e visited I
have not gone to a single show-place, museum, or picture-gallery, save
one remarkable private collection in Baltimore. Of course I must also
except (a large exception!) the public libraries of Washington, Boston,
and Chicago, which are, in a very eminent sense, "show-places." Still,
it seems somewhat remarkable (does it not?) that in a country which is
understood in Europe to be monotonous and unattractive to travellers, I
should have spent two months not only of intellectual interest but of
aesthetic enjoyment, without once, except in a chance moment of idleness,
feeling the least inclination to fall back upon, the treasures of
European art which it undoubtedly contains. I have even ignored the
marvels of nature. I passed within twenty miles of Niagara; I saw the
serried icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the cataract; and I did
not go to see them plunge over. In the first place, I had been there
before; in the second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hours
of Chicago, where I wanted, not six hours less, but six weeks more.

Before saying farewell--a fond farewell!--to New York, let me supplement
my first impressions with my last. The most maligned of cities, I called
it; and truly I said well. Here is even the judicious Mr. J.F. Muirhead
of "Baedeker," betrayed by his passion for antithesis into describing
New York as "a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears and her
toes out at her boots." This was written, to be sure, in 1890, and may
have been true in its day; for it takes an American city much less than
a decade to belie a derogatory epigram. Now, at any rate, New York has
had her shoes mended to some purpose. She is not the best paved city in
the world, or even in America, but neither is she by any means the
worst; and her splendid system of electric and elevated railroads
renders her more independent of paving than any European city.
Fifth-avenue is paved to perfection; Broadway and Sixth-avenue are not;
but at any rate the streets are not for ever being hauled up and laid
down again, like some of our leading London thoroughfares. Holborn, for
example, may be ideally paved on paper, but its roadway is subject to
such incessant eruptions of one sort or another that it is in practice
a much more uncomfortable thoroughfare than any of the New York avenues.
For the rest, New York has a copious and excellent water supply, which
London has not; it has a splendidly efficient fire-briga