[483] 20th.—This day I bade farewell to Washington city and America, and to all the bright and vivid spirits I found in it.
21st.—In company with Mr. E. Dumbleton, and my wicked, beautiful, silver grey squirrel, a native of Maryland, whose brushy tail is his nightcap, and who eats razors, buttons, bibles, &c., and is therefore sentenced to transportation for life, I embarked on board the good ship Minerva of Boston, to Amsterdam bound, and from Alexandria sailed gently down the great river Potowmac.
After a passage of about 30 days, we arrived at the Isle of Wight. Here I had the honour to present my most gracious Sovereign with a precious relic—a cedar-cane cut from the grave of General Washington; together with six gallons of "elegant, mighty fine claret," purposely sent on a Yankee voyage of 10,000 miles, to ripen for the use of British royalty.
[484] CONCLUSION
Having reached home, partially recovered what seemed irrecoverably gone, my long lost health, and told my story, there seems little or nothing to add, except a few retrospective observations, summarily bearing on the preceding descriptions, opinions, and decisions, which throughout are frankly and fearlessly rendered, chiefly aiming to enlighten the ignorant, and to abash the wicked. "But," says the reader, "to emigrate or not to emigrate? That is the question!" It is easier to propound than to answer this inquiry. To seek a refuge from danger, and to fly from the coming storm, is on the one hand in accordance with one of the first laws of nature; and on the other hand, it may be said, that to abandon our hearths, homes, and altars, because our country mourns and is in trouble, is cowardly. That numbers have gone, are now going, and will continue to go, is certain; for when there is a surplus population, and the hive swarms, what shall set bounds to the free-born? To those, then, who are inevitably destined to roam, friendless, homeless, really lone strangers in a strange land, and to see their old, much-loved homes, and the tombs of their fathers no more, I would say: Study the preceding well-meant pages. I know your wants and feelings. Study, then, I [485] would say, by every attainable qualification, principle, and sentiment, to fortify your minds, and make yourselves all which you ought to be. Plague not yourselves nor the land of your adoption, by importing and giving perpetuity to homebred prejudices. A nest you will find; but every where, like that of the nightingale, a thorn within it. Learn, therefore, yourselves to forget, and as far as in you lies, teach your posterity also to forget, and to remember only what they ought to remember. A British origin will be ever honourable in their heraldry. This is well worth remembrance, and may they never stain, never dishonour it; but into whatsoever lands they wander, may they seek the good and peace of that land, for in its good and peace they shall have peace themselves!
To those whose disgusts and moral and physical disabilities point them homewards, as prodigals to the house of their fathers, the broad Atlantic, in the words of the Hon. J. Q. Adams, offers a highway for their return; having undergone a process by which they shall, perhaps, learn the vast sum and value of English homes and comforts.
The old family quarrel has evidently made the natives of both countries somewhat incommiscible; else how is it that the French, Dutch, Germans, Irish, and strangers of any other land, are more acceptable to America than the children of the common parent, Great Britain. For to the latter the most distinguished Americans have heretofore [486] proudly traced their pedigree, unless some rank and cancerous blemish was in the root and core of it. Hence all grades blush not to own and call her mother, though she is denounced by many, and it must be owned with some justice, as an unnatural parent. But those events have long since become matter of historical record, and it is not good policy to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, from generation to generation. Let both countries wisely learn to think correctly of their several governments, and kindly of each other. Peace and goodwill, in all their fruitful ramifications, will ever bring more silver dollars to the one, and more golden guineas to the other, than fire-ships, torpedos, battles, blazing cities, and heroes covered with glory!
"Well! I guess, after all," exclaimed a Yankee friend, "it is a good land with small faults; necessary evils; seeming evils; good in disguise." "Yes, it is a good land," rejoined another, in love with it at first sight, "mine eyes have seen it for myself, and not another. I am fascinated with it. My return from it would be impossible, but for the adamantine chain which binds me to my country. My heart tempts me, but my duty forbids me to break it." Hasty conclusions like hasty matches, are rarely happy, and so it was with our enthusiast; for in less than two years of patient trial and perpetual travel, he very gladly returned to his native country, joyfully repeating,
[487] ——"Whoe'er thou art,
Cling to thy home. If there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,
And some poor plot with vegetables stor'd,
Be all that heav'n allots thee for thy board,
Unsavoury bread, and herbs that scatter'd grow
Wild on the river bank, or mountain brow,
Yet ev'n this cheerless mansion shall provide
More heart's repose than all the world beside."
Finally; were, however, America, of which I now perhaps take my leave for ever, every thing that the purest patriotism could make it, yet the climate is an evil, a perpetual evil, a mighty drawback, an almost insurmountable obstacle to the health, wealth, and well-being of all, except the native red and black man, the genuine aboriginal, and the unstained African, for whom alone this land of promise, this vast section of the earth, this new and better world, seems by nature to have been intended. Otherwise, it is argued, would noisome pestilence annually desolate its cities and districts, and every where unsparingly and prematurely people the grave? In spite, however, of climes, tropical or changeful, torrid or frigid, and of constitutional predisposition to sickness, health, physical and moral, is much more at the command of mankind than she is generally supposed to be. Temperance, abstinence, and exertion, approximating to labour, in free air, are the essential handmaids to health, and enable a man to laugh at doctors, and to withstand the effects of climate. Hence, then, [488] in whatsoever climes, stations, or circumstances, my reader may be found, let him learn to think health worth a sacrifice. To persons, whose fortune it may be to encounter the risks of this dangerous and debilitating climate, I would especially say: Let ablutions and affusions of pure, cold spring water, become habitual with you, and as a beverage, let water be substituted for wine, whiskey, and alcohol in all its forms. Let milk supply the place of tea, coffee, and other stimulants; and let tobacco, snuff, and all the family of narcotics, be abandoned. Surely health is ever, what a late venerable friend of his species was often wont to call her, the Sugar of Life. He who thinks and acts otherwise rarely finds health, and never deserves her.