I saw but one drunken man through all New England, and he was very respectable.  He was, however, so uncommonly drunk that he might be allowed to count for two or three.  The Puritans of Boston are, of course, simple in their habits and simple in their expenses.  Champagne and canvas-back ducks I found to be the provisions most in vogue among those who desired to adhere closely to the manner of their forefathers.  Upon the whole, I found the ways of life which had been brought over in the “Mayflower” from the stern sects of England, and preserved through the revolutionary war for liberty, to be very pleasant ways; and I made up my mind that a Yankee Puritan can be an uncommonly pleasant fellow.  I wish that some of them did not dine so early; for when a man sits down at half-past two, that keeping up of the after-dinner recreations till bedtime becomes hard work.

In Boston the houses are very spacious and excellent, and they are always furnished with those luxuries which it is so difficult to introduce into an old house.  They have hot and cold water pipes into every room, and baths attached to the bedchambers.  It is not only that comfort is increased by such arrangements, but that much labor is saved.  In an old English house it will occupy a servant the best part of the day to carry water up and down for a large family.  Everything also is spacious, commodious, and well lighted.  I certainly think that in house-building the Americans have gone beyond us, for even our new houses are not commodious as are theirs.  One practice which they have in their cities would hardly suit our limited London spaces.  When the body of the house is built, they throw out the dining-room behind.  It stands alone, as it were, with no other chamber above it, and removed from the rest of the house.  It is consequently behind the double drawing-rooms which form the ground floor, and is approached from them and also from the back of the hall.  The second entrance to the dining-room is thus near the top of the kitchen stairs, which no doubt is its proper position.  The whole of the upper part of the house is thus kept for the private uses of the family.  To me this plan of building recommended itself as being very commodious.

I found the spirit for the war quite as hot at Boston now (in November) if not hotter than it was when I was there ten weeks earlier; and I found also, to my grief, that the feeling against England was as strong.  I can easily understand how difficult it must have been, and still must be, to Englishmen at home to understand this, and see how it has come to pass.  It has not arisen, as I think, from the old jealousy of England.  It has not sprung from that source which for years has induced certain newspapers, especially the New York Herald, to vilify England.  I do not think that the men of New England have ever been, as regards this matter, in the same boat with the New York Herald.  But when this war between the North and South first broke out,