Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/92

 and carriages. It is extraordinary, but it is not excellent. I sat all the time in expectation of seeing the head of a horse come through the carriage-window, or of the carriage being smashed to pieces. In the meanwhile, all went well; we reached the steamboat in time, had a beautiful sail upon the calm waters of the extensive bay, where large and small steamboats incessantly are passing and winding their way among the sailing craft. That is a scene of life!

At Mr. Putnam's beautiful house on one of the heights of Staten Island, I saw a most charming, cheerful, and agreeable little hostess and three pretty children, and in the evening a whole crowd of people from the neighbourhood. I played Swedish polskas and ballads for them. The best thing of the evening was a comic song, sung by an excellent elderly gentleman.

I was frozen in my bedroom, because the weather is now cold, and they do not heat the bedrooms in this country. It is here as in England, not as in our good Sweden; and I can hardly accustom myself to these cold bedchambers. It was to me particularly hard to get up and to dress myself in that chilly room, with my fingers benumbed with cold. But I forgot both the numbness and the frost when I went down to breakfast, and saw the bright sun, and the lovely and kind hostess in that cheerful room, with its prospect over the bay, the city, and the island. In the forenoon Mr. Putnam drove me in a covered carriage to see the island, and to call upon various families. The rich golden woods shone in their autumnal pomp of varied gold or brown—a colouring both warm and deep, like that of the soul's noblest sufferings. I indulged the emotion which it excited, and I drove through the woods as through a temple filled with symbolic inscriptions, and that which it presented to me I could read and decipher. Thus we advanced to the loftiest point of the island, whence the prospect was glorious,