icking their
teeth, and talking. The day being warm, some of them have brought chairs
into the street. Some are on three chairs; some on two; and some, in
defiance of all known laws of gravity, are sitting quite comfortably on
one: with three of the chair's legs, and their own two, high up in the
air. The loungers, underneath our window, are talking of a great
Temperance convention which comes off here to-morrow. Others, about me.
Others, about England. Sir Robert Peel is popular here, with
everybody. . . ."

FOOTNOTES:

[56] See _ante_, pp. 307, 308.

[57] Miss Martineau was perhaps partly right, then? _Ante_, p. 344.

[58] Sixteen inches exactly.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FAR WEST: TO NIAGARA FALLS.

1842.

Descriptions in Letters and in _Notes_--Outline
of Westward Travel--An Arabian Night City--A
Temperance Festival--A Party at Judge
Walker's--The Party from another View--Mournful
Results of Boredom--Young Lady's Description of
C. D.--Down the Mississippi--Listening and
Watching--A Levee at St.
Louis--Compliments--Lord Ashburton's
Arrival--Talk with a Judge on Slavery--A Negro
burnt alive--Feeling of Slaves
themselves--American Testimony--Pretty Little
Scene--A Mother and her Husband--The Baby--St.
Louis in Sight--Meeting of Wife and
Husband--Trip to a Prairie--On the Prairie at
Sunset--General Character of Scenery--The
Prairie described--Disappointment and
Enjoyment--Soiree at Planter's House Inn--Good
Fare--No Gray Heads in St. Louis--Dueling--Mrs.
Dickens as a Traveler--From Cincinnati to
Columbus--What a Levee is like--From Columbus
to Sandusky--The Travelers alone--A Log House
Inn--Making tidy--A Momentary Crisis--Americans
not a Humorous People--The Only
Recreations--From Sandusky to Buffalo--On Lake
Erie--Reception and Consolation of a
Mayor--From Buffalo to Niagara--Nearing the
Falls--The Horse-shoe--Effect upon him of
Niagara--The Old Recollection--Looking forward.

THE next letter described his experiences in the Far West, his stay in
St. Louis, his visit to a prairie, the return to Cincinnati, and, after
a stage-coach ride from that city to Columbus, the travel thence to
Sandusky, and so, by Lake Erie, to the Falls of Niagara. All these
subjects appear in the _No