NEW YORK, March 1, 1851.
I had a call this
morning from a man who wishes to get a grant from Government, and so he is
civil to me. It gave me just the feeling I used to have at the selfish
civilities of many Boston men, when I was in our Legislature, who used to coax
and pet and flatter me, and tell me what fine speeches I made, and make me
dine, and force me to drink their wine (for I had not then the full grace of a
teetotaler); but as soon as I left that presidency, and became an educationist,
they knew me no longer.
The ice on the
Susquehanna seemed perfectly strong, and I was not afraid to go where I saw the
baggage-cars go. I wished you could have been clairvoyant enough to see me when
I stepped on the hither shore; but we suffer in this life for our short-sightedness.
SYRACUSE. — I trust
you will now be at ease about me; for here I am in Mr. May's home, and I am to
remain here until Monday. He came to the hotel yesterday morning, and,
like a true Hopkinsian theologian, made his free grace irresistible, and took
me up here. He has a beautiful place, — as beautiful as ours: so I feel quite
restored to old comforts again.
We had about ten
speeches, and at least six of them were very brilliant. There was an air of
boldness, of defiance even, against the crime, and its abettors and promoters,
which augurs well for the cause.
Neal Dow, the moral
Columbus, was there, — a small, innocent-looking, modest man of middle age, who
looks as though he must have felt infinitely surprised, when, as Byron says, he
waked up one morning, and found himself famous.
A mighty audience
last night, I was told, — not less than five thousand people. I had only a
music-stand to put my lecture upon, and was obliged to stand one side of it, a
rascally arrangement! Had I not had your plain handwriting, I could not have
got along at all: so I thought of you continually, as you helped every sentence
out of my mouth. I think of that cough of George's. Do I hear it? or is it
imagination?
The temperance camp
is all astir. I have just been invited to deliver another temperance
lecture before I leave the city.
Dear H. and G., —
did I hear my little boys speaking last night with singing voices like birds,
and showing glad eyes and smiling faces? or was it a dream?
SOURCE: Mary Tyler
Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 347-8
