aining the
perfection of a well-kept turnpike.

A little after one o'clock A.M. I was rattled up to the door of the
Tremont; where, late as the hour was, I found friends waiting up for me,
and experienced what at all times is a pleasure, but more especially
after such a cold jolting,--a warm welcome.

I was now a resident of this city for a month, during which time I
enjoyed a continued series of the most friendly attentions. I found
three or four men, who, like myself, were fond of riding, and together
we rambled over the whole of the surrounding country; and a beautiful
country it is, with its island-gemmed bay and gaily-painted country
seats. One of these, the house of Colonel Thomas Perkins, is seated
within grounds well kept and tastefully laid out, with a very extensive
range of noble hot-houses, within which, at this season and in this
latitude, the fruit and flowers of the tropics were to be found in their
freshest bloom and beauty. I think these grounds are more agreeably
broken, offer a greater variety of soil, and command a finer prospect of
land and sea, than any place I ever visited of equal dimensions.

We wanted nothing, on many of the fine open mornings we now had, but a
pack of good foxhounds: the land is better cleared than it is farther
south, the covers smaller, with fewer swamps, and no fencing that might
not be crept round or got over by even a moderate-going man.

I had heard a good many amusing anecdotes of the infinite respect with
which the country people of New England view and address persons of
their own grade, and the utter disregard of decent ceremony which they
evince towards all others: there appeared something so whimsically
exaggerated in these stories, that I never had received them as
veritable history; and when the Duke of Saxe Weimar told of the
coachman's inquiring "Are you the man going to Portland? because, if you
are, I'm the gentleman that's a going to drive you," I set it down for a
good joke, illustrative, perchance, of a _brusquerie_ of manner which
did exist, but not in itself strictly true. I have, however, during my
present sojourn here, received good corroborative evidence of its being
a veracious report.

I went out on one occasion to partake of a fine black bear, that had
been killed at a house famous for the plenty, the quality, and cooking
of game. There were eight or nine men of the party, some of whom had
ridden out on horseback: in going over a rail-fence cl