ks of Buffalo
had not perhaps quite forgotten that they were once, long before their
city was a city, subjects of King George.

I and another officer in uniform were received with all honours, and
escorted to the Eagle hotel, where we were treated sumptuously, and had
to run the gauntlet of handshaking to great extent. A respectable
gentleman, about forty, some seven years older than myself, stuck close
to me all the while. I thought he admired the British undress uniform,
but he only wanted to ask questions, and, after sundry answers, he
inquired my name, which being courteously communicated, he said, "Well,
I am glad, that's a fact, that I have seen you, for many is the whipping
I have had for your book of Algebra." Now I never was capable of
committing such an unheard-of enormity as being the cause of
flagellation to any man by simple or quadratic equations; and it must
have been the binomial theorem which had tickled his catastrophe, for it
was my father's treatise which had penetrated into the new world of
Buffalonian education.

It is a pity, is it not, gentle reader, that such feelings do not now
exist?

Nevertheless, even now, the designation of a British officer is a
passport in any part of the United States. The custom-house receives it
with courtesy and good-will; society is gratified by attentions received
from a British officer; and it is coupled with the feelings which the
habits and conduct of a gentleman engender throughout Christendom.

At New York, I visited every place worth seeing; and, although
disliking gambling, races, and debating societies, _a outrance_, I was
determined to judge for myself of New York, of life in New York.

On one occasion, I was at a meeting of the turf in an hotel after the
races, where violent discussions and heavy champagning were going on. I
was then (it was in 1837) a major in the army, and was introduced to one
or two prominent men in the room as a British officer who had been to
see the racecourse; this caused a general stir, and the champagne flew
about like----I am at a loss for a simile; and the health of Queen
Victoria was drunk with three times three.

On board a packet returning from England, we had several of the leading
characters of the United States as passengers. A very silly and
troublesome democrat, of the Loco-foco school, from Philadelphia, made
himself conspicuous always after dinner, when we sat, according to
English fashion, at a dessert, by his