Bigelow. (He
is a friend of Forster's, and was American Minister in Paris). There are
no negro waiters here, all the servants are Irish--willing, but not
able. The dinners and wines are very good. I keep our own rooms well
ventilated by opening the windows, but no window is ever opened in the
halls or passages, and they are so overheated by a great furnace, that
they make me faint and sick. The air is like that of a pre-Adamite
ironing-day in full blast. Your respected parent is immensely popular in
Boston society, and its cordiality and unaffected heartiness are
charming. I wish I could carry it with me.

The leading New York papers have sent men over for to-morrow night with
instructions to telegraph columns of descriptions. Great excitement and
expectation everywhere. Fields says he has looked forward to it so long
that he knows he will die at five minutes to eight.

At the New York barriers, where the tickets are on sale and the people
ranged as at the Paris theatres, speculators went up and down offering
"twenty dollars for anybody's place." The money was in no case accepted.
One man sold two tickets for the second, third, and fourth night for
"one ticket for the first, fifty dollars" (about seven pounds ten
shillings), "and a brandy cocktail," which is an iced bitter drink. The
weather has been rather muggy and languid until yesterday, when there
was the coldest wind blowing that I ever felt. In the night it froze
very hard, and to-day the sky is beautiful.

_Tuesday, Dec. 3rd._

Most magnificent reception last night, and most signal and complete
success. Nothing could be more triumphant. The people will hear of
nothing else and talk of nothing else. Nothing that was ever done here,
they all agree, evoked any approach to such enthusiasm. I was quite as
cool and quick as if I were reading at Greenwich, and went at it
accordingly. Tell your aunt, with my best love, that I have this morning
received hers of the 21st, and that I will write to her next. That will
be from New York. My love to Mr. and Mrs. Hulkes and the boy, and to Mr.
and Mrs. Malleson.[18]

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

BOSTON, _Wednesday, Dec. 4th, 1867._

I find that by going off to the _Cuba_ myself this morning I can send
you the enclosed for Mary Boyle (I don't know how to address her), whose
usual flower for my button-hole was produced in the most extrao