Returning to Richmond, I found that consequential little town still in a state of the- greatest alarm. The whole ordinary course of law had been set aside, and a self-constituted committee of vigilance assuming to dictate to the citizens what newspapers they should be allowed to receive, and what books to read, or to have in their houses. At such a moment, it was very easy to fall under suspicion; and unfortunately, just before setting out on my late excursion, I had drawn attention to myself at the dinner table, by an unlucky jest at the fright into which the great state of Virginia had been thrown by a few _ picture books; for it was the cuts with which some of the abolition tracts were illustrated which seemed to inspire the greatest alarm. My coming back redoubled their suspicions. I had hardly had time to wash and dress myself, when I was waited upon by three grave-looking gentlemen, among the most respectable citizens of the town, as the landlord assured me, and in terms polite, but very peremptory, they required me to make my immediate appearance before the vigilance committee, then sitting-in the town.
I had brought letters to a merchant of the place, whom I found, like most of the merchants in the southern towns, to be a northern man by birth, and from whom, on the presentation of my letters on my first arrival, I had received the usual attentions. With some difficulty, I obtained leave from the bailiffs of the vigilance committee to send for this leman, and also for another, whom I had met at his house at dinner, and whom I understood to be a leading lawyer. The merchant soon sent me an apology for not coming. His wife had suddenly been seized with an alarming sickness, which made it impossible for him to leave her. But when I read
