the slow motion of distant ones. Looking from
a right-hand window, for instance, the fences close by glide swiftly
backward, or to the right, while the distant hills not only do not
appear to move backward, but look by contrast with the fences near at
hand as if they were moving forward, or to the left; and thus the whole
landscape becomes a mighty wheel revolving about an imaginary axis
somewhere in the middle-distance.

My companions proposed to stay at one of the best-known and
longest-established of the New-York caravansaries, and I accompanied
them. We were particularly well lodged, and not uncivilly treated. The
traveller who supposes that he is to repeat the melancholy experience of
Shenstone, and have to sigh over the reflection that he has found "his
warmest welcome at an inn," has something to learn at the offices of
the great city hotels. The unheralded guest who is honored by mere
indifference may think himself blessed with singular good-fortune. If
the despot of the Patent-Annunciator is only mildly contemptuous in his
manner, let the victim look upon it as a personal favor. The coldest
welcome that a threadbare curate ever got at the door of a bishop's
palace, the most icy reception that a country cousin ever received at
the city mansion of a mushroom millionaire, is agreeably tepid, compared
to that which the Rhadamanthus who dooms you to the more or less
elevated circle of his inverted Inferno vouchsafes, as you step up to
enter your name on his dog's-eared register. I have less hesitation
in unburdening myself of this uncomfortable statement, as on this
particular trip I met with more than one exception to the rule.
Officials become brutalized, I suppose, as a matter of course. One
cannot expect an office clerk to embrace tenderly every stranger who
comes in with a carpet-bag, or a telegraph operator to burst into tears
over every unpleasant message he receives for transmission. Still,
humanity is not always totally extinguished in these persons. I
discovered a youth in a telegraph office of the Continental Hotel, in
Philadelphia, who was as pleasant in conversation, and as graciously
responsive to inoffensive questions, as if I had been his childless
opulent uncle and my will not made.

On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with
sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of
the car maybe made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a
tra