ural
implement. And in social intercourse I have often noticed needless
celerity in skating over ice that seemed to my ruder British sense
quite well able to bear any ordinary weight, as well as a certain
subtlety of allusiveness that appeared to exalt ingenuity of phrase at
the expense of common sense and common candour. Too high praise cannot
easily be given to the Boston Symphony Concerts; but it is difficult
to avoid a suspicion of affectation in the severe criticism one hears
of the conductor whenever he allows a little music of a lighter class
than usual to appear on the programme.

Boston is, in its way, as prolific of contrasts as any part of the
United States. There is certainly no more cultivated centre in the
country, and yet the letter _r_ is as badly maltreated by the Boston
scholar as by the veriest cockney. To the ear of Boston _centre_ has
precisely the same sound as the name of the heroine of Wagner's
"Flying Dutchman," and its most cultivated graduates speak of Herbert
Spenc_ah_'s Data_r_ of Ethics. The critical programmes of the Symphony
Concerts are prepared by one of the ablest of living musical critics,
and are scholarly almost to excess; yet, as the observant Swiss
critic, M. Wagniere, has pointed out, their refined and subtle text
has to endure the immediate juxtaposition of the advertisements of
tea-rooms and glove-sellers. Boston has the deserved reputation of
being one of the best-governed cities in America, yet some of its
important streets seldom see a municipal watering-cart, dust flies in
clouds both summer and winter, and myriads of life-endangering
bicycles shoot through its thoroughfares at night without lamps. The
Boston matron holds up her hands in sanctified horror at the freedom
of Western manners, and yet it is a local saying, founded on a solid
basis of fact, that Kenney & Clark (a well-known firm of livery-stable
keepers) are the only chaperon that a Boston girl needs in going to or
from a ball. The Bostonians are not the least intelligent of mortals,
and yet I know no other city in America which is content with such an
anomalous system of hack hire, where no reduction in rate is made for
the number of persons. One person may drive in a comfortable two-horse
brougham to any point within Boston proper for 50 cents; two persons
pay $1, three persons $1.50, and so on. My advice to a quartette of
travellers visiting Boston is to hire _four_ carriages at once and _go
in a procession_