villages were new, fresh with white paint and
green blinds, hidden among flowers and shrubbery.

You see, I am eighteen and these external objects realize my dreams and
stimulate them. I do not know these people. They are frank, talkative,
often vulgar and presuming. But they are friendly. There is much
merriment on board, for we have to dodge down frequently to save our
heads from the bridges which the farmers build right across the canal.
The ladies have to be warned and assisted. There are narrow escapes and
shouts of laughter. And when the dinner bell is rung by a comical negro
every one rushes for the dining room. I am introduced again to the
American oyster, raw, fried, and stewed. It is the most delicious of
discoveries among the new viands. Then we have wonderful roast turkey,
chicken, and the greatest variety of vegetables and sweets. I am keeping
a daily record of events and impressions to mail to my dear grandmother
when I shall arrive at Buffalo....

Sometimes I get tired of the boat. Then I go on land and run along the
path behind the horses. A young woman on her way to Michigan to teach
school joins me in these reliefs from the tedium of the boat. We
exchange a few words. But I see that I am not old enough for her. I have
already observed her in confiding conversation with a man about the age
of Yarnell. And soon they go together to trot along the path, to stray
off a little into the meadows, or at the base of the picturesque
hills.... I am interested in the talk of the passengers, and cannot
choose but follow it at times.... One man has been reading the _New
Yorker_, printed by H. Greeley and Company. I learn that Horace Greeley
is his full name, and he comes in for a berating at the hands of a man
with one of the characteristic goatees that I first observed at Castle
Garden. The Whigs! I had always associated this party with
latitudinarian principles. Now I hear it called a centralist party, a
monarchist party. A voluble man, who chews tobacco, curses it as a mask
for the old Federalist party, which tried to corrupt America with the
British system, after it had failed as a combination of Loyalists to
keep America under the dominion of Great Britain.... This is all a maze
to me, at least so far as the American application is concerned. Then
the man with the goatee assails New England, and calls her the devotee
of the soured gospel of envy which covers its wolf face of hate with the
lamb's decapitated he