George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[31] like the dismay with which it has filled the Democratic party. All his former communications were but emollients and palliatives, compared with this final disclosure of the bankruptcy of the nation. Mr. Eppes, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, read it in his place yesterday; and when he had finished, threw it upon the table with expressive violence, and turning round to Mr. Gaston, asked him, with a bitter levity between jest and earnest: ‘Well, sir, will your party take the Government if we will give it up to them?’ ‘No, sir,’ said Gaston, in a tone which, from my little acquaintance with him, I can easily believe to have been as equivocal as that in which the question was put. ‘No, sir; not unless you will give it to us as we gave it to you.’ The truth is that this report is considered a plain acknowledgment that the administration can go forward no longer; and though it is utterly impossible to foresee what will be the next measure, it is easy to believe that it will be violent and desperate.

To Mr. E. Ticknor.

Port tobacco, Maryland, January 26, 1815.

We left Washington the 24th, just at sunrise, and drove five miles to a ferry, where our troops in their infatuation had burnt a bridge. It took an hour to cross the river through the ice, and then our way led through open fields, where only one wagon had preceded us. We had hardly driven a quarter of a mile when we broke through some ice; one horse fell, and the carriage, as the phrase is, ‘mired up to the hubs.’ In half an hour we were extricated, and went on carefully by the track, often walking to lighten the carriage; when the track suddenly turned into the woods, and left us without a guide. The snow was ten or fifteen inches deep, unbroken for a mile or two, when we again followed a cart a short distance. At last we reached the ‘Half-way House,’ a miserable hut of one room; and as I went in, I saw a girl sitting by the fire, pale and feeble from illness; and turning from her, lest she should think me too curious, saw a young man on a bed behind the door, whose countenance showed that he had not long to suffer. I was glad to leave this wretched hut. We went on at a moderate walk, foundered twice in the snow and mud, and at last broke the pole, when two miles from the nearest house. So Gray and I mounted one of the leaders and rode on, fording three brooks, one of them pretty deep. It was after three when we reached an inn, and soon sat down to our breakfast! I had not eaten anything for