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own. These trips often took him some distance from home, and he wrote from
Niagara:—
. . . .My Congregation was good, including Mr. Barnum, whose autobiography I came very near unconsciously referring to. In the afternoon I spoke at one of a series of remarkable meetings for free talk on theological subjects which Mr. May started in a public hall.
All sorts of persons take part, Methodists, Jews, Catholics, &c. and no one can speak but ten minutes.
These absences from home not only gave a needed change, but took the young man among various interesting people.
He wrote to his mother, after lecturing in
Concord, that he had
Mr. Emerson for an auditor ‘which made me nearly dumb at first . . . . ’
Last Saturday I was in Boston [Jan. 1853] and went to see no less a person than Mr. Thackeray— not as lion but as lecturer.
We wanted him here for a new association and offered him $500 for 6 lectures —which he declined; he was very frank about it, saying it was more than he could get in England: but he could get more in other cities; in Providence $800 for three lectures!
He is six feet four, at least, very sweet and manly, with a large head and bushy gray hair, almost white; looks 55.
He has very little English hoarseness or awkward breadth of voice; a very good voice and enunciation; and no hauteur or coldness; was laboriously anxious to show me that he meant me no discourtesy by refusing our offer.
