Cabbages, of about four oz. weight, yellow and bad, having been buried from the frost, four cents each.
Potatoes, seventy-five cents a bushel.
Carrots, bad and scabby, 9d. sterling, to one quarter dollar per peck.
23rd.—Commodore Stephen Decatur[140] fell this day in a duel, having killed five men in the same way himself. He swore shamefully at the doctors while dying, because they could not extract the fatal ball from his bowels. He is called by the National Intelligencer, "One of the bright stars of Columbia, set for ever!" And the country is summoned to mourn for him. The president and the heads of departments, with military and naval officers and citizens, walked in procession at his funeral. The laws of heaven and earth, on this subject, are here quite insulted, by common consent. A lady of this district, hearing that her husband was gone to fight a duel, fifty miles off, sent an express, charging that he should be brought home a corpse rather than disgraced. It is a rule here always to take skilful aim, and if one party chooses to reserve his fire, he may go up and shoot the other, if he does not beg for his life. [397] A gentleman once would not beg it, but the other said, "If your life is not worth asking for, it is not worth taking!" And so fired in the air.
A sinecure, or something in the nature of one, is held by Joseph Paulding, Esq. of Washington.[141] The holder of this situation is enjoined to write in defence of the American character and government, and at the same time to vilify the British. Mr. Colvin, late editor of the National Register, in a critique on Lancaster's lectures, says, "that we (meaning America) are more virtuous than the people of other nations, I cannot believe. It is sufficient that we are equal, not worse." That there is no great superiority of moral worth on the part of America, the following anecdote will prove. A gentleman seduced the sister of his own wife, and then, to hide her disgrace, disguised his wife in the uniform of a lieutenant of the United States' navy, and married the young woman to her. The lieutenant of course went to sea immediately, and, poor man! was never heard of more. The nuptials were celebrated by candle-light, and all the gay company, except the priest, were parties to this ingenious trick!
24th.—Flour now is only four dollars and a half a barrel, five bushels to a barrel. After hauling, grinding, and the cost of the empty barrel, are deducted, it is seen that the farmer only receives two dollars fifty cents, for five bushels of fine wheat. Under such circumstances, where is profit?
[398] Sunday, 26th.—I left this city and old friends, to return, perhaps, no more. At Baltimore, on my way to Philadelphia, I met Joseph Lancaster, teaching a few small children.
28th.—Again at Philadelphia, where British and French goods are selling at 200 per cent. under cost. So great is the distress for money, that the regular merchants are sending their stock to auction. I visited Mr. Potter, an English merchant, who has been established here ever since the peace of 1786. He is now rich, but loves England still. He was intimately known to the Duke of Kent. He says that corruption is rising into an English sense, even here; and adding the state and general taxes together, they make a sum little short of English taxation.
29th.—Six hundred prisoners are this day in a state of mutiny, endeavouring to escape by violence from the Philadelphia state prison. One is shot, and three or four are wounded. The mail robbers now in custody killed the driver of the mail, but they have restored all the money, and pray that they may not be hanged.
31st.—I parted with my old friend C., who promised to meet me again at Baltimore, in June. I reached Newcastle, Delaware State, and visited its old Golgotha, on a bluff, near the river Delaware, which washes the feet of the dead, exposes a great part of the coffin, and bleaches the skulls and bones of men. Numbers of horses tread on the [399] graves and break in the coffins, for here is nothing to protect these bones from insult.