at the
long wharf in (that city) about eight o'clock the same day. I stopped at
John Howe's Hotel, at the head of the wharf. This was the first time
that I was ever in this beautiful city, and I little thought then that I
ever should live there, working at my favorite business, with three
hundred men in my employ, or that I should ever be its Mayor.--Times
change.

Very early the next morning, after looking about a little, I started
with my bundle of clothes in one hand, and my bread and cheese in the
other, to find the Waterbury turnpike, and after dodging about for a
long time, succeeded in finding it, and passed on up through Waterbury
to Plymouth, walking the whole distance, and arrived home about three
o'clock in the afternoon. This was my first trip abroad, and I really
felt that I was a great traveler, one who had seen much of the world!
What a great change has taken place in so short space of time.

Soon after I returned from my western trip, there began to be a great
excitement throughout the land, about the war. It was proposed by the
Governor of Connecticut, John Cotton Smith, of Sharon, to raise one or
two regiments of State troops to defend it in case of invasion. One
Company of one hundred men, was raised in the towns of Waterbury,
Watertown, Middlebury, Plymouth and Bethlem, and John Buckingham chosen
Captain, who is now living in Waterbury; the other commissioned officers
of the company, were Jas. M.L. Scovill, of Waterbury, and Joseph H.
Bellamy, of Bethlem.