selves
to break the monotony of line, and lend, as it were, a peculiar texture
to the scene; to say nothing of the oportunities they afford for the
display of multifarious shreds and patches of colour. Then the houses
themselves are often brightly, not to say loudly, painted; so that in
the clear, sparkling atmosphere characteristic of New York, the most
squalid slum puts on a many-coloured Southern aspect, which suggests
Naples or Marseilles rather than the back streets of any English city.
Add to this that the inhabitants are largely of Southern origin, and are
apt, whenever the temperature will permit, to carry on the main part of
their daily lives out of doors; and you can understand that, appalling
as poverty may be in New York, the average slum is not so dank, dismal,
and suicidally monotonous as a street of a similar status in London.

"The whole city," says Mr. Steevens, "is plastered, and papered, and
painted with advertisements;" and he instances the huge "H-O" (whatever
that may mean) which confronts one as one sails up the harbour, and the
omnipresent "Castoria" placards. Here Mr. Steevens shows symptoms of the
note-taker's hyperaesthesia. The facts he states are undeniable, but the
implication that advertisement is carried to greater excess in New York
than in London and other European cities seems to me utterly groundless.
The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, for
instance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c., painted
all over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches to
Paris; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminated
advertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the august
spectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of
"Castoria" have occupied nearly every blank wall that is visible from
Brooklyn Bridge; but their advertisements are so far from garish that I
should scarcely have noticed them had not Mr. Steevens called my
attention to them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are unknown in New
York; so are the flashing out-and-in electric advertisements which make
night hideous in London. One or two large steady-burning advertisements
irradiate Madison Square of an evening; but being steady they are
comparatively inoffensive. Twenty years ago, when I crossed the
continent from San Francisco, I noticed with disgust the advertisements
stencilled on every second rock in the canyons of Nevada, and defacing