Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/328

Rh they are going, for the benefit of the water and the baths. Later in the summer, I also intend to go thither myself, not to drink the medicinal waters, but to witness that scene of American social life, which I am informed presents its worst side; fashionable immorality and want of principle in their gala dress.

Later.—Usch! such a sermon! Just the sermon,—if such were the only means of divine knowledge, to make people either atheists or numskulls. It made me impatient and angry. The young preacher emptied with great self-complacency the vials of wrath, full of threatenings and penal judgments, into the contents of his Calvinistic sermon of wrath against the sinners who—were nowhere in the church, if I could judge from appearance. The church was thinly attended, and many people slept. A couple of very well fed, and well dressed elderly gentlemen, who sate on a bench before me, took out their watches every now and then to see how the time went on, if it were near dinner-time, I presume they were apparently not thinking about the last judgment, although the young preacher was thundering about it, and its advance upon a godless generation. True it is that the young preacher of condemnation dealt so much with abstract ideas and barren phraseology, that none of his descriptions of sin seemed to touch the heads of the people who sate on the benches. But I have heard more preachers beside this one, who preach to an audience, which evidently is not within the church.

I shall remain here for two days, and then pay a visit to our countryman, Professor Sheele de Vere, in Charlotte's Ville, the university of Virginia, after which I shall return hither for a time.

June 18th.—I have, both yesterday and to-day, received a great number of visits, and ditto invitations. Among the latter, was one to a country-home near the city, which I immediately accepted for my return from Charlotte's Ville,