Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/55

 between it and the town, and also to the left of the road, the large barrack, magazine, and depot of arms, built during the revolutionary war. Dickenson college, a spacious stone building with a cupola was directly before me, with the town of Carlisle on the left of it extending to the southward on an elevated plain: the whole having a very good effect on the approach. The twilight shutting out further view, I hastened through a tolerable compact street to Foster's, to which I had been recommended as the best inn. I asked if I could have a bed that night, and was answered rudely, by an elderly man, in the bar who I took for the landlord, after he had eyed me with a contemptuous scrutiny—that I could not. The house appeared a little would be stylish—and I was afoot—so not of consequence enough for Mr. Foster. I turned on my heel, and entered the next tavern kept by Michael Herr, an honest and obliging German, where I found nothing to make me regret my being rejected as a guest at Foster's, except want of bed linen, sheets not being generally used in this country in the inns, excepting at English ones, or those of fashionable resort. A very good bed otherwise, and an excellent supper, with attentive treatment, well compensated for that little deficiency.

After supper, I received both pleasure and information from the conversation of a philosophick German gentleman, an inhabitant of Carlisle, who favoured {32} me with his company, and who discoursed fluently on opticks, pneumaticks, the French modern philosophy, and a variety of literary topicks, evincing great reading, and a good memory.

Before I retired to rest, I walked to the tavern, where the wagons generally stop, and had the pleasure of finding, that arrived, which carried my baggage, which I had not seen since I left Lancaster.