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[27]

To Mr. E. Ticknor.

New York, December 31, 1814.
I devoted the greater part of this morning to Fulton's steam machinery. The first and most remarkable, of course, is the ship of war, which, instead of being called a frigate, is, in honor of its inventor, called a ‘Fulton,’ and instead of an appropriate appellation is numbered ‘1’; so that the mighty leviathan I went to see this morning is the ‘Fulton, No. 1.’ It is, in fact, two frigates joined together by the steam-enginery, which is placed directly in the centre, and operates on the water that flows between them. It has two keels and two bows, and will be rigged so as to navigate either end first. Its sides are five feet thick, and its bulwarks will be in proportion; so that it is claimed that it will be impervious to cannon shot. It will carry forty 32-pounders, and is intended chiefly for harbor defence. Here you have all I know, and perhaps all the inventor yet knows, of the prospects of this strange machine.


Philadelphia, January 6, 1815.
I dined to-day with Mr. Parish, a banker and a man of fortune. He is a bachelor, and lives in a style of great splendor. Everything at his table is of silver; and this not for a single course, or for a few persons, but through at least three courses for twenty. The meat and wines corresponded; the servants were in full livery with epaulets, and the dining-room was sumptuously furnished and hung with pictures of merit.

But what was more to me than his table or his fortune, John Randolph is his guest for some weeks. The instant I entered the room my eyes rested on his lean and sallow physiognomy. He was sitting, and seemed hardly larger or taller than a boy of fifteen. He rose to receive me as I was presented, and towered half a foot above my own height. This disproportion arises from the singular deformity of his person. His head is small, and, until you approach him near enough to observe the premature and unhealthy wrinkles that have furrowed his face, you would say that it was boyish. But as your eye turns towards his extremities, everything seems to be unnaturally stretched out and protracted. To his short and meagre body are attached long legs which, instead of diminishing, grow larger as they approach the floor, until they end in a pair of feet, broad and large, giving his whole person the appearance of a sort of pyramid. His arms are the counterparts of his legs; they rise from small shoulders, which seem hardly equal to the burden, are drawn out to a disproportionate


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