9
Manchester Monday June 11, 1859
My dear Fanny,
I am at last out of the regions of wonder
and romance, and dragging in the swamps of reality
and fact. For the present therefore my notes will have
little interest for your mother and yourself except
by assuring you the assurance they imply that I am
well and safe. My quite refined excursion into
Scotland ending in fatiguing travels through immense
manufacturing establishments wearied and so much
that I remained indoors chiefly yesterday. Mr
Stell is a retired American merchant, Mrs Stell
is of Baltimore and her mother, an adopted
child of ten and a bright intellectual female
relative of Baltimore make up the family. I ap-
prehended that slavery prejudices might operate
against me, but I find the tone of this family like
that of every other person in England more intolerant
of slavery than even my own chastened convictions.
I have been in the busy town to day. My first
visit was to the most interesting of all inventors
and mechanics I have ever seen – Mr Whitworth.
I think a thousand men are at work with the aid
of steam power in his workshops, and the whole

10
scene is
quite as noiseless
as a village school or
the Senate Chamber at Washington.
In two miles expressed with scarcely
more than two words he stated that the
perfection of machinery and of course its efficacy
depended chiefly on two things 1st. to secure perfect
smoothness or equality of surfaces which are to be brought
into contact, and secondly in the accuracy of machinery. He
showed me how surfaces apparently perfectly flat could
be made more completely only by the use of the hand
instead of machinery, and then he showed me a noble
machine which he had devised by which he will
show you and render perfectly apparent the most minute
measurement even to the one millionth part of an inch.
From Mr Whitworth I went to the Mayors and
the town clerks, whom I found spirited and intelligent
men, and there I closed the morning with an interview
with the Editor of the Manchester Examiner, the great
organ of the party of progress in England. And now
I am in my chamber at the Stells, resting preparatory
to a dinner party at which I am to meet the more famous
Gentlemen of this great city. I have ordered my letters
to be sent to this place from London and tomorrow
I shall have the knowledge of how a fortnight
ago your mother yourself and all
my dear friends are or rather
how they were a fortnight
ago.