faculty have mangled it, is such a complete monologue that I am less at the mercy of my coadjutors than in any other piece I play in....

Dall is very well, very hot, and very mosquito-bitten.  The heat seems to me almost intolerable, though it is here considered mild autumn weather:  the mornings and evenings are, it is true, generally freshened with a cool delicious air, which is at this moment blowing all my pens and paper away, and compensating us for our midday’s broiling.  I do nothing but drink iced lemonade, and eat peaches and sliced melon, in spite of the cholera.

Baths are a much cheaper and commoner luxury (necessary) in the hotels here than with us; a great satisfaction to me, who hope in heaven, if I ever get there, to have plenty of water to wash in, and, of course, it will all be soft rainwater there.  What a blessing!  On board ship we were not stinted in that respect, but had as much water as we desired for external as well as internal purposes.

There are no water-pipes or cisterns in this city such as we have, but men go about as they do in Paris, with huge water-butts, supplying each house daily; for although a broad river (so called) runs on each side of this water-walled city, the one—­the East River—­is merely an arm of the sea; and the Hudson receives the salt tide-water, and is rendered brackish and unfit for washing or cooking purposes far beyond the city.  There are fine springs, and a full fresh-water stream, at a distance of some miles; but the municipality is not very rich, and is economical and careful of the public money, and many improvements which might have been expected to have been effected here long ago are halting in their advance, leaving New York ill paved, ill lighted, and indifferently supplied with a good many necessaries and luxuries of modern civilization.

[This was fifty-six years ago.  Times are altered since this letter was written.  New York is neither ill paved nor ill lighted; the municipality is rich, but neither economical, careful, nor honest, in dealing with the public moneys.  The rapid spread of superficial civilization and accumulation of easily-got wealth, together with incessant communication with Europe, have made of the great cities of the New World, centres of an imperfect but extreme luxury, vying with, and in some respects going beyond, all that London or Paris presents for the indulgence of tastes pampered by the oldest civilization of Europe.

One day, after the Croton water had been brought into New York, I was sitting with the venerable Chancellor Kent at the window of his house in Union Square, and, pointing to the fountain that sprang up in the midst of the inclosure, he said, “When I was a boy, much more than half a century ago, I used to go to the Croton water, and paddle, and fish, and bathe, and swim, and loiter my time away in the summer days.  I cannot go out there any more for any of these pleasant purposes, but the Croton water has come here to me.”  What a ballad Schiller or Goethe would have made of that!  That morning visit to Chancellor Kent has left that pretty picture in my mind, and the recollection of his last words as he shook hands with me:  “Ay, madam, the secret of life is always to have excitement enough, and never too much.”  But he did not give me the secret of that secret.]