simple) and Messrs. Biddle and Anderson, of the Age, and several gentlemen from the Press, as his accomplished aides. Philadelphia is too well known to the country at large to require a description at my hands, even though my opportunities for "spying it out" had been sufficient to justify me in attempting that task. I shall, therefore, hurry through it and take my adieu of the public as an Excursionist.

The dinner spread at the Continental by direction of Mr. Childs did equal credit to the liberality of that gentleman and the cuisine of the house. The table was provided as though a brigade of hungry connoisseurs had been expected, and the wines that washed it down were of the finest French vintage. It is unnecessary to say that we dïd both meat and drink ample justice or that mirth and good humor were omni-prevalent. After dinner the carriages were again ordered for a drive through Fairmount by far the largest if not the finest Park in America. The various and manifold beauties of its lovely scenery were pointed out to us by our attentive and polite chaperones who directed the drivers to such spots as afforded the most charming views. After surveying about half the Park a halt was called at a small public house in the centre of the grounds where refreshments, with straws in them, were again served and where we loitered amid the refreshing shades until the declining sun warned us that it was time to return to the city. It was dark as we returned and the fireworks and pyrotechnics with which the people were testifying their devotion to the birthday of American liberty filled the air with a thousand brilliant and beautiful shapes of flame. An hour later one of the fiercest storms thai ever visited Philadelphia was raging over the city, carrying destruction and in some instances death before it. But heedless of the storm we paid our devotions to the banquet, which, like the dinner, had also been provided at the cost of the proprietor of the Public Ledger. At eleven o'clock we took leave of our warm hearted friends, and seating ourselves in a new car that had been provided for our exclusive use by the polite officers of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad sped southward to

THE MONUMENTAL CITY.

At that place our party disbanded with many expressions of mutual esteem and friendship, but above all with hearts full of thankfulness to the gallant old Major Hotchkiss, Traveling Agent of the Chesapeake and Ohio and Richmond and York River Railroads, for the pleasure they had received through the instrumentality of his untiring labor and potent personal influence. Long may he wave!

And now, we have said but the one-hundredth part of what we should have said, but we must close with paying a tribute that is due to Mr. W. H. H. Lynn, of the Staunton Vindicator, for the able manner in which he at all times presided over our body; and with congratulating the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and the Richmond and York River Railroad Companies, on having in their service a man who, with all his ability and energy, never loses sight of the interest of his employers.

COMMENTS OF THE PRESS.

From the Richmond Enquirer, Saturday, July 13, 1872:

A JUST ESTIMATE OF THE NORTHERN PEOPLE.

We like to see a man who can discard the narrow ideas of his provincial training and lay aside his native prejudices so far as to do justice, when he travels abroad in the world, to those he may meet with. This is a world in which good and bad are pretty well distributed everywhere, and in every nation or country we find them. It is natural for each to think his own people the best, and perhaps it is patriotic that he should; and so long as he remains, like Rasselas, shut up in the Happy Valley of his blissful ignorance, and only knows the world through the terrible accounts he receives of it from occasional travelers, he is not to be blamed if he believes all beyond the boundaries of his visual line outside barbarians; but once he ventures forth and sees for himself how kind and beneficent Providence has been to all, and how equally He has distributed his blessings. if his intellect be not wholly under the control of his prejudices, he must rise to a higher and more generous estimate of the diffused worth of humanity. Among the Editorial visitors to Pennsylvania and New York, who recently accompanied Colonel Hotchkiss, none seems to have profited more by the trip than Mr. James D. Morrison, the able Editor of the Rockbridge Citizen, and he has brought much of his knowledge home with him. In referring to the character of the people they visited, Mr. Morrison says:

"We had been taught to look upon these people as cold, selfish, and miserly-as forgetting the comforts and the amenities of life in their race after wealth. It is not so. We have never seen or imagined a country with such an air of competence and comfort every where, and in all of its appointments.

"It is a false notion that the fast people of the North do not enjoy life. They live more in one day than we do in a year. If they do hoard wealth they put it into a shape in which they and their families may derive from it the largest amount of happiness and the greatest degree of rational pleasure. Their houses and grounds are constructed and kept with neatness and taste, and supplied with every convenience and appliance both for use and to please the eye. We heard of their superior civilization, and in a material point of view, at least, it is superior. Their religion is, that the bounties of Providence bestowed upon them, and which they have taken hold of and by their industry and energy have developed and put into shape, are for their use and enjoyment, and they do use them to the fullest extent, and we are a half convert to their creed. We believe it is as sinful for us to leave buried and undeveloped all the treasures which are scattered around us on every side as it was to wrap the talent in a napkin and bury it in the earth. The difference is, we have received the five talents, they received the two and the one, and they have made them yield a thousand fold, whilst we have not had energy enough to dig a place to hide ours, and they lie around in the broad glare of open day, a living witness of our want of industry to make them breed with a profusion which would surprise the world and make our own beautiful section teem with wealth and the comforts which a proper use of it brings. The field is before us, the way is open. Everything and more

1317.

than these Northern people had is to our hands, and it will be to our shame and disgrace if we do not arouse ourselves and put them to the uses which the God of Providence designed them for."

The following is taken from the Richmond Whig:

THE NORTH AND SOUTH.

We copy in this issue from the Philadelphia Ledger a pertinent and well considered article relative to the recent excursion of Southern Editors to New York and adjacent States. There can be no doubt of the fact, inculcated by the Ledger, that the mingling of the people of the North and South in the manner indicated, would do more to dispel prejudices and strengthen the bond of brotherhood than any other method that could be devised, and chiefly from that conviction we have always favored and encouraged excursions from the South to the North or vice versa. Major Hotchkiss deserves much credit for originating and carrying out the Editorial Excursions of 1871 and 1872, and in granting to him full authority to make all the necessary arrangements, the authorites of the two railroad companies represented by Major Hotchkiss have exemplified their liberality in the most commendable manner. In a New York (State) paper received yesterday we find the following, among other resolutions, adopted by the New York Editorial Association:

RESOLVED, That it has given us a brotherly pleasure to meet our Editorial friends from the Southern States and exchange friendly greetings and social intercourse with them. As an association we have been glad to know them, to take them by the hand as citizens of a common country and members of the same fraternity, to listen to their patriotic speeches and to welcome them to the hospitality of the Empire State. For this high privilege we are indebted to the Union-loving and honest Major N. H. Hotchkiss, and the liberality of the Chesapeake and Ohio and Richmond and York River Railroads.

From the Philadelphia Ledger:

THE SOUTHERN EDITORS.

A few days ago a large party of "Southern Editors" passed through this city, after an extensive tour through Pennsylvania and adjoining States. During their brief visit to this city, the frequency of their allusions to what they had seen in our State or elsewhere in the North, indicating the great resources and power of this portion of their country, and of their allusions to the generous hospitality of their reception in all the places they visited, gave a new evidence of the great advantages resulting from travel and personal observation by intelligent men. We have no doubt that these gentlemen, educated and cultivated as they are, have gone home with opinions and sentiments of a character widely different from and far more just and accurate than those with which they left home a month ago. They have a higher conception of what is meant by the "United States," so far as the northern portion of their country is concerned; they have a better knowledge of the nature of that industry, enterprise, education, training and thrift which have developed the communities in these northern latitudes into rich and powerful Commonwealths; they have better understanding of the future possibilities of their own States, with their vast undeveloped resources, when they shall have applied to them the same processes and energies they saw in active operation in Pennsylvania and New York, and, in addition, they have found that the sharp experiences of the recent war have left no feeling of sectional hostility among the large numbers of people with whom they were brought into close social contact. We infer this not only from what they said, but from the manner which characterized the saying of it, and the natural ways in which their remarks cropped out in the course of