aptains learned the art of pronouncing upon the
exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the
traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, 'four at
one time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and at night appeared to
be all on fire.' They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to
use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty-two large pages of paper.' The
doctor read 'the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as
far as the first book of Samuel.' He also read through Hartley's
second volume, and 'for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid's
Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him
through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and some of
Petrarch's _de remediis_, and Erasmus's Dialogues; also Peter Pindar's
poems, ... which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in
verse.'

On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook. Three days later Dr. and Mrs.
Priestley 'landed at the Battery in as private a manner as possible,
and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's lodging-house close by.' The
next morning the principal inhabitants of New York came to pay their
respects and congratulations; among others Governor Clinton, Dr.
Prevoost, bishop of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great Britain;
the heads of the college; most of the principal merchants, and many
others; for an account of which amenities one must read Henry Wansey's
_Excursion to the United States in the Summer of 1794_, published by
Salisbury in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.

Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John Adams by one day. Adams
had sailed for Boston on the third. But he left word that Boston was
'better calculated' for Priestley than any other part of America, and
that 'he would find himself very well received if he should be
inclined to settle there.'

Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: 'Dr. P. is wonderfully pleased
with everything, and indeed I think he has great reason from the
attentions paid him.' The good people became almost frivolous with
their dinner-parties, receptions, calls, and so forth. Then there were
the usual addresses from the various organizations,--one from the
Tammany Society, who described themselves as 'a numerous body of
freemen, who associate to cultivate among them the love of liberty,
and the enjoyment of the happy republican government under which they
live.' There was an address from the 'Democratic Society,' one from