n their marshes,
and the lamps burning far and near along populous streets; forests that
disappear like snow; countries larger than Britain that are cleared and
settled, one man running forth with his household gods before another,
while the bear and the Indian are yet scarce aware of their approach;
oil that gushes from the earth; gold that is washed or quarried in the
brooks or glens of the Sierras; and all that bustle, courage, action,
and constant kaleidoscopic change that Walt Whitman has seized and set
forth in his vigorous, cheerful, and loquacious verses.

Here I was at last in America, and was soon out upon New York streets,
spying for things foreign. The place had to me an air of Liverpool; but
such was the rain that not Paradise itself would have looked inviting.
We were, a party of four, under two umbrellas; Jones and I and two
Scots lads, recent immigrants, and not indisposed to welcome a
compatriot. They had been six weeks in New York, and neither of them had
yet found a single job or earned a single halfpenny. Up to the present
they were exactly out of pocket by the amount of the fare.

The lads soon left us. Now I had sworn by all my gods to have such a
dinner as would rouse the dead; there was scarce any expense at which I
should have hesitated; the devil was in it but Jones and I should dine
like heathen emperors. I set to work, asking after a restaurant; and I
chose the wealthiest and most gastronomical-looking passers-by to ask
from. Yet, although I had told them I was willing to pay anything in
reason, one and all sent me off to cheap, fixed-price houses, where I
would not have eaten that night for the cost of twenty dinners. I do not
know if this were characteristic of New York, or whether it was only
Jones and I who looked un-dinerly and discouraged enterprising
suggestions. But at length, by our own sagacity, we found a French
restaurant, where there was a French waiter, some fair French cooking,
some so-called French wine, and French coffee to conclude the whole. I
never entered into the feelings of Jack on land so completely as when I
tasted that coffee.

I suppose we had one of the "private rooms for families" at Reunion
House. It was very small; furnished with a bed, a chair, and some
clothes-pegs; and it derived all that was necessary for the life of the
human animal through two borrowed lights; one, looking into the passage,
and the second opening, without sash, into another apartment, wh