The three-forty trotter soon left boots, shoes, and all behind, and deposited us at the door of the uncle’s villa, where a friendly hand welcomed us to its hospitalities.  It was very prettily situated upon a cliff overlooking Massachusetts Bay, in which said cliff a zigzag stepway was cut down to the water, for the convenience of bathing.  The grounds were nicely laid out and planted, and promised in time to be well wooded, if the ocean breeze driving upon them did not lay an embargo upon their growth, in the same heartless manner as it does upon the west coast of Scotland, where, the moment a tree gets higher than a mop handle, its top becomes curved over by the gales, with the same graceful sweep as that which a successful stable-boy gives a birch broom after a day’s soaking.  I hope, for my hospitable friend’s sake, it may not prove true in his case; but I saw an ostrich-feathery curve upon the tops of some of his trees, which looked ominous.  Having spent a very pleasant day, and enjoyed good cheer and good company, Three-forty was again “hitched to;” joined hands announced the parting moment had arrived; wreaths of smoke from fragrant Havanas ascended like incense from the shrine of Adieu; “G’lang”—­the note of advance—­was sounded; Three-forty sprang to the word of command; friends, shoes, and shoemakers were soon tailed of; and ere long your humble servant was nestling his nose in his pillow at Boston.

Hearing that the drama was investing its talent in Abolitionism, I went one evening to the theatre, to see if I could extract as much fun from the metropolis of a free state as I had previously obtained from the capital of slave-holding Maryland; for I knew the Americans, both North and South, were as ticklish as young ladies.  I found very much the same style of thing as at Baltimore, except that her abolitionist highness, the Duchess of Southernblack, did not appear on the stage by deputy; but as an atonement for the omission, you had a genuine Yankee abolitionist; poor Uncle Tom and his fraternity were duly licked and bullied by a couple of heartless Southern nigger-drivers; and while their victims were writhing in agony, a genuine abolitionist comes on the stage and whops the two nigger-drivers, amid shouts of applause.  The suppliant Southerners, midst sobs and tears, plead for mercy, and in vain, until the happy thought occurs to one of them, to break forth into a wondrous tale of the atrocities inflicted upon the starving and naked slaves of English mines and factories, proving by contrast the superior happiness of the nigger and the greater mercifulness of his treatment.  The indignant abolitionist drops the upraised cowhide, the sobs and tears of the Southerners cease, the whole house thunders forth the ecstasy of its delight, the curtain drops, and the enchanted audience adjourn to the oyster saloons, vividly impressed with British brutality, the charms of slavery, and the superiority of Abolitionism.

How strange, that in a country like this, boasting of its education, and certainly with every facility for its prosecution—­how strange, that in the very Athens of the Republic, the deluded masses should exhibit as complete ignorance as you could find in the gallery of any twopenny-halfpenny metropolitan theatre of the old country!