“You must not,” he continues, “allow yourself to be, or even to fancy that you are tired or tormented, or worn out.  Work the mine to the last.  Pump up every drop out of the well.  Put money i’ thy purse; and add story after story to that structure of fame, which will enable you to do as much to that house by the lake side, where I will hope to see you yet.”

* * * * *

He then goes on to speak at considerable length of the society of Boston, praising it much, yet saying that it is made more charming to a visitor than to a permanent resident.  “In this it differs,” he says, “from almost all the countries I have lived in in Europe, except Holland.”

Speaking of a visit to Washington during the inauguration of General Harrison, which seems to have delighted him much, he says he travelled back with a family, “at least with the master and mistress of it, of whom I must tell you something.  Mr. Paige is a merchant, and brother-in-law of Mr. Webster; Mrs. Paige a niece of Judge Story.  From this double connection with two of the first men in the country their family associations are particularly agreeable.  Mrs. Paige is one of three sisters, all very handsome, spirited, and full of talent.  One is married to Mr. Webster’s eldest son.  Another, Mrs. Joy, has for her husband an idle gentleman, a rare thing in this place.  Mrs. Paige was in Europe two years ago with Mr. and Mrs. Webster senior (the latter by the bye is a most charming person) and had the advantage of seeing society in England and France in its best aspect, and is one who can compare as well as see ...  Among the men [of the Boston society] are Dr. Chinning, a prophet in our country, a pamphleteer in his own; Bancroft, the historian of America, a man of superior talents and great agreeability, but a black sheep in society, on account of his Van Buren politics, against whom the white sheep of the Whig party will not rub themselves; Prescott, the author of Ferdinand and Isabella, a handsome, half blind shunner of the vanities of the world, with some others, who read and write a good deal, and no one the wiser for it.  Edward Everett is in Italy, where you will surely meet him [we saw a good deal of him].  He is rather formal than cold, if all I hear whispered of him be true; of elegant taste in literature, though not of easy manners, and altogether an admirable specimen of an American orator and scholar.  At Cambridge, three miles off, we have Judge Story, of the Supreme Court, eloquent, deeply learned, garrulous, lively, amiable, excellent in all and every way that a mortal can be.  He is decidedly the gem of this western world.  Mr. Webster is now settled at Washington, though here at this moment on a visit to Mrs. Paige.  Among our neighbouring notabilities is John Quincy Adams, an ex-President of the United States, ex-Minister at half the courts in Europe, and now at seventy-five, a simple Member of Congress, hard as a piece of granite, and cold as a lump of ice.”