o the
streets, you find yourself amid a transformation scene of wonderful
activity and brilliancy. Some of the streets, in fact most of them in
which business is transacted, resemble strongly the shop scenes in
harlequinades, for the Americans have carried advertising so far that
their streets of shops, and especially those in New York, are simply
museums of grotesque advertisement.

Gigantic hands advertising gloves, huge hats, boots, and animals form a
heterogeneous collection of anything but beautiful models, gilded and
painted in all the most flaming colours, piled on top of each other on
every house from street level to attic, each tradesman vieing with the
other in screeching to the public to "Buy! buy!! buy!!!" by means of the
curiosities and monstrosities of the advertiser's art.

A few years ago a celebrated Continental authoress came to London for
the first time, in the height of the season, to stay a week in order to
get her impressions for a book she was writing, in which the heroine had
flown to London for that period of time. She went everywhere and saw
everything; just before she left London I asked her what had impressed
her most of all she had seen. In reply she said, "The fact that the
drivers of public vehicles never cracked their whips!"

If I were asked what impressed me most about New York, I should not say
Brooklyn Bridge, or Wall Street, or the Elevated Railway, but the number
of chiropodists' advertisements! They confront you at every turn; these
huge gilded models of feet outside the chiropodists' establishments,
some painted realistically and many adorned with bunions, are destined
to meet your eye as you stroll through the streets. Should you look up,
you will see them suspended from the first floor window, or painted on
canvas on the front of the house. Avoid the shops altogether, and you
are bound to knock up against some gentleman in the gutter encased in a
long white waterproof, on which is portrayed the inevitable foot and the
name and address of the chiropodist.

[Illustration: CHIROPODY.]

Now why is this? The Americans have pretty feet and small hands, both
men and women. Is it vanity, and do they squeeze their feet into boots
too small for them, or are their pedal coverings badly made, or does the
secret lie in the rough pavements of their thoroughfares? I am glad to
say that I never required the services of a foot doctor, but I know that
my feet have ached many and many a time