It is now Monday morning, dear H——­, and I am presently going to set off to the races.  American races! only think of that!  I who never saw but one in my own country, and was totally uninterested by it!  But I am going chiefly to please a nice little woman who is just married, and whose husband has several horses that are to run, so perhaps I shall find these more exciting than I did the races I attended at home.  They are very little supported or resorted to here; the religious and respectable part of the community disapprove of them.  There is a general prejudice against them, and they are even preached against; so that they are entirely in the hands of a few gentlemen of fortune, who keep them up, partly for their amusement, and partly with a view to the improvement of the breed of horses in this country.  The running is said to be very good, the show is nothing....  However, I am going, and therefore you may look hereafter to hear—­what you shall hear now—­because I’m just come back, and am happy to inform you that my friend’s husband’s horse won the race.  The stake was only L2000—­no very great matter—­but still enough to make the result interesting, if not important; though I think the hazard we ran of our lives at starting was the most exciting part of the day.

The racecourse is on Long Island, and, to reach it, one crosses the arm of the sea that divides that strip of land from New York in a steam ferryboat.  All these transports were so thronged to-day with carriages, horses, and a self-governed, enlightened, and very free people, that in all my life I never saw anything so frightful as the confusion of the embarking and disembarking....

Dr. Channing was talking to me the other day of Harriet Martineau’s writings, and has sent me “Ella of Garvelock,” recommending it highly as an interesting story, though he does not seem to think Miss Martineau’s principles of political economy sufficiently sound to make her works as useful upon that subject, or to do all the good which she herself evidently hopes to produce by these tales....

God bless you, dear friend!  I am ever most truly yours,

F. A. K.

NEW YORK, Sunday, June 24, 1833.

Great was my surprise, dear Mrs. Jameson, to find accompanying your letter of April 9th a card of Mr. Jameson’s.  My father called upon him almost immediately, but had not the good fortune to find him at home, and I presume he is now gone on to Canada, whither we are ourselves proceeding, and where we may very possibly meet him.  Our spring engagements are all over, and we are now going away from the hot weather to Niagara, into which, if all tales be true, I expect to fall headlong, with sheer surprise and admiration; after which I shall accompany my father to Montreal and Quebec, where we shall resume our professional labors....

     I am very sorry you have been ill.  You do not speak of your eyes,
     from which I argue that you were not painfully conscious of the
     existence of those valuable luminaries at the time you wrote....