“Albany is no despicable place. To be sure it is irregular and without form. Its houses are generally old and poor-looking—its streets are rather dirty—but there are many exceptions. A part of the town is very high, overlooking the river in a very pleasant manner, and affording many fine seats. Some handsome buildings ornament the town. The Dutch Reformed Church and the new State Bank would not disgrace State Street (Boston). Here are all sorts of people, both Greek and Jew, Englishman and Dutchman, Negro and Indian. Almost everybody speaks English occasionally, though I have heard them speak among themselves in a _lingo_ which I never learned even at the Indian Charity School. The river here is half a mile wide, that is, I should think so; and, if I think wrong, you: must look at Dr. Morse and correct me.” The cosmopolitan character of Albany nearly eighty years since, when it probably contained not over five thousand inhabitants, is certainly rather amazing, and I can conceive the modern Albanian reading the description given above with considerable surprise. But Daniel was at an age and in a state of inexperience in which everything new is wonderful, and he certainly saw everything under very pleasant circumstances. From a letter written by his sister it appears that the young law student was paid seven dollars a day for his company by his rich and eccentric companion, who, if he lived to know of Webster’s eminence, probably concluded that the price was by no means exorbitant. In the letter of Sally Webster, already referred to, there is a passage which will amuse my young readers. “Before I have finished my nonsense I must tell you that our neighbors opposite the door fought a duel the other day, one with the gridiron, the other with the candlestick. The female, however, came off victorious, and he, with all speed, ran here with some lint and rum, to be applied immediately, for he was bleeding to death with a wound in his head caused by the gridiron.” It is evident that if the women of New Hampshire were not strong-minded, there were some who were strong-armed, and calculated to strike terror in an average husband.