‘She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose?’
‘Well, I don’t know:’ which, by-the-bye, is a national answer. ‘Her friends mistrust her.’
‘What have they to do with it?’ I naturally inquired.
‘Well, they won’t petition.’
‘But if they did, they couldn’t get her out, I suppose?’
‘Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second, but tiring and wearying for a few years might do it.’
‘Does that ever do it?’
‘Why yes, that’ll do it sometimes. Political friends’ll do it sometimes. It’s pretty often done, one way or another.’
I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends there, whom I can never remember with indifference. We left it with no little regret on the evening of Friday the 11th, and travelled that night by railroad to New Haven. Upon the way, the guard and I were formally introduced to each other (as we usually were on such occasions), and exchanged a variety of small-talk. We reached New Haven at about eight o’clock, after a journey of three hours, and put up for the night at the best inn.
New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted with rows of grand old elm-trees; and the same natural ornaments surround Yale College, an establishment of considerable eminence and reputation. The various departments of this Institution are erected in a kind of park or common in the middle of the town, where they are dimly visible among the shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral yard in England; and when their branches are in full leaf, must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter time, these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance: seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and country; as if each had met the other half-way, and shaken hands upon it; which is at once novel and pleasant.