s in the United States, of
which (then comparatively little known) part of the world she used to
tell us stories that, from her characteristic exaggeration, we always
received with extreme incredulity; but my own experience, subsequent by
many years to hers, has corroborated her marvelous histories of flights
of birds that almost darkened the sun (_i.e._ threw a passing shadow as
of a cloud upon the ground), and roads with ruts and mud-holes into
which one's carriage sank up to the axle-tree.

She used to tell us anecdotes of General Washington, to whom she had
been presented and had often seen (his favorite bespeak was always "The
School for Scandal"); and of Talleyrand, whom she also had often met,
and invariably called Prince _Tallierande_. She was once terrified by
being followed at evening, in the streets of Philadelphia, by a red
Indian savage, an adventure which has many times recurred to my mind
while traversing at all hours and in all directions the streets of that
most peaceful Quaker city, distant now by more than a thousand miles
from the nearest red Indian savage. Congress was sitting in Philadelphia
at that time; it was virtually the capital of the newly made United
States, and Mrs. Whitelock held an agreeable and respectable position
both in private and in public. I have been assured by persons as well
qualified to be critics as Judge Story, Chief-Justice Kent, and Judge
Hopkinson (Moore's friend), that she was an actress of considerable
ability. Perhaps she was; her Kemble name, face, figure, and voice no
doubt helped her to produce a certain effect on the stage; but she must
have been a very imperfectly educated woman. Nothing could be droller
than to see her with Mrs. Siddons, of whom she looked like a clumsy,
badly finished, fair imitation. Her vehement gestures and violent
objurgations contrasted comically with her sister's majestic stillness
of manner; and when occasionally Mrs. Siddons would interrupt her with,
"Elizabeth, your wig is on one side," and the other replied, "Oh, is
it?" and giving the offending head-gear a shove put it quite as crooked
in the other direction, and proceeded with her discourse, Melpomene
herself used to have recourse to her snuff-box to hide the dawning smile
on her face.

I imagine that my education must have been making but little progress
during the last year of my residence at Craven Hill. I had no masters,
and my aunt Dall could ill supply the want of other teache