‘ [361] that a scientific meeting was held at Cincinnati this year, we should telegraph the reports from that place, and I presume other journals would have special reporters to report the proceedings at length. We have a report every day, fifteen hundred miles, from New Orleans daily; from St. Louis too, and other places.’ The Committee then adjourned.On Saturday morning, the seventh of June, after a residence of seven busy weeks in London, our traveler left that “magnificent Babel,” for Paris, selecting the dearest and, of course, the quickest route. Dover, quaint and curious Dover, he thought a “mean old town;” and the steamboat which conveyed him from Dover to Calais was “one of those long, black, narrow scow-contrivances, about equal to a buttonwood dug-out, which England appears to delight in.” Two hours of deadly sea-sickness, and he stood on the shores of France. At Calais, which he styles “a queer old town,” he was detained a long hour, obtained an execrable dinner for thirty-seven and a half cents, and changed some sovereigns for French money, “ at a shave which was not atrocious.” Then away to Paris by the swiftest train, arriving at half-past 2 on Sunday morning, four hours after the time promised in the enticing advertisement of the route. The ordeal of the custom-house he passed with little delay. ‘I did not,’ he says, ‘at first comprehend, that the number on my trunk, standing out fair before me in honest, unequivocal Arabic figures, could possibly mean anything but fifty-two; but a friend cautioned me in season that those figures spelled “cinquante-deux,” or phonetically “sank-on-du” to the officer, and I made my first attempt at mouthing French accordingly, and succeeded in making myself intelligible.’ About daylight on Sunday morning, he reached the Hotel Choiseul, Rue St. Honore, where he found shelter, but not bed. After breakfast, however, he sallied forth and saw his first sight in Paris, high mass at the Church of the Madeleine; which he thought a gorgeous, but inexplicable dumb show. Eight days were all that the indefatigable man could afford to a stay in the gay capital; but he improved the time. The obelisk of Luxor, brought from the banks of the Nile, and covered with mysterious inscriptions, that had braved the winds and rains of four thousand years, impressed him more deeply than any object he had
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New York. Mason. Brothers. . 1855.
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