-car platform. The conductor gathers from our
conversation that we have just landed from the English steamer, and he
at once overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in New York.
"I s'pose you've heard," he says, "that Kipling has been very ill?" Yes,
we had heard of his illness before we left England. "He's pulling
through now, though," says the conductor with heartfelt satisfaction.
That, too, we had ascertained on board. "He ought to be the next
poet-laureate," our friend continues eagerly; "_he_ don't follow no
beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every time, right through;
and a mighty good road, too." He then proceeded to make some remarks,
which in the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about
"carpet-bag knights." I gathered that he held a low opinion of the
present wearer of the bays, and confounded him (not inexcusably) with
one or other of his titled compeers. My companion and I were too much
taken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain our friend's opinions on
Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli.
Think of it! We have travelled three thousand miles to find a
tram-conductor whose eyes glisten as he tells us that Kipling is better,
and who discusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the question
of the English poet-laureateship! Could anything be more marvellous or
more significant? Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean of
less account than the Straits of Dover?

This was indeed a welcome to the New World. Fate could not have devised
a more ingenious and at the same time tactful way of making us feel at
home; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus conductor is scarcely the
authority one would turn to for enlightened views upon the Laureateship.
The mere fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's existence
struck us as surprising enough, until we learned that the poet of Tommy
Atkins is at the present moment quite the most famous person in the
United States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins were
posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets
asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an
antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a
case of "Kipling understood."

At a low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the nigger
corner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divined
from the refrain, "And the tom-