"
He writes to his sister: "To-day has been as lovely as any day can hope to be
this side of Millennium; and I have been out strolling morning and afternoon,
far and wide, ever tempted onward by the delicious buoyant balm in the air
and pleasantly surprised in finding what a distance I could accomplish
without over fatigue." He rode horseback a great deal -- a form of exercise
he was especially fond of all his life.
In a letter to his father he refers to some work he is doing
in the library: "I have also managed to advance very largely
my conceptions of the Jacquerie through a history which I secured from
the Library of the Alamo Literary Society, -- a flourishing institution here
which is now building a hall to cost some thirteen thousand dollars,
and of which I have become a literary member." He has been reading
Michelet's "History of France" which "gives him the essence of an old book
which he had despaired of ever seeing, but which is the only authority extant,
-- save Froissart and a few others equally unreliable;
it is the chronicle of the `Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis'."
With Olmsted's book of travels as a model, he planned a series of articles
for a New York paper.
The only result, however, from these plans was a picturesque sketch
of San Antonio,* afterwards published in the "Southern Magazine".
This sketch is at once a history of San Antonio and a description
of the scenery and the people of that quaint city. "Over all
the round of aspects in which a thoughtful mind may view a city,"
he says in a typical passage, "it bristles with striking idiosyncrasies
and bizarre contrasts.
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