ed
to read their home newspapers in greater comfort than at the existing
American reading-rooms, and would, moreover, come into easy contact with
sympathetically-minded Englishmen, to their mutual pleasure and profit.
Such a club might, in process of time, become a potent factor in
international relations, and form a new bond of union, of quite
appreciable strength, between the two countries.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote G: I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtain
in America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few days
in New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's shop in the
basement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen cents to be shaved,
and gave the operator nothing; but at my second visit I found myself so
lowered upon by that portly and heavy-moustached citizen that I never
again ventured to place myself under his razor, but went to a more
distant establishment and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed,
certain classes of people--railroad conductors for instance--who do not
expect the tips which in England they consider their due; but, according
to my experience, the safe rule in America is, "when in doubt--tip."]

LETTER VIII

Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and Sleepy
Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the Americans--Detroit
and Buffalo--The "Middle West."

CHICAGO.

The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition on
American hospitality which would have come in equally well with
reference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul
(an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons for
my rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be the
reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite me
with a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvious
truth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately English
town. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds the
State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God
was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's
hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best
achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have of
late years taken to decorating their places of worship, and Trinity
Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious
and beautif