“After our banquet, the gentleman took us up into a fine spacious bed-chamber, with desirable bedding and very costly chintz curtains. We enjoyed a sound night’s rest, and arose between seven and eight the next morning, and were entertained with a good breakfast; returned many thanks for the unrestrained friendship and liberality, and departed therefrom, fully purposed to direct our course for Boston, which was not more than seven miles farther. Here all the land was strewed with plenty, the orchards were replete with apple-trees and pears; they had cider-presses in the centre of their orchards, and great quantities of fine cider, and any person might become a partaker thereof for the mere trouble of asking. We soon entered Boston, a commodious, beautiful city, with seventeen spired meetings, the dissenting religion being then established in that part of the world. I resided here for the space of four months, and lodged with Captain Seaborn at Deacon Townshend’s; deacon of the North Meeting, and by trade a blacksmith.” He gives a glowing and beautiful description of the high moral and religious character of Boston; here also he met with a stroke of good fortune in receiving some arrears of salvage for a vessel he had assisted in saving before his last wreck. Such are specimens of the interest and entertainment afforded in the earlier parts of this pleasant piece of autobiography. But we must hasten past his adventures, both in the island of Antigua and among the islands of the Mediterranean. It is not wonderful that the great sufferings and toils of Silas should, even at a very early period of life, prostrate his health, and subject him to repeated vehement attacks of illness. He was but twenty-three when he married; still, however, a sailor, and destined yet for some wild experiences on the seas. Not long, however. A married life disposed him for a home life, and he accepted, while still a very young man, the position of a schoolmaster, beneath the patronage of a Lady Luther, in the county of Essex. He was not in this position very long. Silas, although an unconverted man, must have had strong religious feelings; and the clergyman of the parish, fond of smoking and drinking with him—and it may well be conceived what an entertaining companion Silas must have been in those days, with his budget of adventures—ridiculed him for his faith in the Scriptures and his belief in Bible theology. This so shocked Silas, that, making no special profession of religion, he yet separated himself from the clergyman’s company, and shortly after he left that neighbourhood, and again sought his fortune, but without any very cheerful prospects, in London.