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Another mansion, which N. P. Willis justly describes as "a fairy palace of taste and art," though not so extensive, was equally beautiful, and possessed a large winter-garden. This was approached by passing through a succession of very beautiful rooms, the walls of which were hung with paintings which would have delighted a connoisseur. It was a glass building with a high dome; a fine fountain was playing in the centre, and round its marble basin were orange, palm, and myrtle trees, with others from the tropics, some of them of considerable growth. Every part of the floor that was not of polished white marble was thickly carpeted with small green ferns. The gleam of white marble statues, from among the clumps of orange-trees and other shrubs, was particularly pretty; indeed, the whole had a fairy-like appearance about it. Such mansions as these were rather at variance with my ideas of republican simplicity; they contained apartments which would have thrown into the shade the finest rooms in Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace. It is not the custom for Americans to leave large fortunes to their children; their wealth is spent in great measure in surrounding themselves with the beautiful and the elegant in their splendid mansions; and it is probable that the adornments which have been collected with so much expense and trouble will be dispersed at the death of their present possessors.

I have often been asked, "How do the American ladies dress? Have they nice figures? Do they wear much ornament? What are their manners like? Are they highly educated? Are they domestic?" I will answer these questions as far as I am capable of doing so.