One lived in the atmosphere of the Stamp Act, the Tea Tax, and
the Boston Massacre. Within Boston, a boy was first an
eighteenth-century politician, and afterwards only a possibility;
beyond Boston the first step led only further into politics.
After February, 1848, but one slight tie remained of all those
that, since 1776, had connected Quincy with the outer world. The
Madam stayed in Washington, after her husband's death, and in her
turn was struck by paralysis and bedridden. From time to time her
son Charles, whose affection and sympathy for his mother in her
many tribulations were always pronounced, went on to see her, and
in May, 1850, he took with him his twelve-year-old son. The
journey was meant as education, and as education it served the
purpose of fixing in memory the stage of a boy's thought in 1850.
He could not remember taking special interest in the railroad
journey or in New York; with railways and cities he was familiar
enough. His first impression was the novelty of crossing New York
Bay and finding an English railway carriage on the Camden and
Amboy Railroad. This was a new world; a suggestion of corruption
in the simple habits of American life; a step to exclusiveness
never approached in Boston; but it was amusing. The boy rather
liked it. At Trenton the train set him on board a steamer which
took him to Philadelphia where he smelt other varieties of town
life; then again by boat to Chester, and by train to Havre de
Grace; by boat to Baltimore and thence by rail to Washington.
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