Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/15



 LETTER XVIII.

length, my sweet little Agatha, I have a moment's calm in which to converse with you; but it has been hard to find in this friendly city of the Friends.

I left Charleston the fifteenth of this month, overwhelmed, as in all other places, with presents, and an infinity of kindness and attentions. But ah! how weary and worn out I was during the last days there with the labour of incessant society. Sea-bathing kept me alive, as well as a few hours of rest in the kind house of my friend Mrs. W. H.

My last evening at Charleston was spent in company with a lively little astronomer, Mr. Gibbs, brother of the natural historian at Columbia, and in contemplating from the piazza the starry heavens. The three great constellations, Scorpio, with its fiery-red heart, Antares, Sagittarius, and Capricornus, as well as the Southern Crown (insignificant), shone brightly in the southern heavens, and the zodiacal light cast its white splendour up towards the milky way. We directed the telescope upon a nebulous spot in the latter, and then to that place where—we found ourselves, ah! lost in immensity, like the