--TOPSY.
Washington, 16th Oct. 1858.
I closed my last letter to you on the 12th, and gave it to William to
take to you. On the following day we bade him a sorrowful farewell, made
all the more melancholy by the day being very rainy, which prevented our
seeing him on board. We so very rarely see rain, that when it comes it
is most depressing to our spirits, without any additional cause for
lamentation; but it never lasts beyond a day, and is always succeeded by
a renewal of most brilliant weather.
To console ourselves next day, although papa said it was an odd source
of consolation, we went to see the Greenwood Cemetery, which is one of
the four remaining sights of New York, the fifth, the Crystal Palace,
being, as I wrote to you, burnt down. The cemetery, however, proved a
great "_sell_," as William would have called it; for it is not to be
compared to the one at Philadelphia; and instead of the beautiful white
marble, surrounding each family plot, we found grey stone, or, still
more commonly, a cast iron rail. Moreover, it had to be reached by an
endless series of steamer-ferries and tramways, which, though they did
not consume much money (under 1_s._ a head), occupied a great deal more
time than the thing was worth. The excursion, however, gave us an
opportunity of seeing the town of Brooklyn, which, though insignificant,
in point of size, as compared with New York, has nearly as many
inhabitants as either Boston or Baltimore, and numbers more than twice
those in the town from which I now write.
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