d me into such a place,
offering to pay me half my losses when he returned to town, and begging
me not to say a word about the subject when I got back to London, as it
might get him into a row. I must say, so great has been my experience of
honour among men, and never having been in New York before, I believed in
that young man till we parted, as I did not see how he could have gained
all the knowledge he displayed of myself and movements unless he had
travelled with me as he said, and had never heard of Bunkum men. I had
not gone far, however, before I was again shaken by the hand by a
gentlemanly young fellow, who claimed to have met me at Montreal, where
he had been introduced to me as the son of Sir H--- A---. He had been
equally lucky--had got two books, and, as he was going back to Quebec
that very afternoon, would give me one of them if I would ride with him
as far as his lodgings. Innocently I told him my little tale. He
advised me to say nothing about it, as I had been breaking the law and
might get myself into trouble, and then suddenly recollecting he must get
his ticket registered, and saying that he would overtake me directly,
left me to go as far as the place of our appointed rendezvous alone.
Then the truth flashed on me that both my pretended friends were rogues,
and that I had been the victim of what, in New York, they call the Bunkum
men, who got 300 dollars out of Oscar Wilde, and a good deal more out of
Mr. Adams, formerly American Ambassador in England. I had never heard of
them, I own, and both the rogues had evidently got so much of my history
by heart that I might well fancy that they were what they described
themselves to be. As to finding them out to make them regorge that was
out of the question. Landlords and policemen seemed to take it quite as
a matter of course that the stranger in New York is thus to be done.
Since then I have hardly spoken to a Yankee, nor has a Yankee spoken to
me. I now understand why the Yankees are so reserved, and never seem to
speak to each other. They know each other too well. I now understand
also how the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can't sleep at
nights. We are not all saints in London. Chicago boasts that it is the
wickedest city in the world, but I question whether New York may not
advance a stronger claim to the title. Yet what an Imperial city is New
York! How endless is its restless life! and how it runs over with the
lust of th