us sensibility." Another of them said that "my figure was
spare almost to attenuation." America soon remedied that. I began to put
on flesh before I had been in the country a week, and it was during my
fifth American tour that I became really fat for the first time in my
life.

When we landed I drove to the Hotel Dam, Henry to the Brevoort House.
There was no Diana on the top of the Madison Square Building then. The
building did not exist, to cheer the heart of a new arrival as the first
evidence of _beauty_ in the city. There were horse trams instead of
cable cars, but a quarter of a century has not altered the peculiarly
dilapidated carriages in which one drives from the dock, the muddy
side-walks, and the cavernous holes in the cobble-paved streets. Had the
elevated railway, the first sign of _power_ that one notices after
leaving the boat, begun to thunder through the streets? I cannot
remember New York without it.

I missed then, as I miss now, the numberless _hansoms_ of London plying
in the streets for hire. People in New York get about in the cars,
unless they have their own carriages. The hired carriage has no reason
for existing, and when it does, it celebrates its unique position by
charging two dollars (8_s._) for a journey which in London would not
cost fifty cents (2_s._)!

I cried for two hours at the Hotel Dam! Then my companion, Miss
Harries, came bustling in with: "Never mind! here's a piano!" and sat
down and played "Annie Laurie" very badly until I screamed with
laughter. Before the evening came my room was like a bower of roses, and
my dear friends in America have been throwing bouquets at me in the same
lavish way ever since. I had quite cheered up when Henry came to take me
to see some minstrels who were performing at the Star Theater, the very
theater where in a few days we were to open. I didn't understand many of
the jokes which the American comedians made that night, but I liked
their dry, cool way of making them. They did not "hand a lemon" or
"skiddoo" in those days; American slang changes as quickly as thieves'
slang, and only "Gee!" and "Gee-whiz!" seem to be permanent.

There were very few theaters in New York when we first went there. All
that part of the city which is now "up town" did not exist, and what was
then "up" is now more than "down" town. The American stage has changed
almost as much. In those days their most distinguished actors were
playing Shakespeare or old comedy, and