Hurrygraphs Author:Nathaniel Parker Willis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER FROM NEW BEDFORD. Effect of Steamer Starting from the Wharf—Piece of a Town afloat—The Phenixed Boat—Cost of Empire State—Vocation of Captain—Spectacle... more » of Supper in a Cabin Two Hundred and Fifty Feet Long—Effect on Manners—Sumptuous Entertainment for Fifty Cents—Excuse for Statistics —New Bedford and its Wealth—Climate and Industry—Geographic Peculiarities—" Placer" for Beauty—The Acushnet—Old Fashioned Prejudices and Modern Luxury—Statesmanlike Remedy for Decline of Local Trade and Industry—Proposed Visit to the Raised Leg of New England, etc., etc. My Dear Morris :—If you have any recollection of what the boys call " running kittledys"—prying off and jumping upon cakes of ice and navigating them, when the frozen river is breaking up into floating islands, in the Spring—you can understand what I mean when I say that one of these vast steamboats, leaving the wharf, seems to me like a whole street cake-ing off into the river. I walked the length of the " Empire State," yesterday, before starting, and, when she glided away from the pier alongside of the Battery, it struck me like the lower end of the town going adrift—like " Ward No. 1" getting under weigh. And, really, A STEAMBOAT CAPTAIN. this gi at flotilla comprises almost as much of a town as one wants—quite as much, at least, as one wishes to take into the rountry in August—drawing-rooms, sleeping-rooms, and kitchens, stables and baggage-rooms, barber's shop and refectory, lounging places and promenades, ladies to wait upon and servants to wait on us, goods and merchandise of every description, supper, society and something to see. If we could pack up a portion of the city, as we do a portion of our wardrobe, aud take it travelling with us as " baggage," we should hardly want more. The " Empire State" is ...« less