to-morrow morning.... I have seen Mr. Wallack since our arrival,
whom I never saw in England, either on or off the stage. I went the
other night to see him in one of his favorite pieces, "The
Rent-Day," which made me cry dreadfully, but chiefly, I believe,
because, when they are ruined, he asks his wife if she will go with
him to America. You see I am taking to play-going in my old age.
The theater is very pretty, of the best possible dimensions for me,
and tolerably good for the voice. We leave this place for
Philadelphia on the 10th of October, and remain there a fortnight,
and then go on to Boston....

Last Thursday we crossed the Hudson in one of the steamers
constantly plying between the opposite shores and New York, and
took a delightful walk along the New Jersey shore to a place called
Hoboken, famous once as a dueling-ground, now the favorite resort
of a pacific society of _bon vivants_, who meet once a week to eat
turtle, or, as it is expressed on their cards of invitation, for
"spoon exercise." The distance from our landing-point to the place
where these meetings are held is about five miles, a charming walk
through a strip of forest-ground, which crowns the banks of the
river, gradually rising to a considerable height above it. We were
delighted with the vivid, various, and strange foliage of the
trees, the magnificent river, broad and blue as a lake, with its
high and richly wooded shore, and the sparkling, glittering town
opposite. We looked down to the Narrows, the defile through which
the waters of this noble estuary reach the Atlantic, and between
whose rocky walls two or three ships stood out against the
brilliant sky. The ebbing tide plashed on the rocks far below us,
and the warm grass through which we walked was alive with
grasshoppers, whose scarlet wings, suddenly unfolded when they
flew, made me take them for some strange species of butterfly. It
was all indescribably bright and joyous-looking, and the air of a
transparent clearness that was one of the most striking
characteristics of the whole scene, and one of the most
delightful.... [In discussing the relative merits of England and
America, Dr. Channing once said to me, "The earth is yours, but the
heavens are ours;" and I quite agree with him. I have never seen a