"In England?"
"Yes."
"I'll agree if the winsome, wee thing will give ye time to send us news letters from London. Doctor Franklin could give ye help. He has been boiling over with praise o' you and has asked me to broach the matter. Ye'll be sailing on the next ship."
Before there was any sailing Jack and Solomon had time to go to Albany for a visit. They found the family well and prosperous, the town growing. John Irons said that land near the city was increasing rapidly in value. Solomon went away into the woods the morning of their arrival and returned in the afternoon with his money, which he gave to John Irons to be invested in land. Jack, having had a delightful stay at home, took a schooner for New York that evening with Solomon.
The night before they sailed for England his friends in the craft gave Jack a dinner at The Gray Goose Tavern. He describes the event in a long letter. To his astonishment the mayor and other well-known men were present and expressed their admiration for his talents.
The table was spread with broiled fish and roasted fowls and mutton and towering spiced hams and sweet potatoes and mince pies and cakes and jellies.
"The spirit of hospitality expresses itself here in ham--often, also, in fowls, fish and mutton, but always and chiefly in ham--cooked and decorated with the greatest care and surrounded by forms, flavors and colors calculated to please the eye and fill the human system with a deep, enduring and memorable satisfaction," he writes.
In the midst of the festivities it was announced that Jack was to be married and as was the custom of the time, every man at the table proposed a toast and drank to it. One addressed himself to the eyes of the fortunate young lady. Then her lips, her eyebrows, her neck, her hands, her feet, her disposition and her future husband were each in turn enthusiastically toasted by other guests in bumpers of French wine. He adds that these compliments were "so moist and numerous that they became more and more indistinct, noisy and irrational" and that before they ended "Nearly every one stood up singing his own favorite song. There is a stage of emotion which can only be expressed in noises. That stage had been reached. They put me in mind of David Culver's bird shop where many song birds--all of a different feather--engage in a kind of tournament, each pouring out his soul with a desperate determination to be heard. It was all very friendly and good natured but it was, also, very wild."