, and passed, our windows early in the morning.
I suppose they were twenty thousand strong, at least. Some of the
banners were quaint and odd enough. The ship-carpenters, for instance,
displayed on one side of their flag the good Ship Temperance in full
sail; on the other, the Steamer Alcohol blowing up sky-high. The
Irishmen had a portrait of Father Mathew, you may be sure. And
Washington's broad lower jaw (by-the-by, Washington had not a pleasant
face) figured in all parts of the ranks. In a kind of square at one
outskirt of the city they divided into bodies, and were addressed by
different speakers. Drier speaking I never heard. I own that I felt
quite uncomfortable to think they could take the taste of it out of
their mouths with nothing better than water.

"In the evening we went to a party at Judge Walker's, and were
introduced to at least one hundred and fifty first-rate bores,
separately and singly. I was required to sit down by the greater part of
them, and talk![59] In the night we were serenaded (as we usually are
in every place we come to), and very well serenaded, I assure you. But
we were very much knocked up. I really think my face has acquired a
fixed expression of sadness from the constant and unmitigated boring I
endure. The LL's have carried away all my cheerfulness. There is a line
in my chin (on the right side of the under lip), indelibly fixed there
by the New Englander I told you of in my last. I have the print of a
crow's foot on the outside of my left eye, which I attribute to the
literary characters of small towns. A dimple has vanished from my cheek,
which I felt myself robbed of at the time by a wise legislator. But on
the other hand I am really indebted for a good broad grin to P. . E. . ,
literary critic of Philadelphia, and sole proprietor of the English
language in its grammatical and idiomatical purity; to P. . E. . , with the
shiny straight hair and turned-down shirt-collar, who taketh all of us
English men of letters to task in print, roundly and uncompromisingly,
but told me, at the same time, that I had 'awakened a new era' in his
mind. . . .

"The last 200 miles of the voyage from Cincinnati to St. Louis are upon
the Mississippi, for you come down the Ohio to its mouth. It is well for
society that this Mississippi, the renowned father of waters, had no
children who take after him. It is the beastliest river in the
world.". . . (His description is in the _Notes_.)

"Conceive the p