e alone. I get out at
a station, and can't drink a glass of water, without having a hundred
people looking down my throat when I open my mouth to swallow. Conceive
what all this is! Then by every post, letters on letters arrive, all
about nothing, and all demanding an immediate answer. This man is
offended because I won't live in his house; and that man is thoroughly
disgusted because I won't go out more than four times in one evening. I
have no rest or peace, and am in a perpetual worry.

"Under these febrile circumstances, which this climate especially
favors, I have come to the resolution that I will not (so far as my will
has anything to do with the matter) accept any more public
entertainments or public recognitions of any kind, during my stay in the
United States; and in pursuance of this determination I have refused
invitations from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Virginia, Albany,
and Providence. Heaven knows whether this will be effectual, but I shall
soon see, for on Monday morning, the 28th, we leave for Philadelphia.
There I shall only stay three days. Thence we go to Baltimore, and
_there_ I shall only stay three days. Thence to Washington, where we may
stay perhaps ten days; perhaps not so long. Thence to Virginia, where we
may halt for one day; and thence to Charleston, where we may pass a week
perhaps, and where we shall very likely remain until your March letters
reach us, through David Colden. I had a design of going from Charleston
to Columbia in South Carolina, and there engaging a carriage, a
baggage-tender and negro boy to guard the same, and a saddle-horse for
myself,--with which caravan I intended going 'right away,' as they say
here, into the West, through the wilds of Kentucky and Tennessee, across
the Alleghany Mountains, and so on until we should strike the lakes and
could get to Canada. But it has been represented to me that this is a
track only known to traveling merchants; that the roads are bad, the
country a tremendous waste, the inns log houses, and the journey one
that would play the very devil with Kate. I am staggered, but not
deterred. If I find it possible to be done in the time, I mean to do it;
being quite satisfied that without some such dash I can never be a free
agent, or see anything worth the telling.

"We mean to return home in a packet-ship,--not a steamer. Her name is
the George Washington, and she will sail from here, for Liverpool, on
the seventh of June. At that