Beyond Newgate, Bull Run was to be crossed. Having passed that famous stream, the pedagogue and peripatetic, after a mile or two, came to the Ball plantation. An old negro showed him the way, who related, among many other things, that when he was a young buck he made as much as fifteen dollars one winter as capitation money--“Master, I don’t tell you a word of a lie”--levied on the wolves of the region. At Mr. Ball’s: “In my way through the garden I passed two young ladies gathering roses, who, however immured in the woods, were clad with not less elegance than the most fashionable females of Europe. I asked them whether Mr. Ball was at home. They replied that their papa was in the parlour, and with much sweetness of manner directed me by the shortest path to the house. Mr. Ball[O] received me with undissembled accents of joy. He said he had long expected my coming and was gratified at last. I was not a little delighted with the suavity of his manners and the elegance of his conversation. I now opened what some called an Academy and others an Old Field School; and, however it may be thought that content was never felt within the walls of a seminary, I for my part experienced an exemption from care and was not such a fool as to measure the happiness of my condition by what others thought of it. Of the boys I can not speak in very encomiastic terms. Of my female students there was none equal in capacity to Virginia. Geography was one of our favorite studies. I often addressed the rose of May in an appropriate ode-- _TO VIRGINIA, LOOKING OVER A MAP_ “Powerful as the magic wand, Displaying far each distant land, Is that angel hand to me, When it points each realm and sea. “Plac’d in geographic mood, Smiling, shew the pictur’d flood, Where along the Red Sea coast Waves o’erwhelm’d the Egyptian host. “Again the imag’d scene survey, The rolling Hellespontic Sea, Whence the Persian from the shore Proudly pass’d his millions o’er. “And behold to nearer view, Here thy own lov’d country too-- Virginia! which produc’d to me A pupil fair and bright like thee.” What with a horse, the artisanry of verse, a mild philosophy, and the business of his office, John Davis spent three months very agreeably on Bull Run, within sight of the Blue Ridge. Then a New Jersey farmer of the neighborhood discovered that his eldest boy wrote a better hand than the teacher. Davis resigned the academy to the carpenter of the plantation. “I now once more seized my staff and walked towards Baltimore. It was a killing circumstance to separate from Virginia (the student of geography), but who shall persume to contend against fate? _Phyllida amo ante alias, nam me discedere flevit._ I embarked August, 1802, in the good ship Olive, Captain Norman, lying at Baltimore, for Cowes, in the Isle of Wight.” LIST OF TRAVELS