My first acquaintance with N.P. Willis arose in this, way. He had (as I have mentioned before) been in the habit of quoting month after month in his own paper passages from my "Proverbial Philosophy," believing that book to be an obscure survival of the Shakespearean era, and that its author had been dead some three centuries. When he came to town, I called upon him at his lodging near Golden Square, walking in plainly "_sans tambour et trompette_" but simply announcing the then young-looking author as his old Proverbialist! I never saw a man look so astonished in my life; he turned pale, and vowed that he wouldn't believe that this youth could be his long-departed prophet; however, I soon convinced him that I was myself, and carried him off to dine in Burlington Street. Afterwards we improved into a friendship till he went the way of all flesh in Heaven's good time.
Perhaps another notable matter to record is that President Fillmore invited me to meet his Cabinet at dinner in the White House, and that I there "met and conversed immensely with Daniel Webster, a colossal unhappy beetle-browed dark-angel-looking sort of man, with a depth for good and evil in his eye unfathomable; also with Home Secretary Corwen, a coarse but clever man, who had been a waggon-driver; and with Graham, Secretary of the Navy, and with Conrad, Secretary at War, both gentlemen and having lofty foreheads; and with many more, including above all the excellent President," &c. &c. It was no small honour to meet such men on equal terms.
If I allowed myself to quote more from my first visit to America, it could only amount to variations of the same theme,--the great kindness of all around me to one, however humble, who had shown himself their friend both by tongue and pen. My books and my ballads had made the way to their affections, and so the author thereof reaped their love.
A little before my departure on this first visit this notable matter happened, and I will relate it in an extract from my last letter homeward.