I met at his house divers celebrities, as indeed I did at many other splendid mansions, especially at the Mayor's, Mr.Kingsland: I hear he is the third personage in rank in the United States, and he lives with the grandeur of our London Lord Mayor.
I went with him on the 22d of March 1851 to one of the most magnificent affairs I ever attended.

Here is an extract from my home-letter journal of same date:-- "Mr.Kingsland, the Mayor, came early to invite me to a grand day, being the inauguration of the Croton Waterworks.

Went off with him at 10 from the City Hall in a carriage and four followed by forty new omnibuses and four, some with six horses, and caparisoned with coloured feathers and little flags, besides a number of private carriages; a gay procession, nearly a mile long, containing all the legislature and magnates of New York State and of the city--several hundreds." They visited in turn divers public institutions, and at most of them I had to speak or to recite my ballads, especially at a Blind Asylum, where, after an address from a blind lady (the name was Crosby), "at the request of the Governor of the State and the Mayor, I answered on the spur of the moment in a speech and a stave that took the room by storm," &c.

&c.

And so on for other institutions, and to the opening of the Croton Aqueduct.