. . . Sum charming things cars are! No dirt,—no sp-tt-g, oh! no,—and such nice places for sleeping! Not a long, monotonous, merely animal sleep, but intellectual, a kind of perpetual solving of geometric problems, as, for instance,—given, a human body; how many angles is it capable of forming in fifteen minutes? or how many more than a crab in the same time? And then, no crying children,—not a bit of that,—singing cherubs, innocently piping,—cheering the dull hours with dulcet sounds.
I write in the saloon, on this jarring boat, that shakes my hand and wits alike. We are getting on very prosperously. Your mother bears the journey well. This boat is very comfortable-for a boat; a good large state-room, and positively the neatest public table I have seen in all the South.
There! that'll do,—or must do. I thought wife would do the writing, but
I have "got my leg over the harrow," and Mause would be as hard to stop.
To Mrs. David Lane.
NEW ORLEANS, March 29, 1856.
DEAR FRIEND,—Yesterday I was sixty-two years old. After lecturing in the evening right earnestly on "The Body and Soul," I came home very tired, and sat down with a cigar, and passed an hour among the scenes of the olden time. I thought of my father, when, a boy, I used to walk with him to the fields. Something way-[238] ward he was, perhaps, in his moods, but prevailingly bright and cheerful,—fond of a joke,—strong in sense and purpose, and warm in affection,—steady to his plans, but somewhat impulsive and impatient in execution. Where is he now? How often do I ask! Shall I see him again? How shall I find him after thirty, forty years passed in the unseen realm? And of my mother you will not doubt I thought, and called up the scenes of her life: in the mid-way of it, when she was so patient, and often weary in the care of us all, and often feeble in health; and then in the later days, the declining years, so tranquil, so gentle, so loving,—a perfect sunshine of love and gentleness was her presence.
But come we to this St. Charles Hotel, where we have been now for a week, as removed as possible from the holy and quiet dreamland of past days. Incessant hubbub and hurly-burly are the only words that can describe it, seven hundred guests, one thousand people under one roof. What a larder! what a cellar! what water-tanks, pah! filled from the Mississippi, clarified for the table with alum. People that we have known cast up at all corners, and many that we have not call upon us,—good, kind, sensible people. I don't see but New Orleans is to be let into my human world.
You see how I blot,—I'm nervous,—I can't write at a marble table. Very well, however, and wife mainly so. Three weeks more here, and then back to Savannah, where I am to give four lectures. Then to Charleston, to stay till about the 25th May.
The lectures go here very fairly,—six hundred to hear. They call it a very large audience for lectures in New Orleans. . . . With our love to all your household,
Yours ever,