Taylor. No doubt
his impatience led him to be assigned to the expedition around Cape
Horn to occupy California, this, greatly to his regret, keeping
him out of the war with Mexico.

Whatever may have been the merits of this war in the beginning,
its fruits were undoubtedly of immense value to this country.
Without this war California might, like other provinces of Mexico,
have remained undeveloped. In the possession of the United States
its gold and silver have been discovered and mined, and, together
with all the vast interior country west of the Mississippi, it has
been developed with a rapidity unexampled in history.

In the winter of 1846-7, I for the first time visited the cities
of Washington, New York and Boston. I rode in a stage coach from
Mansfield to the national road south of Newark, and thence over
that road by stages to Cumberland, the railroads not having yet
crossed the mountains. From Cumberland I rode in cars to Baltimore,
occupying nearly a day. From Baltimore I proceeded to Washington.

On my arrival I went to the National Hotel, then the most popular
hotel in Washington, where many Senators and Members lodged. I
found there, also, a number of charming young ladies whose company
was much more agreeable to me than that of the most distinguished
statesmen. We had hops, balls and receptions, but I recall very
few public men I met at that time. Mr. Vinton, then the veteran
Member from Ohio, invited me to join for a few days his mess; he
was then boarding in a house nearly opposite the hotel, kept by an
Italian whose name I cannot recall. He was a famous cook. The
mess was composed entirely of Senators and Members, one of the
former being Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. I was delighted and
instructed by the free and easy talk that prevailed, a mixture of
funny jokes, well-told stories and gay and grave discussions of
politics and law.

My stay at the capital was brief as I wished to go to New York and
Boston. In New York I received from a relative a letter of
introduction to Benj. R. Curtis, then an eminent lawyer, and latterly
a more eminent justice of the Supreme Court. When I presented my
letter I was received very kindly and after a brief conversation
he said he was able to do me a favor, that he had a ticket to a
grand banquet to be attended by the leading men of Boston at Plymouth
Rock, on the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers,
and that Daniel Webster would preside.