Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GOING AWAY, AND THE PASSAGE OUT
- CHAPTER THE FIRST GOING AWAY
- CHAPTER THE SECOND THE PASSAGE OUT
- CHAPTER THE THIRD BOSTON
- CHAPTER THE FOURTH AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM
- CHAPTER THE FIFTH WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN. NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK
- CHAPTER THE SIXTH NEW YORK
- CHAPTER THE SEVENTH PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON
- CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH - WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GOING AWAY, AND THE PASSAGE OUT
- CHAPTER THE FIRST GOING AWAY
- CHAPTER THE SECOND THE PASSAGE OUT
- CHAPTER THE THIRD BOSTON
- CHAPTER THE FOURTH AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM
- CHAPTER THE FIFTH WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN. NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK
- CHAPTER THE SIXTH NEW YORK
- CHAPTER THE SEVENTH PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON
- CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
Summary
We left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six o'clock one very cold morning, and turned our faces towards Washington.
In the course of this day's journey, as on subsequent occasions, we encountered some Englishmen (small farmers perhaps, or country publicans at home) who were settled in America, and were travelling on their own affairs. Of all grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the public conveyances of the States, these are often the most intolerable and the most insufferable companions. United to every disagreeable characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers possess, these countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption of superiority, quite monstrous to behold. In the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, as if they panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old restraints of home) they surpass any native specimens that came within my range of observation: and I often grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them, that I would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I could have given any other country in the whole world, the honour of claiming them for its children.
As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening.
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- Chapter
- Information
- American Notes for General Circulation , pp. 269 - 308Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009