Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/91

 printed and circulated here at a low price, and to allow me the same pecuniary advantage as a native author. Mr. Downing was pleased with the proposal, because he knows Mr. Putnam to be a thoroughly honourable and trustworthy man.

It was not without pain that I parted from the Downings, with whom I had spent so richly intellectual and delightful a time (I will call it my honeymoon in the New World), and to whom I am really cordially attached. But I shall see them again; I have to thank Mr. Downing for many things; for the wisdom and the tact, as well as the brotherly earnestness with which he has assisted me to arrange my movements here in the new world, and as regarded invitations and other marks of friendliness which I have received. At parting he admonished me with his beautiful smile, that I should on all occasions make use of a little inborn tact—(N.B. a thing which I was born without)—so as to know what I ought to do and to permit. I think, in the meanwhile that I made good use of his advice, by immediately afterwards declining the proposal of a young gentleman to climb a lofty church tower with him. Nothing strikes me so much as the youthfulness of this people—I might almost say childish fervour and love of adventure. They hesitate at nothing, and regard nothing as impossible. But I know myself to be too old to climb up church towers with young gentlemen.

When the Downings left me, I was intrusted to the kind care of Mr. Putnam, who was to conduct me to his villa on Staten Island. It was with difficulty that we drove through the throng of vehicles of all kinds which filled the streets leading to the harbour, in order to reach the steamboat in time. I cannot help admiring the way in which the drivers here manage to get out of the way, and twist about and shoot between and disentangle themselves without any misadventure from the really Gordian knot of carts