forty different divisions, not only rings the bell, but mentions what it is you want at the same time. For instance, you can say, "Bring my_boots"; "Apollinaris water"; "Morning or evening papers," &c., &c. It can be imagined what a saving of labour is gained by this device. About the only necessary thing I did not notice on the bellchart was Bring a cup of tea." Instead one had to ring for "Dining-room waiter," which was a waste of time. There are several other customs in American hotels, some of which have their decided advantages to some folks. One of them is that you can eat nearly all day long, if you so choose, from an enormous variety of dishes, the price paid for your room covering everything. Another habit is that of serving iced water with every meal. This suits some people better than others, and not only the Americans but the Canadians like it. No sooner does a person take a seat at table for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, than a waiter appears instantly with a tumblerful of blocks of ice and water, which is placed by his side, no matter if outside the ground is white with snow. And everything is iced that can be iced the oysters are served up to you on powdered ice, and at times they even ice the claret. On the other hand, the rooms are kept at a tremendous heat by means of steam-pipes. A strange anomaly this, and not good for the health. The effects of these unhealthy practices are plainly evident in the faces of the women. They are mostly very pallid and rather thinlooking; and though pleasant looks are common, and a certain amount of elegance by no means rare, real beauty, as we understand the word, among the ladies of New York is most conspicuous by its complete absence. This was a disappointment, for having frequently heard of la belle Américaine, and, indeed, having in my time met a few very pretty American ladies on the Continent, it was only natural to expect la belle Américaine existing in New York itself. But after having looked for her in vain, in the Opera, in the hotels, in the streets, in the tram-cars along the avenues, driving in the Central Park, or in the trains in the elevated railways, we were obliged at the end of eight days reluctantly to acknowledge that beauty among New York ladies is a "fraud." During the whole of those eight days we "located" only five handsome women: they turned out to be two English, one French, and two Americans. It is to be hoped that Boston and the other States manufacture a better supply of the article than New York: it is my firm belief that they do. In fact, we found many real beauties afterwards in Chicago and in California, especially at San Francisco. But as regards dress the New York girls are magnificent, many of them spending annually over £1000 on their attire. The elevated railroads that I have mentioned above are a great eyesore to the city of New York, but they are wonderful things all the same: they run chiefly north and south along some of the avenues. By their means, and by the road tram-cars, that also travel chiefly north and south along the avenues, and run exactly underneath them for miles along Sixth Avenue, it is that all the locomotion is done in New York. Cabs are hardly used at all: they are too expensive altogether, the shortest drive costing you a dollar, if it is only the length of one street. It may be as well to mention for the uninitiated that the word "avenue" in American cities is only used in contradistinction to the word street. All of the avenues run one way, sometimes for miles the whole length of the city, and all the streets cut them across at right angles. All the avenues are numbered from east to west: First Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue, (Madison Avenue and Lexington Avenue are two extra ones). Altogether there are about thirteen of these excessively long streets on Manhattan Island, on which is placed New York proper. The streets which run across them are numbered consecutively from One to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street; everything is regular, and you cannot lose your way, except in the oldest part of the town, which follows no rule. The elevated railroads are built overhead, the track laid on iron crossbars held up on double rows of iron pillars, which are made as light as possible. In most places the united double tracks are placed over the centre of the carriage-road at the height of the first-storey windows, which can be looked into, and allowing the light of day to come down freely to the sides of the road and on to the side-walks. But for a long distance along Third Avenue a curious sight is seen. The up and down trains here are disunited, and run along separately on lines of single iron columns, one over each of the pavements or sidewalks. It is just as if the railways were built along the tops of the lamp-posts. The trains run each way less than every half-minute, only stop from five to fifteen seconds at each station, only cost five cents for any distance, and are always crowded. In some places at the north of the city, where depression in the ground makes it necessary, the thin iron columns on which the elevated railways are carried are run up to the level of the fifthstorey windows, and even higher, of the houses alongside. It is not a very pleasant sensation travelling along on these thin supports at such a high altitude-at least it requires practice to get accustomed to it. em Not until one has actually travelled in America can one form any idea of how enormously the States are, in all parts, constantly being recruited by Englishmen and Scotsmen. I say nothing about the Irish, because every one knows in what quantities both they and the Germans pour over. But it is a matter of fact that in all the largest hotels in New York at the present time nearly the whole of the staff of waiters and other men- servants, also the carriage drivers ployed, are not " Yankees," but British. Of course out West they are frequently negroes. They may have picked up Yankee expressions and a nasal twang, that will deceive you at first; but in spite of their saying "I guess,' "Sit right there," "I'll fetch it right away," "Is that so?" or constantly using the frequent expression "quite a number" to denote a great many, when you come to question them, you will find their homes are in Devonshire, Edinburgh, or perhaps somewhere in the "shires." And, as a rule, their story is the same. They have married out here an American wife, and can never go back. Have they become naturalised Americans? "No, not yet; but they guess it will be as well to take out their papers some time," is the usual answer. In any case they must do so to open any kind of business. One fact strikes me much, and that is, that all these English waiters and carriage drivers talk so much about the "The Indian summer.' "" Who that has read books about America or known Americans has not sometimes heard of, their Indian summer? It is the brief period of beautiful weather which comes sometimes just as a break between the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. I was fortunate enough just to drop in to this Indian summer in the first week of November, while staying at Niagara Falls City (American side). For three perfect days in the most lovely sunshiny warm weather was I able to roam about Goat Island, or cross over the river on the 1300-feet-long suspension - bridge to the beautiful park on the Canadian side, and with the greatest comfort look at both the falls, and all the rapids from every point of view. And this, too, although there had been a fall of snow the day before the Indian summer set in, and one could stand and drop snowballs down the falls from Luna Island on the first of these summer days. the Canadian Horse-shoe fall, that I shall not dwell on it myself. But I should just like to put on record a bit of advice gratis to enraptured and newly wedded couples. If you want, my turtledoves, to see the place when it is at its very loveliest, when the changing leaves on the trees on all the islands have just reached their most perfect hues, when the "Lovers' Walk," and still more sacred "Lovers' Retreat," among the thick sweet-scented cypress and fir on the Dufferin Islands make love itself, 'midst the roar of the rapids, seem sweeter still,-go and stop a week at Niagara, either on the American or Canadian side, during the Indian summer. Having put the above on record, I have something else about newly married couples and Niagara Falls to make a note of. The head-waiter at my hotel told me that the honeymoon pairs sometimes arrived "quite thick," and then he continued: "I guess we made quite a mistake with two couple here on last fall. They arrived together in the evenin', just about dusk. While the two gents was down-stairs payin' the drivers, the chambermaid she showed the ladies to their rooms right away. About five minutes afterwards I took up one of the gents, and Robert here he took up the other of the gents, and we shows them straight into what we thought was their own young ladies' rooms. But somehow, you see, we'd mixed up them honeymoons. One of 'em he came out again pretty quick, but the other he didn't come out again for quite a time. 'Pears as how he'd found Rhapsodies about Niagara, its the young lady on'y half-dressed; spray clouds and rainbows, are and when she turned round in the out of date. It is now such a dusk from the basin where she well-known fact that nothing can was a-washin', and had kissed him beat either the American fall or or somethin' before she saw it VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCIV. M wasn't her own fellah, she got mad, and pushed him right into the dressin'-room and locked him in. You bet, sir, there was a high old time about them two mixedup honeymoons. We was rather crowded, too, so I put 'em all four at the same table afterwards, and there wasn't one of the four could look the other in the face at first without blushin' quite a deal. And very nice-lookin' young ladies they was too, sir. But, you see, they'd all sorter made acquaintance in their bedrooms; so they soon hit it off again quite well together, and used afterwards always to go about in one carriage to save expense." Evidently another example of the saying "All's well that ends well." It is not to be supposed that, travelling in the States as I was at the very time of both the general and municipal elections, I could avoid hearing the M'Kinley Tariff Bill, that is so unfavourable to England, very freely discussed. I found it generally very much hated by the majority of Americans I met, some of them even going so far as to tell me they wished that England would resort to retaliatory measures, so as to bring the Republican party to their senses. When, however, the great Democratic organisation, known as Tammany Hall, swept the country with the tide of democracy, and in all the States secured a majority for the next year's Assembly and Congress, as well as for all civic offices, great was the joy of a very political and piano playing gentleman I met at Niagara. He had no language strong enough to denounce the obnoxious Tariff Bill, the object of which was, he declared, to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. He had a very pretty little baby-faced, fair adorable haired wife, with an figure and a tiny foot. She was the most pussy-cattish little lady, with the most wheedling insinuating ways, that we ever met. I don't wonder that she made "Fred" marry her. She was the sort of woman who, when once you met her, somehow seemed to explain to you at once, or insinuate it by her actions, that you never ought to be without her more. While Fred was playing the piano, Mrs Pussy-cat, refusing a chair, and sitting at one's feet on the very lowest footstool she could find, would in a low, soothing, purring voice give one her own views on the M'Kinley Bill. "I don't know anything about politics, you know-Fred does all that; and I don't play the piano much, you see Fred does that too; but I do think this new tariff is just quite awfully abominable,— don't you? Why, just think of what we shall have now to pay for our Europe dresses," and here the little lady looks down complacently at her neatly clad little self; "and our Paris boots," and out comes the tiny little highheeled shoe; "and our gloves," out comes the wee hand. "And then you dear English people will suffer so by it too. Oh, I do like the English people so! I am never so happy as when I am with them; they have such nice ways. Say, Fred," disturbing the pianist in his best part, "when are you going to take me to England? I am just dying to get there; let's go-now at once, and we will have quite a nice time, I know." Pretty little pussy-cat, should you ever purr Fred into taking you across the ocean, I am sure that, with your pretty little harmless flatteries to every one, you will be sure to succeed in having, as you express it, quite a nice time. So much for the M'Kinley while bemoaning the withdrawal Bill, and how it affects American of the British troops twenty-five ladies. years ago, he relates word for word interesting conversations he had with Colonel Jones and Major Robinson; tells us how Lieutenant Brown drove tandem for a bet down those steps; shows us where he himself once, at the instigation of the merry Colonel Goodfellow, purposely upset his own sleigh, which was the leading one of twenty, and which contained the excessively stout Lieutenant Smith and the merry Mrs White. And the old fellow, who although seventy-two is as hearty as a boy, still tells his yarn so well that one almost fancies one sees the twenty following sleighs all driving round and round the capsized couple in a grand circle, and mocking at them as they struggle out of the snowdrift. "And Mr Smith, he weighed two-and-twenty stone, sir, and, Lord, how he did laugh hisself! And many a time I drove Mrs White since, and her little daughter too, who growed up and married; but never did they know that I upset 'em that day because Colonel Goodfellow told me to. But the Colonel, he calls me in when we gets back to the Citadel and says, 'Aird, here's five dollars for you;' and I says, 'Thankee, Colonel.' Lord, those were times! Why, I've seen forty race-horses of a morning up at the Citadel. But Quebec is just ruined now, ever since they took the regiments away. It will never be the same again." And then, although his mother was a Frenchwoman, and his second wife too, he abused the meanness of the French a littlesaid that no English Canadians could ever do any business with them, they had no enterprise, &c., &c., all of which I have often heard repeated elsewhere. From Indian summer to winter is an easy and quick transition in North America in November. After arriving by Grand Trunk Railway at the ferry of Pont Levis, opposite Quebec, and crossing the dancing waves of the noble St Lawrence in a bright sun on one day, it was no surprise to us to see the snow beating against the double windows next morning, beating too with such vigour that little piles of snow soon found admission, and mounted higher and higher between the outer casement and the inner. After the ground was well covered with snow about four inches deep, came a little rain, and then a very sharp frost at night, the consequence of which was the upper crust of the snow was all turned to sheet-ice by morning. The next day all the sleighs were out, and merrily jingling their bells before the door and windows of the St Louis Hotel, and we speedily followed the example of all Quebec, and were wrapped up in furs, speeding swiftly over the snow in a comfortable sleigh, behind a free-going horse, at the rate of about twelve miles an hour, with a grand old driver named Aird, well known, so it seems, for the last sixty years in Quebec. After visiting the spot where Wolfe fell victorious, we had soon flown in our sleigh down the hill through the now thickly populated suburb of St Roch. This was all part of the bed of the St Lawrence in driver Aird's younger days, and many an interesting legend does he tell of how he saw schooners, and even iron ships, building where now are the finest shops of the French Canadians, who chiefly live here. Mr Aird is a man with a wonderful memory; and, Beguiling the time thus, and |