concentration of
self, hovering over one of the last of the wonders of the world, that I
rushed to the Three Horse Railway, and soon forgot all my misery in
scrambling for a place; for there was no alternative. There were only
three carriages and one open cart on the rail; the three aristocratic
conveniences were full; and the coal-box--for it looked very like
one--was full also, of loafers and luggage; so I despaired of quitting
the Falls almost as much, by way of balance, as I rejoiced when they
once again met my ken.

But women are women all the world over; a black lady nursed Mungo Park,
when he was abandoned by the world; and a charitable she-Samaritan
crowded to make room for a disconsolate wayfarer.

I felt very much as the nigger's parrot at New York did.

Blacky was selling a parrot, and a gentleman asked him what the bird
could do. Could he speak well? "No, massa; no peaky at all." "Can he
sing?"--"No, massa; no peaky, no singy." "Why, what can he do, then,
that you ask twenty dollars for him?" "Oh! massa, golly, he thinky
dreadful much." So, when the daughter of Eve made way for me in the
rail-car, why I thinky very much, that, wherever a stranger meets
unexpected kindness, it is sure to be a woman that offers it.

There were the usual host of American travellers in the cars; and as one
generally gets a fund of anecdote and amusement on these occasions, from
their habits of communicativeness, I shall put the English reader in
possession of the meaning of words he often sees in the perusal of
American newspapers and novels which I gathered.

New York is the Empire State, and with the following comprises Yankee
land, which word Yankee is most properly a corruption of Yengeese, the
old Indian word for English; so that, by parity of reasoning, John Bull
is, after all, a Yankee.

Massachusetts The Bay State, Steady Habits.
Rhode Island Plantation State.
Vermont Banner State, or Green Mountain Boys.
New Hampshire The Granite State.
Connecticut Freestone State.
Maine Lumber State.

These are the Yankees, _par excellence_; and it is not polite or even
civil for a traveller to consider or mention any of the other States as
labouring under the idea that they ever could, by any possibility, be
considered as Yankees; for, in the South, the word Yankee is almost
equivalent to a tin pedlar, a sharp, Sam Slick.

Pennsylvania is The Keystone State.
New Jer