To a lad such as I, bred in a quiet tho' prosperous colonial town, a walk through London was a revelation. Here in the Pall Mall the day was not yet begun, tho' for some scarce ended. I had not gone fifty paces from the hotel before I came upon a stout gentleman with twelve hours of claret inside him, brought out of a coffee-house and put with vast difficulty into his chair; and I stopped to watch the men stagger off with their load to St. James's Street. Next I met a squad of redcoated guards going to the palace, and after them a grand coach and six rattled over the Scotch granite, swaying to a degree that threatened to shake off the footmen clinging behind. Within, a man with an eagle nose sat impassive, and I set him down for one of the king's ministers. Presently I came out into a wide space, which I knew to be Charing Cross by the statue of Charles the First which stood in the centre of it, and the throat of a street which was just in front of me must be the Strand. Here all was life and bustle. On one hand was Golden's Hotel, and a crowded mail-coach was dashing out from the arch beneath it, the horn blowing merrily; on the other hand, so I was told by a friendly man in brown, was Northumberland House, the gloomy grandeur whereof held my eyes for a time. And I made bold to ask in what district were those who had dealings with the colonies. He scanned me with a puzzling look of commiseration. “Ye're not a-going to sell yereself for seven year, my lad?” said he. “I was near that myself when I was young, and I thank God' to this day that I talked first to an honest man, even as you are doing. They'll give ye a pretty tale,--the factors,--of a land of milk and honey, when it's naught but stripes and curses yell get.” And he was about to rebuke me hotly, when I told him I had come from Maryland, where I was born. “Why, ye speak like a gentleman!” he exclaimed. “I was informed that all talk like naygurs over there. And is it not so of your redemptioners?” I said that depended upon the master they got. “Then I take it ye are looking for the lawyers, who mostly represent the planters. And y e'll find them at the Temple or Lincoln's Inn.” I replied that he I sought was not an attorney, but a man of business. Whereupon he said that I should find all those in a batch about the North and South American Coffee House, in Threadneedle Street. And he pointed me into the Strand, adding that I had but to follow my nose to St. Paul's, and there inquire.