Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/234

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HOMES OF THE NEW WORLD.

have seen people there with whom I should like to live all my days.

But these feelings for amiable people whom I meet with now and then during my pilgrimage, are to me as “a tent of one night,” under which I repose thankfully; I would fain linger yet longer; but I must the next morning remove my tent and proceed still farther,—and I do so with a sigh.

Farewell, ye charming people in that ugly city! Receive my thanks, warm hearts of Chicago!

P.S.—Jenny Lind is in New York, and has been received with American furor—the maddest of all madness. The sale by auction of the tickets for her first concert is said to have made forty thousand dollars. She has presented the whole of her share of profit from that first concert to benevolent institutions of New York. Three hundred ladies are said to besiege her daily, and thousands of people of all classes follow her steps. Hundreds of letters are sent to her each day. Ah! poor girl! Hercules himself would not be equal to that.




LETTER XXV.

Watertown, Wisconsin, Oct. 1st.

The most glorious morning! How I have enjoyed it and a solitary ramble on the banks of Rock River (a small tributary of the Mississippi), on which the little town stands. Many a thought also winged its way homeward, and said, “Good morning to my beloved, and I would that I could bear to them, and above all to you, my Agatha, this air, this sun of the New World's Indian summer!”

Watertown is a little, newly sprung-up, infant-town, of two thousand inhabitants. The small, neat houses, most of them of wood and painted white, and very smart and