eturned to the Episcopal faith, but
allowed me to keep the pew to myself for one or two years, till I went to
college. In Dr. Furness's chapel I often heard Channing and all the
famous Unitarian divines of the time preach, and very often saw Miss
Harriet Martineau, Dr. Combe, the phrenologist, and many other
distinguished persons. In other places at different times I met Andrew
Jackson, Henry Clay, to whom I was introduced, Daniel Webster, to whom I
reverently bowed, receiving in return a gracious acknowledgment, Peter
Duponceau, Morton, Stephen Girard, Joseph Buonaparte, the two authors of
the "Jack Downing Letters"; and I once heard David Crockett make a
speech. Apropos of Joseph Buonaparte, I can remember to have heard my
wife's mother, the late Mrs. Rodney Fisher, tell how when a little girl,
and while at his residence at Bordentown, she had run a race with the old
ex-king of Spain. A very intimate friend in our family was Professor
John Frost, the manufacturer of literally innumerable works of every
description. He had many thousands of woodcut blocks, and when he
received an order--as, for example, a history of any country, or of the
world, or of a religion, or a school geography, or book of travel or
adventure, or a biography, or anything else that the heart of man could
conceive--he set his scribes to write, scissors and paste, and lo! the
book was made forthwith, he aiding and revising it. What was most
remarkable was that many of these _pieces de manufacture_ were rather
clever, and very well answered the demand, for their sale was enormous.
He had when young been in the West Indies, and written a clever novelette
entitled "Ramon, the Rover of Cuba." Personally he was very handsome,
refined, and intelligent; a man meant by Nature for higher literary work
than mere book-making.

Miss Eliza Leslie, the writer of the best series of sketches of American
domestic life of her day, was a very intimate friend of my mother, and a
constant visitor at our house. She was a sister of Leslie, the great
artist, and had been in her early life much in England. I was a great
favourite with her, and owed much to her always entertaining and very
instructive conversation, which was full of reminiscences of
distinguished people and remarkable events. I may say with great truth
that I really profited as much by mere hearing as many boys would have
done by knowing the originals, so deep was the interest which I felt in
all