There were reasons, too, of a personal character for my visiting Canada. I had a fever, which was contracted at Washington and laid me prostrate at New York. It was of the low typhoid type, which proved fatal to so many in the Federal army at the same time, and its effects made me weaker for the time than I ever remember to have been. There was no promise whatever of military operations, and I read every day of the arrival of friends and acquaintances in Canada, whose faces it would be pleasant to see, after the endurance of so many hostile glances and such public exhibition of ill-will. I do not wish to dwell on private annoyances, but as an instance of the feeling displayed towards me in New York I may mention one circumstance. On my arrival in 1861 I was elected an honorary member of the club which derives its name from the state or city, and was indebted to its members for many acts of courtesy and for more than one entertainment. Returning to the city from Washington early this year, I was invited to dine at the same club by one or two of my friends. Certain members, as I afterwards heard, took umbrage at my presence, and fastened a quarrel on my entertainers. A day or two subsequently the people of New York were called on, by the notorious journalist who had honoured me with his animosity ever since I refused the dishonour of his acquaintance, to express their indignation at the conduct of the club; and the members received a characteristic reprimand for their presumption in letting me into the club, from which they had kept their censor and his clientele carefully out. My offence was rank; and public opinion--or what is called so--perhaps was in favour of the ostracism at that moment; for, as far as I know, the people must have believed I was the sole cause of the Federal defeat and flight at Bull Run. There was some novelty in the idea of starting for Canada in the midst of the bitter winter wind and the dazzling snow; but I would have gone to Nova Zembla at the time to have escaped the monotony of New York, which the effects of recent illness rendered more irksome. New York is among cities, what one of the lower order of molluscous animals, with a single intestinal canal, is to a creature of a higher development, with various organs, and full of veins and arteries. Up and down the Broadway passes the stream of life to and from the heart in Wall-street. In the narrow space from water to water on either side of this dry canal there is comparatively little animation, and nothing at all to reward the researches of a stranger.