of an hour’s time, these hopeful youths had shed about them on the
clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain; clearing, by that
means, a kind of magic circle, within whose limits no intruders
dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and rerefresh
before a spot was dry. This being before breakfast, rather
disposed me, I confess, to nausea; but looking attentively at one
of the expectorators, I plainly saw that he was young in chewing,
and felt inwardly uneasy, himself. A glow of delight came over me
at this discovery; and as I marked his face turn paler and paler,
and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek, quiver with his
suppressed agony, while yet he spat, and chewed, and spat again, in
emulation of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and
implored him to go on for hours.
We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin below,
where there was no more hurry or confusion than at such a meal in
England, and where there was certainly greater politeness exhibited
than at most of our stage-coach banquets. At about nine o’clock we
arrived at the railroad station, and went on by the cars. At noon
we turned out again, to cross a wide river in another steamboat;
landed at a continuation of the railroad on the opposite shore; and
went on by other cars; in which, in the course of the next hour or
so, we crossed by wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two
creeks, called respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water
in both was blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which
are most delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at that season of
the year.
These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only just wide
enough for the passage of the trains; which, in the event of the
smallest accident, wound inevitably be plunged into the river.
They are startling contrivances, and are most agreeable when
passed.
We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland, were
waited on, for the first time, by slaves. The sensation of
exacting any service from human creatures who are bought and sold,
and being, for the time, a party as it were to their condition, is
not an enviable one. The institution exists, perhaps, in its least
repulsive and most mitigated form in such a town as this; but it IS
slavery; and though I was, with respect to it, an innocent man, its
presence filled me with a sense of shame and self-reproach.
After dinner, we went down to the railroad again, and took our
seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those men
and boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, and were
curious in foreigners, came (according to custom) round the
carriage in which I sat; let down all the windows; thrust in their
heads and shoulders; hooked themselves on conveniently, by their
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elbows; and fell to comparing notes on the subject of my personal
appearance, with as much indifference as if I were a stuffed
figure. I never gained so much uncompromising information with
reference to my own nose and eyes, and various impressions wrought
by my mouth and chin on different minds, and how my head looks when
it is viewed from behind, as on these occasions. Some gentlemen
were only satisfied by exercising their sense of touch; and the
boys (who are surprisingly precocious in America) were seldom
satisfied, even by that, but would return to the charge over and
over again. Many a budding president has walked into my room with
his cap on his head and his hands in his pockets, and stared at me
for two whole hours: occasionally refreshing himself with a tweak
of his nose, or a draught from the water-jug; or by walking to the
windows and inviting other boys in the street below, to come up and
do likewise: crying, ‘Here he is!’ ‘Come on!’ ‘Bring all your
brothers!’ with other hospitable entreaties of that nature.
We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, and had