The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-28
THAcKERAY IN AMERICA.

Accompanied by his secretary, Eyre Grove, young English artist Thack- cray sailed for Boston, October 3o lsol' in the steamer Canada. Just as she was casting off her lines a package was placed aboard the Cunarder containing letters from his London publishers ana the first copies of Henry Esmonu'
 Among his fellow passengers were James Russell Lowell, fresh from Italy, and Arthur Hugh Clough, who as d youth had spent several years III thls country. The voyage was rough one, and in one of his letters the Oxford scholar mentions that the great writer was poor sailor also that he had been chatting with "Titmarsh" when con- fined to his berth. On the occasion or the usual entertainment during the last evening aboard the Canada, atter leaving Halifax, Thackeray's health was proposed, to which he responded III an amusing and appropriate manner; then Lowell's, who concluded by pro- posing the health of Clough, the Eng { fish poet. The steamer arrived at her Boston dock al sunset. and an hour 1 later Thackeray, with Clough ana ms artist secretary, was enjoying his first American dinner at the Fremont House. Among the earliest to welcome him the next morning was William H. Prescott, with whom he dined on the following day and to whom he became greatly attached. In one of his first letters | from Boston Thackeray writes: MT. Prescott the historian is delightful. :. It Is like the society of a rich ca thedral town in England-grave and | decorous, and very pleasant and well read" A friend met Thackeray in Bos- | ton street with the three volumes of "Henry Esmond" tucked under his arm.
 Here is the very best l can do,' ne said, "and I am carrying it to Prescott as a reward of merit for having given me my first dinner in America. l stand by this book, and am willing to leave 1t where I go as my card"
 Thackeray arrived in New York from
 Boston on the 18th of November, read
 ing on the way the Shabby Genteel | Story" of a dozen years before, Which i he purchased on the train from "a rosy l checked little peripatetic book-mer- 1 chant" who accosted him with "Thack- i eray's Works!" quite unaware that he ! was standing before the great author himself. His first visitor at the Claren- don Hotel. on the evening of his arrival,
 was George Bancroft, who surprised
 Thackeray with the statement that III
 May, 1922, he had carried compllmenta- " messages from Goethe at Weimar 10 1 Lord Byron who was then living III
 Pisa. As a memorial of the young | Amerlcan's visit copy of Don Juan,'
 which he received from It's author at
 that time. may be seen in the LenoX
 Library, with the inscription, MT.
 George Bancroft from Noel Byron'\
 Two subsequent evenings were spent | by Thackeray in witnessing Home
 spirit rapping manifestations at Ban- i croft's house. and in listening to an ad- 1 dress delivered by the historian before
 the New York Historical society.
 Among the audience of about twelve
 hundred that filled every seat in pr
 Chapins Universalist church on the
 east side of Broadway, little below
 Prince street on Friday evening, NO
 yen1ber 19, 1852, were an unusual num-
 Der of literary, artistic and professlonai
 celebrities. Besides an imposing array
 of social leaders, the writer recalls
 Bancroft and Bryant, Halleck and IT,
 wing, OConor and Verplank, President
 King and Professor Morse, with the eo-
 itors Greeley, Morris Webb and Wlllls'
 Thackeray appeared in the pulpit
 promptly at eight o'clock. and was cor
 diallv welcomed by the sympathetic
 audience. He seemed "a very castle of
 man. as Irving said of Fenimore
 Cooper. His breadth of shoulders was
 quite in Keeping with his six feet three
 inches He was in his forty-second
 year, but his silvered hair ana golo
 spectacles gave him the appearance o1
 a person past fifty. His subject was
 Swift. His exceedingly fine presence
 combined with his charm of manner
 and the melody of his rich tenor voice
 created most favorable impression
 Never rising into the declamatory, ths